>When it comes to God and Christianity, I see faith as a rock
>whereas I see a reliance upon evidence as sand. What can be proven
>by evidence can also be disproven by evidence (like building a house
>on sand), but what is based on faith is everlasting (like building a
>house on rock).
Susan:
>I can see why you would say that. Science, built upon evidence,
>is always shifting and changing (like sand, I suppose). Religion does
>evolve but most people think it's not supposed to. That's the difference
>between science and religion. As new evidence is discovered science
>must change. Religion must ignore any new evidence and remain
>static--as static as a rock. Though rocks do weather way.
>A bit of a testimonial for you to consider :-)
Science can afford to be so provisional because, for the most
part, it doesn't deal with important issues. And in the matters
which are not that important, religion has indeed changed in
light of evidence. How anyone can deny this after being aware
of the various religious positions on this board (all stemming
from the same basic religion) is beyond me.
Religion deals with the important issues - who are we? why
are we here? what should we do? It is questions such as these
rather than questions of measurement (science) that define
our sense of being. For example, the Christian religion imparts
value to our lives, as we are in some way created in the image
of God (the means of this creation are disputed by Christians,
but that is not important). The Christian religion imparts
meaning and direction to our lives, as we exist for a reason.
The Christian religion imparts validity to our sense of right
and wrong. And I think it is a very good thing these are
unchanging. After all, science is impotent in these regards
and it would create quite a schizoid society if it were not.
Let's put it in a different light. Let's say that after the genome
has been sequenced, and after many studies have been done,
science shows that a minority group, as a group, are more prone
to violence and less likely to be above a certain level of
intelligence because of the frequency of certain alleles they possess
as a group. Science also develops very robust models showing that
if we forcefully sterilize members of this group who carry certain
genetic markers, in a few generations, the incidence of violent
behavior will be significantly reduced and IQs will be increased.
Just pretend that this is what science shows. Should religion
change to support plans of forcefully obtaining genetic
profiles and then implementing forceful sterilization?
Science might be able to tell us what can be done, but does
it tell us if we should do that which can be done? No.
Mike