The Love of God vs. the "love" of this world

[Persol]

Originally posted by Jenyar
I just want to bring things into perspective. It's an exaggeration of principles to imply that 'religionists' want to make reason invalid.
There are many theists on this board (you included) who seem to have a firm basis in reality, and faith in something greater. I think the problem comes along when this turns into blind faith which isn't based on personal experience or thought, but on the rhetoric.

Yes, humans create "new" things, materials, methods, but it uses energy that already exists.
Agreed, but this does not devalue science. We can have a set amount of 'energy', and science allows us to use it better.

Religion is also not something new. I believe Tiassa is the authority on this.
Most likely

Ask any explorer who ever climbed Everest or went to the North pole. Ask anybody who ever suffered, what gave them hope?
I'm guessing that most (but surely not all) would say some modification of 'faith', be it in God, Jesus, Allah, or self. This is fine, but at the same time they realized that their faith was not all they needed. Work and knowledge was also involved, and while faith may provide the motivation it didn't hand the result to them.

 

[Jenyar]

Which is why James said:

As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead. (James 2:26)

Faith and actions work together. The one is incomplete without the other. There is a relationship between the two. Just as there should be a relationship in what we do and why we do it. There is a relationship between an arrow and a bow, a vector needs direction and length.

Yes we need reason. We need science, and we need people. But God is concerned with the interaction between people and Him, which is by faith and actions. Who gets saved is up to Him to decide - our work is to be consistent, trustworthy, patient, in short: to love. The Bible calls it "to bear the fruit of the Spirit".

The explorer who used all he had to his disposal - his body, strength, mind, energy, tools and science to accomplish what he set out to do. If he set up camp and never used those tools, did they mean anything? Were they beneficial? If he had a robot drop the flag at his destination, did he get there? Even if your destination is heaven, you still have to do the walking. You still have to weather the storms. What you use depends on where you're going. On earth we need science, of course, but spiritually it isn't much use. You can't reason out the weather. (Ask us, South Africa didn't make the cricket super sixes, and it wasn't for lack of trying). We need God on this journey towards Him.