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Syndicate
Yes. Our bodies are riddled with inefficiencies that reflect the creatures from which we evolved. For instance, just about everybody over 30 has a sore back because bipedal travel was late to the party. If we were created by a supreme being, why not make us properly? Why stuff us full of these evolutionary artefacts? (Oh yeah: to test our faith.)
I have thought the origins of religion perhaps lie in people trying to make sense out of tragedy in the days when women generally gave birth to far more babies than survived to adulthood. It's easier to think that everything happens for a reason rather than accepting the amorality of nature.
Why can't evolution be part of God's plan though? I mean, someone mentioned devine powers of intervention in evolution. Surely we can rule out nothing when such a powerful force is at work. We can call it nature, and nature could be anything. There are four forces of nature: gravity, electro-magnetic, weak and strong nuclear. There could be more. Nature could even be one of the tools in God's repertoire. Bad backs, pain and suffering could all be part of the consequences of eating fruit of the tree of knowledge etc. If I was a scientist with faith in God, I could simply say that God's ways work not in just one heaven or even space, but in the space between spaces. We have to first prove that there are extra dimensions, and then we have to prove that God is not there either.
Lord Rees says that perhaps we will never understand the universe in our currently evolved form. It may be too much for our brains to comprehend, he says. Disproving the existence of God is like evolution in that respect. Therefore, I think that disproving the existence of God will happen only after a very long period of time has passed. We won't be around then. Or maybe we will exist in some other form, perhaps a heavenly form that exists in the space between the spaces, a higher energy form vibrating at frequencies of light, or perhaps existing as neither negative nor positive particles of matter in a neutrino universe(Dirac). Our heavenly forms could be anywhere in the universe in zero time and speed of thought. Who knows, really? Mother Nature? God?
Back to the OP, the funny thing is that it isn't originally biblical at all. The geocentric model was the one that was assumed by Greek and Roman civilizations, with the exception of a few people - like Aristarchus - who were far ahead of their time. After all, I don't think Ptolemy, for whom the Ptolemaeic system is named, was even CHristian.
And Helios rode a chariot, if I recall. He didn't run a tanning spa with a great central location.
Scientists in relatively modern times were not always on the mark, either. A British Royal Astronomer of the 19th century once said that we might as well fly to the moon as attempt a trans-Atlantic ocean crossing... by steamship. Another once said that heavier than air craft would never get off the ground. Sometimes it is the engineers and ordinary people with ideas of their own who take matters into their own hands. We're only human.
The lack of evidence for it compared to the wealth of evidence for evolution. It's not a matter of intelligent design being upsetting, it's a matter of it being wrong.
Wait for it. http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2011-04/retina-dish-most-complex-tissue-ever-engineered-lab
Fidel, the idea of "disproving" the existence of god (s) or other supernatural beings is sort of strange though because there isn't even any indication other than our own very human ideas that they exist in the first place. On what basis could you even try to disprove an idea like that?
to me the closest you can get is what we've already done. By looking at the history of people and origin of religions, the claims made by them etc we've pretty much proven that it was all false by any reasonable standards of evidence we use for anything else.
And since believers have pretty much nothing to base their ideas on (other than a short history of believing a modified version of the beliefs of others) it's pretty much a non-starter.
i still go back to the reality that all religions seem to stem from early sun worship, dreamed up in a time we knew nothing of the natural world or how it worked, nothing of what space even was or that we lived on one of many planets, etc.
i also like the idea of "if you had never heard of religion and had the knowledge we have now and someone put a bible in front of you and said this is how it all started, you would rightly laugh at them and call them insane."
Most serious scientists simply don't go there. And being a scientist doesn't necessarily mean that one has to give up having faith or spirituality. There have been a number of neuroscientists and physicists who still maintained faith throughout their lives. This desire to disprove something that is unknowable is not necessarily a bad thing. And some people just like writing books and profiting from the sales of. If they can be sure of anything, it's that they will be financially better off as a direct result in this life. I think some biologists may be taken with the idea that religion is at the root cause of events like 9/11 terrorism and are truly horrified by it all. And they wouldn't be entirely wrong so much as they are caught up in a political situation they might not entirely understand themselves. They might hold personal belief that democratically oriented western governments are attempting to create secular democracies by waging war on ideas in Asia and elsewhere, when in truth it is the opposite the elites are striving to achieve. They don't realize or pay attention to the fact that having and maintaining enemies is highly profitable for people connected to governments and militaries. Their god is mammon, and these pagans have been offering up human sacrifices to the gods of war and personal wealth for a long time.
i agree that most scientist don't go there publicly. there's no reason to, since it's not really a scientific question that one can answer for the reasons i've stated above.
the point is that in the abscence of any sort of credible evidence (or anything remotely resembling evidence no matter how flimsy) scientists and thinkers have pretty much done all any human could possibly do to show that religions are all bogus, and have been consistently throughout human history.
it's probably one of the main reasons religions avoid discussion on these issues at all costs, even though you'd think in this day and age some major soul searching would be going on amongst the religious!
I think there are a number of scientists who are atheists, agnostics, and even believers with faith. There were numerous scientists who had faith. There was John Eccles, James Jeans, and quite a list really. A study at the University of Buffalo in recent years showed that roughly half of the science department either goes to church or profess personal faith in something or other. Apparently being a scientist does not preclude one from having faith. Why would some percentage of scientists not rule out something as a flimsy as seven world religious claims for an afterlife, spirit world or cosmic consciousness of some kind? Surely everything the backwards Eastern and Asian cultures have offered the world throughout history is worthless compared to our more scientific world view. Dominant cultures have time and again tried to erase the religious and other views of people they conquer and replace it with our own in acts amounting to cultural genocide. But what is science?
I think it ironic that today's leading theoretical physicists are positing theories for parallel universes, unified field theory and the like. The words they use to describe universal matter and theoretical physics is said to border on the mystical when describing the cosmic dance of energy. Is our world solid matter, or do we exist in dual states as both matter and particle waves? Do we even really exist? Will Shiva dance the cosmic dance for CERN?
Never trust an engineer to correctly interpret theoretical physics, climate change, or higher maths. They are taught sufficient mathematics to pass them through their narrow professional programmes but, unfortunately not enough to instill a sense of humility or convey the required finesse to methodically address complex problems.
Take a look through lists of "scientists" who sign on as climate-skeptics, IDers, invertors of perpetual motion machines, purveyors of "alternative" theories to relativity etc. - you will find a significant number of professional engineers. Just as a mathemtician is not ideally suited to design a bridge or a complex electrical grid, so the engineer lacks the required skills to effectively analyze the latest developments in cosmology or the fine details of atmospheric physics.
We know what you mean. In 1903, Dr. Simon Newcomb published an essay and "scientifically" proving that the only way air travel would happen is with lighter than air balloons. That was two months before the Wright bros first flight.
A leading Royal astronomer of the 19th century once said that trans-Atlantic ocean crossings would be impossible and suggested that we might as well fly to the moon.
And in 1941, Dr. Campbell of the University of Western Ontario produced a report that said the total weight of a chemical rocket to fly to the moon and back would be 300 million times greater than was actually used to go to the moon less than three decades later.
And when those Apollo 13 astronauts were stuck up there and losing hope, they were a team of engineers and techies running emergency procedures around the clock and who eventually brought the space cowboys back from the brink. It was a fine day for team work.
Scientists can be wacky at times for sure. But we need scientists as much as we need engineers and backyard mechanics with big ideas of their own to transform theory into something real.
the problem is that religion doesn't take the position of a scientist proposing ideas about other dimensions, etc. The difference is these are just theories, and they are not proven and that is admitted by the scientists. They also have some basis in evidence to go on, it's not just out of thin air.
The religious on the other hand make all kinds of absurd claims, even going so far as to claim very specific things like who the god is, what they like/dislike/how they act, how they want us to act and what will happen if we don't act that way.
Now, some of these people may be employed as scientists, but that doesn't make their ideas about religion any more scientific. Obviously they're not using anything even remotely resembling the standard of evidence required for good science. They don't even make rational conclusions based on the evidence against religion that is available. They're like most people, when it comes to religion the part of their brain that asks serious questions gets turned off.
And it's not that the history of religion and some of the ideas the religious put forth are "worthless" but that in this day and age you don't need to believe the stuff about supernatural life forms to see that it makes sense to "love thy neighbor" in the same way as i learned some valuable stuff from other stories, but it doesn't mean i have to "believe" the story is true! The value is there regardless.
Well according to astronomers and physicists, it all began with a big bang, sort of. But before the big bang, there was this singularity, an infinitely dense point of incredibly hot matter outside of which nothing existed. There was no light. Time did not exist. Nothing.
And today some scientists are back to Hugh Everett's many worlds theory. They like it and like it a lot. Apparently it allows for a lot of things that have been bothering physicists and astronomers for the last century. They think big bangs are happening all of the time everywhere and creating new universes, like soap bubbles expanding for very long periods of time, and then contracting by mysterious forces of dark energy not discovered much less categorized as of the present time. A man and wife astronomer team in the U.S. think the contents of this universe are being pulled in a certain direction, like milk sloshing sideways in a carton, at a million miles per hour by something very large and suggesting another universe much more dense than this one. As for me and my belief, I think it's possible. I am a possibilist who worships at the temple for broad-minded possibility. For now.
In my Father's house are many mansions. If it were not so, I would have told you. - Sweet Jesus!
You're getting pretty close!
Thanks, big G.
No problem.
In fact you're getting so close, I might as well tell you how it all went down, so gather 'round.
Why I remember it like it was yesterday....
Way back in the day, and I'm talking in the very earliest stages of what's become known as "the big bang", and I guess that phrase captures it as well as any, (you might call it the big roll out), but anyway, it was in the middle of that that I became self aware. Except of course there was no middle because there were no edges, and not even any time. So paradoxically, there being no time, I had plenty of it.
I should try to avoid all the paradoxes inherent in the tale, and just try to bend it around four-dimensional space/time to be easy on you guys I suppose. So there I was, entwined with this rapidly expanding amount of proto reality, (to the extent you can use the word 'rapidly' outside of time) and I came to a few realizations. One was that I was having this incredible sense of déjà vu. It was then the awareness formed that I was involved in an endless loop of such events, and was both a causal and a connective element, but also acted upon. It was more than me, so I was a facilitator, and not an absolute creator.
As events unfolded, I began to comprehend a huge, but ultimately finite set of futures. It was finite because a few of the laws of physics were already pre programmed, or had become established by the time of my insight. I considered every future to the absolutely fullest extent, and began to make choices. These choices reflected themselves as echoes in what had been up to then an entirely even and homogonous reality. The first differentiation took place, and with that were born time, direction, and form.
It had not always been thus, but in this cycle I intentionally decided to make it a masterful work of art, and not a just masterful work of craftsmanship as I could have. To that end, I inserted an element of random magic, of chance, of luck. I think that's part of what makes art something more than the sum of it's materials. I saw this as eventually expressing itself in humans, but you had to be permitted free will.
I think you'll agree the results have been mixed but generally positive. There have been times when I've had to step in with an unaccustomed degree of intervention to save your collective butts. I may have to again.
Thanks, G. Randomness? I suppose that explains everything. Possible.
I've always wanted to ask you, Big G, what's infinity, and where are we relative to ∞?
]:-)
Ah, infinity. First, if like most people you grapple with the term as being like a measurement of time, only really awsomely large, then you're totally missing the boat.
If infinity were a vessel, then I would say that math deals with the contents of the vessel better than the vessel itself, but it's doable. Having said that, the vessel metaphore breaks down almost immediatly, so don't pursue it further. You'll be better off going to the root of all science, which is philosophy, to really get it.
Actually for the average bloke who enjoys playing with the concept, you could do worse than to read "One Two Three Infinity" by George Gamow. An exellent effort at popularizing some very difficult concepts for the non-technical. I would encourage the more cosmologically literate not to eschew the work for it's simplicity.
Thanks, Big G. I must say you sounded a little like Richard Dawkins fielding a question from the audience by a famous standard model physicist who began by asking Dawkins, "I'm an atheist, but....?" I think Dick nearly blew a gasket on that one. By comparison you did a much better job. ]:-)
I'll never stop getting a kick out of being told I sound like Richard Dawkins.
Arriving late to the party.
Re. Sineed's post #19.
Dawkins of course, may feel differently.
Wow, I cross-posted with god.
.
.
.
{ Hi Maysie, it's GOD. I can do better than cross post. ..I can actually intra-post. Part of the omni-present thing.
}
Variation on an old joke:
What's the difference between Richard Dawkins and God?
God doesn't think he's Richard Dawkins.
(playing on the theme of the bearded old man in a dress version of god, of course)
Variations of that have been around almost as long as I have, but it's still a good one. Anyway, I should get back to my euchre game with the other persons the Catholics think make me up. See ya!
Yawn.
I used to be able to do that.
What else ya got?
It's like this. Your mind created your own universe. I think that quantum physicist David Bohm and neuroscientist Karl Pribram discovered the truth, that this world is really a 3-D hologram. Everything we see is a 2D data projection to 3D and originating from a highly dense parallel universe. And we are living in The Matrix according to modern day quantum theorist Brian Greene. Central American Indians said everything around us is 'Maya', an illusion. Never mind asking how far down the rabbit hole you want to go because you're in it.
The Cat: We're all mad here.
The Hatter: Why is a raven like a writing desk?
Multivac: Insufficient data for meaningful answer...
I remember seeing a dramatization of that story at the Manitoba planetarium when I was a kid. It was spectacular.