My God, My God, why have you forsaken me ?

[mfewell]

Words from the cross by Christ. Can I add a tilt to them. They are supposed to be a fulfillment of the OT, but what if, when Christ uttered them from the cross, that they were more than that and utterly true, i.e. God the Father had momentarily forsaken his son ? Imagine for a moment that Christ in hanging there did indeed take all the badness of all time on his shoulders ? Can you imagine a pain any worse and a love any higher ? Just a thought, but by heck it sticks with me.

[spk]

My God, My God, why is this thread still going ! Lots of interesting comments though

[mimififi]

Blinky, this is really on you mind isn't it. I'm still following this thread as it is really interesting.

However, there comes a time for the searching to cease and to make a decision. Therefore, I'm going to submit this hymn. Read it carefully and digest.

Rock of ages, cleft for me

let me hide myself in thee.

Let the water and the blood

from the wounded side which flowed

be of sin the double cure;

save from wrath and make me pure

not the labour from my hand

can fullfull thy laws demands

could my zeal no respite know

could my tears forever flow

all for sin could not atone

thou must save and thou alone

nothing in my hand I bring

simply to the cross I cling

naked, come to thee for dress,

Helpless look for thee for grace

Fould I to the fountain fly

wash me saviour or I die

While I draw this fleeting breath

When mine eyes shall close in death

When I soar to worlds unknown

see thee on thy judgement throne

Rock of Ages Cleft for me

Let me hide myself in thee.

[mimififi]

I wonder, How would science explain why this language is so beautiful;

Or maybe there are things within the humaness of our nature that science can not explain.

Science is man made, We were here before we were scientists.

[loudickson71]

I don't believe in God, but I think there is truth in what you say there.

[mibn2cweus]

Just an alternative poem

http://www.swarthmore.edu/~apreset1/docs/if.html

[mibn2cweus]

http://www.swarthmore.edu/~apreset1/docs/if.html />

[Uzoma]

My 2p worth . . . The Bible tells us that God cannot live with sin or tolerate sin/evil in any way. It means that although He loves his creation (ie. man), he doesn't like some of the things he does. This means (1) God doesn't create the evil in this world. It comes from a devil that causes it & (2) when Jesus took the sin of the world, by default, His father had to 'forsake' Him as He was the carrier of sin. In fact, that further explains why up until that time, Jesus referred to Him as His father but in that particular context referred to Him as God instead.

[blinkyblinky]

Hey Mimififi, glad you're still around...

I accept what El D said in his last post, but I still think it doesn't answer some of what I said, especially the point about the ants. In what way is discovering laws the same as knowing the truth about the universe? And just how many laws do I need to hold in my mind in any one moment to understand the true nature of the universe?

Another thought that came to me. You know those pictures that look like dots and if you stare at them for a minute or so they turn into 3-dimensional pictures....

I just imagined that you could give them to a scientist who has never seen one before. He could examine them, he could weigh them, tell you what they were composed of, right down to the molecular structure of the ink molecules. He could give you a complete physical description of them...

I imagine asking him at the end of it all, "And what did you think of the teapot/giraffe/dolphin?" The point being that he hadn't seen what was crucial about it. I mean there's more to the world than just what is physically there. You could have all the information about something physically but still be missing something.

I'm not saying these pictures can't be explained by science (of course they can), just that it's not simply what you know about something that determines its nature, it's also the way you look at it and this can be crucial, possibly the most important aspect of something, and that something could be reality, life, the universe, everything : o}

[mibn2cweus]

blinkyblinky: Science, reason, truth, they have no independent value, meaning, purpose; it�s all about you, and me, and everyone else who sees its value, meaning, purpose. It is a personal thing which each of us must discover for and reveal to ourselves first. If you don�t have it you can�t share it and if you just try to still it, its value eludes you. It�s an individual thing that belongs only to those among us who have taken the time and gone to the trouble to earn it. And we share it by relating it to each others own individual experience; mutual understanding!
It all comes down to understanding what we are, how we live and our relationship to the world out there that makes it all possible. We create our own selves by paying the price for our own understanding, by thinking! To be human is to realize our potential for self-understanding. We are born only with the potential; becoming what we can be is the how and the why. When you achieve this for yourself you will understand what it means to say, "To hell with heaven!"

[babyshambles]

Eloi, eloi, lama sabachthani?

Yeah, I just wanted to display my knowledge of Aramaic, hehe.

[blazebuster]

It was a perfect man who first sinned way back in the garden of eden, so it had to be a perfect man who could die the way Chirst Jesus did in order to buy that sin back from God so that we could live. You really have to look deep into the Bible to find the answers to the questions that we all ask ourselves today. But I truly believe that one day we will as God promised live in a Paradice earth. When Jesus gave him life for us that was "The Ultimate Sacrifice"

[El D]

I RETURN

How could a perfect man have sinned? - boom

Blinky

A sense of other's perspective is always useful - we learn from other people's experiences just as we learn from our own. Once we had seen such an optical illusion we would be aware of what to look for in the future. Life is a learning process, and the only way in which to learn about the world is through empirical observation EVEN if the logical conclusions of such observation do not immediately make themselves apparent.

As regards to the ants, I feel this to a certain extent denigrates the capability of mankind. Sure, the ants always find food in a certain spot etc etc. Now, what if we gave them a modicum of intelligence and they asked why the food was always in this spot. If certain ants suggested that human beings were gods, immortal beings who deposited food for the ants good behaviour, we might laugh, knowing that this was not so. If they placed their question in the correct context, if they asked why instead of what, meekly accepting their discoveries, if they ventured forth to trace the food back to its source, if they questioned enough, then they would discover that we were not gods, that we did not provide food according to their behaviour. In essence through observation of the world combined with rational logic, they would discover the truth. We are not ants, ants are incapable of placing their observations in the context of rational logic. If we were ants, for example, if we merely observed the results of the physical world instead of deducing the cause, apples would fall to the ground because they fell off trees . . .

[deekaying]

I must say i have enjoyed reading this thread. it does seem to have snowballed into a different argument/discussion science Vs religion. one of the statements that has been made regularly is " although science is man made." but isnt religion also man made? after all Jesus ( a proven historical figure.) never claimed to be the son of God! his divinity was never given any credence until 325AD when a council decided on his divinity to maintain peace and stop religious factions from fighting, Jesus became the son of god because 220 african bishops decided he should be. Then of course there's the Bible, (the word of God.) decided upon by Athanasius in 367AD in his annual letter to the egyptian bishops therefore creating the accepted gospels of the new testament. so not only science is man made so is christianity. All based on historical fact.

[deekaying]

sorry to keep on but on afterthought man did not create science, gravity would exist without man, chemicals would react without man, the universe would exist without man, but christianity would not, so by my reckoning science is not man made but christianity is! so is science the true nature of the universe where in more primitive times we used a fabled character and called it God to explain away all the things we could not truly understand? (just a view)

[blinkyblinky]

I think science is our attempt to understand the world, whereas religion is our attempt to deal with what we don't/can't know ie our ignorance.

As soon as you have life, you are faced with the prospect of what isn't life (ie death). As soon as there is existence, you have the implication of non-existence. As soon as you have knowledge, you also realise that there is so much ignorance.

Life/intelligence is like a spark in the darkness. it lights up a bit of the universe, and we call that knowledge. But to have that spark you necessarily have that darkness. So ignorance is a pre-condition of knowing and of being.

Sorry if that sounded pretentious.

[El D]

No, I think Blinky that again you fall into the mistake of equivilating science and religion. Science is not a belief system. It is the best method for gathering, analysing and explaining the raw data we collect from the real world, and it is based on empirical, objectively verifiable methods. Science is a way of explaining and understanding, a way of conquering ignorance. Religion embraces ignorance because that is what gives it its power - as you so rightly say, it is a way of dealing with the unknown. The more people don't know, the more they can be afraid of. Religious people have a very childlike view of the world which stems from never having developed their own viewpoint, at least freed from the contraining shackles of a thousands of years old belief system. Science deals in knowledge, religion deals in ignorance, it never really seeks to explain.

As regards your spark analogy, I might also be pretentious in saying that from tiny acorns are mighty oaks grown - we know very little, for sure, but we are learning, and we must nurture that growth and not stamp on it with ludicrous Kansas style dictates. I am intensely curious about everything - unfortunately the explanations of some archaic cannabalistic blood cult are insufficient, as they should be to every rational, logical and independant mind.

[blinkyblinky]

El D

I don't think I'm doing that. I think what I said (or at least what I meant) was quite innocuous. Science, I think we agree, is an attempt to gather knowledge about the world. However, that knowledge is not complete. Religion is an attempt by people to deal with the vast area of life that is unknown. Wouldn't you agree (bearing in mind I'm not making any judgements about the truth value of religious doctrines)?

What happens when we die? What is good and evil? Is good preferable to evil? If so, why? What causes gravity? What causes the thing that causes gravity? What happened before the big bang? What caused the big bang? What caused the thing that caused the big bang? What causes causality? How many big bangs/crunches have there been and why? Where did time and space come from and why do they/does it (spacetime) operate in the way it does? Why does light travel at the speed it does? Why can't it travel faster? Who says? Is there just one universe or a multiverse of universes? What is outside the uni/multiverse? Why? Why not? Why do atoms contain electrons? Why do electrons spin round atoms? Why are there reasons why these things happen? Why are there only four dimensions? How many dimensions are there really? And why? What is love? What happens after death? Really? Are you sure? How do you know?

[blinkyblinky]

What percentage of the possible knowledge about everything have we presently grasped? 1%? 99%?

I'm not anti-science and I'm not promoting any particular religion. I say the world is a deep deep place and we have just begun to scratch the surface. The remaining ignorance is a vast cavernnous darkness that stretches out way beyond the flame of science's illumination. I don't think it's necessarily true to say that religion always exploits people's fear of that darkness (although it often does). Religion can just be a way of coming to terms with it.

If you really feel that everywhere is bathed in science's light, that there are hardly any dark places left, then you will probably not feel the attraction of religion. You won't need religion. But if you're more sensitive to the existence of what we don't know, then you will be more open to religion.

Lastly, I think for some people religion is a dirty word. But I'm talking about it in a general way. There are specific religions and many of them are crap, dangerous, evil, exploitative... whatever, I grant you that. But there is also the general religious instinct that has been a part of human affairs since we lived in caves and started burying people with their spears. That was just a result of people's ignorance, their lack of knowledge about the world, I hear you say. But how much have we grasped? 99% or 1%? I can't prove 1% and you can't prove 99%. It comes down to faith, doesn't it, either way?

[El D]

Blinky - your first post was going so well, so many excellent questions - do you think religion will ever provide an answer to them? Again I feel that you buy into the sidetracking arguments employed by so many 'lay religion' types - what exactly does our lack of knowledge have to do with asserting yet another unknown? I know it may seem contrary to a lot of what I say, but I am remarkably open minded about the possibilties of the world we live in - all I require to distinguish imagination from reality is proof, objectively verificable proof.

Again, what does our undoubted ignorance have to do with science v religion? We don't know everything - so what? I feel that this is part of the religious condescension of the human condition. Why is the fact that we know so little cause for such concern - surely this merely illustrates the proven track record of science in illuminating such matters and should lend itself to an argument that science is a sturdy method of discovering new truths. We have many instincts, many of them are outdated, e.g. flight or fight adrenaline response in situations where it does not help us. A bestial fear of the unknown is hardly an instinct worth cultivating, or would you argue differently? What has religion taught us in the last thousand years? What new progress has it brought humanity? It soothes the fears of the ignorant and assures them that they do not want knowledge, knowledge brings pain, questions that are best left unasked, indeed the first sin was a quest for knowledge - isn't the whole proposition of religion that Big X knows best anyway? The fatalistic determination of many religions also undermines their scientific enquiries - arab nations in particular have fallen foul of this.

You seem unsure blinky - my advice would be do not let your ignorance be your guide as to what to believe - it's not a particularly logical way of approaching things.

[blinkyblinky]

I thought Arab nations were always cited as having a fantastic history of scientific enquiry...?

Anyway, I agree with just about everything you say in your post El D, but I disagree with the way you slant some things...

Why is the fact that we know so little such a cause of concern? I don't think it's a cause of concern, but it's a fact that we must live with. Yes, we can rely on science to constantly extend the beam of its knowledge into the darkness - what we don't presently know - but the mysteries explained a hundred or a thousand years from now don't help us today, do they? Our whole lives have to be lived and have to end alongside that unknown. And can science explain every mystery? What about many of the questions I asked? Some of them may be answered one day, but many I think are unanswerable. They are beyond the scope of science now or ever. Look at those questions again and tell me how science can even start to try to answer some of them. Does that mean the questions are unimportant? (Incidentally, can you use science to say which questions are important and which are unimportant?)

To take one example:

Is good preferable to evil? (If so, why?)