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Science requires faith.
Imagine…no abortion.
On another note, religious beliefs give people hope and if you take that away then you make them depend on the government for hope alone which is sad.
As an atheist, I find the billboards mentioned silly. The thing that I always bring up to other atheists is that they are as obsessed with everyone else NOT believing as many believers are obsessed with everyone else believing. I don’t see much difference—the rabid on both sides seem to be nervous about letting others make up their own minds.
Repeating that I'm an atheist, I've always found this a moronic ideal. I've seen plenty of good coming from religious folks, and plenty of evil; ditto from atheists.
If there were no religion, I don't see how the world would just automatically be improved.
Frankly, I do not believe there must be a conflict be science and religion. The current generation of scientists has made it so because they are “physicalists” i.e. they are convinced there is a material explanation for everything.
There are few who do not see things this way and are trying find the link. I met this guy: http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/bios/hoffman.html
not too long ago and he had an amazing and convincing explanation.
First, he said to imagine the universe as you perceive it to be your “human interface” with reality. Similar to the screen on your computer, it represents what is happening, but is not a true representation of reality. Evolution guarentees that it cannot be. The amount of energy needed to perceive real reality would be a huge waste. Your perception is evolved so that your “hack” into reality is better than the “hack” of what you want to eat or what wants to eat you. Humans may not even have the capacity to understand reality.
Thus, trying to expain the universe by using what we are able to perceive is like trying to explain what is happening in a computer by what you see on the screen. The screen represents reality, but it is not. It is your “human interface” because you cannot communicate with the true reality of the computer.
Scientists can’t explain what the universe is composed of (although there are fuzzy theories) and they don’t even have a theory for what causes human consciousness. Of course if the brain is just a representation of reality, that is perhaps understandable. Could you explain the an icon on your computer if you weren’t willing to believe there was something beyond it?
That much said, there is a lot going on in religion that does not stand up to scientific scrutiny. Religious doctrine often can best be understood by thinking of it like a file of the pictures of your children on a computer screen. The file is important to you, you would not put it in the “recycling basket” and erase it. But you do not believe that this file really looks like that or really contains your pictures (they are a series of 1s and 0s of course). However, you take the representation seriously, but not literally.
Religios movements are unfortunately filled with a lot of people taking things literally that should only be taken seriuosly. Thus the conflict with science. Those who take things literally are not so open to being questioned. The scientists are equally guilty, but in a different way. Moreover, “faith” is often just an excuse for believing something about which one is uncertain. Scientists have “faith” too, but claim to be open to challenging it if given evidence to the contrary. Religions don’t usually appreciate this, but Christianity has proven remarkably adaptable on questions that scientists have answered (round earth revolving around the sun not in the center of the universe)
Hoffmann believes that scientists will spend another 20 to 30 years trying to figure our the “physical” explanation for things. Then enough of the old school will be dead and perhaps it will be possible to apply the scientific method to some of the ideas that religion has had for the past 10 millenia.
Applying the scientific method to religious concepts would be a revolution of extraordinary proportions. Too few scientists have been willing or able to go down this path. There will be opposition from both science and religion to doing so. But it is probably the only way to really begin to answer those huge open questions.
So if there's no God, then there has to be an infinite number of universes. If there is an infinite number of universes, then pretty much anything that CAN happen will happen. Therefore, if it's possible for a God to exist, he probably does.
The magazine has an interesting story by Tim Folger which is titled “Science’s Alternative to an Intelligent Creator.” The article begins by noting “an extraordinary fact about the universe: its basic properties are uncannily suited for life.” As physicist Andrei Linde puts it, “We have a lot of really, really strange coincidences, and all of these coincidences are such that they make life possible.”
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Coincidence or design? Don’t you just love how hard some work to NOT believe in life being God-breathed? It is so obvious to most people who are not trying to justify their own reasons for their rebellion. It is their choice after all to believe or not believe in a Creator-God, as laid out for us in scripture. It’s all right there, but men striving for knowledge and power will continue to go to any lengths to prove there is NO God. Why is this?
Over and over again science proves that there is a pattern and purpose to life. I guess this goes against the sensibilities of the “Intelligent” who must see to believe. For the Christian, it is much the other way around, we believe. It is because of this belief that we see...
“Faith is believing what we cannot see and the reward for this kind of faith, is to see what we believe.” ~ St. Augustine
I really enjoyed the author’s book “What’s So Great About Christianity.”. I disagreed with him on some points but I consider him to be a brilliant thinker.
The opinion piece is not particularly surprising if you’ve read the book but it does serve as an update on current events in the religion of secular humanism (atheism).
In Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis makes this statement at the end:
“Ever since men were able to think, they have been wondering what this universe really is and how it came to be there. And, very roughly, two views have been held.
First, there is what is called the materialist view. People who take that view think that matter and space just happen to exist, and always have existed, nobody knows why; and that the matter, behaving in certain fixed ways, has just happened, by a sort of fluke, to produce creatures like ourselves who are able to think. By one chance in a thousand something hit our sun and made it produce the planets; and by another thousandth chance the chemicals necessary for life, and the right temperature, occurred on one of these planets, and so some of the matter on this earth came alive; and then, by a very long series of chances, the living creatures developed into things like us.
The other view is the religious view. According to it, what is behind the universe is more like a mind than it is like anything else we know. That is to say, it is conscious, and has purposes, and prefers one thing to another. And on this view it made the universe, partly for purposes we do not know, but partly, at any rate, in order to produce creatures like itself-I mean, like itself to the extent of having minds.
Please do not think that one of these views was held a long time ago and that the other has gradually taken its place. Wherever there have been thinking men both views turn up.
And note this too. You cannot find out which view is the right one by science in the ordinary sense.
Science works by experiments. It watches how things behave. Every scientific statement in the long run, however complicated it looks, really means something like, “I pointed the telescope to such and such a part of the sky at 2:20 A.M. on January 15th and saw so-and-so,” or, “I put some of this stuff in a pot and heated it to such-and-such a temperature and it did so-and-so.”
Do not think I am saying anything against science: I am only saying what its job is. And the more scientific a man is, the more (I believe) he would agree with me that this is the job of science- and a very useful and necessary job it is too. But why anything comes to be there at all, and whether there is anything behind the things science observes-something of a different kind-this is not a scientific question.
If there is “Something Behind,” then either it will have to remain altogether unknown to men or else make itself known in some different way.
The statement that there is any such thing, and the statement that there is no such thing, are neither of them statements that science can make.
And real scientists do not usually make them.
It is usually the journalists and popular novelists who have picked up a few odds and ends of half-baked science from textbooks who go in for them. After all, it is really a matter of common sense.”
Could one say that C. S. Lewis is denying not only the scientific legitimacy of the ID “Movement”, but also “independent” natural theology in general?
Re: “Independent” natural theology:
http://books.google.com/books?id=0qXBpoIE_QwC&pg=PA83&lpg=PA83&dq=independent+natural+theology&source=web&ots=lzRLQ4nHO_&sig=LC-daa499EeMg9ykE-4Oq5_TCJ8&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=9&ct=result#PPR5,M1
It is logic like this that leads people to believe in intelligent design.
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There is only one universe. The idea of “multiverses” or “alternate universes” is stupid.
A sinister and desperate effort to work the laws of statistical probability out of the equation. I luv when scientists grasp at straws. The reasoning should get the "Stanley Miller" award.