[Michael Chui]

Originally Posted by Hsiang-Lin

Mark Lapierre & Michael Chui:

Heh. I can only answer for myself; I'm too unfamiliar with Mark's beliefs to splice through that. Fair warning.

Originally Posted by Hsiang-Lin

You're saying God is based upon an unproveable assumption, hence it is simply speculation.

Read closer to the agnostic creed. (I am, of course, nitpicking what Mark said, not what Hsiang-Lin said.) God is not based on an unprovable assumption. God, as defined as an incomprehensible, undefinable (though he most certainly is), etc., is either assumed or not.

I, personally, choose to assume that God exists. I don't bother talking about this, because it's not a useful fact to argue with. So yes, God is simply speculation. Whatever you mean by God, and I almost certainly don't agree with many people's idea of God. Thus, I cannot discuss it with many people. So I don't.

Originally Posted by Hsiang-Lin

Michael you write, "Failing to agree on self-evident propositions immediately makes a conversation pointless." Right there, you are viewing faith in view of the scientific method.

No, I'm not. You're taking it completely out of context from the entire post.

How can I be viewing faith in view of the scientific method when I already say, "[Faith] is not logically deduced, nor can it be ultimately tested scientifically."

Take one of my non-scientific examples of truth deduction. Let's say we agree on "In vino veritas", translated "In wine, truth", meaning "Liquor up a person and they'll spill the beans." But notice that I said "we agree on". That part's important. If I don't think that some light drinking will help determine the truth, then I won't consider what's said as a result to be reliably truthful.

A different example: the priests of Zeus would often "listen to the wind" to divine the truth. Others examine the entrails of recently slain animals (read the Odyssey) or open a book to a random page (biblomancy) and so on. In the case of Christianity, most of such methods are quietly ignored, even the ones recommended (or recommended against, such as mediums) in the Old Testament. (You notice they're generally not in the New.) The essential Christian creed appears to be, "If God agrees, then it's true." The riddle is how to find out whether or not God agrees; most people end up asking an ancestor or an accessible member of the clergy.

Faith is a matter of essential assumptions. A certainty in the present: this is what I know. The existence of God (theism), lack thereof (atheism), or irrelevance of the question (apathetic agnosticism), is one of these.

Originally Posted by Hsiang-Lin

That statement assumes that we as human beings have the final say on everything that is: that we know what's best for us.

Nothing I have said in this thread or the linked thread even suggests this. To even say that "we know what's best for us" begins with the assumption that there is a "best for us". This assumption is, in and of itself, an article of faith.

See, what I talk about in the other post is applicable to just about everything. It's an intrinsic part of conversation itself. There are not that many assumptions built into it. It's not even a model: it's a description.

Originally Posted by Hsiang-Lin

There is no room for faith or hope in a scientific world as yes, it is ultimately pointless to try to prove God's existence in such a model.

You say that "science is a discipline based upon the capabilities of our human senses and minds". And I tell you this: it is not. It is a body of knowledge based, yes, on human senses and minds, but more importantly on the scientific method. What is the scientific method? "Put simply, [it] is what happens when you try to narrow down and isolate the cause of an observation. It is founded on the expectation that, if something is the cause of a phenomenon, repeating the cause in similar conditions will repeat the phenomenon."

Consider the idea that prayer moves mountains. Does it happen? Okay, we assume that prayer is X, that a mountain is Y, and it is moved if Z happens. This is called operationalization. Now, you have a group of people enact X, observe Y, and measure Z. Perform this test as many times as you can. If the same results occur over and over, then the conclusion you may draw from all of the experiments together is probably true.

Originally Posted by Hsiang-Lin

BUT, I am saying do not just analyze everything within the scientific view. A religious view of the world does not mean you have to separate science and religion. You can believe in God and believe in the connection between science and religion.

It is so strange: my post was about how there wasn't merely a connection between so-called "science" and so-called "religion", but in fact that they were so powerfully and necessarily intertwined that it's not actually possible to separate them at all.

And here you speak as if you disagree.

Read my post more carefully and more fully.

Originally Posted by Hsiang-Lin

But analyzing God, faith, and hope under the lens of the scientific method is not really fair.

Also, how do you classify hope in you model?

...
Perhaps a good question to ask is, under your current model of thinking how does it explain hope, faith, and love?

An interesting turn of phrase. It sounds like it's from the Bible. If it is, I invite you to read this post:
Unconditional Love Revisited

However, I also want to say that "classification" is the wrong term. What is hope but a noun? If it has no basis, then it is an assumption, an article of faith. Hope in beer volcanos in the afterlife is one kind of hope, whereas hope that the child you raised will live his life well is a different kind of hope.

And fairness is a remarkable term to use.

Make no mistake: I am a religious person. I'm simply not a blind one; I do not throw the name "God" around as if I were an authority on the subject, though I am, having partially invented my own beliefs. I choose to believe what I will believe because, in the brotherhood I believe I share with humanity, they are no better than I and I am no better than they.