Quote:
Originally posted by Cerek the Barbaric:
Ahhhhhh...but what about Divine Intervention. I have personally seen prayers succeed where science and technology failed. I've told the story before, but the short version is that I faced a life-threatening condition 6yrs ago. I suffered massive internal injury and - through a series of events - had to wait more than 30 hours before corrective surgery could be performed. After the surgery, the doctor asked my wife and mother if they believed in miracles. They replied that they did and he said "That's good - because a miracle is the only thing that will save him now. I've done what I could, but it simply wasn't enough to repair the damage that's been done. I don't expect him to survive past the next 72 hours."
My mom returned to the waiting room in tears and asked everyone there to pray with her for my safety. Total strangers joined hands with my mom and asked God to spare me. I later learned that over 100 people from my hometown were also praying for a miracle on my behalf. However, I was completely unaware of any of this - so my recovery cannot be attributed to "positive thinking".
The bottom line is that our advanced medical technology was not sufficient to save me. Only God's Grace was able to do that.
|
You’re talking about supernaturalism there.
But Science only deals with Tangible proofs and evidence,
So to say that someone _is_ cured by “god’s grace” is rather misleading, since there is no scientfic justification for that (the matriel world, including people getting cured come under the jurisdiction of science) nor will there ever be, unless someone empirically proves the existence of a god or higher power of the sort that your beliefs subscribe too.
So someone can believe that they were cured by such, but ultimately it comes down to a matter of faith, and so it is inadmissible as evidence in any form of logical debate and argument.
I can say that I think for example When I went Short sited in my right eye, That It was caused By something to do with hardening of the lenses or something? or I could say that It was done by god who was angry that I had done sometihng bad,
However on the one hand I have an Optician to back one veiw up with the whole wieght of human scietific endevour and "proof" behind him, On the other hand I have faith in A God and faith in various doctrinesn needed to ascribe my ocular malady to him.
The choice is up to the individual in the end.
Quote:
Originally posted by Cerek the Barbaric:
I disagree. Although I'm in no hurry to die, I do not fear death. I have a personal relationship with God that is real - not imaginary, hallucinatory, or chemically induced. I have heard His voice in direct answer to prayers and I have seen His hand intervene in my times of need. This is not just "wishful thinking" -
|
some people may think you have proved his point,
your belief in a god as you state quells your fear of dieing,
i.e “I do not fear death”.
Quote:
Originally posted by Cerek the Barbaric:
I have gone to God in prayer over different circumstances and seen real, empirical results occur from those prayers.
We are stuck on this planet, but we are not insignificant - at least not to God. 
|
Religion in itself cannot be empirically proved true, therefore unless you first prove the existence of god, to claim the existence of it's intervention in the matriel world is, since it cannot be verified on scientific grounds, is purely faith.
You cannot definitively claim that god _does_ exist or that god _does not_ exist without making the statement anything other than pure faith with all that entails.
Quote:
Originally posted by Cerek the Barbaric:
I agree. Although I don't feel that science and God are mutually exclusive. I believe God designed our world and the universe to operate in an orderly and precise manner. He then gave Man the ability to "discover" these "orderly patterns" for ourselves so that we could better understand how our world works.
|
Religion deals with faith, i.e. simple (or complicated YMMV) Belief in something without nessacerily any valid empirical proof to back it up.
Science deals with empirical proof, i.e. something that within the evidence based observation model we have built up of the materiel world can be independently verified by someone with repeatable experiments and similar.
Mathematics I think deals with Necessary truth & pure logic, I.e. within our current mathematical system 2+2=4 and no one and nothing can change this without changing the whole premise of Maths as it currently is.
Language deals with contingent truth, For example The Sentence “Fish don’t have legs” Is contingent that we don’t call “fins” (something which fish have) “Legs” (something which under the current meaning of the word Fish do not have).
For example I can get Foucault’s pendulum or whatever it was they used to prove that the earth rotates and I can duplicate this experiment myself, You can duplicate it, Everyone on earth can, and They can therefore prove to themselves that the earth appears to rotate.
We can all get a sheet of people and a pencil or even a calculator perhaps, and see that 2+2=4. We can all look in a dictionary at current meaning of words,
But we cannot all sit down and do a certain proscribed action and all find proof of god’s existence in that or even contract with a divine being etc.
Therefore IMHO (YMMV) I think science and relegion do have an irreconcibiable gap, One of proof and evidence.