The Science of Christianity

[skeeterboy]

Daniel 1:4, "Children in whom was no blemish, but well favoured, and skilful in all wisdom, and cunning in knowledge, and understanding science, and such as had ability in them to stand in the king's palace, and whom they might teach the learning and the tongue of the Chaldeans."

 

If you have questions regarding Christian faith, morals, and other issues in Christianity, ask them here, and I will give you answers based from the Bible.

 

This is my principle: As much as I could, I want to answer your questions without exceeding from what is written in the Scriptures.

 

"And these things, brethren, I have in a figure transferred to myself and to Apollos for your sakes; that ye might learn in us not to think of men above that which is written, that no one of you be puffed up for one against another. (I Corinthians 4:6 KJV)"

 

Just be patient in waiting for me to reply.

 

PS. I would like to talk about Christianity as a science, a "systematic knowledge or practice (Wikipedia)". To avoid possible equivocation, I just want to say that I am not in any way related to the group Church of Christ, Scientist nor with Mary Baker Eddy.

[Buffy]

If you have questions regarding Christian faith, morals, and other issues in Christianity, ask them here, and I will give you answers based from the Bible.

...

This is my principle: As much as I could, I want to answer your questions without exceeding from what is written in the Scriptures.

...

PS. I would like to talk about Christianity as a science, a "systematic knowledge or practice (Wikipedia)".

 

You need to make yourself familiar with the purpose of the Theology Forum that is outlined in 4064. This forum is for the discussion of the phenomenology of religion.

 

Usage of any self-proclaimed "inspired" text to prove the "truth" of a particular set of beliefs is considered "Proselytizing," and folks that do it don't last long around here.

 

We're not opposed to religion: we're just opposed to people claiming theirs is the only true one.

 

Thus we have this forum--quite carefully titled "Theology"--to study religious beliefs and organizations.

 

Calling Christianity a "science" in and of itself is mangling the definition of the word, and as has been discussed in the past here, usually involves trying to say that the contents of the Bible itself are "by definition true." This is something you can "believe in" but its not provable or justifiable.

 

As a practical matter of course--again, lots of interesting discussion to be found in this forum--even those who try to interpret scriptures strictly can have wildly different views of what they mean, and this quite often degrades into mudslinging because of the lack of clarity and seeming inconsistencies in the texts. And this point is *not* directed at the Bible: most religious texts run into the same problems.

 

Lots of us are happy to engage in this sort of discussion, but you need to be aware of the limits we impose, and the fact that these limits are designed to keep the discussion at least reasonably "scientific," but more importantly to eliminate truly offensive "my religion is better than your religion" debates.

 

Enjoy your stay!

 

My commandment is "try to be nice to everyone,"

Buffy

[Freddy]

Six centuries before Jesus is born the Chaldeans capture Judah and bring some of the intelligent Jews back to Babylon. Somehow from that you get that Christianity is a science! What science were they practicing back then in Judah?

Christianity is a religion and nothing more.

[Hill]

From Merriam-Webster's 11th Collegiate Dictionary:

 

science

1. : the state of knowing : knowledge as distinguished from ignorance or misunderstanding

 

2a : a department of systematized knowledge as an object of study <the science of theology>

 

3a: knowledge or a system of knowledge covering general truths or the operation of general laws as obtained and tested through scientific method (the scientific method is the collection of data through observation and experiment, and the formulation and testing of hypotheses)

 

While 2a is one of the definitions of the word science, you will find that the main subject of interest at Hypography is found in definition 3a. There is obviously room to discuss theology, based on faith, but attempting to prove theological concepts by using the scientific method will make for some tough uphill sledding I believe. I'm just sayin....:cheer:

[Inter.spem.et.metum]

Christianity is just one interpretation of the TRUTH. All religions give the same message, but they are only different interpretations. If one tries, they can completely translate each of the religions into each other.

 

But lets remember what true Christianity is supposed to be about. Love, truth, self sacrifice, and the rejection of materiality. These were the teachings of Jesus. He never once claimed to be the sole representation of God, and he definitely didn't preach that believing that he was God incarnated was the path to the Source.

 

By the way, I am not a Bush hater, he is only human, but who would Jesus bomb?

[charles brough]

I have noticed that there is a lot of reluctance in social science theory to deal with what function religions serve and therefore why they have always been with us---perhaps more than 150,000 years, every since we developed language and speech.

 

It is a touchy subject with them and they naturally prefer to avoid it. It is enough to say we are "hard-wired" to "like the spiritual." We are not "hard wired" and just what is "spiritual" supposed to mean?

 

We developed religion so we could bond ourselves into groups ("societies") that were much larger than the forty-odd sized hunting-gathering groups we evolved to live in. We are, after all, highly evolved social primates and lapes into addictions, despair, corruption, stress and hostility when our bonding beliefs fail to work, when they fail to bond us tightly together so we feel "as one", united and not "lost" and "abandoned."

 

So, we need a new belief system that does the job better, doesn't fiddle with our minds and choke them up with "spirit" talk, "miracles," and myths

[Buffy]

I have noticed that there is a lot of reluctance in social science theory to deal with what function religions serve and therefore why they have always been with us...

Uh, well I guess you're entitled to your opinion, but most of the anthropologists and even political scientists I know personally argue quite openly that religion was where political functions *came from*....

It is a touchy subject with them and they naturally prefer to avoid it. It is enough to say we are "hard-wired" to "like the spiritual." We are not "hard wired" and just what is "spiritual" supposed to mean?

"Hard wired" is not how these experts that I've talked to discuss it: until just the last hundred years, political and social structures were barely differentiable from the religious ones.

 

Do you have some examples of this "reluctance?"

 

It sounds like you agree with my thesis here, the only question is where is the conspiracy against it that you see?

 

If your question is why is "Theology" separate from "Social Sciences" as a forum *here*, that is solely idiosyncratic to the fact that the discussions in the Theology forum--much to my own dismay--lean toward justifications of particular religious beliefs rather than the specific societal implications of formal human belief systems. You will notice that where discussions of religion here lean more into sociology that we actually categorize them as such and the end up in the Social Science forum (we've got a few active ones there right now!).

 

In religion and politics, people's beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second hand, and without examination, :evil:

Buffy

[OldBill]

As Buffy pointed out "try to be nice to everyone." The Golden Rule is all we've ever needed to guide our moral behavior. All attempts to elaborate, guide or define morality beyond that will usually devolve into something as asinine as Leviticus.

[Lancaster]

Christianity is just one interpretation of the TRUTH. All religions give the same message, but they are only different interpretations. If one tries, they can completely translate each of the religions into each other.

 

Lumping all religions into one big group with identical goals is far from accurate. I would love to see you "try" to "completely translate" Hinduism into Judaism. Can you justify your statement?

 

But lets remember what true Christianity is supposed to be about. Love, truth, self sacrifice, and the rejection of materiality. These were the teachings of Jesus. He never once claimed to be the sole representation of God, and he definitely didn't preach that believing that he was God incarnated was the path to the Source.

 

Are you kidding? That last statement is reputed by one of the most famous bible verses of all time: John 14:6, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me."

 

That was Jesus speaking. You must come through him to get to heaven! Seems like he considered himself the "path to the source" after all. Fact checks are so much fun!

[rockytriton]

That was Jesus speaking. You must come through him to get to heaven! Seems like he considered himself the "path to the source" after all. Fact checks are so much fun!

 

That's what jesus said or that's what someone copied that someone else wrote down that they heard someone who was with someone who heard jesus say that?

[Inter.spem.et.metum]

"I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one may come to the father except through me."

 

This only means that he was the perfect example of what a human should be, the perfection of God's imagination of what a person should be.

 

Hinduism and Judaism are perfectly compatable, outside of their relative setting. You have to remember that both religions were divinely inspired in different regions of the world and at different times. They both speak of duty, and the consequence of a person's actions in this existance. Both testify that we all eventually return to the source of creation.

 

Any differences in the religions are based on historical blindness and cultural ignorance.

 

Lancaster, your assumptions are clearly based on biased opinion of religion and an assumed competency of your knowledge of them. Religion is nothing more than the categorizing of themes that exist in all things and the interpretation of these themes in relation to human existance. If you remove the human aspect of these assumptions from each of the major religions, and, debatably, even the pagan religions, you are left with models that completely resemble each other in their application.

 

Jesus didn't turn anyone away. He wasn't a Christian, a person who believes that salvation is based on the belief of something or someone. And he wasn't a Jew, because he didn't follow the rituals necessary for him to be accepted by the Jewish community during that time. That is why there was much conflict between the Jewish leaders and him during his adulthood. He was completely non-denominational and his teachings were outside the confining nature of most religions, but he didn't renounce any religion as long as it wasn't polytheistic.

 

Check your facts, because they aren't facts. They are interpretation.

[Queso]

Jesus sold out.

[Inter.spem.et.metum]

?

[C1ay]

Contrary to the thread title I'm having a hard time finding any real science in this thread about Christianity. Is this yet another strange claim?

[cotner]

As Buffy pointed out "try to be nice to everyone." The Golden Rule is all we've ever needed to guide our moral behavior. All attempts to elaborate, guide or define morality beyond that will usually devolve into something as asinine as Leviticus.

 

There are two versions of the Golden Rule:

 

The positive one and the negative one, which latter I imagine to be more primeval than the positive one.

 

The negative one goes like this:

 

Don't do to others what you don't want others to do unto yourself

.

 

And the positive one thus:

 

Do unto others what you want others to do unto yourself

.

 

Forgive me if I am mistaken which is more probably the case, but Master Kong (aka confucius -- 551-478 BC) is given the credit for the negative formulation.

 

Jesus Christ is credited with the positive formulation.

 

 

If you like a Christian girl so much you want to kiss her, then go ahead and kiss her, then tell her:

 

I have done to you what I want you to do to me, kiss me now in return; for the Lord says "Do unto others what you want others to do unto yourself."

 

 

Just the same, that will not get you off the hook on the charge of sexual molestation or harassment.

 

 

Laugh.

 

 

 

cotner

[charles brough]

Uh, well I guess you're entitled to your opinion, but most of the anthropologists and even political scientists I know personally argue quite openly that religion was where political functions *came from*....

"Hard wired" is not how these experts that I've talked to discuss it: until just the last hundred years, political and social structures were barely differentiable from the religious ones.

 

Do you have some examples of this "reluctance?"

 

It sounds like you agree with my thesis here, the only question is where is the conspiracy against it that you see?

 

In religion and politics, people's beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second hand, and without examination, :)

Buffy

 

Buffy, does tying religion in with politics actually explain to YOU why religion has always been with us? Perhaps they are thinking from a Marxist perspective and feel that religion is imposed so that the imposers can overlord over everyone else. That pictures the human race as a bunch of dumb suckers that are always being duped into cow towing to their masters.

To me, that is merely a very negative, emotional and especially ideological view of what happens. It is not objective. It does not explain the immense growth of the human cultural heritage on Earth. It does not give us any insight into the future---except possibly doom. It offers no solution except that we "educate the public" about the supposed benefits of "freedom" and "democracy." Yet, it seems to me we in the U.S. are being the most poorly led of many a nation!

 

"Religion" is an old word representing the old "spirit" based world-view-and-way-of-thinking systems that have until now served the human race. Because we evolved thru millions of years in small hunting/gathering size groups dominated by Alpha males, we are instinctively geared to function best in just such size groups. However, that limited the expansion of the human species and led to the development of language and speech. That in turn enabled us in each group to believe in common, something which fortified the unity of the group. This set up an evolutionary-like situation in which the group with the most advanced and most satisfying World-View (WV)---"religion"---had an advantage over others. So, naturally, the better religion spread among the hunting gathering groups and led to their eventually being able to be united into larger groups we should now call "societies."

 

That is using evolution to explain religion and that, in turns, explains why it is not accepted in the mainstream!

[Buffy]

Buffy, does tying religion in with politics actually explain to YOU why religion has always been with us?

Yes!

 

Man's single greatest achievement is the development of complex societies. This is directly tied to the development of hierarchies and enforcing them via a supernaturally imposed *stability* that is resistant to overthrow every time some bully manages to beat up the current chief: this is known as the "divine right of kings," and has been the operative mechanism for control from pre-history right up until the last few hundred years with the much stronger rooting of the notion of democratic institutions that are not based on power being provided by God.

 

Why does this work? If God, the creator of all things, the provider of good and the punisher of evil tells you to do something--well, at least his *emissary* does, if the society does not actually say that the king *is* God (e.g. the Egyptians)--then you do it or risk very severe consequences, not only here on Earth, but in the afterlife as well! Pretty powerful stuff! Its hard to argue that anything could be developed that was a more effective social control mechanism!

 

Democracy can indeed turn into anarchy, and until suffrage was universal (unlike the much earlier Greek and Roman attempts at democracy, where only those with high social status had a vote) it was not possible to sustain it. Even now it is a fragile thing when some of the powerful begin to start reclaiming a "divine right" to lead (sound familiar?).

 

Now the main argument against this, which you seem to be hinting at but won't say is that this "evolution" of socio-religio-political power is somehow "emotionally unsatisfying" or "feels inadequate" as an explanation. People try to use this same argument to "prove" that quantum mechanics is wrong, but its just an emotional appeal rather than being anything solid.

 

Unfortunately that leaves the counter-argument as something emotionally laden as this:

Perhaps they are thinking from a Marxist perspective and feel that religion is imposed so that the imposers can overlord over everyone else. That pictures the human race as a bunch of dumb suckers that are always being duped into cow towing to their masters.

Do you have a counter argument that is more convincing than to blast that view as "Marxist?"

 

I'll ignore the fact that this statement is a contradiction insofar as Marxism strongly posits equality among all people, rather than dismissing the masses as unable to lead themselves (technically that's "Leninism" which has fallen from grace even among Communists!).

To me, that is merely a very negative, emotional and especially ideological view of what happens. It is not objective. It does not explain the immense growth of the human cultural heritage on Earth.

Why not? You're mainly making the argument here that "without God, there can be no good," which is an appeal to emotion, but of course it begs exactly the same argument as posited above about "Marxism": are humans incapable of creating an "immense...cultural heritage" without God to inspire them? How belittling.

It does not give us any insight into the future---except possibly doom. It offers no solution except that we "educate the public" about the supposed benefits of "freedom" and "democracy." Yet, it seems to me we in the U.S. are being the most poorly led of many a nation!

Of course as I hint above, we are being led poorly precisely because we are abdicating our democratic *responsibility* to question those who revert to "divine right" or "just trust me" methods of asserting authority!

 

There's actually nothing *inherently* wrong with God-led government, in fact its arguable that it is evolutionarily superior as a mechanism for maintaining "social organisms."

 

That's my point of course though: its indeed very easy to see why these things developed!

"Religion" is an old word representing the old "spirit" based world-view-and-way-of-thinking systems that have until now served the human race. Because we evolved thru millions of years in small hunting/gathering size groups dominated by Alpha males, we are instinctively geared to function best in just such size groups. However, that limited the expansion of the human species and led to the development of language and speech. That in turn enabled us in each group to believe in common, something which fortified the unity of the group. This set up an evolutionary-like situation in which the group with the most advanced and most satisfying World-View (WV)---"religion"---had an advantage over others. So, naturally, the better religion spread among the hunting gathering groups and led to their eventually being able to be united into larger groups we should now call "societies."

Yep!

That is using evolution to explain religion and that, in turns, explains why it is not accepted in the mainstream!

Okay, you lost me there: I think you basically said "using evolution to explain religion is not accepted because evolution is used to explain religion," which is just circular. Maybe I misunderstood you.

 

It really just comes back to the question I posed above which you did not address:

I have noticed that there is a lot of reluctance in social science theory to deal with what function religions serve and therefore why they have always been with us...

Do you have some examples of this "reluctance?"

The discussion we're having right here is evidence that its being discussed! And of course with Dawkins running around the talk-show circuit, its even a hot topic!

 

It might be useful--and even persuade a minority--to simply say "no one likes to talk about it because they can't refute it," but that does not make it *true*.

 

So maybe I misunderstand you completely. What point *are* you trying to make?

 

Eschew obfuscation, :)

Buffy