You're right on some level, but I think you're wrong on another level.

One thing that people far too often assume is that science denounces the unproven. It does no such thing.

All science does is lay claim to what it can prove.

Anyone who claims that science denounces God or magic is simply wrong. There may be individual scientist who may make those claims, but there is nothing in the scientific method itself that denounces the unproven. All that science does is confirm what has been proven.

Science and spirituality are not mutually exclusive.

I think Christianity is responsible for the attitude that they are mutually exclusive because Christianity wants to denounce the things that science has already disovered (i.e. evolution).

But that comes entirely from the religious sect. Science itself doesn't necessarily denounce religion. Although it has shown that some things that some religions claim have been proven to be false. But that was by pure coincidence, not because science was out to do that!

But no, science doesn't reject magic.

What is true is that no one has ever found a way to scientifically prove that magic works. In fact, whenever they have tried they have failed. Science showed where their results were flawed.

However, that still isn't the same as science denying magic. All science has to say is that, thus far, no one has been able to scientifically verify magic.

So science and magic aren't really incompatible. I love them both!

Science and magic are the same thing.

I mean, all things thought to be "magic" can be explained. That is "science."

We may not be there quite yet, but we are getting there.

Well, if it was, then I guess I'm supporting your position.

I didn't mean to sound like I was disagreeing with you. I was just saying that many people misunderstand what it means to 'judge' another.

Exactly.

"Magic" is just the label we give to things that science has yet to explain.

Science if far from a 'finished' field of study.

It also assumes magic from the get go. It can explain how the Big Bang may have unfolded, but it says nothing about what 'banged' in the first palce.

Most people just don't understand science.

Science tells us how balls bounce. It says nothing about how the balls came to be in the first place.

In a similar manner science tells us that we evolved from lesser animals. But it doesn't explain why atoms contain the blueprint for DNA.

All that science tells us is that the blueprint for DNA is in the atoms!

But some religions don't like that point of view.

I SEE WHAT YOU ARE SAYING, THAT YES, THE GOOD BOOK DIDN'T JUST FALL OUT OF THE SKY AND THERE IT WAS. A MAN (OR IN THIS CASE, A COLLECTION OF MEN) WROTE IT. A MAN EDITED IT OVER THE YEARS, AND A MAN INTRODUCED IT TO ME. I AM PUTTING MY FAITH IN THE FACT THAT THESE MEN HEARD THE WORD OF GOD, AND WROTE DOWN WHAT HE WANTED THEM TO. MUCH LIKE THIS COMPUTER IS ACTUALLY SENDING OUT THE MESSAGE, I'M JUST THE ONE TYPING IT. BUT BEHIND THIS MESSAGE, YOU BELIEVE A MAN IS WRITING WHAT IS COMING UP, NOT THE COMPUTER. JUST AS I BELIEVE THAT GOD MERELY USED THESE MEN TO PUT OUT HIS WORD FOR US, IN THE BIBLE. I JUST BELIEVE THAT GOD GAVE MAN THE LIMITED KNOWLEDGE WE HAVE NOW, AND THAT IS TRULY AN AWESOME GIFT. SOME THINGS SCIENCE COMES UP WITH BOTH AMAZES ME, AND TERRIFIES ME. OTHERS LEAVE ME SCRATCHING MY HEAD, AS IN HOW COULD YOU POSSIBLY HOPE TO KNOW THAT. JUST AS SCIENTISTS SEEM TO PUT FAITH IN THEMSELVES WHEN THEY'RE EXPLAINING FINDINGS ABOUT THE COSMOS, AND HOW THE UNIVERSE WORKS WITHOUT EVEN HAVING MADE IT OUT THERE PERSONALLY(AFTER A FEW CENTURIES OF STUDYING THE UNIVERSE, WHICH HAS BEEN AROUND FOR, WELL, A LOT LONGER TIME THAN I KNOW), I PUT MINE IN THE FACT I BELIVE IN THE WORD. AND MY CREATOR MERELY USES MAN FOR HIS OWN PURPOSE, WHICH I IMAGINE WE WILL NEVER UNDERSTAND SO LONG AS WE LIVE, OR HE WOULDN'T BE WORTHY OF BEING CALLED GOD. AND I DON'T HAVE THE PAMPHLET (THROUGH THE UNITED CHURCH OF GOD)WITH ME, BUT SOME OF THE THINGS IN THE BIBLE HAVE BEEN PROVEN THROUGH ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND SCIENTIFIC FINDINGS, THOUGH I GIVE CREDIT TO YOU, NOT EVERYTHING, YET :) THAT ONE I LEAVE TO FAITH. SO, MAYBE BOTH COULD AREAS COULD SAY SOME THINGS ARE PROVEN, OTHERS ARE JUST LEFT UP TO FAITH. THAT IS WHERE OUR OWN FEELINGS COME IN. GOD BLESS!!

HAVE A GREAT EVENING EVERYONE-I'M NEW TO THIS, AND I DON'T HAVE A COMPUTER, SO YOU MAY NOT SEE ME UNTIL WEDNESDAY. JUST LETTING YOU KNOW I'M NOT CUTTING AND RUNNING, SO PLEASE REPLY, AND WILL GET BACK TO YOU ASAP......

no problem, was wondering if I could have written it a better way

Thank you Abra. I was beginning to think that no one was going to speak for the “Scientific” viewpoint.

Of course science is correct about “the physical universe” – simply because its sole purpose is to measure and classify physical universe phenomena. (Technology is the application of that measurement and classification.) But all that really does is point out the self-defining nature of science. It simply says “science correctly describes the physical universe because science is the description of the physical universe”. (If something didn’t correctly describe the physical universe, then by definition, it wouldn’t be scientific.)

But my point was intended toward those phenomena that cannot be physically measured – like memory, thought, choice, opinion, self-determinism.

1) The “scientific” explanations all boil down to an assumption that all of those things are nothing more than chemical reactions. But that logic only leads to the inescapable conclusion that science itself is nothing but chemical reactions. Thus we have a “proof” that is just as circular as “God is omnipotent because he is God.”

2) Even if “all is nothing but chemical reactions”, the key difference between “science” and “religion” is that science teaches that those chemical reactions are “chance” whereas religion teaches that they are “directed”. But science cannot prove its own premise, nor can it disprove the “religious” premise.

3) And probably the most blatantly circular and conceited of all is the assumption that the chemical reactions are the cause (of thoughts, emotions, et all) instead of being the effect. Basically science is saying “If we can’t measure it, it can’t affect the physical universe.”

Just going around letting everyone know I wasn't shouting, just didn't know that when I made everything in caps, that's what that meant. The intro people just tipped me off. Everyone have a wonderful night!

But isn't it true that "math" is really nothing more than a made-up language to describe things that are just mental constructs and have no physical existence? (e.g. "Infinity", "imaginary numbers", etc.)

So yes, "math" actually exists. But so does "Esperanto". And neither one can "do" anything at all, much less "perform miracles".

(Just razzin' ya. )

Hi Sky,

It's always fun to converse with you because you are so intelligent.




But all those things are nothing more than chemical reactions whether a God exists or not.

Even if God exists, it doesn't negate the laws of physics. All that says is that God is the one who designed the laws. And that brings us to the very serious question of "What is God then?"

Does God have an explanation?

Well, if we're talking about the biblical God, then God supposedly knows everything, including it's own nature! After all, we can't very well have a God who doesn't have a clue about its very own nature. That would put it right in the same boat with us! A God who doesn't know what it is!

So in theory if God can EXPLAIN his very own nature, then doesn't that boil down to God simply knowing his own 'science'?

Like JB and I were just discussing, once something is explained it's no longer magic, it's science. But if God can explain himself, then he's a scientific God! No magic necessary.

It seems like EVERYTHING ultimately leads to a self-inflicted contradiction no matter which road we chose to travel. Therefore no road has any priority based on whether or not it leads to a circular contradiction because all roads apparently lead to a circular contradiction.

So science and God are on precisely equal footing in this regard.



That's not entirely true. This is a gross misconception in science. Even within the scientific community itself!

First and foremost this conclusion is blatantly false. The proof is in the atoms, the simple observation that they have the miraculous property of self regeneration.

If you take an atom, and put it into an atom smasher (a particle accelerator lab). What happens to it when you smash it? Does it fly apart into totally unrecognizable debris?

No, that NEVER happens! Never ever, has anyone every seen that to be the case. There are cases where it might annihilate into pure energy, but never into unrecognizable debris.

Compare this with something like the solar system.

Let's imagine that a star flies by the solar system close enough to fling all of the planets out of their normal orbits.

Now let's further supposed that after that star passes by all of the planets are still caught in an orbit with our sun (non of the planets were actually ripped away from our sun altogether). Only their normal orbits were disturbed.

What would happen? Well, physics says that the planets would assume NEW ORBITS based on how they were disturbed. The idea that all of the planets would return to precisely their old orbits would be extremely unlikely. Such an event would indeed be caused by CHANCE.

However, atoms don't do that.

When atoms are disturbed (or torn completely apart) they miraculously return to precisely the same configurations they had before (assuming they didn't break apart into new particles altogether). However, even when they do break apart into new particles they even do that in precise and predicable ways!

In other words, there is NOTHING left to chance in the quantum world. That may seem strange because quantum physics claims to be ALL ABOUT probabilities and chance. But those probabilities and so-called chances are extremely WELL-DEFINED. Just like the probabilities of rolling numbers on a pair of dice are WELL-DEFINED. It's a combination of chance and miracle when the numbers come up on a pair of dice.

The chance being that any possible combinations of the numbers on the dice can come up. The miracle being that there are only 6 sides on each die and they can never change! And you will never see anything happen other than what CAN happen. Is that chance? Or is that miracle?

Science truly claims that nothing happens by chance. But none-the-less things do happen randomly.

There is a difference. Most people just don't understand the subtle details of what science is actually saying. And many of those people include actual scientists!



Again, I need to seriously ask,... Is it 'science' that is actually saying this, or just 'some scientists'?

Quantum physics has shown us that the differentiation of cause and effect is an illusion.

If science says that we are made of atoms. And science has recognize that atoms have a mysterious unexplainable property of regeneration as well as containing the blueprints for DNA, then why should anyone conclude that science is claiming that we are just the result of pure chance?

Maybe we are the result of pure randomness, but alas, randomness is not the same as chance as I've already describe with the examples of rolling dice.

I think most people will easily believe that humans are produced "randomly" (in addition to the obvious genetic factors). We even claim with enormous PRIDE that no two humans are exactly alike!

That sure as hell doesn't sound like we were perfectly designed. You'd think if we were perfectly designed we'd all look like we came off a conveyor belt at a 'Human Assembly Plant".

Clearly we are RANDOMLY created! Is that the same as by "chance".

I think not.

Atoms the blueprints of the universe.

Atoms naturally combine to form amino acids. Amino acids natural combine to form DNA. DNA is the blueprint for life. Atoms are the blueprint for DNA.

Random yes, chance no.

Has science yet explained why atoms regenerate precisely the way they do?

No, it has not.

Therefore science doesn't even claim to have answers to the questions that you're claiming that it answers!

Maybe some atheistic scientists try to claim that science supports atheism, but I'm afraid those people have absolutely no right to make that claim. That is a bogus claim.

Science DOES NOT conclude atheism.

It has however produced much evidence that the biblical account of creation is incorrect (even when taken remotely verbatim).

Science has shown us that life was around long before we were. Science has shown us that plants and animals lived and died in an imperfect world that contained disease and natural disasters LONG BEFORE mankind ever came onto the scene.

This observation of the real world pretty much flies in the face of any religion that claims that mankind's fall from grace from his creator is the reason the world is imperfect.

A person could argue that God just made is look that way to fool us. But any such argument merely suggests that God is deceitful. As far as I'm concerned there is no way out for the biblical myth.

Science may not be claiming atheism, but it has definitely discovered that either we evolved from lower life forms, or God is deceitful. You can take your choice on that one.

If there's any 'magic' in the universe it resides in the atoms. That is where any blueprint for this universe resides. The universe is on 'autopilot'. There's simply no need for a creator to baby-sit it and guide it along every step of the way. Nor is humankind responsible for the fact that the universe is a dog-eat-dog world.

Sorry for the massive post, but I couldn't sleep tonight and felt like typing.

It is wrong to equate science with atheism. Science is not a religion. It's simply an investigation into how our universe works. Science studies the REAL BIBLE. The universe itself!

There is no question about who wrote the universe! No need to worry that it might just be a manmade myth.

Religions that try to lay a guilt trip on people by telling them that they are the cause of all the pain and suffering in this world are clearly lies. Pain, suffering, and death is innate to this universe and existed LONG BEFORE mankind ever even evolved.

Man is not responsible for the dog-eat-dog world we live in. Although, now that we have become sentient we can chose whether or not we want to contribute to that aspect of nature.

In the meantime Science DOES NOT equate to Atheism. That is the biggest lie ever told. But it has revealed how some religions are clearly bogus lies that were invented by superstitious men.

Isnt it all subjective?

I could write a book on this subject. In fact I should be writing it!

Yes, you are right. Mathematics has indeed become nothing more than mental constructs of man. Unfortunately the mathematical community got off track with math, and they may not get back on track for a very long time. I really should write my book and show them the way.

In truth though, there's nothing imaginary about imaginary numbers. They actually do represent quantities that are manifest within the universe. They do have a meaningful cardinality. I have no problem with imaginary numbers. I understand them perfectly and they are very real in their meaning and interpration (or at least they can be depending on who's using them and how they use them )

There is also nothing wrong with the concept of 'infinity' in and of itself. It can be a very meaningful idea. Although I would argue that infinity itself is not a 'number'.

What might come as a suprise to use is that negative numbers are actually numbers that have no absolute meaning in the real world. In fact, they can only have relative meaning.

Negative numbers are not 'quantities' in and of themselves. And therefore they should not be thought of as being purely cardinal (unfortuantely they are defined to be purely cardinal). However, what they actually are is a quantity and a relationship to another quantity.

In other words, they not only represent cardinality, but they also represent a condition that exists between cardinalities. That has never been addressed by the mathematical community. They treat negative numbers as though they can stand alone as pure cardinal entities. That's bull crap.

The other thing they do is claim that there are different sizes of infinity. That's also bull crap. Most of that came out of the work of Georg Cantor, but he was wrong because his work was based on a previous incorrect turn that the mathematical community took many years earlier.

The Pythagoreans were correct.

Leopold Kronecker was correct.

Guiseppe Peano was originally correct before he submitted to Cantor's ideas and gave up on his own original correct idea!

In any case, there can only be one size of infinity. Any more than that is totally absurd and meaningless. Infinity only needs to mean "endless", and nothing can be more than endless.

It's also incorrect that a finite line segment can contain an infinite number of points. It can't. That's wrong. Modern day formal Mathematics is wrong.

They'll get it right someday I'm sure. But as we speak they don't even seem to be aware of just how wrong they are.

You're right. Modern day mathematics is nothing more than an arbitrary construct of man.

Well, it's not exactly 'nothing more' or it wouldn't work at all. But they have recently made some really bad turns. Ironically religion played a role in the wrong turns of mathematics! (yes, Christianity! )

Why am I not surprised!

The Earth is held perfectly suspended

in SPace...

Alone with the moon , stars ,sun,

and all the other planets ...

nothing visibly holding them up....


Ever Wonder How This Can Be?

I agree imaginary numbers are “real” in that there is agreement as to what they represent and their relationship to other “mental constructs”. What I’m saying is that they have no physical existence. They cannot be measured by physical means. They are mental constructs. Even the simplest of arithmetic concepts – e.g. “one” – has no physical existence. You can’t assign a weight or a length or a frequency to it. Yes, you can say “one apple weighs this much.” But in that case, what you’re giving the weight of is not “one”, it’s “apple”.

That was pretty much my point from the git-go.

Hi Abra. Ditto!
Thank you Abra. That couldn't have been more perfact if I'd scripted it myself...

You have just put forward exactly what I said was the "scientific premise". Of course you can say that it's not "scientific" and therefor cannot be labeled "the scientific premise". But the label is not important (as you yourself have insisted in the past). My whole point in starting this thread is to show that the premise you just stated ("...all those things are nothing more than chemical reactions...") must be taken on faith because is not (and most likely cannot ever be) proven by "science". So it is true that the existence or not of god is irrelevant to the "proof". But that's only because there is no more proof of the "scientific premise" you stated, than there is of "God". Which was my whole point from the beginning.

Well, I'm not sure where the "contradiction" part comes into play. But yes, it is obvious that God and science are on precisely equal footing. But what that means is that in order to evaluate them, there must be something "outside of" or "senior to" BOTH of them, that can be used as a "control set" (or a "tie breaker" in the vernacular). So the basic problem here is that both of these "equal but opposites" are something that must be accepted "on faith". Now wouldn't the logical choice for the "tie breaker" be that which is doing the accepting? And that line of reasoning is what brought me to the conclusion that "I" must be SENIOR to everything when making a self-determined choice. Otherwise, it is, by definition, not self-determined, it is other-determined.

The fun never stops!
Dammit I wish I knew enough about quantum physics to understand what that means. So all I can do there is fall back on the admittedly provincial viewpoint - it hasn’t shown me that. But then again, if I look at it from the viewpoint of quantum physics being a closed system (i.e. limited to physical phenomena), then all it really says to me is that quantum physics has no way to describe the difference between cause and effect, because it can only describe effect, it cannot describe cause.

Aren't you confusing the difference between the map and the territory it describes, the tools with the task?

I don't worship my dial calipers, nor do I take it on faith that whatever it tells me about a piece of metal is a piece of the alpha and omega of the warp and woof of the Universe. I understand that it can go out of calibration and give me wrong measurements, so I periodically have it prove 'itself' by comparing its output to agreed upon standards.

Does Faith (capitalized intentionally) do that?


-Kerry O.

I would only agree with this on the most generic abstract philosophical notion of 'God'.

Clearly the biblical notion of God is necessarily out of the 'competition'.

That picture is simply not in agreement with what the universe is like. The biblical picture requires that man is responsible for the imperfections in 'creation'.

However, science has revealed to us that those 'imperfections' existed long before man came onto the scene.

Therefore only one of two things can be possible.

1. The biblical picture of God is wrong.

2. The biblical God is a decietful God who purposefully misleads mankind by planting false evidence in nature.

Either way the Bible loses. Either it's a lie to begin with. Or the biblical God is a decietful God that is far from rigtheous.

So when you talk about the 'God concept' being on equal footing with science, you need to be more specific in what you are including in the 'God concept'. Clearly the Bible-based religions can't be true without maintaining a decietful God.

But a decietful God would be a demon!

So it's a lose-lose proposition.

The only religions that are in the running with science (as though science is even competing with religions) would be the pantheistic religions.

So I think when you speak about the 'God concept' you need to be a bit more specific about precisely what you are referring to.




I personally don't see science as being an 'egual but opposite' phiolosphy to religion.

Science is merely revealing to us how the universe works. It doesn't say anything about how it was 'created' initially.

It does offer theories of how the Big Bang unfolded, but even those theories don't truly address the issue of what might have caused the Big Bang initially. They also just assume that atoms are the way they are. There is no theory in all of science that actually explains why the fundamental particles have the properties they have.

Even the most sophisticated theory yet devised (String Theory), just assumes that quarks, leptons and bosons are the way they are and starts from there!

It also just assumes that Quantum Mechanics is right and has nothing at all to day about why Quantum Mechanics is the way that it is!

So it's hardly explaining anything about 'creation'. It's just saying that given all this 'stuff', (i.e. quarks, leptons, and bosons), we can show how the universe would have naturally evolved into what it is today without any further outside guidance.

In other words, all science is really saying is that if there is a God, then that God clearly designed the universe via the subatomic particles of quantum physics!

In other words, science is saying that if a God created this universe then that God put the universe on AUTOPILOT!

That is all that science is really saying.

Science isn't saying whether or not a God exists. It's simply saying, "Hey, if there is a God, that God put the universe on autopilot and there is no need for divine intervention to 'create man' in the middle of the evolutionary process".

The required 'divine intervention' was already establish in the making of the quarks, leptons, and bosons.

That's all that science is really saying on a religious plane.

Science is not in competition with the 'God concept', nor does it support atheism. However, it has no evidence that a God exists either.

The only scientific argument that can be given for a 'God-like creator', is the argument that the quarks, leptons, and bosons are too well-defined to have been a pure 'accident' - therefore there must have been an intelligent designer.

However, that argument in and of itself is rather lame. The reason being that if we accept it on face value then the answer is, "Ok there must have been a prior designer because the universe is too orderly to have happened by happenstance."

But the problem with that argument is that it just pushes the problem back one more level. Now we have an intelligent creator whose origin is unexplained. Therefore we need to run the whole argument again and say that if an intelligent God exists, it must have had an intelligent creator and so on ad infinitum!

Then we start thinking,... "Ok if order had to start somewhere, then why not here with this universe?"

And then we're back at square one.

I don't think science even tries to address this problem.

Alan Guth (the scientist who came up with the Inflationary theory of the Big Bang), has pushed this problem so far out of reach that his conclusion is that it is necessarily unanswerable.

So Alan Guth is a scientist who is saying that science cannot answer this question. Yet he doesn't denounce science. After all, it's not the purpose of science to answer that question.

We know that the biblical picture of God can't be true unless God is a deceitful demon. Which of course could be true but is a highly undesireable thing to want to have to believe! I think most people would rather believe in atheism than to believe that we are all just the pets of some sick demented demon!

Of course, all of this still leaves open pantheism. Pantheism says, "Yes! There is a God, and we are it!"

This is a win-win situation. Science wins, Pantheism wins, and all of humanity wins, as well as every other living creature.

We are the mysterious beings that created this place! We created it on autopilot because we were planning on becoming LOST in it! We couldn't very well do that and baby-sit it at the same time. This explains everything quite nicely actually.

Some people might object and say, "So why did we allow things like venomous snakes to evolved that can bite us, etc, etc, etc.

That's an interesting question. The pantheistic answer is that we had to put some risk into the mix, otherwise the game wouldn't have been any fun to play.

What would life be like if everything truly was perfect? There would be nothing to overcome. Nothing to accomplish. Nothing to be appreciated. Everything could be taken for granted if everything were perfect and nothing could ever go wrong.

A perfect creation would be totally uninteresting and boring as hell.

Some level of difficulty is a MUST.

The level of difficulty that we see around us is evidently the level that we chose for this game.

That's the explanation. Pure and simple.

It's also the panthestic view that these games are being played eternally, in an endless series of reincarnations. So if you don't particularly like this one don't fret. There's plenty more where this one came from.

I personally believe that we are spirits, and life is like a movie. We chose to come into this movie, part of that choice included being blinded to our true nature. That's the only way to get in!

However, before we came in we were aware of what we were getting into. At least to some degree.

Maybe some of us won't like this movie and when we go back to the spirit world we'll tell our friends, "Don't go to play in Planet Earth! It's a terrible life!"

However, there will be just as many spirits who will go back to the spirit world saying, "OMG! You gotta go play in Planet Earth! It was a GREAT LIFE!"

Some people enjoy life, and others don't. There is no consensus on whether life is good or bad. All that exists are opinions.