Posted on 03/21/2016 9:30:20 AM PDT by fishtank
Well on the other hand, folks with a vested interest in there NOT being a God, and I know QUITE what that’s like, will espouse the silliest alternative.
Being religious is not antithetical to science; using supernatural explanations to account for phenomena is. Neither Mendel or Newton did that.
Re: “If god did not create the universe and the laws of physics, all of it works whether a human believes or not.”
Isnt the reverse also true?
However, if God did not create the universe nor the physical laws that appear to govern it, then you “believe” that it created itself or, that it always existed, which brings us back to the question, why is it “scientific” and “rational” to believe that nothing initiated itself into something, but the belief that a Creator God initiated and designed the universe into existence is “irrational” and “unscientific”?
but I suppose if you want to assert that, for example, continental drift has been steady that it was some pre-modern-human race farming those fields now well above the permanent frost line....”
Genesis 10:25Two sons were born to Eber; the name of the one was Peleg, for in his days the earth was divided; and his brother’s name was Joktan.
The Hebrew term for “earth” was used in the sense of land, or the physical earth or ground. It was not used in terms of ‘peoples” though there were the accounts of Babel and God confusing the languages; God may have acted to physically separate the continents within a short space to further separate the peoples as well as create more mass symmetries to stabilize the Earth’s spin on it’s axis!
Re: “By definition, belief that powers operate beyond the laws of nature is unscientific.”
And which “laws of nature” hold that nothingness can initiate itself into somethingness? Which ones hold that nothing can bring something into existence.
None. But even the BBT starts with a singularity. No one knows what that is, but there are limits to science. But with science, rather than making up some deity to explain it all away, we just say we don’t know.
That wasn’t my point, these persons in today’s scientific anti religious climate would have been attacked for having a religious view points which would possibly have undermined their experimentation according to the atheists controlling the scientific leftist hegemony!(look at what happened to E Forest Mimms iii when he expressed a pro life view point in a political setting...his columns were canceled in the Scientific American magazine) Having religious view points caused folks like Newton and Mendel to be scientifically honest in their investigations. Occam’s razor, so highly valued as a scientific tool of reasoning was first developed by William of Ockham...a FRIAR!( you know one of the pro-God, Pro-Christ religious bigots(/sarcasm) that all the modern atheist scientist love to hate!
A typical strawman argument... i.e. because deity does some things by means other than nature, deity makes science in its modern sense impossible.
A disorderly deity might do that, but an orderly deity that takes the trouble to give an honest revelation won’t.
Don’t worry, I was that stupid too when I looked for solace in denying God.
I found that I didn’t have any choice in where I ended up when I did. I ended up dancing with the devil.
“But with science, rather than making up some deity to explain it all away, we just say we don’t know”
Paul says that we can know but we are too stubborn in our sinful darkness to want to believe it.(though God’s glory is revealed throughout the heavenlies so we are all without excuse)
Science doesn’t even explain the impulse of humans to claim deities as the originators of creation...social scientists and anthropologists speculate but they can speculate only from existing data. The argument is that ancient men did so out of ignorance... but they don’t dare speculate that perhaps it wasn’t out of ignorance but from what ancient men actually experienced by interactions with these beings far above them; the data now being unearthed suggests that human origins were much more complex than just the evolutionary and cultural processes as posited for the past 2 centuries or so.
Science, with those who practice it best, can’t make a distinction between the emotional desirability of believing in a deity or the emotional desirability of simply saying “I don’t know”. It can’t say “ “saying a deity made the universe” is stupid while at the same time saying “I don’t know” is the valid choice. For a scientist to say that “believing in a deity is stupid” is to step out of the world of scientific rigorousness and into a world of speculation. In short science will never fully escape the irrational humanity of those that practice science. Part of our humanity involves sometimes making choices and forming opinions that can’t always be supported by science!
If you want to say “believing in a deity that created the universe” isn’t science and there-for to be scoffed at, that is fine but you can’t say that it was fully informed scientific logic that brings you to that conclusion, but rather your own human pre-biases!
Reflections on a provocative subject.
The Greeks of Antiquity gave us eternal Laws and Rules in Mathematics and Physics. So too did Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Von Leibniz; among other great minds.
So what have the moderns produced? Most notably: Evolution and Relativity; both Theories. Bottom line is this.
There is an obvious inverse relationship between the rigor of the scientific proof and the degree of zealotry on the part of its acolytes.
“science as a unbiased method “ Unfortunately with all the climate dudes and others messing with their data to “show” that their opinion is valid - Science has taken centuries of steps back in integrity. I say that as the recipient of a degree in Physics.
BS-Physics-1989-USNA
I am a scientist who does research at a major university. In my experience there is no anti-religious climate in science. I don’t know nor do I care about the religious affiliation of the people I encounter—it simply isn’t an issue. And FWIW, Mimms didn’t work for SA. He wanted to be an editor there and wrote some pieces, but just wasn’t hired.
Please present a reliable source that shows that “climate dudes” were “messing with their data”.
So why is Evolution a Theory and not a Law, such as Motion???
So why is Evolution a Theory and not a Law, such as Motion???
I think He had done more than a few for Scientific American as a contributor to the Ameteur Scientist though only a few as “trying out editor”(which he didn’t get), though he contributed to other mags(Popular Science?) and I bought a lot of his stuff from Radio Shack. It was his religious views that caused him to lose the full editing job. The link I provided does Mims a good service in describing the issues scientists had with his pro life views as well as his creationist views.(heck even the ACLU offered to help him,...talk about strnage bed-fellows) My point still stands...express a belief in God as a scientist in many areas, especially in ways that shame leftist politics and you get ostracized...no matter how good you are as a scientist.
Yup, has to be evolution. Can’t even be that an alien from zorg MIGHT have designed it. Can’t be that it was guided by anyone or anything else. Has to be random, unguided, unintelligent happy happenstance.
Bkmk
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