Science and religion have absolutely nothing to do with each other.
One uses a rational approach to explain natural phenomena while the other attempts to do the same using irrational and unprovable arguments.
The truth is that no philosopher has ever been able to successfully deduce the existence of God. Many have provided 'proofs' for the existence of some supreme deity, but all have failed in the light of evidence showing otherwise.
Science is based on faith? Only if you distort the definition of faith.
Scientists must have faith in previous science without repeating it all, but since it's published, including its methodology, then the only thing you really need faith in is that the publications aren't lies.
Scientists don't need to have faith in some unifying physical order. It's enough to say we learn about the universe through observation, and we don't know everything yet -- so that's why we still look.
That's, of course, different than science and religion. I'd say that religion has nothing to do with science, but science has a lot to do with religion.
Why? Well, scientists and science don't preoccupy themselves with religious issues or questions. But religious people do preoccupy themselves with scientific issues, including the existential issues raised by scientific discovery as well as many ethical issues. Religion tries to insert itself into pure science, like in this intelligent design stuff. I don't ever remember science trying to insert itself into a purely religious issue, though...
All concepts are conservative, so that once established they may be relied upon whether this is in basic math, or area, or mole, momentum, or or or... And from these Facts and Formulas we reason forward, and make presumptions, and in the process we learn. More.
I think there is an obvious faith in a unifying order. Why would anyone add two and two if they did not believe in an absolute sum somewhere. Doesn't this all add up? Isn't math good in this world and the next, since the saints are all book keepers?
We accept a universal order, and this matter of faith keeps the scientist looking for that order while the priest takes it as proof of God.
what teaches people is the leap of insight based upon seeming senseless phenomen.
Science does seem to go after religion's goat and disprove biblical explanations.
They told what was important in their lives, and it is not important in our lives. We can't buy their God because he is a puny little shithead.
Why do you regard this as faith in the foundational concepts rather than an understanding that is based on scientific descriptions?
I don't know about this one. If the whole premise of science is to uncover the unknown through reductionist observation, then how does one have faith in an overarching unknown? There are varying degrees of confidence in scientific knowledge from extreme confidence to no confidence -- but this is based on strength of data and nothing else.
Math, I'm afraid, does not suffice for me as an example of some immortal unifying order or even part of one. It's nothing more than a type of language, in fact a technical language. Pure math is divorced from applications, and applied math is used to describe particulars using its vocabulary. Math does not embody natural truths, because it is completely internally defined. 1+1=2 is not a statement of natural truth, it's simply a statement of equality in definition.
Science is concerned with a universal order only insofar as all experiments and observations are finite -- so there is an assumption of repeatability. However, most studies will statistically describe findings which is basically just a statement of certainty vs uncertainty. So the universal order you speak of has mainly to do with levels of statistical confidence.
Now I'm talking about the level of the scientific study and the generation of new data. The patchwork quilt that constitutes scientific theories, consenses, laws, etc, are also founded on evidence while using reason to draw all these data together. But even a law is finite if you question its basis enough, i.e. it's never really a law
The scientist's search is reductionist -- it seeks to divide and divide and divide and describe those divisions. Science looks for processes, constituents, and forces by reduction -- it doesn't look for order. The farthest I'll go with you here is that a scientist needs to assume to some degree that findings are repeatable and therefore generalizable without actually repeating them. Is that really faith? Or is it a statement of confidence in our observations?
:confused: I'm not sure what you mean here...
Like where? Were Copernicus and Galileo and Newton going after religion's goat? Was Darwin? Was Einstein? Was Heisenberg? Was Bohr? How is it the fault of science that religious explanations are inconsistent with what science observes? Science also devotes plenty of attention to things that don't challenge religion at all -- no one in religion has any opposition to the physiology of the retina or the biochemistry of photosynthesis.
I don't think I read the same journals that you do...
Look it as language then and what does it say: IS. one and one is two.
If science did not look for order it could not discover laws, and without predictability of outcome is could have no formula of behavior, no this before that, and no cause and effect.
I see that all of science feels after this true thread in physics, as in laws as formulas of behavior, and why?
Science accepts order because order is how we learn of reality by taking obvious disorder and finding how it is governed.
No, it says one plus one equals two. That's why you use a plus sign and an equals sign.
Furthermore, if you want to concentrate on the word is, you need to pick your definition of IS. This is not the IS of existence, and it's not the IS of predication, it's the IS of identity. The atomic meaning of this equation is self-contained and self-defining without any external reference. In other words, 1+1=2 is a circular argument.
See, I think this is the difference between conducting science and philosophizing about science. I look at science from within, and the whole idea of looking for order and looking for universality is absent from everything I've seen. Scientists look for understanding, indeed look for fundamentals, but in reality the more you describe the more unanswered questions become revealed. In other words, the process of science continually reveals our lack of knowledge, more and more with every discovery. No final answer is ever final -- to discover that DNA is the genetic element answered a huge question, closed a book on an epoch, and opened up a million other questions that themselves spawn more questions. That's science from within. If science from without sees this as a search for order, it seems to me just idealism.
The presumption of repeatability in science is not based on faith in the constancy of physical laws. It's the other way around, i.e. the constancy of physical laws or even their possibility comes out of the probabilistic confidence of any set of observations.
Where do you see this?
I don't agree with the idea of disorder here. Lack of knowledge is not disorder. It's just lack of knowledge. Science looks for components, or constituents -- this, specifically, is what data constitute.
So one and one is not two?
It is not wrong to think reality does not behave rationally.
but the rules of that rationale changes depending upon the focus, so that Nuetonian physics are still valid, as are the physics of Gallilaeo, but they do not explain Einstein's relativity, or nuclear physics.
I look at every science text book I have, even on the moral sciences and the one thing they all do is systematize the subject. All bring order to apparant anarchy, and I am not saying that the order is not there.
All I am saying is that science chips away at anarchy that presents itself as certain facts without cause or effect, and science seeks the cause and the effect. Data is like the many pieces of a jig saw puzzle, and when each piece of information can be put into a coherent whole then it can be concieved of as a idea, as opposed to so much data, some without meaning and some with much meaning.
1) Who are we (and what are we worth)?
2) Where did we come from?
3) Why are we here?
4) Where are we going?
Both Christianity and evolution seek to answer these four questions.
Believe it or not, if you add one thing about genetics (re-combination) to current scientific knowledge, it would pretty much explain God and answer those questions, if not prove or disprove God's existence.
Is not God said most emphatically to be life?
Yes, but is that not what people seek in religion.
That is assuming that God is a a fictional character like one from a novel. A true scientist will not make such an unsupported assumption.
What surprised me was to show that the silliest religious belief (well, Christianity at least) is very well supported by science if you just add up a few facts and squeeze real hard. What would I calculate the probability? Somewhere between 20% to 90%.
Note that though that I can use science to describe a God very very like the one described by Christianity, there is one difference. No one has ever seriously attempted to describe God without a big parcel of MetaPhysics. I can do it with only science. I haven't found anyone really ready for that. Test yourself. Who was more evil, Hitler or Stalin? If you can answer that without prejudice, maybe you could stretch to understand God.
If we take such a simple understanding of god, where god=life, then we do not need science to prove God's existence, such a thing would be patently obvious to everyone.
Yes, God is often said to be life, but God is often said to be many things. God is life, God is truth, ect - none of these statements are absolutely accurate, they all point to the inexpressible truth of God. That's the gist of how language around God usually functions.
People can seek whatever they like, where ever they please. You can look for Death under a tree if you like.
People seek all sorts of things in religion - sometimes people seek alternatives to scientific explanations.
Doesn't mean that Christianity uses the scientific method to explain the development and existence of life. Religion tends to be concerned with coming to terms with the life we have.
Well, I'm no scientists. And God is like a fictional character from a book. Scripture is literature, by the way.
Any scientists who tells you he is studying the nature of God, in a scientific manner, is a mad man. What would he observe? What data would he collect?
Christianity is not a religious belief.
And I am not sure what probability you are projecting.
Depends on how you define metaphysics. And even then, you would have to answer some metaphysical questions, or at least make some metaphysical assumptions.
And I must doubt that you can arrive at God through any scientific exercise. But hey, I'll give it a hearing.
Yah, you have that right in trumps. Still, I think most things, the life we have included, are easier to understand and deal with if we understand them.
Yah, but many fictional characters have some ontogeny in fact.
If someone wants to understand God, perhaps they should start with the closest thing we know of, humans. Humans must be well understood before an understanding of God can be developed.
The key to this question has to do with events during re-combination. You might not think that that would say much about God, but it certainly does. God has the same problems that humans have and has solved many of them the same way that humans will have to.
Uh.... OK, but I thought it was.
The probability that God or more likely Gods, exist...(plural dependant on THE other QUESTION)
Nope. No metaphysics. That's a hard part for most people to understand. Meta-physics means magic to me or something that science can never describe. This isn't even that hard to understand, though the idea that God isn't interested in magic does throw most people.
Tell ya what, I don't answer that question directly these days, but if you were use Google or MS Live Search to search for instructions for Lobster Hunting, the first result could lead you to a detailed answer. No one has found a flaw in the reasoning so far.
Christianity is not a religious belief.
Nicely, but ....
>Can any science which draws foregone conclusions
Not familiar with that science. Sort of contradicts science.
