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I watched an Intelligence Squared debate last night on Public TV. This is the first I've heard of these debates. The proposition was that the world would be better off without religion. Here is a link to a summary, from the NPR website.

http://www.npr.org/2011/11/21/142470957 ... t-religion

The pro side carried the day among the audience, by a slim margin.

The contrary view was argued by a Rabbi and a college president (D'Souza). They were, in my view, at something of a disadvantage, because they couldn't take the view that the world is better off keeping one religion, but discarding all the others. And the subject of truth never really came up. By this I mean, in this context, the substantive question of whether the tenets of any given religion are objectively true.

As you might expect, I do not think that the world would be a better place if all the Christians were suddenly to abandon the faith, or to be raptured out of the world. The question of whether "faith" and "religion" can be used as interchangeable terms is by itself a major subtopic.

Anyway, the debate gave me a slightly better handle on what we are up against. And I am convinced that science has become a kind of religion of its own. It has adherents and evangelizers who accept the pronouncement of the authorities in the scientific community without critical evaluation, and who do not really understand what they profess. Not all of them, of course.

Among the educated public at large, there seems to be the tacit assumption that any proposition that science can neither verify nor falsify is therefore inherently subjective. I do not accept this formula. I believe that there are truths that are objectively true, but that science can neither verify nor falsify.

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Not all those who wander are lost.

You have brought up some very good points and questions. This is why, in my opinion, more churches should be emphasizing apologetics.

The topic you mentioned sounds like the book I read called "The End of Faith," by atheist Sam Harris.

I also agree with your assessment that science in some ways is like a religion. I remember the university I went to, a secular university, and the anthropology teacher was committed to evolution and to debunk Christianity. I thought, after the course, he really taught evolution like a religion.

my thought is it's been this way for centuries -- the supposed "higher understanding" always appears superior & gains converts

i would quibble with this -- science is a religion to some but is not 1 in & of itself -- this distinction needs to be made -- some think Jesus was a wise man that had some groovy ideas -- that doesn't make them believers

i am uncertain if apologetics is the key emphasis -- i would focus on hermeneutics -- "study the Word to show yourself approved" & all -- God's Word will stand on it's own w/o people going to seminary & such -- churches should teach the Word, going verse by verse thru each Book

in the end, God has Won the only debate that matters so let's not forget that -- He's Told us "the harvest is ripe" so let's be about His Business & focus on His Will for our lives (Eph. 2:10)

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Let me try to be a little more precise.

By likening science to a kind of religion, I don't mean to suggest that the scientific community has reorganized itself along the lines of religious communities before them. A little of that might be going on. But for the most part, scientists continue to treat science like science.

I'm talking about the public consciousness regarding science and scientists. These are the "memes" that originate with scientists, may be considerably changed by journalists or by social networkers, and stay alive because they have more survival characteristics than other memes.

Let's take Darwinism. The average person doesn't really give hoot whether his original ancestor was Adam or some kind of primeval swamp ooze. What the average person is really interested in is this: "is it OK for me to be selfish?" Darwin didn't really give a scientific answer to this question in his work. It's not really a scientific question. But a lot of people, including Dawkins, address this issue directly, and merge questions about science with questions about the real meaning of life.

On the other hand, some "religious" people learn that it's not OK to be selfish one day out of every week. The other six days, they live in a world where the rule is "do it to them, before they do it to you".

Does teaching Darwin in schools do any real good or any real harm if Darwinism turn out to be true? Does it do any real good or real harm if Darwinism turns out to be false?

Does teaching the Genesis account of Adam and Eve in schools do any real good or any real harm if that account turns out to be true? Does it do any real good or any real harm if it turns out to be false?

In the debate, the merits and drawbacks of "religion" in world society were discussed without regard to whether religious beliefs were true, false, or some true and some false.

Truth matters to me. But it's not the only thing that matters.

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Not all those who wander are lost.

The moderator was some guy from ABC news. The real groaner for me was when the moderator said that Moses was "something like 800 years old when he died". That tells me a lot about the extent to which a "world without religion" has already been acheived.

Harvard college was founded as a bible school. We really live in a post biblical America. Less so, perhaps than Europe. But dramitcally so compared to the America of a half century ago.

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Not all those who wander are lost.

The atheist side quoted Deut 25:11-12 as ana example of how religion holds people back from evolving into the kind huimanity that we could become.

They spent more time on this than on Lev 19:18. And they claimed that the intent behind this scripture could equally well be found in belief structures that don't depend on God at all.

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Not all those who wander are lost.

that's how i understood your original comments

a very sad reality that christians allowed to happen

we should not expect spiritual wisdom from athiests

Correct.

If you are implying that Dawkins is suggesting that it is ok to be selfish, that is completely incorrect. In the first chapter of The Selfish Gene, Dawkins clearly expresses that "I am not advocating a morality based on evolution. ... My own feeling is that a human society based simply on the gene's law of universal ruthless selfishness would be a very nasty society in which to live."

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"My object in all arguments is not to make any preconceived opinion of mine seem right, but merely to discover and establish the truth, whatever the truth may be."

-- HP Lovecraft, letter to Robert E. Howard 7/27-28/34

Well, we aren't in complete control.

But if what you are suggesting is that we Christians have been asleep at the switch for about a half a century, then I mostly agree.

I'm not really talking about what percentage believe the Bible. I'm talking about the percentage of the public that are mostly familiar with the stories in the bible that everyone, believer or not, used to know.

As in, "who'se Noah?" I suppose you hear that more in Vermont than in Mississippi.

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Not all those who wander are lost.

That's not what I was trying to suggest. But, now that you mention it, I do not accept Dawkins' self assessment. He's basically trying to set up framework where an intelligent designer that would create a world like this one would be an evil creator. That, in turn, makes a world with no creator look relatively benign.

But I'll admit that I'm not a great student of Dawkins.

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Not all those who wander are lost.

He's not trying to set up any such framework. Primarily, he is presenting the results of scientific inquiry (namely evolution) to a popular audience. The 'framework' of evolution existed long before Dawkins, and it is accepted by biological scientists (theist and atheist alike) as the best theory explaining the facts of biological change-over-time.

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"My object in all arguments is not to make any preconceived opinion of mine seem right, but merely to discover and establish the truth, whatever the truth may be."

-- HP Lovecraft, letter to Robert E. Howard 7/27-28/34

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I was reading Somewhere that the laws of physics Had to be In Place Before anything was here or it couldn't Be here. Gravity being a big thing -- but All of nature - the way everything works together Speaks of an Intelligent Designer. That Designer being God. The Genesis account of creation makes more sense than anything evolutionary thought comes up with. Evolutionarily speaking there's no reason for anything To be here.

Religion is man trying to reach God. Christianity is what God has done for us on the Cross.

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