“Why not admit that we might not know if being a homosexual is okay with God? Why not admit there might be a time when fornication would be okay? Why do we claim some things are Absolute Truth” but then others we say “Just that I have faith that as I seek to find the truth, I will be led CLOSER and CLOSER to it.””

This to me is critically important in discussing Religion vs Science. I believe Religion takes faith, which is to accept some things are truth to me without physical proof, but relying on spiritual proof. Science cannot get into spiritual proofs, and therefore fails in that area. It doesn’t mean science is less important that religion, just out of its field of study.

I have faith the creation was done in 6 creative periods because God said that. There is a point where we let go of proving scientifically if fornication is ok, and simply knowing that if God said it, then I accept that as my faith. IOW, it is not so much about proving “right” or “wrong”, but viewing some things as “God’s will” and therefore what I will accept, even without proof. How can you possibly have faith if you don’t know? Because you know God’s characteristics, and have faith in Him. Maybe I don’t know about fornication or about homosexuality, but I have my confidence in the nature of God. God cannot lie, God cannot change universal laws, God cannot be ignorant of anything… and by that, I can set my starting point of what I view as truth without having to know it all.

Can I prove God has a body? No. So must I admit I don’t know? No. Because, unlike Thomas, I can have faith in what God said instead of what my intellect tells me. God told Joseph Smith who wrote it down as a prophet, I prayed and received a witness, and so now I know God has a body. My faith isn’t in Joseph Smith, but in God because God has the infallible characteristics that I can place my faith in, without using science.

I hope that makes sense. I really think that is critical in discussing this topic. It is not science vs. “touchy feely spiritual emotional hopes and beliefs where my brain must be turned off”. Religion is grounded on faith in the Omnipotent Supreme Being, and therefore can be taken as truth without a perfect knowledge of things. A religion founded on anything other than this will not stand on its own, and one with misplaced faith will eventually fall like the house built on sand.

So, figure it out on your own through science, or gain a testimony of God’s characteristics so that you can place a solid faith in His teachings such that you can truthfully say, “I know that is true because of my religion.”

The objection, as stated clearly by Kari, is with the **assumed** meaning behind Shadow’s posting of it – NOT with anything Shadow actually said about it. That was my point – that the quote by itself doesn’t incorrectly express what the rest of the statement following it expresses. It’s only when additional meaning / interpretation is imbued into it that a problem arises. It’s one thing to not like it when people quote something out of context to prove a point with which the origin would not agree; it’s another thing entirely to assume that was the intent when it is not clear at all that such an intent existed. Iow, it’s not fair to argue with one person based on how other people have acted and continue to act when that first person isn’t engaging obviously in the tactic being decried.

In one way, at least, this is personal for me. There have been multiple times when someone has read a comment or post of mine and reacted to what they perceived to be my underlying, unexpressed meaning – when, in reality, there was no such hidden meaning, and when I ended up agreeing completely with the “rebuttal” to my comment or post. That’s frustrating, so I try very hard to respond only to what someone actually says or quotes. In that context, I think Einstein’s quote, as posted by Shadow, can stand on its own. I think it sums up his argument quite well when no additional commentary is added.

The Einstein quote, I believe, can stand on its own without clarifying commentary. Ray #79

I would have to disagree. This quote out of context by religious folks to lend credence to the idea that religion, usually meant to mean organized religion, is of equal value to science (and was how I interpreted Shadow posting it as a comment, but I may be wrong). But that is certainly not what Einstein meant in the article from which this quote comes. The paragraph immediately after this quote reads:

Though I have asserted above that in truth a legitimate conflict between religion and science cannot exist, I must nevertheless qualify this assertion once again on an essential point, with reference to the actual content of historical religions. This qualification has to do with the concept of God. During the youthful period of mankind’s spiritual evolution human fantasy created gods in man’s own image, who, by the operations of their will were supposed to determine, or at any rate to influence, the phenomenal world. Man sought to alter the disposition of these gods in his own favor by means of magic and prayer. The idea of God in the religions taught at present is a sublimation of that old concept of the gods. Its anthropomorphic character is shown, for instance, by the fact that men appeal to the Divine Being in prayers and plead for the fulfillment of their wishes.

And two paragraphs latter he leads, “The main source of the present-day conflicts between the spheres of religion and of science lies in this concept of a personal God.”

And he closes the article thus:

But whoever has undergone the intense experience of successful advances made in this domain [science] is moved by profound reverence for the rationality made manifest in existence. By way of the understanding he achieves a far-reaching emancipation from the shackles of personal hopes and desires, and thereby attains that humble attitude of mind toward the grandeur of reason incarnate in existence, and which, in its profoundest depths, is inaccessible to man. This attitude, however, appears to me to be religious, in the highest sense of the word. And so it seems to me that science not only purifies the religious impulse of the dross of its anthropomorphism but also contributes to a religious spiritualization of our understanding of life.

The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge. In this sense I believe that the priest must become a teacher if he wishes to do justice to his lofty educational mission.

Hardly a ringing endorsement of Judea-Christian thought and organized religion. So, to follow your example, when using this particular quote from Einstein, maybe it should be led with , “You know, even Einstein, an avowed agnostic, recognized the importance of religious feeling when he said…”

Similarly, Einstein’s quote loses meaning, in my opinion, if members of the LDS church use it to promote the idea that the LDS doctrines and form of worship coincides with science because Einstein’s quote did not support the interaction of religion and science in that sense. In fact, Einstein believed that organized religions, such as those that believed in the bible, were antagonists to science and were nothing more than childish superstitions. So the quote used in this thread, “Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind,” when being used to support the idea that Einstein believed that the LDS religion (or any other judeo-christian religion) progressed hand in hand with science is not just misleading, but it is absolutely false.

Einstein said: “The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this. These … interpretations are highly manifold according to their nature and have almost nothing to do with the original text. For me the Jewish religion like all other religions is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions. And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people. As far as my experience goes, they are also no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything ‘chosen’ about them.”

If I were going to quote Hitler or Stalin or any other SOB (and I DON’T include Einstein in that characterization at all), I would do so with a HUGE introductory disclaimer – or even a humorous one like,

“You know, even a lousy, evil SOB like Hitler recognized that . . .”

My main point is very simple:

I try very hard not to call good evil – and I try very hard to see good even amid the bad. I have no problem whatsoever validating what someone says that I feel is good, correct, uplifting, edifying, etc. – even if I disagree with the other 99% of what they say. Once I close my mind to good from any source, I believe I begin to close my mind to MANY others sources – and that’s not a path I even want to start to pursue. I understand the risks of that decision, but I also understand the risks of a closed mind – even if it is only partially closed.

There is a regular commenter in the Bloggernacle whose focus and overall effort I despise – and I choose that word intentionally. However, I still learn from his comments once in a while. As one of my favorite Bishop’s used to say (quoting exactly, so don’t read if you are offended by what some consider to be coarse language),

“The gold is worth the shit you have to shovel to get to it.”

Or maybe I just compusively agree with Ray, lol. I totally feel like a yes-man to him sometimes.

I do not think that science needs religion or that science is strengthened by harmonizing itself with religion.

I think Ray is saying that he WOULD quote something Hitler or Stalin said if it is spot-on and wonderful, and you are saying that you think it is too risky because of the chance of offending someone. Is that correct? I got thrown off because you say at the beginning of your comment that you agree with Ray on this one.

I know personally that I would never give Hitler any attention by quoting something he said. The harm he did to society far outweighs anything he could have ever said that merits any attention.

Re: Einstein, I think it is unfortunate that both sides (atheists and believers alike) seem to use him to back up their arguments, at the very least, I agree we should not be misrepresenting what he may have really believed.

I am always intrigued when I hear Mormons quote Einstein thus (and I’m assuming Shadow is LDS, which may be incorrect), as this quote comes from an article in which Einstein was arguing against the idea of a personal God. I think if most LDS really understood Einstein’s religious beliefs, or more accurately his lack of religious belief, they would be less likely to quote him.

The division of science and religion into separate categories is itself something of an accident of history. The Greeks, at least, developed the steam engine, and didn’t USE it for anything except demonstration of “divine” or philosophical principles.

Even the great dispute between Mr. G and the church wasn’t over the CONTENT of the science. It wasn’t a comflict between science and religion so much as a conflict between two political religious factions, and Mr. G mocked the wrong church politician. The church was fine with the notion of a sun-centered system; what it could not tolerate in a time when Protestantism was becoming a full-blown limb of Christianity was the notion that the church had no final authority to decide what was true.

I sincerely believe that God is as responsible for the rise of Western science as He is for the rise of the Restoration. In fact, I became a physicist because of a personal revelation in which I was commanded to study science. I think they are BOTH tools given us for our benefit and as means for God to accomplish eternally significant purposes in our world.

But I think that they are tools that are also supposed to sharpen each other. I believe in God as strongly now as I did as a child, but, as a result of my study of science, I believe (I hope more accurately) very different things about God than I used to.

Because I believe, I also find I tackle different science issues because of the teachings of my religion than I would otherwise, and I’ve always tried to take jobs that might allow me to best influence the use of science discoveries for moral good (as I understand that good).

Back to knowing what science is. By the time science is communicated to us, the unwashed, it goes through several layers or filters. Often these filters have agendas or biases that are unreliable. I stared to move over to the Darwainist camp a few years ago, but with a greater understanding of the politics and business of science, I have now become more skeptical. This isn’t to say that I am now a young earther, but that I now do not trust the textbook and media feeding I have been getting. There is too much political and ideological gum in the system for me to trust it. Case in point . . . global warming. How is the science settled when over 700 scientists disagree. Sometimes abstracts that are fed to media outlets spin a different digestion that one finds in the body of the work. Peer review isn’t free from personal biases. The granting mechanisms in the ivy leagues are wholeheartedly owned by some very shady foundations that are tied to early 20th Century progressivism and its offspring. Science is politics. Science is religion. And science is business.

Like all things a skeptic should be, the system of science information has its own subjectivity that it must deal with.

Where they really differ is in their ability to understand nature (god’s creation) and improve the lives we live. Here, science wins hands down. Kind of ironic huh?