I haven’t been overly inspired lately with news items or local events, tripping my desire to write trigger. Sure there are floods and murder and mayhem on the loose, but nothing that begs me to respond. So I have been perusing blogs here at Word Press and some of my responses to some articles were IMO darn near blog worthy in their own right. The following are my responses to some blogs, each response will have the appropriate blog site link posted. It would take up a lot of space and time to try and chronicle it all here, and doubtful anyone would want to read through it all, if you are that bored hit the links for the full perspective..first up:

Here’s my take, I read blah, blah blah, “Science does not provide meaning” We live in a universe without meaning. This is a cold uncaring place that will  kill you dead, with no concerns about your beliefs, your family, your aspirations, or your desire to continue living. The universe, this world, does not care. We humans have emotions, we want to survive, we want to be with our kids, we want to experience life to its fullest, and we have ascribed meaning to a world devoid of it. Religion today is no better than the bone tossing shamans of centuries past. Simply an institution developed to take advantage of the human desire to live…and a half assed attempt to explain away the scary things. A security blanket for those afraid of the dark.

Then…blah blah blah “science is BAD” Then “science is both good and bad, therefore on equal ground with religion” Science has brought us many unique ways to kill, but is it science that uses these methods? Or is it someone with an axe to grind, or a vendetta to settle, or a war to win that uses them? Often as not religion is used as a justification to use the machines of science as a means of destruction. Science is an investigation for knowledge, where that leads can be good or bad, but it rarely starts off with bad intent. I am sure a few examples can be provided that show bad intent from the get go, such as the development of arms, but most scientific endeavors are a simple quest for knowledge, and you can’t lump them all in the same category.

Then blah blah, something about a debate with a perceived winner by the author, yay! I think?

Then blah blah blah specific scientific fields cannot “perceive the whole picture at any one point.” No, but now take all of the many branches of science, with many facts from each branch, lining up with facts from other fields, each validating the other, all leading to a consensus. Soon the big picture develops, with a much more meaningful definition of the reality we live in. “Evidence Based Reality”. This is the beauty of science.

Then, the one thing I agree with “Religions have always evolved, arisen out of other religions, and required responses to changing understandings and social realities.” Slow but sure, it takes centuries for religion to change, but it does. Many cannot see this simple truth, even religion evolves over time. Modern xianity is nothing like its beginnings. People seem to like the fact that they don’t need to offer bloody sacrifices anymore, but you never hear them talking about it. Heck, even the Catholic church, dogmatic as it is, has conceded evolution (though a tad misguided attribution to a god guided process). It is a shame Islam, appears to be entrenched in the dark ages. I hope at some point that one matures, but I see no hope of that in the near future, it would be nice if it could evolve a bit. Sooner the better but I am straying off topic. Yes, religion evolves, but at a snails pace, and never in a proactive way, but reactionary to changing times and only in an effort to save itself from declining membership, or to save face. Such a moral high ground eh?

http://mysteryjourney.wordpress.com/2013/06/09/religion-and-or-is-it-versus-science/comment-page-1/

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I’m sorry, but that is one of the dumbest arguments I’ve ever heard.

Aging: I don’t recall anyone saying science could stop aging.
Getting Sick: can you say immunization?
Not Dying: can you say CPR?
Reproduction: can you say condom, or “the pill”?
Moral issues: really? can your dog stop these things?
Weather/Earthquakes: isn’t your dog responsible for these?
Look Into the Past: can you say telescope?
Abiogenesis: you are right, cant say for sure when or where, but can say it happened.

Most of your arguments are common fallacies. Mostly, “Argument from Ignorance”, “False Equivalencies” , and lets not omit outright lies. This argument is riddled with holes. You have achieved nothing here worth noting. Except a big patting yourself on the back for thinking you have all of the answers. The answers you claim do not exist, are out there, it is up to you to become more educated on the matter. I strongly doubt you have the capacity to do it. It would require reading some actual fact based sciency stuff, and not the babble.

Faith, believing that which has no evidence whatsoever to support it. Kinda like this blog post.

http://theologyarchaeology.wordpress.com/2013/06/09/what-science-cannot-do/

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Great Post. I agree with your perspective entirely.

The comments that suggest science requires faith, is to me a bit misinformed. Science does expand into areas of unobservable probabilities (black holes, string theory), but this requires not faith, but a deep understanding of physics and math, that is way over my head. I trust those with the knowledge do do the physics and math, to come to a reasonable conclusion that may well be testable in the future. Those guys and gals can work it out, and I trust in their abilities. Is that faith? I think not. That is an assumption that people way more educated than I have the faculties to do their job adequately. Indeed we know now that black holes DO exist, they were once theoretical, but no more, and we can now see how matter interacts with them. I’d call that a scientific success. Faith is more a belief in something, despite the fact that there is no evidence to support it.

What about all the sciences such as geology, astronomy, genetics, biology, and all the rest of the “ologies”? Do they require faith? I think not. Science is a conclusion, based on observable, repeatable, verifiable, falsifiable, facts. Same can be said for atheism. Faith is for those without the reasoning skills or the desire to grasp the reality of science.

Any attempt to reconcile one with the other, is futile. Science is grounded in reality, science has the “E” word (evidence) to back it up, and not just a little evidence, tons of it. Faith as I said before, is a belief in something despite the fact there is no evidence to support it. They are polar opposites and not compatible…unless you want to discuss cognitive dissonance and compartmentalization.

http://ryan59479.wordpress.com/2013/06/08/science-and-religion/   I like this guy’s stuff.

and lastly:

The entire history of all religions is done by graduates of the well known institution MSU. Better known as Making Stuff UP. You don’t expect them to stop now, or start using well researched arguments do you?

It’s a house of cards based on out dated mythologies and made up stuff, that requires constant rationalizations to keep itself afloat. This is the only kind of science they are capable of. No facts necessary.

http://eyeonicr.wordpress.com/2013/06/09/not-so-giant/

That concludes my recent journey’s in the blog ether world. I do regret the apparent necessity to constantly define faith, but it is so often used as a positive aspect of someones else’s perspective, or as an attribute of science, that it demands pointing it out from a rationalists perspective.