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Originally posted by winewood
I think you are mixing up immune system resitance with genetics. An immunity can be passed from a parent, but that is not gene coded. ...
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If not coded into the genes, how did it happen? Chance? Can immunity be taught?
Anyway.....
I started this thread to get one premise across: Faith (in the philosophical sense) != Knowledge. It has fallen into a debate on evolution. Both sides (with some exceptions), though, seem to have accepted certain aspects of the argument on Faith on one level or another. I wish to "bring it back to Earth", if you will.
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Originally posted by Alchemy
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Further, wiring ones' mind to accept arguments on blind faith seems to me like the opening of port 21 in the mind - even on the hypothesis that everything regarding ones' faith is true, to use blind faith as a mechanism makes one vunderable to exploit....
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This is a relatively precise illustration of religious use of Faith. If you believe, you can be led.
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Originally posted by winewood
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Lets pretend that whomever wrote the Bible had "higher understandings" beyond our own.
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How were these "higher understandings" derived? Are men so ignorant and naive that we need external guidance for all time?
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Originally posted by winewood
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I personally don't think humans are any smarter than thousands of years before we have just been able to keep better records and build on it.
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Oh, I guess so.
This is an example of how most religions view man. Only the "enlightened" have any right or ability to guide men's lives. A few examples of this in action would be Plato's Republic, medieval Europe, or any two-bit dictatorship of the 20th century.
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Originally posted by winewood
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So far, we have not been able to find a substantial logical fallacy with the Bible, but still hold it in high regard as one of the most hardened volumes of morality and logic to our criticisms.
Faith in this regard is acceptance that the road that we should not venture out into is in fact not in our best interests. If we have that for no other reason than we haven't been led astray or can find no holes in the fabric of the arguement, this is a scientific principle of the theory. Test it until we find it is false. I have tested and therefore find it a working theory that has yet to be disproven. Do I have blind faith? Not at all, it is based on what I cannot disprove, and have already seen
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The Bible offers no proof of anything.
It is an elementary tenet of logic that he who makes the assertion has the burden of proof of that assertion. The fact that a thing cannot be disproven proves nothing. It becomes a hypothesis. Add to this the predilection of the faithful to regard any non-provably factual element of the Bible as allegorical or symbolic. This allows something to be "interpreted" to mean anything. You might as well get spiritual guidance from Jean Dixon's horoscopes.
Bob