Catholic Rift Over Panel Widens

If you are use to doing whatever you want whenever you want -- with no questions permitted -- it is not easy to have someone looking over your shoulder.

These guys will never learn.

But since I am opposed to organized religion -- GOOD.

It'll cost 'em.

This is exactly the sort of thing which lead to the Protestant Reformation . . . arrogance and hubris . . .

Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad . . .

the bishops would do well to remember what happened to richard nixon after he fired archibold cox.

Aerodynamically a bumblebee can fly. How do we know this? Because it flies. If someone says it can't because aerodynamic rules say it can't then, obviously, not enough rules are known to know or understand what can cause flight.

Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.
[Lord Kelvin, 1895]

Radio has no future. Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible. X-rays will prove to be a hoax.
William Thomson, Lord Kelvin English scientist, 1899

There will never be a bigger plane built.
Boeing engineer, after the first flight of the 247, a twin engine plane that carried ten people.

The bomb will never go off. I speak as an expert in explosives.
Admiral William Leahy, U.S. Atomic Bomb Project.

By the way, that Lord Kelvin was a mathematician and physicist. He was one of the leading physical scientists of his time. He developed the idea of absolute temperature (Kelvin). He was responsible for the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

Now what brilliant scientist says aerodynamically a bumblebee can't fly?

http://plus.maths.org/issue17/news/bumble/

Science has a lot more to learn.

well, after all that is what separates science from religion.

every scientist's opinion is open to verification by experimentation. if the data shows it is proved wrong, modifications are made based upon new evidence and one moves on to the next hypothesis. an opinion found incorrect does not throw the scientific method into question, it throws the original hypothesis into question.

religion allows for no such thing. divine revelation is it. no opinion can be tested, or verified, no nothing but wishful thinking.

anyone pointing to the incorrect opinions of a person, or scientist, in this case kelvin, as some sort of substantiation that the sciencific method is not valid as a tool for helping describe the universe has an agenda that is undermined by scientific method and is trying to dipute its effectiveness, and has a basic ignorance of what scientific method is all about.

My aim of pointing out Lord Kelvin's and others misstatements was not to deride scientific method but to show that scientists will never know all. There is always an unknown factor out there. I view Lord Kelvins statement about aircraft as I view scientist today who say we can never travel beyond the speed of light. When making predictions never say never regardless of what your current science says. You never know if there will be something out there that will surprise you.

Religious "science" takes the position of knowing without the benefit of evidence. All hypotheses are divinely given. Therefore the effort should be to find the evidence to support "god's hypotheses" even if it has to be fabricated. Any evidence to the contrary must be destroyed, belittled, or be excused in some manner.

Creationism and biblical archeology are examples of "religious scientific method."

As for the primary question at hand it should be pointed out that 68.7% did respond. Catholic bishops are like the world in general; they come in all shapes ad sizes. There are many out there they are truly trying to do the best they can for humanity and there are others who are arrogant self-centered pompous asses. The only people they have to answer to are themselves (Council of Bishops) and the Pope.

Xingu and Kuvasz

Excellent observations. Thanks.

as there is no dry water, there is not religious science, the two terms are antithetical to the other. nor is there any religious scientific method. the use of the term hypothesis in a system of analysis that denies the ability to prove or disprove the hypothesis precludes its use as a descriptive term.

what religion does is declare truth without the willingness to subject its truths to verification. it may be a thesis, but it is not a hypothesis, it is dogma.

associating religion with science and attempting to legitimize religious dogmatism by using "religious" as a qualifying adjective to "scientific method" produces an oxymoron and attempts to legitimize religion as equal to sciencetific method as a method of logical and reasonable analysis which the former term fails by its very nature.

Here is an interesting viewpoint from Andrew Greeley, a priest and author.

http://www.suntimes.com/output/greeley/cst-edt-greel06.html