2006-01-13 Reaction to Religion discussion

Woozle Posted 2006-01-13

Ok, there's a problem with this whole thing of "you must accept the whole doctrine or none of it" thing. There's nothing in science that's like that. Isaac Newton got some stuff wrong; so did Einstein.

Newton's laws of motion were found to be wrong when you get very small or very fast. Does this mean everything Newton said was wrong? Or that the Laws of Motion are wrong? No; it means that the Laws of Motion are right for most practical purposes, but they're now a special case of General Relativity (or something like that) which is much more complicated but remains accurate for very small things and very fast things (and very heavy things, etc.).

So... who is to say that just because Joseph Smith's hand was divinely guided, everything he wrote is correct? I mean, I understand the thinking: God is perfect and cannot make mistakes; God was writing through Smith; so everything written was perfect and without error.

I'd say that just means we don't have a theory to explain how error could have happened.

Let's postulate that God is in fact incapable of error, and did in fact guide the hand of Joseph Smith during the writing in question.

So... theory: what if God *deliberately* put some errors in? (For reasons we don't yet understand, that is.)

I could start coming up with theories for why He might have done so, but that's not the point. The point is that you shouldn't have to swallow a doctrine whole or reject it entirely.

Woozle Adds

(This was getting too long for chat.)

I have to wonder if this explains a lot of the Evolution vs. Intelligent Design debate. A scientist looks at the facts and sees a lot of evidence pointing to the idea that Evolution is how we came to be here. An Intelligent Designist comes along and says "Oh, but wait! Your theory doesn't explain this!" (Pointing to, say, lack of fossil evidence for an intermediate organism between humans and their immediate ancestors.) "Therefore Evolution is wrong!"

But that's not how it works. Science is not all-or-nothing; it's "best fit". Religion tends to be all-or-nothing, and I think it's because that's how it propagates; dogmatic doctrine, where you either agree with all of it or are excluded from the community, forms a thick line of separation to prevent anyone in the community from asking too many questions.

and I don't think I'm done with this, but I have to do some other stuff for a bit, so I'm saving what I've written so far and will come back to it later. --Woozle 13:41, 13 January 2006 (EST)