Just saw on the news about people singing the 'Star Spangled Banner' at the Lincoln Memorial and being told to stop as it was as demonstration. What?

I'm sorry, proud Americans being told to shut up? I have to look more into this.....

Wow, you guys took what I thought was a beautiful thought about the wonders of science as evidence of the existence of a greater intelligence in the universe than we humans and boiled it down to....

I guess I failed to convey my thoughts properly.

My belief in God isn't a crutch for anything... it just is. And my belief is not threatened by science, but strengthened by it.

The bible comes from a time when information was conveyed in allegory. And it's really a tome of collected separate books, minus a few that were eliminated by committee (because we all know how good committees are) many centuries ago. So information could be missing, added, etc. Then there's the whole "well how much of the Old testament is relevant" question. So I think it's important that people weigh all these factors when determining whether or not they REALLY understand the will of God. Personally, and this is just me, I tend to give more weight to quotes directly attributed to Jesus, and less to everything else.

But I see no reason to throw out the baby with the bathwater.

But whatever, if you choose to believe the whole universe just magically burst on the scene at random, completely by chance, and that all the amazing things about creation (evolution, to name one) are completely by accident, then that's fine. But your beliefs are no less "magical" than my own.

Actually, it was Lincoln, himself, who asked them to stop.

Okay, to approach this from a religion free perspective, here are some thoughts on faith. Even scientists have faith, that's what causes them to pursue their discoveries. Take the periodic table of elements...

There were empty spots on the periodic table where undiscovered elements should theoretically be, based on atomic numbers. Scientists didn't know those elements existed, they just looked at the evidence and believed that, based on the math, an element with that atomic number should be possible. Now, some of those elements only exist if they're manmade and only briefly at that because their half-life is so short as to be pretty much unobservable. And yet, they pursued those elements on the faith that they existed and could be found (or made, however briefly).

Scientific discoveries happen because someone believed in something that nobody else had seen or touched.

How is not believing in magic somehow a magical belief?

Again, you're using the word "faith" incorrectly. Predicting something due to evidence is not faith. Faith is believing in something even though there is no objective evidence indicating its possible existence. You don't "believe" or "have faith" in math.

I believe John Locke and others justified their belief in a creator on the theory that as a matter of logic, there had to be an uncaused cause.

One does have faith in postulates.

Wow, I've hardly had breakfast and we're already onto the nature of the universe and religion. It's going to be a long day....

Faith be it personal or part of an organized religion covers a wide range of human experiences: Love, hate, relationships, self. It's many things to many people. Sometimes good, sometimes bad.

One aspect of faith that's always bugged me is when it's used to explain the unknown. From Lightning to games of chance humans have always created Gods, muses, totems, rituals, etc. in an attempt to explain that which baffles us. It seems hard for many people to accept that at the end of the day we humans are basically ignorant hairless apes.

How does time exist? Is the universe finite or infinite? How did the Universe start? I could go on and on.... For many questions, the answer is: we just don't know. We are ignorant. Using religion to plug that hole and offer it as proof of a higher power seems wrong to me.

Even science is not immune to this, I always think back to the famous comments from Dr. Carl Sagan:

When scientists first looked at Venus through a telescope they saw a featureless sphere. Why? Because it's covered with clouds. What are clouds made of? Water. Thicker clouds means more water. More water in the clouds means more water on earth. What's very wet? A swamp. Dinosaurs lived in swaps.

Observation: I can't see anything, Conclusion: Dinosaurs!

First pass reading:

Even if accepted though (and this was Hume's response) it says nothing about the nature of that first cause and it would just be a baseless assumption that there must have been intent behind it and it would be baseless assumption on top of baseless assumption that the entity with that intent was still controlling every aspect of its creation.

Not to mention that a logical structure that requires a First Cause itself suffers from asking what caused the First Cause. Where did God come from is no less valid that asking where did the Big Bang come from.

Also, the argument flows from the limited nature of physics at the time in which every motion appeared to have a direct cause. They didn't have the benefit of quantum mechanics.

If that works for you, then that's great. But when I look at the same thing I'm not entirely sure I see any bathwater and definitely don't see any baby.

Well, except my "beliefs" come with an explanation that makes predictions that can be tested in the laboratory or through direct observation of the physical record and could be overturned or significantly altered by what is found.

Presumably your faith in the existence of god and Jesus's relationship to that god exists despite whatever evidence is produced.

Very true. "Science" ****s up all the time. Goes down blind alleys. Leaps to unsupported conclusions. Pillories those who are right. Sometimes engages in fraud. It can produce famines that kill millions and environmental disasters that wipe out species. It suffers all the flaws of the humans who practice it. "Science" is not a hegemony of ironclad principles into which all participants must completely subscribe.

The key difference though is that when the improved telescope comes out and provides a clearer picture of Venus the scientists say "huh, we were wrong about the dinosaurs." The faithful say "Obviously the dinosaurs live underground and breath through the hollow roots of plants on the surface."

And when we put a probe on the surface which shows it is hundreds of degrees and the atmosphere is highly acidic science chuckles and says "wow, can you believe how wrong we were?" and the faithful say "oh my, that's amazing that dinosaurs could live in such an environment."