I would second that, Arthur is a good man!
I must confess that I had not read all of the thread before I posted my own take on things last night and had not realised the passions that had been stirred up
For myself I was born and brought up in the Catholic faith, I had issues with the faith as a young man in part because of of the way we were taught and in part because of my intense interest in science.
Aged 14 our Religious Knowledge (RK) teacher Father Diamond changed tack and introduced the argument by design, now up to that point there had been no arguments no philosophy and only bold statements of fact, this is how it all happened and this is what you will believe etc. So it was odd that suddenly when we were around about 14 years old they felt the need to prove things to us
To cut a long story short our RK class turned into a heated debate chamber for the next several weeks, I was a very shy young man at the time very odd for me to speak out the way I did, anyway eventually we agreed that it boiled down to faith, you either had it or you didn't.
I regret that argument now because many in my class at school were swayed by my arguments, in favour of Science and "proof", so as time has passed and my overall experience of life has grown and also as my studies in subject areas that interest me have expanded, I have grown to realise that Scientific certainty and "proof" is actually rather thin on the ground.
This does not diminish my view that Science, Natural Philosophy and Mathematics offer a unique and wonderful, beautiful insight into the nature of our reality however there are specific questions as to what constitute a proof.
Gödel's incompleteness theorems are extremely important in this context see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del's_incompleteness_theorems
The following is a quote from Wikibooks realting to Kurt Godel
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Purpose...servation_Laws
Gödel's work implies that there are things that are intrinsically unknowable and that is the kind of thing that mellows ones attitude particularly as you get a bit older.
This bites both ways, those who have faith and believe in God must accept that they have no proof as by definition they believe through their faith i.e. on trust. Those who demand proof must accept that the Philosophical systems upon which their doubt is based may well be unprovable and that absolute proof of all postulates is impossible!
Stalemate, somewhere near where I found myself at the age of 14 in an argument with a very generous, very understanding, good man, who happened to be a priest in the Catholic faith.
For what it is worth I attend church with my partner Ana in Manila regular as clockwork every Sunday and sometimes weekdays as well, she knows I have strange views that don't exactly mesh with the way she was brought up however she understands that I somehow have a big picture in my mind that is not entirely aesthetic. I can go to church and celebrate the wonder of the creation/universe that I find myself in, its been a wonderful experience existing
Jim
Originally Posted by JimOttley
I would second that, Arthur is a good man!
