BS: Science and Religion

Subject: RE: BS: Science and Religion
From: Slag
Date: 15 Jun 09 - 03:32 AM

Rig, would you consider it evidence that throughout the entire history of modern man he has been a religious creature? Everywhere he has been he has left evidence that he worshipped something greater than himself. Idols, icons, pyramids, temples, music, scripture, grave markers, on and on, all evidence of a god.

So if religion or god or God is a delusion then perhaps Mankind is delusional from the get go. Or maybe you it's you, who is in a minority, that is delusional.

The fact that there are those who come along and deceive believers and manipulate them through their religious practices is NOT evidence that there is no God. That is only evidence that there are deceivers and gullible folks among us. If money is your religion what, then, is Bernie Madoff? If love is your religion what is the streetwalker? The examples are endless but it remains that there is a vast preponderance of evidence that people everywhere worship that which amounts to a supreme being.

Subject: RE: BS: Science and Religion
From: Riginslinger
Date: 15 Jun 09 - 12:52 AM

Yes, Little Hawk, I do oppose the system you talk about. But an informed people would not be so easily duped--in my opinion--so those of us who consider ourselves to be responsible citizens must do something to get the truth to the people. Having only two parties to deal with, however, makes things very easy for the manipulators-and-the-users.

Subject: RE: BS: Science and Religion
From: Little Hawk
Date: 15 Jun 09 - 12:44 AM

But, Rig...divide and conquer is the name of the game! Surely you don't expect the mass media and the great partisan powers that be to resist golden opportunities to set the public at each other's throat over divisive stuff like this? Surely you don't expect them to be reasonable and seek mutual understanding and look for ways to get people to agree with each other on much more important matters! How else could they generate the vicious process called "multi-party elections" without crap like this to fight over? And how could they get their supporters all excited and mindlessly partisan without crap like this to fight over?

I ask you... ;-) You must be opposed to the $ySStem as we know it!!!

If so....hey!...I can relate to that.

Subject: RE: BS: Science and Religion
From: Riginslinger
Date: 15 Jun 09 - 12:20 AM

"But there may be a baby still in that bathwater. Let us keep looking, at least. It is probably just as harmful to say ther eis nothing there than it is to say there is somethign there and give it false names, attributes, and attachments not natural to it."


                   I would be willing to go along with a continued resolution to determine if there is, or is not, a god, if the people who are so completely deluded into thinking that there is one would keep it (him/her) out of public policy decisions.

Subject: RE: BS: Science and Religion
From: Little Hawk
Date: 14 Jun 09 - 11:21 PM

Bill, you are mistaking my goodwill toward Dave for fuzzy thinking. ;-) Uncle Dave-O decided to be nasty and sarcastic to me and imply that I respect only ideas and opinions which are identical to my own. I decided to be friendly and noncombative in return rather than hurling a similar barb back at him. And that's really all there is to it. I like a world with many different ideas and opinions being expressed.

If, however, you want a deeply serious dissertation from me on what I mean when I use the phrase "higher levels of understanding" in regards to science and spirituality ....and I really doubt that you do...well but if you do, just say "please, pretty please", and I'll do my best to try and come up with one for you.

But keep in mind, Bill... My knowledge and abilities are necessarily limited. I may not be able to totally satisfy your requirements or your expectations.

Subject: RE: BS: Science and Religion
From: Amos
Date: 14 Jun 09 - 09:53 PM

Well, there is no question that myths, legends and icons are cultural delusions, or at least cultural artifacts trying to symbolize something a bit beyond words.

But there may be a baby still in that bathwater. Let us keep looking, at least. It is probably just as harmful to say ther eis nothing there than it is to say there is somethign there and give it false names, attributes, and attachments not natural to it.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Science and Religion
From: Riginslinger
Date: 14 Jun 09 - 09:39 PM

Let's see, a few posts back I tried to make the case that science can be supported by fact, and religion cannot. I was told that the cat who started this thread "wasn't talking about religion, he was talking about god." But the name of the thread is Science and Religion, so how about this:


    "'1. The massive body of evidence is that there is no evidence for a god at all. Only cultural delusion.'""
    "Come on String. I expect that level of incompetence from Rig, not from you."

                  There's a massive body of evidence that religion is only cultural delusion.

Subject: RE: BS: Science and Religion
From: Slag
Date: 14 Jun 09 - 08:49 PM

I hate to pick up String's cause but wasn't "ether" postulated because scientists of the day could not imagine a wave being propagated without a medium? It is what wasn't there that they finally discovered, thanks to the Michelson/Morley experiment. From there, physics took a quantum leap, you might say.

By way of analogy an artist will often use negative space to imply the object of the work. It's everything around the subject and what is NOT there that defines the object. Alas, I can use this same analogy to portray God, so grains of salt all around.

And Stringsinger, any extremist for any cause will attempt to use moderates as patsies or buffers or promoters or whatever they feel will advance their ideology. Marxs called them "useful idiots". It seems that extremists of every stripe have both contempt and plans for someone of more moderate views.

Subject: RE: BS: Science and Religion
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 14 Jun 09 - 08:03 PM

""1. The massive body of evidence is that there is no evidence for a god at all. Only cultural delusion.""

Come on String. I expect that level of incompetence from Rig, not from you.

Find me one reputable scientist who will state that absence of evidence FOR a theory is objective evidence against it.


""4. I think that in the scientific community, there is a consensus that among the more
educated and well-developed scientists, since there is no evidence to support a god,
there is a general lack of belief.""

So they decide that in view of the lack of evidence FOR such a being they don't BELIEVE in its existence.

They do NOT say it doesn't exist. To do so WOULD be UNSCIENTIFIC, which has been my point all along.

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: Science and Religion
From: Bill D
Date: 14 Jun 09 - 08:01 PM

"Just find your own definition of the concept and I'm sure it will work for you. "

Kinda like Humpty Dumpty?

"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean--neither more nor less."

It's very comfy to have everything so vague and subjective, but it's the philosophical equivalent of cotton candy.

Subject: RE: BS: Science and Religion
From: Little Hawk
Date: 14 Jun 09 - 05:49 PM

Uncle DaveO, I'm always hoping to meet someone who is at a higher level of understanding (about anything at all) than I am...and I do meet such people. If I met Mark Knopfler, for example, I believe he would be at a much higher level of understanding about guitar playing than I am, and I would pay close attention to anything he could show me.

If you want an airtight definition of "higher level of understanding" that will automatically identify it at ALL possible levels, I can't provide it. I'm not at at high enough level of understanding myself to be capable of that. ;-)

Just find your own definition of the concept and I'm sure it will work for you.

Subject: RE: BS: Science and Religion
From: GUEST,Paul Cookieless Burke
Date: 14 Jun 09 - 04:15 PM

Nothing you'd understand Dave.Or me, or anyone else blinkered by the need for some sort of supporting "evidence".

Subject: RE: BS: Science and Religion
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 14 Jun 09 - 03:19 PM

Little Hawk said, in part:

there IS no real divide between science and spirituality when you take them to the higher levels of understanding.

Please explain what is meant by "the higher levels of understanding". Agreeing with your viewpoint?

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: BS: Science and Religion
From: Dorothy Parshall
Date: 14 Jun 09 - 03:13 PM

LH: LOVE that last post! Such a good laugh. Thank you!

Subject: RE: BS: Science and Religion
From: robomatic
Date: 14 Jun 09 - 03:07 PM

Communism was certainly a state religion in the now defunct USSR. I visited Leningrad and will never forget the heroic depictions of Lenin and Marx, including a small iconic 'shrine' of Lenin, backlit, at the end of the hotel corridor, exactly like a depiction of Christ. Not to mention his wax-like body on display next to the Kremlin, similar to gilded saints in the Vatican.

Subject: RE: BS: Science and Religion
From: Little Hawk
Date: 14 Jun 09 - 01:13 PM

Strinsinger - You are dead right about Pol Pot having his own dogma and "religion" (an atheistic and materialistic religion in his case). I myself have made that point many times in threads here.

It is my opinion that all fanatical political credos ARE in fact forms of secular religion. They follow the same psychological patterns of unquestioned authority, hierarchical command structure, and strict obedience to dogma that fundamentalist religions do.

As for the motto on the US dollar "In God We Trust", it's totally appropriate, because the dollar IS God in the USA. Think about it. What do people devote the most loyalty and attention to? What lies behind every big political iniative? What is the strength of every effective lobby and power group? The dollar. It IS the dollar that America trusts and serves and the dollar is America's ruling God.

Subject: RE: BS: Science and Religion
From: robomatic
Date: 14 Jun 09 - 01:04 PM

More of a book about mathematics and religion:

Naming Infinity

Subject: RE: BS: Science and Religion
From: Stringsinger
Date: 14 Jun 09 - 12:28 PM

Amos, I think it's important to show how so-called "moderate" religion enables extremism.Sometimes it's difficult to separate them.

Dawkins is not Hitchens. Hitchens likes to fight whereas Dawkins is a humanitarian who
is interested in reason. Hitchens would prefer to keep religion as something he could bat around through argument but Dawkin's goal is to enlighten the public as to the ethics of science and the contribution of Darwin and to lessen the need for religion.

L.H., Pol Pot had his own "religion" going so I think you would be hard put to find much of a difference in oblations between him and the Ayatollah at least in their obeisance to dogma. The same "dogma" could be applied to Stalin and Bush. All this dogma resulted in human atrocities.

I think what could be written on US currency is "In Dogma We Trust". (It would be an improvement over the 1954 edict by a minister).

Frank

Subject: RE: BS: Science and Religion
From: Little Hawk
Date: 14 Jun 09 - 12:11 PM

Well, people who are intent on hectoring everyone else in the world into believing the same as they do about something often cause more harm than good, don't they?

This is true of religious prosyletizers. It's true of anti-religious prosyletizers. What would happen if you put Pol Pot and 1500 of his most faithful atheistic followers on an island with the Ayatollah Khameini and 1500 of his most faithful Shiite followers? ;-) A lively old time, I should think.

Subject: RE: BS: Science and Religion
From: Bill D
Date: 14 Jun 09 - 11:44 AM

Hitchens in particular does more harm than good with his "hit 'em over the head with sarcastic disparagement of religion until they see reason" type of approach.

Subject: RE: BS: Science and Religion
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 14 Jun 09 - 08:55 AM

I did enjoy reading 'The God Delusion', 'robomatic'. A bit 'extreme' perhaps (?) - but then it was countering thousands of years of extremism!

I think that the most valuable lesson that it teaches is that religion is not above criticism.

I was accosted in the street, the other day, by some evangelicals. In the course of my debate with them I suddenly realised that what had prompted this particular 'crusade' was writers like Dawkins and Hitchens (author of 'God is not Great' ... if you thought Dawkins was extreme, just try that!). They even appeared to have softened their position on evolution. I suspect that at least one of those books was 'bang on target'!

Subject: RE: BS: Science and Religion
From: robomatic
Date: 14 Jun 09 - 08:41 AM

Enjoying reading "The God Delusion" by Dawkins.

Just sayin....

Subject: RE: BS: Science and Religion
From: Little Hawk
Date: 13 Jun 09 - 07:57 PM

Slag has expressed it beautifully. No, I wasn't talking much of worldly knowledge (memorizing a great many facts), but of inner knowledge about life itself...knowledge of, as you say, "that which is eternal".

Subject: RE: BS: Science and Religion
From: Dorothy Parshall
Date: 13 Jun 09 - 07:42 PM

LH: OK, but I do not believe worldly knowledge enters into what I would term wisdom, or does it?
As per Slag who went on about it but finally came to:
"A wise person is knowledgeable but a knowledgeable person is not necessarily wise." THAT I can accept. To me, the most real knowledge is that which is eternal and comes from the inner depths of a "wise" person.

Religion/religious- Amos: That is, of course, a long way around and, I believe begs the question in the end. But at least I understood your words! Not sure, at this point, I care anymore. I am about to dump "religion" and "the American Way of Life" in the same basket - myriad definitions, too numerous to be meaningful?

Back to your pontificating, folks. I recognize the fun you are having. Endless and circular - almost.

Subject: RE: BS: Science and Religion
From: Little Hawk
Date: 13 Jun 09 - 05:46 PM

We all have our own definitions, Dorothy. I guess my defintion for wisdom would be:

* great knowledge of life, combined with great love and compassion * (and that goes with emotional maturity)

Great knowledge in the absence of great love and compassion can be quite dangerous.

In regards to those people I've met who I felt were wiser than I, they usually had greater knowledge, greater love, and greater compassion than I have, and I could see that in them. This made them people I naturally wanted to be around and learn from.

Subject: RE: BS: Science and Religion
From: Riginslinger
Date: 13 Jun 09 - 05:39 PM

"No SENSIBLE answer then? I thought not."


                That's right! You didn't!

Subject: RE: BS: Science and Religion
From: Slag
Date: 13 Jun 09 - 04:50 PM

"The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom." BTW that's not original with me. "Those who have ears to hear, let them hear." Also not original with me. "Fear" in this case means having the respect for a ruling monarch who has the power of life and death over you.

OK. That's one take on the subject. A word to the wise is sufficient.

There are computers and people who have stores of knowledge much greater than I but that does not make them wiser than I. Wisdom really begins with knowing one's self. It involves absolute honesty with yourself, knowing what your strengths and limitations are, not biting off more than you can chew and not taking the backseat to anyone when it matters the most. It involves being able to assess the reality of any given situation. It involves having a firm foundation under you, a good roof over you and more than one escape plan. It's knowing how to play poker and win and it's knowing how to leave the game alone. It's knowing that you don't swim against the rip tide but in a right angle to it.

It 's being able to understand what a metaphor is and what it is telling you, as above.

It is about keeping your own counsel but also recognizing that no one lives unto himself (Usage Panel?).

It's knowing that Spellcheck is not always right.

With regards to science it's knowing that ego is not part of the method; that when you are wrong, you are wrong. Science may hold the key to much knowledge but not ALL knowledge.

The word "know" gets heavy usage in trying to describe wisdom. A wise person is knowledgeable but a knowledgeable person is not necessarily wise.

I could go on but those with wisdom are probably bored by now and those without, well, they were lost from the beginning.

Lastly, a wise person does not go on at length about THEIR wisdom. Sometimes the wisest thing to do is show yourself the fool.

Subject: RE: BS: Science and Religion
From: Amos
Date: 13 Jun 09 - 03:40 PM

Noun
religion (plural religions)

A collection of practices, based on beliefs and teachings that are highly valued or sacred.
Rather than being diligent and mindful of the way he practiced religion, he chose to stir up quarels by ridiculing the manner in which others do.

Any practice that someone or some group is seriously devoted to.
At this point, Star Trek has really become a religion.

Any ongoing practice one engages in, in order to shape their character or improve traits of their personality.
Our ideological and traditional heritage.
If you examine various churches throughout the world, you will find religion expressed in diverse ways.

[edit]Usage notes

Generally speaking, certain groups that do not acknowledge the existence of one or more deities, such as Buddhism, are still religious, though some people prefer a definition of religion that discourages non-theistic groups from identifying as religious. Others are in favor of a more inclusive definition of religion that recognizes that everyone has their own set of religious beliefs. Avoid calling religious institutions that should be called churches, religions.

---

The pursuit of spiritual truth, IMHO, is the common denominator of all definitions of religion, whether theistic or not.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Science and Religion
From: Amos
Date: 13 Jun 09 - 03:24 PM

If all you have learned from me, you varlet, is a few worn old words, you have been sadly lacking in proper attention, and are a poor study indeed.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Science and Religion
From: Dorothy Parshall
Date: 13 Jun 09 - 03:23 PM

"And while there is a great deal of mystery still to uncover in the realm of space, energy and the cosmos and microcosmos, there is even more to be uncovered in the realm of thought, being, and the delicate web of energies involved in making dreams and data and understandings." Wow, something that makes sense to me!

But who is determining what is or is not "religious" writings.

LH: Please define "wisdom".

Subject: RE: BS: Science and Religion
From: Little Hawk
Date: 13 Jun 09 - 03:16 PM

Got that right, Mrzzy! We would definitely be AS gods if we could all find a way to work together in harmony.

Slag - Well, yeah. ;-) But I have met people whom I considered to be wiser than myself. Not too many, admittedly, but a few here and there.

(I might add as a caveat that I have met a simply vast number of people who have knowledge or information or practical experience or various types of skills that I do not...and even some who were better looking than me! (joke)...but only a few whom I definitely felt were a good deal wiser than I am.)

What I have learned from Amos is...umm...well, I learned about the word "frisson" from Amos. And a couple of other rare and sophisticated words too. He has frequently reminded me of the old phrase "I swan!" (which is not about the bird) What a guy that Amos is, eh? He's like a walking thesaurus. ;-)

Subject: RE: BS: Science and Religion
From: Amos
Date: 13 Jun 09 - 02:25 PM

Here's the blue clicky to the evil Pastor.

I think it would be wise in our secular haste to differentiate between genuine and perverted variants of religion.

Buddha's advices qualify as religious script, as do Lao-Tze's, and many other writers on matters of the human spirit.

The Pope's opinion on condoms, on the other hand, is a small sample of the perversion of what is a natural human approach to mystery. And while there is a great deal of mystery still to uncover in the realm of space, energy and the cosmos and microcosmos, there is even more to be uncovered in the realm of thought, being, and the delicate web of energies involved in making dreams and data and understandings. Right, Horatio?

Let us not drink bathwater, but let us not throw out babies, either.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Science and Religion
From: Stringsinger
Date: 13 Jun 09 - 01:24 PM

Religion, metaphysics, new-age ideas, and even certain political philosophies enter into
the realm of untested, unscientific speculation. In my opinion, Stalin, Pol Pot and Hitler
were religious in the application of their belief systems. They were not true atheists.
The subscribed to a "religious" ideology, each in their various beliefs.

Faith is used to justify abominable acts of humans one to another. Does this disqualify
faith as an agency for good? I think that the overwhelming evidence that faith has been used to perpetrate atrocities at worst and bullying ideologies at best indicates that the damage done by religious faith outweighs the good it purports to have.

The question to be answered is faith useful to being a good person, a moral person,
and a socially-conscious one. Not if the preponderance of its use is to outweigh the
good behavior of mankind.

I was for some reason unable to make a blue clicky of <
http://crooksandliars.com/john-amato/pastor-drake-prays-obamas-death-im-not>
but it bears looking at.

Frank

Subject: RE: BS: Science and Religion
From: Stringsinger
Date: 13 Jun 09 - 01:12 PM

Hi Don,

You ask:

"1. Where is this massive body of evidence located.
2. How precisely does it achieve the impossible task of proving a negative.
3. Who are the learned scientific geniuses who produced and tested this evidence.
4. What credentials can they produce to back up the credibility of their research and conclusions."

1. The massive body of evidence is that there is no evidence for a god at all. Only cultural delusion.
2. As you say, negatives can't be proven. It's a logical fallacy.
3. There are some scientists today who are testing the legitimacy of a god. This is what the Dover trials were about as well as was the Scopes Trial.
4. I think that in the scientific community, there is a consensus that among the more
educated and well-developed scientists, since there is no evidence to support a god,
there is a general lack of belief.

Since as you say, there is no proof of a negative, skepticism is healthy here. Otherwise
you enter the realm of delusion. You can will the earth to be flat if you are so inclined but
this flies in the face of the perception of scientific data.

Now here is one of the reasons that religion is dangerous.


http://crooksandliars.com/john-amato/pastor-drake-prays-obamas-death-im-not

Subject: RE: BS: Science and Religion
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 13 Jun 09 - 10:22 AM

""Elsewise, stop making a fool of yourself."


                  What, and let you have the stage all to yourself?""


No SENSIBLE answer then? I thought not.

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: Science and Religion
From: Mrrzy
Date: 13 Jun 09 - 09:52 AM

OK, then, since nobody's voting any more, who wants to do the tally? I gotta go see Mom (managed to break the femur in her "good" leg and the shoulder blade in her "good" arm right after her 80th birthday...) but I'll check back...

Subject: RE: BS: Science and Religion
From: Riginslinger
Date: 13 Jun 09 - 08:49 AM

That's it! God was uncloaked in 1935.

Subject: RE: BS: Science and Religion
From: Amos
Date: 13 Jun 09 - 12:56 AM

A wonderful wonderful Wiz he is,
If ever a wiz there was, he is
Because because because because becaaaauuuuse
Because of the wonder woz he haz!

Yatatatatatatummmmm!



A

Subject: RE: BS: Science and Religion
From: Mrrzy
Date: 13 Jun 09 - 12:19 AM

If people would just work together, we would be AS gods!

Subject: RE: BS: Science and Religion
From: Slag
Date: 12 Jun 09 - 10:13 PM

It has been said that experience is not only the BEST teacher, it's the ONLY teacher.

LH, isn't it amazing how we usually fit our own paradigm for wizdom? All those who agree with me on that point, I salute you as ALSO being very wize.

PS I HAVE Spellcheck

Subject: RE: BS: Science and Religion
From: Riginslinger
Date: 12 Jun 09 - 09:45 PM

"Elsewise, stop making a fool of yourself."


                  What, and let you have the stage all to yourself?

Subject: RE: BS: Science and Religion
From: Amos
Date: 12 Jun 09 - 09:34 PM

Hey--I taught LH everything he knows!! I'll do the same for you if you can pass the qualifications exam. His was a book of blank checks, but it varies with your figure aura.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Science and Religion
From: Bill D
Date: 12 Jun 09 - 07:57 PM

Of course, Dorothy... I am merely tweaking LH about our differences over whether there IS such a place and the language used to discuss it.

(we have been at this for 6-8 years.. *grin*)

Subject: RE: BS: Science and Religion
From: Dorothy Parshall
Date: 12 Jun 09 - 07:53 PM

I don't know about LH but I do not believe anyone can point out that path for another person. I believe we each must find our own. Of course there are plenty of people out there who, for an exorbitant fee, will offer to help. "Nobody else can do it for you" but the odd hint or example might be helpful. "This I know experientially" is, for me, about all that counts - after all the reading and talking, etc. That is where I stand.

Subject: RE: BS: Science and Religion
From: Bill D
Date: 12 Jun 09 - 07:37 PM

"...no real divide between science and spirituality when you take them to the higher levels of understanding."

And that high level of understanding....you will be sure to point it out for those of us who can't 'quite' manage the path on our own? ☺

Subject: RE: BS: Science and Religion
From: Little Hawk
Date: 12 Jun 09 - 07:00 PM

TIA - My problem isn't with people who are doing science. Not at all. I applaud their efforts.

My problem is with chauvinistic but ill-informed individuals who simply hate religion on principle for some reason (generally due to some kind of negative experiences they've had with it...or just due to the fact that they're not themselves inclined to BE religious), and who insist on regarding it as the antithesis of science...but whose own knowledge of science is so fragmentary and incomplete that they don't have much business quoting it as their supposed authority.

It seems to me like the ignorant attacking the ignorant for being ignorant...or the pot calling the kettle black. ;-)

The people I am most impressed by are those who understand and respect and appreciate BOTH science AND spiritual philosophy and have found a way to integrate the two so that knowledge can be found through combining both of them.

And there are a good many such people. Instead of wasting their time trying to find the stupidest and most prejudiced people on the OTHER side of the supposed divide in order to justify their own prejudice, they are doing something productive by realizing that there IS no real divide between science and spirituality when you take them to the higher levels of understanding. That's the path of wisdom, seems to me.

Subject: RE: BS: Science and Religion
From: Slag
Date: 12 Jun 09 - 06:41 PM

Thanks Amos! Put another way might be to ask why something is thus or thus. Through reduction one finally has to make the appeal to reason, ie, "because it is reasonable to think so." When dealing with children, you can go one step further and appeal to authority "Because I said so!" That seems reasonable to me!

Your second paragraph is essentially what is meant by "extrapolation".

Phenomenology is better described as a way of viewing the world, an exercise, if you will. It is laying aside "words" and measurements, etc. and viewing the object or phenomena as "a thing in itself". It is interesting to do this for a while. Painters and media artist pretty much make this their way of seeing most things most of the time. If nothing else, it teaches one to really see the world as it is, not as we may think it is.

Subject: RE: BS: Science and Religion
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 12 Jun 09 - 05:55 PM

""Let's put it this way--and we'll call it a theory: The evidence is overwhelming that there is no god, and the evidence to support this grows stronger with every day that passes.""

WHAT EVIDENCE!

If you have it, PRODUCE IT, with proper attributions. Elsewise, stop making a fool of yourself.

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: Science and Religion
From: Amos
Date: 12 Jun 09 - 04:04 PM

The ultimate tautology is that reason is reasonable. The sensual world and whatever extensions of those senses we can manage are the exclusive realm of scientific thought. It cannot acknowledge anything beyond our ability to sense and extrapolate. That is the limit of scientific endeavor.

I just love the first sentence. However scientific thought can be applied to any data set, because in addition to material replicability it also uses imagination and analytic skills of several kinds. And it can (in the right mind) be used to find new ways to acquire data and then test and evaluate the data so acquired. Phenomenological data is not, strictly speaking, part of the sensual world in any shared sense of the word. There is no sure way to know if one perception of intense affection is just like another's even though they both say it is love.:D

But there are ways to group and compare such data.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Science and Religion
From: Slag
Date: 12 Jun 09 - 03:53 PM

Now we're on to E.T.s! Wow! Yes, Dorothy, there IS pontification below the line here at the 'cat. that's what we DO! (I'm tempted to say "that is ALL we do", but, well, that just isn't factual and, besides, I think that line may be copyrighted!) And Yes LH, we get to show off our verbal skills, intellect, sophistry and the God given ability to BS thru just about any subject! Don't ya just love it?


Did the Creator God have Theomorphic ideas concerning man? That is asserted in Genesis. It's Man without the familiar presence of God who came up with the anthropomorphic argument concerning the nature of God. That God created Man for a personal relationship with Himself is consistent with the hermeneutic integrity of the Bible.

I would contend that scientists ARE of a faith, albeit a knowledge-based faith, in the method. The ultimate tautology is that reason is reasonable. The sensual world and whatever extensions of those senses we can manage are the exclusive realm of scientific thought. It cannot acknowledge anything beyond our ability to sense and extrapolate. That is the limit of scientific endeavor. The common man may be ignorant (for whatever reason) about the scientific process but he sees and experiences the successes of science and therefore he DOES have some basis for his belief. Even so, he may have an over-inflated belief on the ability of science to do all he expects it to do.

I don't quite remember the exact limit but such a limit does exist and it is depressingly small in terms of the immensity of the universe in regards to the most powerful electromagnetic signal mankind could reasonably be expected to generate. At the distance of about 20 light years any radio signals thus far generated by humankind will have been absorbed or have become meaningless radiation. I think it is at about 40 lys that our most powerful beam imaginable will have evaporated.

Isaac Asimov proposed that our search for a truly advanced extraterrestrial civilization might include looking for a star that winks or dims off and on in a non cyclical manner. Such civilization, recognizing the limitations of artificially generated signals may attempt to orbit shielding material about a star in a pattern that would be mathematically identifiable. Who knows?