Faith
Our open acknowledgment of faith comes from intellectual humility, and from a desire to protect what we value from falsehood and coercion.
First, the only intellectually honest posture on whether we live in a universe with a divine, omniscient creator who will judge each person for their actions is humility. Theism and atheism are both strong claims, and neither should be considered proven according to the scientific method.
We do not require a particular denomination, and we do not test your personal faith. A secular path to the same moral lessons is welcome.
We treat the lessons of the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20, Original Douay-Rheims) and the Beatitudes (Matthew 5, Original Douay-Rheims) as a shared moral framework we will operate under. The words we bind on our speech are:
Thou shalt not speak against thy neighbour false testimony.
Visitor English may say false witness. The commandment we quote is false testimony. We take that as a binding constraint on our speech.
Collective punishment is un-Christian. We call people in, not out in bad faith. We take inspiration from how Jesus taught grace, forgiveness, and humility.
Blessed are the peace-makers: for they shall be called the children of God.
Ecumenism is a core operating principle: focus on shared common values, not the ones used to divide us.
From intellectual honesty, the theistic position lacks sufficient evidence.
Russell's teapot looked absurdly hard to check in Bertrand Russell's time. As an engineering problem it is less intractable now. That is a point about scientific method: how hard a claim is to check can change as instruments improve. Science works by a loop of theory and evidence. We read the close of Genesis 3 (Original Douay-Rheims), with Philo of Alexandria, as a picture of that work, not as a laboratory result.
And he cast out Adam, and placed before the Paradise of pleasure Cherubins, and a flaming and a turning sword, for to keep the way of the tree of life.
That is Paradise of pleasure, Cherubins, and a flaming and a turning sword. This verse does not say Garden of Eden, and this edition does not say karibu. Later English cherubim, the Akkadian gloss karibu, and Philo are on Vocabulary, not as a Douay-Rheims quote. We still read those two Cherubins as a picture: The Angel of Theory and the Angel of Evidence, that work conjunctively to guide the faithful out of sin. On this site, sin is the darkness, lacking in God's good light, and rejection of reason and truth.
We do not consider the scientific method to be contradictory to anything stated in scripture unless there is proof to the contrary.
We are truthseekers. We do not discriminate based on personal faith. We expect intellectual honesty. No progress comes from rejecting reason for ideology or coercion.
Definitions of the load-bearing words on this page live on Vocabulary. Encoded claims live in Holy Lean and SiteConsistency. The monetary and OS aims live on Philosophy. What Holy Lean checks is at the end of that page.