I'm not religious, don't believe in God but...

Originally posted by Trev33
I do enjoy going into churches and sitting for a while in silence. It first started in S. America in 2008 but wondered into the local Chapel the other day (i'm in Ireland now) and found it quite peaceful...

Have you tried other large impressive buildings like courthouses, or Mosques? Do they have the same effect?

Originally posted by twhitehead
Have you tried other large impressive buildings like courthouses, or Mosques? Do they have the same effect?

There's a 12 storey mall in Jakarta that has an interior like the inside of gigantic egg which I find impressive.

Originally posted by twhitehead
Have you tried other large impressive buildings like courthouses, or Mosques? Do they have the same effect?

It's hard to get any real silence in a courthouse - at least, in the courthouses here that I've visited.

Originally posted by Suzianne
Certainly an atheist would not attribute these feelings to a sense of being in the presence of God, so what would explain it?

Do you think the presence of God resides in old buildings?

Originally posted by SwissGambit
It's hard to get any real silence in a courthouse - at least, in the courthouses here that I've visited.

I have been inside the High Court in Zambia when court was not in session. It had a very similar feeling to Churches.

Originally posted by FMF
Sticking to the OP, when it comes to buildings like St Paul's Cathedral, I think they are monuments to the human spirit and to the power of religiosity - that led to their construction - rather than to anything supernatural. Do you have any comment on either this or the OP?

A lot of people think that 'spirit' implies 'supernatural'. Do humans have spirits, and if so what are they made of? Does humanity as a whole have its own spirit (and given that humanity is full of tribes and races, does that help explain humanities fractured view of the gods?)? Does our planet have a spirit (eg Eywa in Avatar or Gaia here at home)?

Where is the line between natural and supernatural? Is magic 'supernatural'? Was A.C. Clarke right that Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic and so the 'supernatural' may be just fantastic stuff we don't understand yet?

How is it that bags of seawater and clumps of star-matter have hopes and fears and go to war and fall in love? No mysteries there?

There's a cool quote that an atheist can share with a believer: "I contend we are both atheists, I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours." Stephen F Roberts

I get it. But why did we happen to evolve in such a way that we see this underlying spirituality, regardless of race or tribe. Due to psychology? Well, same question!

Spiritual atheist, itt. ^^^

Apparently he respects science. as well.

He has a question for the science-loving atheists.

Science speaks mostly in math, but we cannot derive mathematics by using the scientific methods. (History cannot be established via the scientific methods either. And other disciplines use other methodologies as well.)

So the question is, May there be aspects of reality where science cannot be the primary path to knowledge?

Originally posted by Trev33
I do enjoy going into churches and sitting for a while in silence. It first started in S. America in 2008 but wondered into the local Chapel the other day (i'm in Ireland now) and found it quite peaceful...

San Francisco City Hall on a quiet morning.

Many wedding s are performed there.

"The building's vast open space is more than 500,000 square feet (46,000 m2) and occupying two full city blocks. It is 390 ft (120 m) between on Van Ness Avenue and Polk Street, and 273 ft (83 m) between Grove and McAllister Streets. Its dome, which owes much to Mansart's Baroque dome of Les Invalides, Paris, is the fifth largest dome in the world, rising 307.5 ft (93.7 m) above the Civic Center Historic District. It is 19 ft (5.8 m) higher than the United States Capitol, and has a diameter of 112 ft (34 m), resting upon 4 x 50 ton (3.5 x 44.5 metric ton) and 4 x 20 ton girders (3.5 x 17.8 ton), each 9 ft (2.7 m) deep and 60 ft (18 m). (Wikipedia - which has a few pictures.)

There is a good picture of the interior at

http://www.flickr.com/photos/efigueres/3828035861/

Originally posted by divegeester
Do you think the presence of God resides in old buildings?

There are plenty of "old buildings".

Some of them are churches, which is specifically what we were talking about. Please pay attention.

Originally posted by twhitehead
Have you tried other large impressive buildings like courthouses, or Mosques? Do they have the same effect?

Hhmmm, i guess yes... there was an incredible Temple in Jaipur, mostly seems to be churches though.

Originally posted by apathist
Spiritual atheist, itt. ^^^

Apparently he respects science. as well.

He has a question for the science-loving atheists.

Science speaks mostly in math, but we cannot derive mathematics by using the scientific methods. (History cannot be established via the scientific methods either. And other disciplines use other methodologies as well.)

So the ...[text shortened]... stion is, May there be aspects of reality where science cannot be the primary path to knowledge?

Science speaks mostly in math, but we cannot derive mathematics by using the scientific methods.

No mathematics is not derived using the scientific method.

It's [maths] derived from the laws of logic.

What about it?

History cannot be established via the scientific methods either. And other disciplines use other methodologies as well.

Wrong. Scientific methodologies can very much be applied to history, and are applied by any/all good historians... whether
they realise that's what they are doing or not.

In fact scientific methods can be applied to ANY aspect of reality.

Which answers your question.


Science is the study of reality... there are no aspects of reality you can't apply science to study.

Originally posted by googlefudge

Science speaks mostly in math, but we cannot derive mathematics by using the scientific methods.

No mathematics is not derived using the scientific method.

It's [maths] derived from the laws of logic.

What about it?

[quote]History cannot be established via the scientific methods either. And other disciplines use other methodolo ...[text shortened]... is the study of reality... there are no aspects of reality you can't apply science to study.

Of course scientific methods can be applied to any domain of human inquiry. Hell, we could even use observation and induction to support arithmetic (Every time we put this and that apple together, we get two apples... Further support that 1+1=2!). But I'm not sure that was the point. I think the thesis above was that in many domains of human inquiry there are background assumptions, premises, and relevant considerations that are not themselves determined via the application of scientific methodology. The grist for the science mill is not itself provided by science. Further, in many domains of human inquiry, scientific methodology may be ancillary to other forms of structured investigation. This is clearly right. In formal logic, science is pretty much irrelevant (Quine be damned). In epistemology, ethics and aesthetics, science plays at best a background role. You could deny that these fields are part of 'reality', I guess, but then I'd wonder whether your claims about the universal applicability of science is a conclusion based on evidence (an epistemological notion) or, rather, an axiom (in which case, why should we accept it?). Even in proper scientific inquiry, there are typically complex concepts that need to be analyzed and clarified before there is anything for a scientific methodology to latch onto.

Originally posted by googlefudge
[quote]Science speaks mostly in math, but we cannot derive mathematics by using the scientific methods.

No mathematics is not derived using the scientific method.

It's [maths] derived from the laws of logic.

What about it?[/quote]
? You agreed with the point, that's what.

[quote]History cannot be established via the scientific methods either. And other disciplines use other methodologies as well.

Wrong. Scientific methodologies can very much be applied to history, and are applied by any/all good historians... whether
they realise that's what they are doing or not.[/quote]
I didn't say they cannot be applied.

In fact scientific methods can be applied to ANY aspect of reality.

Sure, I agree, science is always useful. Never said otherwise.

Which answers your question.

Science is the study of reality... there are no aspects of reality you can't apply science to study.

No, it doesn't answer the question. Maybe try reading the question again.