[Sca-cooks] Faith and chellenges
Jeff Gedney
gedney1 at iconn.net
Wed May 31 07:43:40 PDT 2006
>>> Not really. Conclusions are *proved* by replicating tests
with consistant results. A 'scientist' should know that. You
start with a theory and then work to prove the opposite. You
explain the results. You repeat the experiments. You submit
it to critical peer review. You question. You validate. You
verify. You double-check. You triple-check. You do blind
tests.
And the idea of doing this occurred comparatively late in the
history of the world.
Our concept of "science" as a separate and distinct set of
world explanations uninformed by religion and driven by empirical
observation utilizing the "Scientific Method" is extrememly recent,
and not fully realized in it's modern form until the 20th century.
It is irresponsible and unnecessary to hold religious authority
for being unscientific and establishing unscientific dogma when
the tenets of their faith were laid in an age and culture that
utterly lacked anything resemling a modern scientific thought.
The world explanations in the Christian Bible are explanations
that made sense to the people who wrote them.
I read them and regard them with care, not because I think that
they are absolute unwavering truth, but because when stripped of
their anachronsims and analyzed for their structure and
relationships (betweem people and between pweople and the divine)
they illustrate, poetically, certain metaphysical concepts I like
to live by, including do no harm to others, do not be dushonest,
and honor the world and each other.
Even the assumption that there is no god is an act of faith.
>we can guess (again, faith) and we can make educated guesses
(still faith) but we never really know.
>
>>> Nonsense. Of course we can. If I put a chicken breast in
a 2,000 degree oven for six weeks, it will not be presentable at
feast.
>If I pull a raw steak out of a sub-zero freezer that it has been
in for 2 days and give it directly to a server, it will not be
well-done by the time it reaches the high table.
>
>Observations are facts. conclusions are explainations taht may or
may not be right,
>and that are made based on interpretations of facts.
Arguing that that because you can know what a chicken will do
in an oven means that faith in a creator God is ludicrous
is "Apples and Oranges" argumentum.
They are unrelated.
Religion is generally NOT concerned with the effects of heat on a
dead chicken
Lets examine what religion is conecerned with, please.
Unless you are starting a Church of the Divine Frypan, Religion
deals with things that science cannot grapple with.
What is the origin of the observable universe? Science has no
answer that is not, in itself an assumption underlain by faith.
Even the "Big Bang Theory" is, in effect, a statement of faith.
What you can know as fact, to be apprehended by humans, can be
known.
What is unknowable as fact, to be apprehended by humans, must be
assumed by means of faith.
There are many aspects of "science" are are equally ludicrous on
the empirical surface, some concepts, such as string theory, exist
only in the mathematics derived by human minds, and have no
empirical observation. That is also faith.
The very nature of reality, the origin of life, and many other
aspects of scientific inquiry are also quite naturally elements
of faith.
Those who claim that Science and religion are antithetical know
too little of either, and are not cognizant of the history of
science and scientific thought.
Galileo expressly said that the Bible cannot err, and saw his
system as an alternate interpretation of the biblical texts.
Max Planck said "the holiness of the unintelligible Godhead is
conveyed by the holiness of symbols." Atheists, he thought,
attach too much importance to what are merely symbols. Both
science and religion wage a "tireless battle against skepticism
and dogmatism, against unbelief and superstition" with the goal
"toward God!"
Here are some intreresting quotations:
"It is true, that a little philosophy inclineth mans mind to
atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to
religion; for while the mind of man looketh upon second causes
scattered, it may sometimes rest in them, and go no further; but
when it beholdeth the chain of them confederate, and linked
together, it must needs fly to Providence and Deity."
- Sir Fancis Bacon
"The most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets, could
only proceed from the counsel and dominion on an intelligent and
powerful Being."
- Isaac Newton
"Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind"
- Albert Einstein
>why? we say gravity.
>gravity is the idea that magnetic and other vector forces exert a
pull on all
>objects. we have math that if you plug in weights and velocities,
you can figure a
>constant value that we call "gravity".
Completely incorrect.
Science does not know and, moreover, does not really have any
valid theory as to how gravity works, but it is clearly separate
from electromagnetic force.
We do know that a property of masses is that they are attracted to
each other. We have Einstein's postulate that a mass causes a
"curvature" in the fabric of "spacetime" that interacts with
other curvatures, but how this is accomplished, or even what is the
particle that is responsible for carrying gravitic force is unknown.
The Einsteinian "curvature" of spacetime has been
observationally confirmed by the observation of "Gravitic lensing."
Gravity remains one of the enduring mysteries of science.
It is "explained" with equally validity by the "Demonic" theory
(a demon exerts a pull on everything), as by any other theory.
(what I mean by that is that there is no proof of any theory at this
time, just an assumption of "facts" not evidenced.)
That said.
Please lets get back to topic.
Your particular bugaboos regarding religion are yours, and you
really have as much right to force them on me as I have to force
mine down your throat, which is to say: none at all.
I treasure my faith.
I believe that I am neither ignorant nor am I unscientific.
Keep your desparaging and insulting comments to yourself from here
on.
Thank you.
I shall post no more to this topic.
It is getting too far afield.
Capt Elias
Dragonship Haven, East
(Stratford, CT, USA)
Apprentice in the House of Silverwing
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