In the world before Monkey, primal chaos reigned.

Heaven sought order, but the phoenix can fly only when it's feathers are grown.

The four worlds formed again and yet again, as endless aeons wheeled and passed.
Time and the pure essences of Heaven all worked upon a certain rock, old as creation.
It became magically fertile. The first egg was named "Thought".

Tathagata Buddha, the Father Buddha said "With our thoughts, we make the world".
Elemental forces caused the egg to hatch.
From it came a stone monkey.

The nature of monkey was irrepressible!

“Belief does not rest on evidence; it is a different way of knowing than that of scientific knowledge.”

One has to wonder how we reached modern times whilst institutionalized religions and theology carry such fear and loathing of science from medieval times.

I am impressed however, with the slight of hand by which Peter Sellick slips in the word “knowing” as an extension of the word “belief”. He didn’t actually replace “belief” with “knowledge” but it’s tantalizingly close, he’s almost there.

It’s vital for theology to allude to “belief” as a form of “knowledge” because faith can then sit at the right hand of “science” on an equal footing.

Unfortunately, much as theology seeks to bastardise the use of the term knowledge, it remains a specific entity as part of a structure and cannot be separated without the word and function of knowledge being destroyed.

Data is all things stored, recorded and otherwise available. Information is Data distilled into specific topic by context and relevance. Knowledge is the application of information and actions to produce a result. For example, a list of ingredients (information) will not produce a cake. A recipe however (knowledge) provides the methodology, timing and sequence that will produce a consistent something from the ingredients.

If theology wishes substitute the words faith or belief with the entity “knowledge”, we would have a reasonable expectation that theological data could be distilled into information and applied as knowledge to produce a result. Knowledge is therefore a validation.

Can we please have an example of religious knowledge, or if you prefer it, “knowing”?

- Greetings all:

Martins S,

David f’s citation of Isaiah 45:7 seems emphatic: According to scripture, the Christian god did create evil. George seems to concur, adding, if I represent George correctly, evil is needed, so we can appreciate good.

I wonder why god didn’t just create good and better? - I suspect the faithful will point to The Fall of Man. Yet, would a loving god punish all humanity for all temporal time based on one transgression by two people (more so Eve) under provocation & temptation allegedly) 6,000 years ago.

Besides, the evil Satan seems to predate Genesis. Against what good was Satan’s evil contrasted before the Creation?

No doubt other mythologies qualify evil: e.g. Pandora’s Box. Christian is just one of the pack. Try to explain evil is essential to common cultural histographies. Even before the advanced religions developed, animists would have spoken of "evil spirits".

David f,

Thanks. I was unaware of this verse. It appears the Churches don’t bring that one out when evil is discussed.

George,

Maybe there are religionist anthropologists, yet the methodologies of the Discipline might tend to class religions as a chemist would classify elements, as I previously commented. As, also mentioned before, humanity had the Axial Age and we read of H.G. Well’s Alexandrian God factories. Christianity is a carpet sitting on a dozen layers of under-felt. Moreover, Christianity is but one room in a Hilton Hotel of rooms.

Relda,

I have not previously read Alan Watts. I would have thought there are plenty of predictions made in the Bible or at least interpretations as predictions. The End Days being a case in point. The ancient Jews, the Christian Jews and Nicaean Christians have all exclained, “the End is Neigh”! Like Marx, who also made predictions by leveraging Hegel, the hypotheses were valid and disproved.

Oliver,

As far as hypotheses go, it certainly has been and probably will continue as so, to give ‘God’ as a proposed explanation for an observable phenomenon – proof however, as to his existence, and also according to the theologian, Paul Tillich, will always be beyond us. The ‘predictions’, as pointed to, and as you correctly point out were literally false. The word prophet, to which we have now affixed a new idea, was , however, the Bible word for poet. The word ‘prophesying’ meant the art of making poetry. It also meant the art of playing poetry to a tune upon any instrument of music.

We are told of Saul as being among the prophets, and also that he prophesied, but not what he what prophesied. The case is, there was nothing to tell. These prophets were a company of musicians and poets, and Saul joined in the concert, and this was called prophesying. Now, what the writers of the NT had read into the OT was really a form of poetry, and really not validating at all an Old Testament prediction about the coming of the person, Jesus Christ, despite the wonderful poetry.

But it does remain, by examining the behavior of the past and describing it carefully, we can make predictions about what's going to happen in the future – this is also science, in perhaps as much for many at least, as it is common sense.

reida, can you give examples of dawkins' crass mistakes?

bushbasher,
please reread what I wrote; I did not “attack the religious fervour” of any meeting, I just pointed out similarities between this particular meeting and meetings conducted by evangelical preachers.

I am sorry, but I cannot express more clearly what I dislike in Dawkins’ approach to other peoples’ world-views, and as I said, you are free to call that nonsense. I do not think it is possible to “unconvince” those who are convinced by his arguments. Again, the same with followers of evangelical preachers.

Please note, that there are also mirror images of you, people (e.g. some contributors on this OLO whom I do not need to name) who are also convinced that they have “evidence” for their world-view (based on faith in their case), and regard as blasphemy or nonsense contrary views. Some people are more antagonised by the one extreme, some by the other. I am trying to understand both. I mean, not so much the extremes but the people holding them, and I am sorry if you were offended by what I wrote about Dawkins.

Oliver,
Do you mean to say that one has to be an avowed atheist in order to be recognised as a scholarly anthropologist, (sociologist, historian etc)? Don’t you think the disciplines would suffer if you “excommunicated“ all non-atheists, past and present?

>>I wonder why god didn’t just create good and better?<<
It seems, you did not understand the quote from Tao Te Ching. This reminds me of the old joke “most of the casualties after train collisions occur in the last carriage, so why don’t they just leave out the last carriage?” It is not about train colisions but about the meaning of “last”, the same as the good-evil controversy: it is not so much about God, but about how we understand the concepts involved.

A different question is why did this rather than that person have to be a victim of evil. As you know, a Christian answer is that the affected will be “compensated” in afterlife, and there is no “scientific“ answer to compete with this answer.