If you believe god's takes part in the world in obvious ways (like miracles as written in many texts) why don't such things seem to happen around people documenting things ? Why allow large amounts of people to live lives of pure suffering? Etc.
If you say that god's more of a force from afar, why is that worth worshipping any more than another natural phenomenon?
1. Why don't Miracles get documented? This one is less difficult to answer for me than it might seem. First of all by definition a Miracle is not an everyday occurrence, is out of the ordinary experience, and is unscheduled. Given those items it's not too surprising that they would not be documented at any time relatively recently. Second I would consider the the Miracles in the Gospels to be documented. However you likely don't count those since they are not recent enough to be recorded by something more permanent than a written word that has been copied multiple times. Either way I don't find this to be a significant blocker to faith. Even in scripture Miracles were pretty rare except for during Jesus 3 years of ministry.
2. Why allow large amounts of people to live lives of pure suffering. To answer this one you have to ask what are Gods motives for creating us?
2a. Motive #1 is for God to be worshipped freely. In order for him to be worshipped freely we have to be free to choose. If we are free to choose this implies that we can choose not to. The Christian Faith holds that we have freedom of choice.
2b. It boils down to God having a choice between Robots who all worship him due to programming or Human beings of whom a subset worship him out of choice. He values the Human beings more than Robots. You will either find this a harsh decision by him or a loving one depending on your viewpoint.
3. I don't believe he is a force from afar.
All of that said my faith is personal and much of what I believe I believe because of personal experience that I interpret as Him taking action in my life. Not in the Miracle fashion you describe in your questions but action nevertheless.
Fundamentalist creationism is not an inescapable consequence of "religion" generally.
Can't speak for zaphar, but I for one have no problem believing that God could've created the world any way he felt like, including by letting evolution happen.
Despite being not merely religious but an actual Bible-believing Christian, I am nevertheless quite willing to accept that a good deal of scriptural text is metaphorical. A lot of it is pretty dang hit-you-over-the-head-with-a-stick obviously metaphorical, so the idea that the Biblical creation account might not be intended as an accurate scientific account is Not A Problem.
Regarding other possible inconsistencies, I find that most of the ones people complain about are like evolution- not actually necessary inconsistencies if you think about it. For the rest, I assume that one or the other is either wrong or incomplete, and hold off judgment until either scientific concensus or doctrinal assertion are changed. When it comes to questions of scientific fact, I usually lean in favor of science. When it comes to matters of philosophy or ethics, I lean in favor of religion. And for reference, I don't usually consider sociology or social psychology to be very convincing "science".
> "A lot of it is pretty dang hit-you-over-the-head-with-a-stick obviously metaphorical"
Origen: "[if scripture was purely literal] we would not certainly believe, when thus possessing the meaning of Scripture in a continuous series, that anything else was contained in it save what was indicated on the surface; so for that reason divine wisdom took care that certain stumbling-blocks, or interruptions, to the historical meaning should take place, by the introduction into the midst (of the narrative) of certain impossibilities and incongruities; that in this way the very interruption of the narrative might, as by the interposition of a bolt, present an obstacle to the reader, whereby he might refuse to acknowledge the way which conducts to the ordinary meaning; and being thus excluded and debarred from it, we might be recalled to the beginning of another way, in order that, by entering upon a narrow path, and passing to a loftier and more sublime road, he might lay open the immense breadth of divine wisdom. This, however, must not be unnoted by us, that as the chief object of the Holy Spirit is to preserve the coherence of the spiritual meaning, either in those things which ought to be done or which have been already performed, if He anywhere finds that those events which, according to the history, took place, can be adapted to a spiritual meaning, He composed a texture of both kinds in one style of narration, always concealing the hidden meaning more deeply; but where the historical narrative could not be made appropriate to the spiritual coherence of the occurrences, He inserted sometimes certain things which either did not take place or could not take place; sometimes also what might happen, but what did not: and He does this at one time in a few words, which, taken in their “bodily” meaning, seem incapable of containing truth, and at another by the insertion of many." - http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf04.vi.v.v.i.html section 15
Origen was one of the foremost Christian scholars of the 2nd-3rd century. This was the predominant approach Christians took to scripture until 19th century America, when literalism took over -- for a short time.
Of particular note, the earliest parts of Genesis would have been obviously metaphorical to any of the early readers... because they blatantly undermine the Egyptian creation stories. They take the most significant Egyptian gods and describe them as mere objects (even the sun and moon aren't named -- they're just "lights".) They take the most significant elements of the Egyptian stories and turn them around, twist them up on themselves, and use them to express how Yahweh is different from Horus, Isis, and the rest. It's like the way Shrek takes common tropes from Cinderella-type movies and turns them on their head, only serious instead of comedic.
Of particular note, the earliest parts of Genesis would
have been obviously metaphorical to any of the early
readers... because they blatantly undermine the Egyptian
creation stories.
That would be an odd reason for the early readers of Genesis to consider them metaphorical. Just undermining the Egyptian creation stories is hardly a cause to assume a creation myth is metaphorical.
I consider most if not all those consistencies to be manufactured.
Evolution vs Creationism is of course the poster child for this. The simple answer is I wasn't around for either Evolution or Creation whichever one happened so I can't give a definitive ruling either way. I happen to believe that God did some sort of creative act. What form that act took (7 days of creative work? or billions of years of guided evolution?) I can't really say.
Either one is something of a miracle to my mind though. Both appear to be highly unlikely to occur, yet I and your are here having this conversation so one of them had to. I choose to believe God was the motivating force behind whichever one it was.
I have one rule that I follow. My faith must be rational. If an article of faith is disprovable then I don't hold with it. That leaves a lot of room for faith though.
I can't say one way or the other. There is enough water to cover most of the earths surface if it's not tied up in ice at the poles so it's physically possible. And there is also evidence of water coverage over many parts of the earth that are not near any ocean. However the story could also be interpreted in terms of a localized flood covering all of the known earth.
I do believe Noah was a literal person and I do believe there was a flood. I even like the idea of a global flood as it seems to allow one to explain some phenomena observed in Geological formations. However I'm not a Geologist so my opinions there are pretty uninformed and could just as likely be wrong.
Also, fossil evidence doesn't not support a worldwide flood. If a worldwide flood would have happened you have have fossils from that era all over the place in sediments of rock, but you don't. They are all found neatly organized in their own respective layers. Here is some more info if you are interested: http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Global_flood#Fossil_layers
I think a localized flood is a much better explanation for people who believe that part of the bible.
Your belief in pure Darwinism, 7-Day Creationism, or any theory in between, really doesn't have any impact on real-world biology or any of its applications (anatomy, physiology, medicine, agriculture, ecology, biotech, the creation of cyborg supersoldiers, etc, etc). I think real scientists are more interested in testable hypotheses about "how that thing works" than in untestable, unprovable claims about "how that thing got there".
I would contest that. They can be either but not both. They are either not very smart biologists or not very devout creationists. Or more likely just attention seekers.
My ideas about irreducible complexity and intelligent design are entirely my own. They certainly are not in any sense endorsed by either Lehigh University in general or the Department of Biological Sciences in particular. In fact, most of my colleagues in the Department strongly disagree with them.
Not true. I know someone who last I spoke was in graduate level cell biology and did lab work on brains at a top university, yet did not believe in evolution. In fact, I recall her citing her personal awe of the brain etc as evidence of intelligent design.
Don't underestimate humans' abilities to selectively ignore evidence, the immense pressure of their peers, parents, and friends who have similar beliefs, and the underlying fear of death that motivates people to believe in an afterlife (and all the various attached beliefs from there) to allow compartmentalization of beliefs from knowledge.
How is that a false dichotomy? I guess there's the implication that there is only religious and non-religious engineers. But isn't that a binary? I'm curious as to what other options there are.
Thanks imsofuture, I didn't even pick up on that. It's plenty obvious that people can be rational in their professional life and still hold magical beliefs. It's not like software engineering has to teach good critical thinking skills.
My view on the divine intervention issue is, essentially, "God helps those who help themselves". Do as much as you can to accomplish your goals according to secular understanding, and after that it can't hurt to pray and faith, too. If I'm wrong about my faith, it might not help, but it certainly won't hurt.
In the vast majority of cases, conflicts between my arational religious beliefs and rational scientific beliefs are essentially consequenceless; acting according to rational belief does not result in Sinning, so I can make practical use of scientific knowledge in my life while still gaining emotional satisfaction and sense of purpose from the belief in things that cannot be definitively proven one way or the other.
