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Originally Posted by Charlatan
I try hard to stay away from the metaphysical. I see God as a metaphysical concept. I do not need faith know if go exists or not. God is not observable (hence the need of faith). If God were to pop down and give me a high five, I might come to believe in it but as it stands the idea of God does not stand up to any empirical evidence. Period.
As a result I see no need to believe in God any more than I do the Easter Bunny.
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Ah but there's the rub, Knifemissile's protestations aside, anything that doesn't stand up to empirical evidence, must ipso facto be accepted on lack of evidence (faith - even that is common sense).
Is god metaphysical? We don't know. Up to know, as a race, we have been unable to take a measure of God. Nor can we even determine if there is no God. Does the fact that we have been unable to do this make God metaphysical? Beyond our physics perhaps, Utlraphysical? who knows.
So to further elaborate on Knifemissile's gravitational behaviour analogy, we can prove consitantly that objects with mass will be attracted to gravitational forces. But there is a starting point in accepting the science of this. This is the faith in the scientific method, and its repeatability. The monsters, remote controls, cokes etc are all red herrings.
You may not need to believe in God, but that doesn't make you an atheist, because you are not stating that you believe that there is No god. Rather, it makes you an empiricist, a scientist and therefore an agnostic.
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Originally Posted by KnifeMissile
Well, let me just say something that might come as a surprise to the people in this thread. I'm not looking for proof. Proof is too heavy a burden to be a reasonable expectation of people. I can't prove to you that Australia exists. I'm just looking for a reason to believe in God. Anything even vaguely compelling will do. I have an open mind...
For a change of pace, I will try something new and adopt your meaning of the word "faith," which seems to be (and correct me if I'm wrong) the literal meaning of believing in something. So, I have faith that my TV remote control will fall to the floor if I let go of it.
As another side note (I seem to enjoy them), by definition, nothing in science is ever proven. Again, proof is something that pretty much only exists in mathematics. We merely have good evidence that some theory appears to model reality well or we don't. Some theories are better supported than others. Scientists have a lot of faith that the good theories are accurate while being more tentative with their faith for unsubstantiated theories. Bad theories are simply disbelieved...
With my new found definition of "faith," what we are talking about, here, is a degree of faith. Things that seem self evident, like my falling remote control, hardly need any faith at all while fantastic things like men riding flying reindeer need much more faith. |
And... this is my contention. Since you are not looking for proof/ evidence what have you, you are happy to take the existance of God on faith. Yes scientists have faith in the scientific method, but you said it yourself, the intent of that method is to provide a working model, until something else can replace it (if possible). Faith in the details of the theories is not required or demanded. Repeatable, observable experiments are what are required to substantiate the theories. Again, the mosters, and gravity are red herrings when taken against the grand scale.