The Batt?sai
Diamond Member
interesting.
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Religion vs. Science
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PowerEngineer
Diamond Member
Yes, this is to the point.
The title to this thread really says it all: "religion vs. science".
Science is a highly successful way of gathering facts; and on the basis of those facts, predicting what will happen as a result of something else. It does NOT explain "why" it happens. That is for religion/philosophy to speculate about.
On the other hand, religion/philosphy can not "prove" anything (in a scientific sense) and shouldn't put forward faith-based explanations of the physical world to explain "what will happen" (or "what did happen"). That is for science to theorize about.
Religion and science are not in opposition to each other, as long as each restricts itself to answering the questions meant for it.
(IMHO) 🙂
JulesMaximus
No Lifer
I believe that pie is good. I like apple pie, cherry pie, chocolate cream pie. I also like cheesecake.
You've made some good points, but I think it's even simpler than that.
The 50% who are certain there is no higher power can only do so based on faith, there is no rational basis for not believing anymore than there is for believing.
Not that I think there's anything wrong with that, but I believe it to be true. :moon:
Clearly there is no free will. It's possible to predict how the balls will bounce on a pool table, given thier original position and velocity, right? Then it's possible to predict what kind of universe will form given a certain configuration of partcles at the big bang, right? And possible to predict how the things in that universe will interact?... If someone can tell me where that logic beaks down i'll be impressed.
Your logic breaks down from the very start. Predictability of billiard balls is an assumption. The only "proof" you have to support the predictability is that you've never seen them behave in a way that contradicts your current understanding of physics.
Science has always changed over the years. Why was earth once flat and the sun revolved around it? Because nobody observed anything that disproved that "fact".
So what your arguement is saying, is that everything you know about physics and science right now is absolutely 100% true and will never change over the next 1000 years?
MrDudeMan
Lifer
clearly you know nothing of theology or even physics. i could send some quantum mechanical equations your way that can NOT predict the outcome of an event, even given the initial parameters you stated.
lim [quantum mechanics] as x-> infinity = classical mechanics. that means everything that we observe with classical mechanics must be able to be explained with quantum mechanics. here is the problem - everything at an atomic level becomes a probability. we dont even know what matter is. read that a few times. WE DONT KNOW WHAT MATTER IS. we observer everything as both a particle and a wave. it just depends on the surroundings. photons, electrons, neutrons, entire atoms, baseballs, whales, the earth, and the solar system can be modelled as a wave or a particle. look up the infinite square well if you are interested in understanding how probability works at this level. there is NO WAY to determine where an electron will go if it passes through a slit. we can guess which part of the interference pattern will house the single electron, but knowing where it lands? impossible. literally impossible and it always will be until we can actually figure out what it is.
what most people dont understand is science does not attempt to explain how anything came into existance, unless you are talking about metaphysics. pure science attempts to explain what we see and how we can describe it with language. it makes no attempt to say "this was created by a divine being" or "this proves evolution." it makes no such claim! nor does religion falsify science!
if God created the heavens and the earth, why would God also limit the development by making evolution an impossibility? when you get down to extremely complicated arguements, which the worlds leading biologists and scientists can not answer, like the flageller motor on a protozoan, then it becomes very interesting. i have extensively studied this subject so i know a thing or two about it.
personally? i believe in God and i believe He created everything, including science and our ability to reason. several compelling arguements can be presented to explain the viewpoint of faith to a non-believer. i should say, however, that most of the people i meet who dont believe in God are in their current state of thinking because they observe believers and their terrible behavior. the christian God is a loving, merciful God. now, here it comes...someone ask me about pain and suffering.
let me ask you this. if you were forced to love God, would you really love Him? absolutely not. if there is no choice involved then it isnt really a choice. forced love isnt really love...it was just the only choice. pain and suffering is the result of straying from a Godly life - and before you call me a bible thumper - i do NOT think people who lead good lives and are ethical and moral beings are going straight to hell for simply not having faith. it is true that Jesus said he is "the way the truth and the life" though, but it takes a really long time to explain things like this. if it was easy to understand then everyone would have the same faith, right?
take an a priori arguement for example - the ontological arguement. if you can conceive a greater being, then you can conclude the being exists. seems far fetched at first, but it also has its implications. being able to think of such an abstract concept begs for an explanation of conciousness. what is it and how do we have it? where did it come from?
how about this - an ultimate moral giver. in almost every community in the world, religious or not, murder has been observed to be wrong. very few african tribes dont have it as morally wrong, but the few that dont have been influenced by people in the past. they dont have an ultimate moral sense of right and wrong because of the influence of a past human. barring those tribes (and for good reason IMO), every person from every community knows what is right and wrong inherently in absolute more situations. people of all religions, backgrounds, ethnicities have agreed that murder is wrong (with or without a law that says so) because it feels wrong. unless you have a mental issue or psychological problem, you KNOW murder is wrong. you dont even need to think about it - killing a human is wrong. stomping on the neck of a baby is wrong. you know these things and dont even try to deny it. no one taught you that murdering is wrong - you may have been taught that hitting and stuff is wrong, but most people i know never explicity had it said to them that killing a human is wrong. we just know. that being said, who gives an absolute moral awareness? having an ultimate moral begs for an ultimate moral giver. think about it.
lets look at the temporal cosmological arguement. this is an example of a posteriori. something exists and we know it does because we see/feel it. we now must explain where it came from. as a christian it is easy to say God created it. this isnt a cop-out or weak answer - it is truly what we believe. God created the heavens and the earth, therefore what we observe and see is a result of that. that in NO WAY invalidates the big bang. THINK ABOUT THAT. God != no big bang. the big bang != no God. they can exist simultaneously! to say God couldnt have created the big bang is absurd IMO because an all powerful being can do whatever he wants. if everything was contained in the big bang, then how did God exist outside of the big bang? that is a good question and not one which is easily answered. but to try to understand how God "is" is pointless to me. that would be like trying to understand what God physically is, and that may very well be beyond our comprehension.
i am a man of science and physics. i believe in evolution as an observed behavior seen in several animals. i do NOT believe evolution created humans by chance. when you take the spring out of a mouse trap, what happens? it will NEVER work. natural selection would have quickly eliminated any changes that did not happen all at once because a change which did not make a positive upgrade was weeded out. a mousetrap without a spring is useless. think about that hard before you reply.
i like what u have to say.. but are you a christian?
My viewpoint on religion:
There are infinite number of possibilities of how the world was created or who created it for what purpose and reasons. When you choose to believe in a religion that enforces idea of divine being of omniscience and omnipotence, you are basically drawing ONE number out of INFINITE pool of numbers. Thus, your chances of being correct is in fact ZERO.
MrDudeMan
Lifer
i edited to write more, and yes i am a christian, but that did not influence my way of thinking as far as strictly science is concerned.
i see your point about infinite possibilities, but when you look at microscopic organisms that could never have evolved into what they are, it makes you ponder. take the flageller motor for example (i mentioned it earlier). it is exactly like an outboard motor on a boat. it has a rotor, precise angles, an energy source, pins and rods that connect it to the organism, and specific proteins needed to make it happen. ive seen over 20 documentaries, from several accomplished biologists (both believers and non-believers), and not a single one can explain this.
darwin himself said if something is observed that could not have evolved or adapted through natural selection that his theory breaks down. i believe the flageller motor is an example of that. there are over 40 components of the motor and all of them would have had to be created at the same time or the whole system would not work. if everything made it into place except the actual energy source, natural selection would have weeded out the change. a long tail and more parts would make that particular organism vulnerable and slow, making it die quicker. a long tail that doesnt move would be a negative effect. also, the flagellum can spin at 100,000rpm, stop in 1/4 of a turn, and get to 100,000rpm in the other direction immediately. that to me is iconography of a divine being. God's thumbnail if you will.
as far as choosing 1 out of an infinite pool...i dont think that is quite what religion addresses. God is omnipotent and omnipresent, but that does not mean He could not have invented an infinite number of ways to create the universe. loglcally, there is a contingency that God must have always existed if he created everything (commonly called the logical cosmological arguement). this can not be proved by us obviously, but when i look around i see the work of God in everything. i simply can not believe we happened by chance. knowing the infrastructure of a cell and how extremely complicated it is has a lot to do with why i believe. microscopic machines with specific purposes, to me, couldnt have evolved like that.
most people like to use darwin to backup evolution, but he didnt really even facilitate that belief. he pushed hard on natural selection, and if you truly understand how natural selection works (which by the way is fact and has been observed), it does not allow for such complicated organisms to evolve out of single cell protozoans for example. the protozoans would have had to undergo massive changes, making it a completely different organism, in order to evolve a greater being. that still does not explain conciousness, but since almost no one can explain what conciousness is, we can just leave that out even though it strongly suggests to a lot of people the idea of a divine being.
MrDudeMan
Lifer
yes, that is exactly it. here is what they missed though by claiming they found broken motors. the motor obviously serves a purpose, but it is possible for, biologically, a piece of an organism to not develop correctly. look at deformed babies for example.
here is why that fails to point out a contradiciton to what i said. having a programmed developmental structure to build the motor is different than it happening by chance. the DNA of those cells have instructions to build the motor. whether or not they successfully do it is another story, but saying it happened by chance, to me, is absurd because it exists in the instructions.
if it always existed in the instructions, which i think it did, then finding a broken one is a clear possibility. we are all supposed to have 10 fingers and 10 toes...it says so in our instructions, but problems in the conception process can lead to other results. we do not simply develop new parts from birth that are also found in our DNA. if we have extra parts, it was the result of a mistake and that mistake is NOT propogated throughout the species. it is eliminated.
myusername
Diamond Member
Lobster Boy's children would beg to differ.
MrDudeMan
Lifer
if the motor was a necessity, then the species would have died if they did not currently have it. ask yourself if a computer could have randomly put itself together...the motor isnt a thinking part of the organism much like a computer doesnt do any thinking. to me at least, the motor could not have randomly put itself together. it is far too complicated. it implies design which begs for a designer.
Mrdudeman.. u kinda sound like the old me... i used to go read about all scientific evidences and different types arguments all day.. i used to be a hardcore christian most of my life until i chose to peel off the label off my back couple years ago...
i'm at a point where i'm pretty sick of being in or hearing about these debates about "the truth." One question of "how" draws another question of "why." It in itself is a never ending riddle. I personally think that understanding of the ultimate truth, reasons, or creation of existence is far beyond the grasp of our intelligence or capabilities. I'm very glad that you are a open minded person which is a hard thing to do while believing a such dogmatic religion. However, I'd like to dispute the good ole "an ultimate moral giver" point because obviously these terrorists are killing thousands people even including themselves to glorify their god and reach their version of "heaven." Einstein once stated that no man is wiser than another before God. It is as if we are standing behind a wall that is so tall that we cannot even see where the wall ends and trying to figure out what is behind the wall. I strongly believe that the world is created by a being that is beyond our imagination, but he obviously gave a limit and didn't want us to know everything. 🙂
i'm at a point where i'm pretty sick of being in or hearing about these debates about "the truth." One question of "how" draws another question of "why." It in itself is a never ending riddle. I personally think that understanding of the ultimate truth, reasons, or creation of existence is far beyond the grasp of our intelligence or capabilities. I'm very glad that you are a open minded person which is a hard thing to do while believing a such dogmatic religion. However, I'd like to dispute the good ole "an ultimate moral giver" point because obviously these terrorists are killing thousands people even including themselves to glorify their god and reach their version of "heaven." Einstein once stated that no man is wiser than another before God. It is as if we are standing behind a wall that is so tall that we cannot even see where the wall ends and trying to figure out what is behind the wall. I strongly believe that the world is created by a being that is beyond our imagination, but he obviously gave a limit and didn't want us to know everything. 🙂
I just want to reitterate, that this thread was not to point out whether or not one idea is correct or not.
The point was to show that those people who ask for proof of god and require logic and reason to account for it, accept that they have free will, which there is no proof for, nor can it be explained by logic and reason.
It was to show them that their minds are closed. How could anyone prove a god exists when they will ultimately deny it without a second thought.
This is why in my first poll (refering to free will) I said "I really want you to think about it. I don't think most of you who say you believe in free will, REALLY understand what it means.
I believe that science and a god/divine being/lifeforce/ can co-exist. They are not mutually exclusive. I believe that everything is connected and I believe we are only just beginning to understand the world around us.
The point was to show that those people who ask for proof of god and require logic and reason to account for it, accept that they have free will, which there is no proof for, nor can it be explained by logic and reason.
It was to show them that their minds are closed. How could anyone prove a god exists when they will ultimately deny it without a second thought.
This is why in my first poll (refering to free will) I said "I really want you to think about it. I don't think most of you who say you believe in free will, REALLY understand what it means.
I believe that science and a god/divine being/lifeforce/ can co-exist. They are not mutually exclusive. I believe that everything is connected and I believe we are only just beginning to understand the world around us.
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