The newfangled atheists' normalization of Islamophobia was a...

[Bretton Garcia]

69. God Favors Science Over Faith (1Kings 18.20-40; Dan. 1.4-15, etc.).

Last edited Tue Dec 6, 2016, 10:13 AM - Edit history (3)

Everyone assumes religion should be based on faith, not proven facts, or science. But in my reading, the Bible warned hundreds of times about countless bad and false things in religion; even Christianity. So finally the Bible itself told us to follow not holy men; but visible material evidence (1Kings 18.20-40; Dan. 1.4-15 KJE; 1Thess. 5.21; Mal. 3.10, etc.).

Christian religious leaders, even St. Peter, are so unreliable that Jesus himself calls them "Satan"ic (Mat. 16.23). So we shouldn't have faith in them, or their God. Instead we should "test everything," in religion with "science," (1Thess. 5.21; Dan. 1.4-15 KJE; Mal. 3.10).

So I find in my writings in this that even according to the Bible, we are NOT supposed to follow faith, and the suspension of disbelief.

To be sure, once we apply science and critical thinking to religion, most of religion - its promises say of "all" the physical miracles we "ask" for, for instance (John 14.13), is immediately found to be false. And so our original religion collapses; is found false.

It was to get around the obvious physical failures of religion that writers like Paul and Origen, began to semantically spin the old promises if material mirackes; to insist they are mostly only symbols - allegories, figures, metaphors, parables - for not literal, physical things. But for invisible "spirit." Even tthough? The Bible championed not just spirit, but also the material universe. Which God made in Genesis, and found "good."

So the attempt to separate science and religion, matter vs. spirit, science vs. faith was not entirely biblical. But was an apologetics sophistry. Which was used to cover up obvious failures in our original, very materialistic religion.

But that apologetic doesn't even stand up to a look at the Bible itself. Jesus himself say, asked for only a tiny bit - a mustard seed - of faith. It was only St. Paul who writes many pages dedicated to faith. Even as he cites physical "works" as proof of goodness.

And so, as for our spiritual heaven? Heaven itself is supposed to "dissolve." And the "New heaven" is supposed to return here; to be not a metaphor, but a physical, material place, here in this physical material earth (Rev.21 ff.; Isa. 65-6?).

So in my reading, in the end, the Bible cancels much of what it once said; cancelling faith and it's Platonistic/Marcionism spirituality, in favor of science.



(In effect, the Bible self-deconstructs.

These matters, sketched briefly here, are developed more adequately in the Woodbridge Goodman books. On the Science of God, versus priestly, ministerial overspirituality.

As for the supposed confusions between religion and patriotism? I note that Judaism, like many tribes, had a religion that was tribal, or in effect, nationalistic. Or patriotic. Its god most often favored their tribes, Jews, as "God's chosen people."

So in Judaism, in its often theocratic "kingdom," just like many ancient theocracies, church and state, religion and science, were not yet separate areas, or "magisteria". Nor did they become entirely separate, even in the New Testament. That separation happened more later; in subsequent church history. Though to be sure, the first outline of the schizophrenic "magisterial" split, matter/spirit, state/church dualism, can be seen in the New Testament, and its flirtation with "spirit." Which was basically a long flirtation with hierarchical, Platonistic idealism, dualism; later, Gnosticism. )