H
Hydrogen
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To use an example cited earlier in this thread, Soren Kierkegaard examines the authenticity of faith in the story of Abraham and Isaac and comes to the conclusion that what separates Abraham from murder is his duty to God; that to believe in faith is irrational and that faith is founded in absurdity. Faith, for Kierkegaard, is an expression beyond the limits of what can be considered thought and cannot be observed or measured from any systematic point of view.
If I recall correctly, it was an angel that commanded Abraham to stop, not god. If Abe was truly tied to his faith, he wouldn't have listened to a mere angel.
A nice story (well, not really), but it is a story. The idea that god suggested murder and then pulls back on that command suggests a hesitant god (not to mention a little mean-spirited).
More to the point, faith - as you set it up here - is not much different from fantasy or day dreams. People have been known to have fantasies of themselves that exceed the reality they otherwise inhabit. Does that suggest that they have special knowledge, or an imagination?
Faith is thought. It's all in one's head - unless one can show existence for trans-thought of some kind.
We can put science to the same testing and see that it, too, comes off the rails: how is intelligence a measurable property of brain matter? What is the intrinsic value of a sunset? And how would scientific discovery, which is itself value-laden and in search of measurable phenomena in a world where a lot may escape detection, be an appropriate means to determine the existence of gods?
The word "intelligence" has many different usages. Attempts to measure intelligence in a supposed scientific manner has a long history of abuse and criticism. Intelligence quotients are largely meaningless, but do reflect an attempt to explore and define what intelligence (as a capacity) is, and how to measure it. People do science, and people are by no means perfect.
By the "intrinsic" value of a sunset, I think you are asking a question of aesthetics and not necessarily science. However, the intrinsic value of the sun on earth should be fairly obvious - no sun, no life. I can still recall the thrill I had when learning about nucleosynthesis. I've never looked at a sunset quite the same way again. It's added an extra appreciation to the beauty of the event. That experience has been informed by science.
Interestingly, "sun set" is a long and harmless hold-over of a geocentric belief of the universe. The sun does not set; the earth rotates as it orbits around the sun. Moreover, the sun used to be worshipped as a god by some people. Given its importance to life on earth, it's almost an actual contender.
There are a number of interesting studies that have examined the mind and the relationship to qualities such as beauty. However I don't have a background in these subjects to explain them adequately. Nevertheless, would it be so strange that a mind as adaptive as the human mind, and so capable of making connections between the warmth and importance of the sun - and the (apparent) cycles of rising and setting - could experience emotions related to that daily happening?
As for the last part, how would something so completely value-laden as a search for gods be scientific? Gods are a conclusion. To look for them as already defined gods, you would first have to know something about them, some of their qualities, location and so on. While many people have reported a belief in god, they have offered up very little in the way of phenomena to search for. The belief is nothing more than a highly generalized statement shared by many individuals - often taught to them from an early age. Science starts with questions, but they must be scientific questions. People professing a belief in a god suggest they know something; they should be offering up that knowledge or evidence for testing or examination.
Some people I know who believe in a divine Creator would go so far as to say that the Bible and other sacred texts hang around their necks like a millstone.
But what gives these people special knowledge to know of a divine creator? In the absence of any explanation otherwise for the existence of the universe, why do people feel it's suddenly okay to just invent a cause?
My final word on the matter: the belief in God that I could reconcile with would be the same as that of Isaac Newton. If He exists (and I guess we'll never know, through science or otherwise), then he was just a perfect being who created a perfect universe to run and then left it at that. I believe in a deterministic universe and to address the question posed by Archibald MacLeish in J.B., I think that the world we live in represents a Panglossian ideal.
Again, the stance you propose would presume a prior knowledge of god, plus knowledge of those actions.
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