The Veritas Forum: Belief in an Age of Skepticism?

Answer the door, hes knocking. The answer isnt in science, intellectualism, shrouds or what Darwin thought. Its in your heart, youve come this far. Open the door.

The dude lost me in the opening monologue. How can you be religious and claim to be open-minded? Either you are religious and there's one truth based on revelation, or you are open to alternatives. At least be honest.

At exactly 5:50, pretend skepticism opens and religious apologetic begins. Might watch a bit more to see if it goes any further then this..but not a good start.

He's a pastor, not sure exactly what you were expecting...

If God does not fall under the domain of scientific investigation then it does not fall under the domain of the real world, which is what science seeks to test. Belief in God is indeed not in the same room as scientific analysis, and shares a room with anything imaginary like fairies and Santa Claus, who are 'exempted' from being proven by the convenient possession of supernatural magical powers. Belief in God being true 'cos science cant touch it' also means a similar default belief in fairies.

Science cannot "touch" a lot of things: Meaning, purpose, value, volition, intention, other minds, the underlying assumption of the rationality, intelligibility of the universe (even our confidence in the success of science itself cannot be demonstrated by a purely scientific framework.) Not to mention, history, mathematics, logic, philosophy

Could you please give me your definition of what it means to be "a good person." And after stating it, could you give reasons why anyone, including you, should follow your definition. Further could you demonstrate what would be the purpose of your goodness if all it gives you is a feeling of "safety" in the knowledge that it is better to be damned for doing so.

I think my definition of what it means to be a good person is something along the lines of 'the golden rule', trying to treat others as you yourself would want to be treated, the purpose being to make a positive contribution to the society in which I live and thus deriving the benefit of living amongst people who generally reciprocate that same 'do no harm' behaviour. Id rather be damned for trying to do good than obediently kow-tow to one man's personal laws in fear of his silent invisible god.

OK! But where did that idea of the golden rule come from? And who decides what is "golden?" Is it fairness? Is it Justice? Who decides what is harmful? To a pedophile "harm" means something a lot different than I suppose your definition would be, right? And whether you realize it or not, you ARE "kow-towing to one man's personal law;" Your own! That may be the major reason why the world is in such a mess. We have 6 billion plus little "personal laws" bumping into one another. Comments please?

The Golden Rule arises from almost universal consensus of most humans to not want to be raped, murdered, stolen from or otherwise mistreated, and to teach their children to see things from other peoples perspective to learn how altruism helps us all. Its a Darwinian survival advantage to be altruistic, as seen in other species which cannot conceive of messiahs and gods yet still derive benefit from the evolutionary trait of mutual altruism just like we do.
Religions preserve unaltruistic laws.