I think spirituality and science can go together... but I don't know about religion. It was my understanding that scientists can trace everything back to "the big bang" and they even have photo evidence of the event, but they can't explain what caused it. Is there an old man sitting in a chair up in heaven? I don't know. I personally believe that there is something greater than what we see, but I don't really hold the Bible in much regard as anything more than a guidebook for a decent life. My only question to atheists: do you believe that Jesus the man existed? I'm just curious if you think that he did, in fact, walk the earth, or do you think the whole thing is a myth?
^ To counter your point, somebody might ask if Socrates existed. Evidence of Socrates' life is from Plato's dialogues. There are no written works by Socrates. A lot of what Plato attributes to Socrates changes over time and the later dialogues are thought to be injected with Plato's own opinions. I've heard/read a lot of Christians make this point. Except the teachings of Socrates are palatable even if he was a character Plato invented to get his point across, however unlikely that is. The claims made in the new testament are extraordinary and thus require extraordinary evidence. If someone tells you they routinely examine their life you can take that on faith, so to speak. If they tell you they can walk on water you might ask for a demonstration.
Sure, I think Jesus existed at that time. I watched an interesting History Channel program a while ago about how there were a number of charlatans in that era claiming all sorts of religious knowledge/god-like status. Just because I think they were full of shit doesn't mean I deny they existed. Jesus' shtick just stuck better than the other guys'. Maybe he had a more optimistic and friendly message, or perhaps he was a better marketer. Who knows. But I sincerely doubt he was the only son of the same guy who made that ridiculously huge star (along with everything else). It just seems silly and egotistical to think that.
I'm not an athiest, I'm agnostic, which is to say speaking definitively isn't my thing. Yeah perhaps a man named Jesus was a prophet up to around 40CE but even if proof of his existence came to light it wouldn't prove his claims or verify his miracles. I thought you were touching on the historicity of Jesus. It is a debate.
I'm not really interested in the subject, but my mom is. She's read a lot of books that said Jesus wasn't going around saying he was the only son of god, but in fact was saying that he was the heir to the throne. I've never read the books myself, but from what she said, they say that he came from bloodlines that would have given him claim to leadership over the Jews. This was why they were threatened by him, and this is why they had him killed. I personally don't know if that theory is any more true than the Bible itself, but it would certainly make more sense. I think one of the books is called, "Holy Blood, Holy Grail" and was the basis for the fictional book called "The Davinci Code".
This is exactly what I think. Spirituality and science are not incompatible, as they are after different things. Science is searching for the best models that allow us to best describe and predict the universe around us. Spirituality is after the "why," at base. Religion, to me, is a subset of spirituality that depends too greatly on rules and assertions, the latter of which fly directly in the face of empirical evidence and the former of which have no intrinsic logic but, rather, depend on belief in an unproveable superior entity that imposes the arbitrary rules upon us. I'm not a fan of organized religion, but I am fine with, and even respect, personal spiritual investigations.
I took a geography of religions class last year and it was fascinating. We learned about all the major ones (Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism) and also covered Daoism and Confucianism. I personally found myself identifying with Daoism the most, with some aspects of the original Buddhist beliefs ringing home as well. A few of our forefathers were actually daoists. Ben Franklin being one of them, as well as Thomas Jefferson. I actually found a quote in one of my books from Franklin that basically said that he believed that Jesus existed, but not that he was the only son of god. It's all very interesting stuff.
Not to be picky, but the largest known star is about 2B miles in diameter, which is about 2000x the size of the sun. The most massive star is about 250x the mass of the sun. I don't mean to minimize just how huge 2B in diameter is. If it were where our sun is, it would engulf all the planets through Saturn (and quite a bit beyond).
I quite like the original Buddhism, because there wasn't really any mysticism to it, it was really more of a philosophy about life. Taoism/daoism is also very enriching to read about, IMO. In fact, I enjoy reading what might be considered the more philosophical aspects of religions. The parts that represent people trying to think through why things are the way they are.
I've posted about this before, but I'll repeat it now because I find it interesting. Carl Sagan was one of the top scientists of his day. He was always a proponent of the search for E.T., and responsible for the gold record on Voyager, and the plaques on the Pioneer spacecraft. His list of awards and accomplishments rank him as one of the brightest of his (or any other) day. Sagan died in 1996. In 1997, a movie based upon a book he wrote (fiction) came out called Contact. In the movie there were a lot of religious images, actors/roles, and philosophy. It all went hand in hand with the science. SPOILER ALERT (plot follows). The short story is that Jody Foster (an atheist/scientist) is a SETI type researcher. She hits the jackpot when the first extraterrestrial signal is received during one of her experiments. As the story unfolds, the aliens send the blueprints for a machine and the nations of the world agree to pitch in $1T to build it. She is not chosen as the one to "ride" in the machine, because she refused to say she believed in God during a congressional hearing to pick the person who'd go. Sagan's message is clear in this bit if plot - the vast majority of people in the world DO believe in God, so anyone who's going to represent the world in meeting another race has to believe in God as well (to be representative, right?). Palmer Joss: "Our job was to select someone to speak for everybody. And I just couldn't in good conscience vote for a person who doesn't believe in God. Someone who honestly thinks the other ninety five percent of us suffer from some form of mass delusion. " A religious zealot somehow gains access to the machine and blows it up with a bomb during one of its final tests, killing the guy who was going to take the ride. Everyone thought all was lost. Foster's character had a mentor, who many believe was Sagan writing himself into his story (though her mentor was a recluse $billionaire, but like Sagan was a dying man). This mentor contacts Foster with the news that the Japanese had built a duplicate machine at the same time the first - "First rule in government spending: why build one when you can have two at twice the price? Only, this one can be kept secret. Controlled by Americans, built by the Japanese subcontractors. Who, also, happen to be, recently acquired, wholly-owned subsidiaries..." So she does get to ride the machine. From the point of view of the hundreds of cameras and thousands of people who watched her ride the machine, it was over in seconds. From her POV, she spent hours or even days travelling through a network of wormholes to points very distant in the universe (not the milky way). She ended up in a place that one can only conclude is "heaven." It was a tropical paradise, and she met her dead father there. What is heaven if it isn't paradise and you don't get to join your dead ancestors? In the end, she was taken before another congressional committee who was investigating the fraud that surely took place. Senator: "[questioning to Ellie about her travel across the galaxy and back] Dr. Arroway. You come to us with no evidence, no record, no artifacts, only a story that, to put it mildly, strains credibility. Over half a trillion dollars was spent. Dozens of lives were lost. Are you really gonna sit there and tell us we should just take this all on faith? " Take this all on faith. That's a religious term, not a scientific one. The lawyers and scientists didn't believe her. In the end, it was Palmer Joss, the religion advisor to the president who stood up for her and said he believed her. And in the end, it was the atheist scientist who had to beg everyone to have faith she was telling the truth! Joss was no religious zealot, though he was deeply religious in his own right. News Reporters: Reverend Joss! Reverend Joss, what do you believe? What do you believe? [pause] Palmer Joss: As a person of faith I'm bound by a different covenant than Doctor Arroway. But our goal is one and the same: the pursuit of Truth. I for one believe her. Sagan surely knew he was dying when he wrote his book. He had several bone marrow transplants along the way to fight the disease that did him in. The questions raised by the book/movie do not preclude science and religion co-existing (quite the opposite!). What's even more interesting to me is that when faced with his own mortality, he seemed to have embraced religion. Perhaps science didn't provide enough for him.
Nailed: Ten Christian Myths That Show Jesus Never Existed at All Haven't read it, but supposedly he has spent over 10 years researching Jesus and that time period. I've also seen that the 'Jesus' characters name was not Jesus, or a translation of Jesus. It was Yeshua, which is translated to Joshua.
Again, I'm pulling from second hand info, but from what I was told, Jesus wasn't a name at all. It was a word for king or leader. More like a title. I don't know the real answer though.
Carl Sagan did not, in anyway, embrace religion near his death. Sorry, but you don't know what you are talking about. Sagan wrote the screenplay for Contact in 1979. When the movie didn't get picked up, he converted it to a novel in 1985. "When my husband died, because he was so famous and known for not being a believer, many people would come up to me—it still sometimes happens—and ask me if Carl changed at the end and converted to a belief in an afterlife. They also frequently ask me if I think I will see him again. Carl faced his death with unflagging courage and never sought refuge in illusions. The tragedy was that we knew we would never see each other again. I don't ever expect to be reunited with Carl." - Carl Sagan's wife, Ann Druyan. Carl Sagan is an idol of mine, and I don't appreciate your baseless claims.
It seems to me that science will never prove or disprove spirituality, just like religion will never be able to prove there is a higher being. It wouldn't be very much of a faith if there was indisputable evidence sitting before us all. There seems to be a need for balance. But at the same time, I can imagine a time a 100 or 200 years from now when science may know enough about how our brains function that they may be able to determine if we have any freedom of thought at all. If we are just biological machines... and have no freedom of choice... then really religion starts to fall apart. To me... a lot of my faith comes down to whether I am a biological machine with no real freedom of choice... or that I do have this other thing that lets me be in essence... more than the sum of my parts... I also think that even if a creator did not exist... we would most likely create the image of one anyway. I think religion has wrongly fought against science in the past (as Galileo would say if he... ah... had a head). I just don't see it as one or the other. At least... not yet.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contact_(film) FWIW, I am a big fan of Sagan, too. I read the book before the movie came out, and I've seen the movie maybe a dozen times. Sagan can say one thing, but what is presented in the movie are those symbolic things I talked about. Like the (basically) marriage of Joss (man of the cloth without the cloth) and the atheist scientist main character. More Sagan quotes: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20101010164158AA1wrH0 Sagan, however, denied that he was an atheist: "An atheist has to know a lot more than I know." In reply to a question in 1996 about his religious beliefs, Sagan answered, "I'm agnostic." Sagan maintained that the idea of a creator of the universe was difficult to prove or disprove and that the only conceivable scientific discovery that could challenge it would be an infinitely old universe. I'm not so sure his wife's quote is attributable to him.
I've seen a program on the science channel where they showed an experiment that indicates religious thought and experience can be stimulated with magnetism near the proper part of the brain. FWIW. Ultimately, religion is about Faith - a belief in something regardless of physical proof, and science is about physical proof and not supposed to be about Faith. In the end of the movie, Foster's character was in tears because she had to convince people to take on Faith that she experienced what she claimed. I suppose the 18 hours of snow on her video recorder was some sort of statement that there was actual proof of her experience...
