Say, what's with the formatting, filtherton? Why all the extraneous carriage returns? It looks like I'm reading a Shakespeare play without all the rhyme or poetry...
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Originally Posted by filtherton
Is there a phenomena that science can't investigate? The set of things that
are observable and amenable to scientific investigation is a subset of the
set of things that are observable- to claim otherwise is to claim that
science can achieve omniscience.
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That doesn't follow. At the very least, you're assuming that there is a finite number of things to investigate and there's no reason to think that.
It's ironic that you think
I tend to oversimplify...
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I'm not sure anyone has claimed to wonder why someone would investigate theism scientifically, so that's really beside the point.
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This is what I was responding to:
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Originally Posted by levite
I also am at a loss to explain what anyone hopes to gain by trying to explain religion scientifically...
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...followed by you saying:
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Originally Posted by filtherton
...I think he's saying that folks who try to explain away theism with science miss the point of theism.
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My comments seemed on topic in light of these statements...
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The point that I was making is that there are many beliefs held by theists
for which examination by the scientific process is irrelevant. Science has
nothing to say about the existence of a god, but it can say things about what an existing god is not, for instance, god is obviously not a visible hobgoblin on
Pat Robertson's shoulder. Science is impotent when it comes to explaining
the things that theism (in it's most general form) attempts to explain.
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But theism is an attempt to explain things arbitrarily, with no reasoning behind it. It's my contention that a fictional explanation is worse than no explanation at all.
In my experience, the things that religion attempts to explain are things that don't bear explanation...
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Not all religious people are attempting to make you live by their beliefs. How can you expect to be taken seriously as the arbiter of reason you seem to think you are if you can't even be bothered to notice the very real distinctions between the religious people who bother you and the religious people who couldn't care less about anything you do?
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Not all biologists think that evolution and common descent are scientific facts. There are, like, two who don't...
Yes, not all theists are attempting to make me live by their beliefs... Are you even understanding my arguments or are you desperately trying to find every pedantic way that my statements aren't strictly true and comment on those fine points? Effectively all christians on this continent are, in fact, trying to enforce their beliefs onto me. They do so whenever they elect a politician whose views and policies coincide with their christian sensibilities. In other words, they're trying to erect public policy based on their fairy tales. This is an enforcement of their beliefs onto me. Of course, this is their democratic prerogative but, of course, I will want to convince them that they're wrong. Hence, the debate continues...
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I think the more reasonable explanation is that people are the problem, and
that the culture of rural america is much more complex than you seem to
think it is.
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You're just saying that, though. Surely there are complexities in the problem. However, very few atheists deny scientific findings while the pious assault science with superstition. People are the problem. They have replaced reality with religion!