Agreed. I read that in his later life, Darwin was disturbed by the way people took his ideas and used them to attack religion. I suppose he felt a little like the guy, who split the atom, after viewing the devastation of Hiroshima. I don't know why we take new knowledge and use it like a dagger to attack former ideas, but we do. Maybe we think the attack is necessary in order to kill the old knowledge.JackDaydream wrote: ↑January 18th, 2022, 12:28 pm Definitely it seems that religion and science can be complementary in many ways. My understanding is that Darwin was not an atheist at all. It does surprise me how so many people seem to think that the idea of evolution and atheism must go together.
Evolution is a process, atheism is a belief -- although atheists will deny that it is a belief. So the atheists take evolution, the process, and use it to attack creationism, a different belief, to prove that the atheist's belief is more valid -- which is a crock of bull as neither belief is entirely accurate, nor is it entirely invalid. Rather than attacking each belief, I chose to consider where the ideas merged and took what we know about evolution, chemistry, consciousness, and "God" ideas, merged them and showed that there is a viable pathway between consciousness and evolution. And I did it in a science forum, which was a lot of work.
JackDaydream wrote: ↑January 18th, 2022, 12:28 pm When I was a child and first heard a teacher, who said he was an atheist, speaking of the theory of evolution I was horrified because I had been taught the story of creation by my family and at church. However, as a teenager, when I was at a Catholic school, I found that the teachers there were in support of the idea of evolution or trying to think how to interpret it. I found an English teacher helpful as he pointed to the way in which the Book of Genesis is so different from the way in which science or newspapers are written. It is based on oral traditions and folklore which was passed down. It is not as if the writers of it witnessed the 7 days of creation or the actual Adam and Eve.
Yes. It is always important to remember that religion is a study of emotion, and emotion is difficult to pin down, to put into words, and to relate, so it lends itself to story telling. If the story comes to the same conclusion that science comes to, no matter how they got there -- they are both correct.
Regarding the symbolism, this is because religion is a study of emotion. Remember that emotion is subjective, so if I wanted to share a feeling, let us say hate, with you, I could tell you about a circumstance that caused me to hate strongly. Would telling you about that cause you to have the same strong feeling? Probably not; you may be able to identify with my story, but it would not be the same. Although emotion does not share the same way knowledge does, if that emotion is symbolized, the knowledge of that symbol can be shared, which in turn can share the emotion. Much like a flag can symbolize all of the things we feel about our country, allowing us to share that emotion when in the presence of a flag. I suspect this is where archetypes come from -- I think they are the product of trillions of human minds over millennia that have symbolized feelings in the unconscious.JackDaydream wrote: ↑January 18th, 2022, 12:28 pm So much of the difference between science and religion is on a symbolic level, even though many religious believers do take ideas concretely.
As far as believers taking ideas concretely, I think that has to do with intelligence and age. When I was in elementary school, one of my teachers had a plaque on the wall which stated; great minds think about ideas, average minds think about events, and lesser minds think about people. This is true, and I think that most leaders whether religious or secular know this. Religion provides the ideal/belief for the greater minds; the events like church on Sunday, picknicks, Bible studies, and rituals for the average minds; and the personas for the lesser minds. Secular governments do the same thing providing the ideals of the government, parades and holidays, and portraits of leaders. Since the "greater" minds make up about 15% of the populace, that leaves a lot of people to internalize the other more physical aspects of the teachings into symbolic and concrete concepts.
Miracles and the supernatural are simply events that we do not yet know the cause of. Nothing to get upset about.JackDaydream wrote: ↑January 18th, 2022, 12:28 pm One of the major aspects is the idea of miracles and the supernatural.
Have you ever been to the Vatican? We visited Rome fifty or so years ago, and I learned that there are basements in the Vatican where thousands of scrolls are stored. Remember that a scroll is simply a book that could have been written by anyone for any reason, but only those that have been studied and chosen to represent some truth have been incorporated into the Bible. The Vatican does not allow most of this information to get out.JackDaydream wrote: ↑January 18th, 2022, 12:28 pm There was a deep split between the early Church and Gnostic ideas, and this was linked to the political aspects of the church. The finding of the Gnostic gospels does represent a very different perspective on the life of Christ, especially in the raising of the issue of whether Mary of Magdalene was his sexual partner. Theologians recognize that the writers of the Gospels weren't really the names ones and it is probably only Paul who was the real writer. Within the development of Christianity, so much was down to the ideas and interpretations of Paul.
Did you know that Mary of Magdalene was determined to be a prostitute about 400 years after her death? I believe it was St. Augustine, a prolific writer, who determined that. He also was responsible for most of the doctrine that initially promoted the Church. If you read Holy Blood Holy Grail, which was written in the 1970's, I think, they have a different interpretation. They think that Mary of Magdalene's relationship with Jesus was hidden in order to protect her because she was his wife, which would be the wife of an acclaimed leader of a subjugated people, and the question of legitimate children continues to this day. This book also notes that none of the Gospels were written within 100 years of Jesus's death. So there were a lot of stories passed before anything was written down.
Regarding Calvinism: Augustine wrote the initial Church doctrine which embraced Neoplatonism, but Augustine did not like Aristotle or logic. He thought that belief in "God" was enough to prove ideas valid. In the 1200's, Aquinas wrote new Church doctrine which accepted many of Aristotle's ideas. It took a few hundred years for this new work to reach enough people to create an impact in the Church, but it eventually was at the root of the split -- the Calvinists and Gnostics following Augustine.JackDaydream wrote: ↑January 18th, 2022, 12:28 pm I don't know a great deal about the historical circumstances of Calvinism. Generally, I understand that the idea was that people should live in poverty and be rewarded in the afterlife. In Christianity as a whole there was often a big division between the wealth of the Church in contrast to the poverty of many. But, there has often been an emphasis on charity.
Regarding the wealth of the church; it is important to understand that people will look at the clergy to determine the worth of the "God" that is represented, so it is not unreasonable to show a wealthy successful clergy. Of course, this wealth can lead to corruption.
Hierarchies are not just relative to human life. I can't think of any species that does not have some kind of hierarchy from ants and bees to wolves and elephants. I suspect that it is fundamental to nature.JackDaydream wrote: ↑January 18th, 2022, 12:28 pm It seems likely that hierarchies are central to most aspects of social life, independently of religion or science. There are still big aspects of social inequality. At least in England presently there is a welfare state and the NHS which are able to support people because in many parts of the world there is not much available of this kind. It is to hold onto these that brought big lockdowns, especially the idea of the NHS being overwhelmed. But, the events of the last couple of years have made so many aspects of life in the world very unstable.
Gee