There isn't a shred of "objective evidence" that *you* or *I* exist. "Objective" facts are a consequence of the *unprovable* starting points of logic, upon which science is based. You object to religion being made up out of whole cloth. But *every* system that claims to bring us knowledge has this problem. You have absolutely no way of telling whether we're in some virtual reality like "The Matrix" or whether we actually exist as it seems. The truth is that science got tractions because it brings us practical results. But it is not inherently free of the constraints that haunt all epistemologies. In short, something is "objectively true" based entirely on what you believe (but cannot prove) in the first place ... no different that the most ardent religious believers...
You need to go read some U.S. history. This paragraph above is mostly wrong. It is true that Deists are not necessarily Christian. It is false that the "majority" of the FFs had "little good to say about Christianity". Most of them were steeped in it at some level. And most of them were silent on the question of organized religion, at least as near as I can tell. A good many were, in fact, quite devout in their personal faith as their many letters and other writing attest.
You are, of course, free to disagree with them, but rewriting history to sanitize it of religious references because it makes your rationalist hackles go up is at least bad manners, and verges on outright fraud.
P.S. It is just as fraudulent for the religious right to claim the FFs as their own and turn them all into orthodox Conservative Baptists. I'd suggest we just let the FFs be what they were - brilliant, all over the place, sometimes inconsistent, occasionally wrong, etc. Jamming them into today's political and cultural filters is foolish and betrays the truth of this nation's history.
P.P.S. Your "most had little good to say..." probably comes from isolated readings of Paine and Franklin. You might want to consider reading two books that will give you a far more balanced and thoughtful view of those times: "Patriots" by Languth and "John Adams" by McCullough.
Astonishing, though, isn't it, when, IIRC, the thread started as a look at the Huckster and his religion and politics. Now it's religious philosophy versus scientific fact.
I long ago found out something about Tim, too: there is no chance of making a change in his mind, regardless of subject.
You can change my mind - some here have done so. e.g., Fredfighter convinced me that Intelligent Design as currently proposed does not qualify as science. You just can't do it using your favorite technique, Charlie, by swearing at me. Perhaps that approach works well in your world. I consider it profoundly rude.
Tim might cause he reminds me of those guys arguing about the angels dancing on the head of a needle but Buddhism isn't a religion, never has been, never will be.
Please don't lump a simple way of looking at the way life works into that group of beliefs that call for supernatural events and beings to be true. Buddha was a man, not a god. The Dalai Lama is a man, not a god.
By stating that I view science as a religion, you are trying to state that I am just as irrational as you.
No more possible than a "teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit"
Lots and lots of "Tea Pots".
It is nothing short of an weak attempt to 'fix' an obviously flawed argument.
Your argument above uses backwards logic. See below
I am supposed to believe that this machinery you describe was designed by an "intelligent agent" into a form that was accommodating to the needs of humans that would inhabit "earth" billions of years later. I am not supposed to believe that life on earth evolved to fit the environment we have. I am supposed to believe that the entire universe was personally tailored by some "intelligent agent" for us.
To use your phrase here is a "thought experiment": Most major cities are situated around a river. Suppose an 'alien' from outer space views our planet and notices this phenomenon. The 'alien' might conclude that the life forms on Earth placed the rivers there because they provided a source of water and transportation. This would be backwards logic (like you use). The rivers were not placed there by design by the inhabitants, the cities formed around the river out of need.
To the alien, the placement of the rivers appeared to be 'miraculous' in design.
You gave me as possibilities to a question I asked that the creator always existed. And the turtle theory claims that there was always a creator that created the creator to infinity. You can take those on "faith" that "it always existed (creator)", but you have a problem with the possibility that the universe always existed in some form (mass-energy) OR that it had a non-creator beginning. Astonishing!
Sorry Timmy. That's the way it goes. I have a hard time convincing people about the "Celestial Tea Pot", so I know how you feel.
The burden of proof lies with you, not with those who contest it, they do not have to dis-prove the existence of your 'creator'. For the same reason I can not be sure if the celestial "Tea Pot" exists.
One more thing. Why don't you call it (intelligent cause) what it is? Intelligent design (ID). Is it that much of a dirty word for you?
You are asking us to "take a leap of faith" and accept the 'creator' first cause as a possibility. This is just a huge of a leap of faith as asking you to believe in a "Celestial Tea Pot" as a possibility.
This is not the 'golden key' to believe in all things irrational.
Like I said ad nauseum, you want (desire/need) to fill the GAPS of science with the irrational.
? Do you really believe this or is this tongue-in-cheek?
Timmy. Read this slowly:
I am not ignoring the questions. I choose not to fill the GAPS with theology. I leave the question, not ignored, but acknowledged and unanswered.
It seems that you are in disagreement with the majority if you consider Buddhism to be other than a religion. If some person associated with it not being a deity makes something not a religion then neither Islam nor Roman Catholicism is a religion--Mohammed wasn't a god and neither is the Pope.
You left out a very important part. The one that says those general conclusions can successfully be used as predictors. That would seem to prove the "unprovable" axiom.
Of course, there are those who sincerely believe that fossils and rocks are just the creators practical joke - it's the only refutation of the science they can think of.
It has been said that George Washington (an aristocrat at heart) was not "the father of his country." Rather, the fathers(s) were a troika. Jefferson, Franklin, and Paine. Without them, the country would have been very different.
The "lesser lights" among the founding fathers may well have been devout Protestant Christians, with the occasional Jew or Catholic thrown in. But all of them together lacked the candlepower of the three deists who made up the troika.
To the contrary, many who call themselves Buddhists don't consider it a religion at all. As for the association with a deity, there has been an attempt over time to deify that which we call the Buddha. He himself resisted those efforts as he knew he wasn't a deity. Buddhism suffers from it's own name. That and the unfortunate usage of terms like monks and nuns to describe some of it's practioners. Anyone who reads the Dhammapada should be able to figure out that there are no religious beliefs in Buddhism, not then, not now.
As for the Pope, he is considered God's man on earth by catholic's is he not? His word is taken as infallible to the true believers is it not? Islam has it's Allah and his prophet as well. All efforts to try and keep people in fear of self awareness in my opinion.
Sorry, Mr. Clarke, but I am a Bhuddist and neither I nor anyone that I know considers Bhuddism to be a religion. A philosophy, yes, but certainly not a religion. Bhuddism requires no faith whatsoever.
And it has to be tested and be shown to be repeatable before it is accepted as anything other than hypothesis. Religion hypothesizes answers but never proves them. That doesn't necessarily make religion invalid, but, IMO, when religious opinion crosses scientific fact, then it's time to adjust the religious opinion, not the scientific fact.
I was contrasting them to now, not within their own time. What was, for the most part, liberal thinking then is now pretty conservative, particularly on the social scene.
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