Science vs God

Jasper, I do not have a problem. You do ... you are stupid. Go play with tai (the one you call tia) in the retard corner. smiling rofl lol emoticon **** Stu ****

Feynman used to talk about an 'infinitely lazy Creator' who would just set up some very basic rules - natural selection, Newton's three laws of motion, the laws of thermodynamics and then just set it all going. Jude is right - there are some very odd things like, if the rate at which helium decays into hydrogen giving off energy was a fraction of a fraction of a percent different, life could not be sustained. So, either everything is all set up for life to evolve, or else in a universe of infinite size that has been in existence for millions upon millions of years, it is just blind luck. As some physicist said "The universe is just one of those things that happens from time to time" Speaking personally, I don't feel that there NEEDS to be a Creator to set all the rules going and watch what happens, and that if there was, he would have precisely no interest in Earth; so from a logical pov I can't see that a Christian-type God exists; but that doesn't mean that it is not interesting to think about it and consider other people's views. At the same time, as much as I KNOW that the eye evolved piecemeal over a long series of intermittent stages, each of which managed to confer benefits to the creatures who possessed those mutant genes which led to them being more likely to breed and pass them on in the gene pool; there's still a part of human nature that looks at the eye and thinks, "Well, there's the Reverand Paley argument in action" - how COULD something that intricate and complex evolve without a designer, a blueprint? It is in our nature to both believe and question. And all the science ever produced can't really help with the fundamental question - why is there something instead of nothing ?

Jasper, stop lying. It makes you appear more stupid than you really are... or does the Oz branch accept the insane nowadays? Put up your membership number or shut up. Stu

Dear All, I am yet to read the complete report on the newscientist article. Thought cosmology is not my subject, but it is related to my field of interest. General Relativity happens to be one of my favorite subjects, so hopefully if I get a look at the complete article I would be able to give a more educated answer to those two links. More so, I would love to see the first article in PRL (physical review letters). But then, it depends on the referees and other factors when it appears. I have a friend in Cornell university who works in same field, who wrote me that these are just claims and counterclaims by different groups. I had to buy his arguments coz I am not directly related to this field. I have also invited him, but there is a remote possibility of him joining this discussion. (so apologies in advance, if he in fact doesn't appear). Let us not talk about vacuum energy and cosmological constants, and bubbles. Let us talk on something more local for all of us, and which all of us possess. Thanks to John, who has already highlighted some interesting points, let me quote him, "It would seem to me that an important aspect of human nature is being over looked in this discussion. The 'Instinct' to be inquisitive, ask questions and explore. Regardless of the fundamental differences that may exist between Scientific pursuit and Religious pursuit, at the heart of both is 'I believe', that fundamental aspect of the human need to understand and explore our own self awareness." What John calls instinct, is a mixture of many instincts and responses of those instincts through the various feedback loops that make the form of inquisition. This cosmos has all the information for itself, we may not need to abstruse a parallel cosmos to explain our existence. Talking about matter and anti-matter sounds fancy for sci fi enthusiasts, for scientists those who have studied standard model and tried to see beyond it know about the complexities. We are yet to approach the Planck length energy! We are yet to get signatures of any susy particle (supersymmetry) particles. It will take a few more years, let us see what the CMS(composite muon solenoid) project gets upto! Like any complex system of information storage, human brain is a database. It has its database designing, which has its rigid aspects and flexibility at the same time. To receive any information and store it as a meaning data, one has to ask questions...first about the nature of data...second about where the data may be used and stored. Third how efficient this data processing will be, if this goes there and that comes here! We all know the basic laws of thermodynamics, which require optimization of system parameters from entropic and free energy requirements. Entropy and free energy of system tend to maximize, one needs to keep handle over system parameters! This optimization is given by various feedback mechanisms like--homeostasis, reflex,...et al. I may err hear, will have to take professional help! The stuff that John categorises as insticts can form the primary requirements for any data base and data processing network. What we human beings and other living objects have is something called intelligence. This intelligence is an extra feedback and action loop. It provides us to recognise and understand things on the basis of previous memory, something we say pattern recognition. The recognition capability will depend on hardwired system coded in our genes, while what patterns will come will depend on progeny's exposure. Let us not get into this cathartic struggle and unnecessarily digress from the core issue of god vs science. I see, god as faith and science as means of any logical machinery that tries to understand and emulate faith. These faiths are NOT necessarily same! In the theory of god, faith comes primary and the most important ingredient, whereas science keeps faith as a derivative. Debashish

If you look at the collective concience what some might say God, you find that indeed God is displaying signs of being there it could even be generated fromnt his idea that when you die you are just becoming a collective part of God to further and becoming part of God means being emotionally and spiritually in touch with whatever, as 1 leg says. Although to be this part of the 'over all' god you need to live your life in a positive way *inside* or in a compassionate way and this transcending in to positive cells for the bigger picture (God-Death). You can see this when you take aant like view of the human species that we all look out of the same eyes, positive and negative, in this i see there is a positive God out there.

there you go again, utterly pointless nonsense and you wonder why you're not taken seriously. You're like a kid in a playground who's lack of intelligence forces him to retort with "See!" and "well up yours with nobs on twatty!" rather than anything resembling an actual answer.

So you scientist types really believe this is more likely than God - bearing in mind nobody has ever come up with a convincing explanation of what when bang and why! ;o) A team led by Edward Kolb of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois, US, say they can account for the cosmic speed-up using "inflation" - the widely-accepted theory that describes what happened in the first 10-35 seconds after the big bang.Global universe. During inflation, space itself expanded faster than the speed of light. As it did so, random quantum fluctuations that popped into being produced ripples in space-time. These swelled to fill the entire "global" universe, which is about 10100 times as large as the universe we can see. (Smiley science says that if something travels faster than light it travels into the future so that's probably why it's only just started having an effect ;o) Our "observable" universe is confined to a region with a radius of 14 billion light years because only light from within that distance has had time to reach us since the big bang. The team believes the ripples had little effect on our observable universe for billions of years because the effect of nearby matter overpowered the far-distant ripples. But about a billion years ago, they say, the density of nearby matter became so reduced by the expansion of space that the effect of the ripples began to be felt - as cosmic acceleration. Kolb explains that the ripples should affect the observable universe because they flowed through all of space during inflation, leaving behind a gravitational wake that can still be felt, if not seen, nearby. "Imagine you're out on the ocean, and it's foggy. You can be affected by very long-wavelength ripples, although you don't actually see the wave - all you feel is the swell moving up and down," he told New Scientist. He adds the ripples are growing with time - which causes the acceleration.

bit of mumbo jumbo or maybe has shreds of truth in it maybe.

The Bubble That Ate The Universe ;o) You really take this science stuff seriously? [%sig%]

When I was a young whipper-snapper of aScientist I thought it was mumbo jumbo. If I had carried on quietly thinking to myself it was mumbo jumbo and not thinking about it all too much God might have left me alone. But no - I had to go on a one man (woman) crusade against my catholic inheritance...and arrogant, cheeky things always get what's coming to them from the big G.

I have very little knowledge about the various religious beliefs, what I can argue is from scientific standpoint. To me existence of god is faith, discipline and evolution of self and community around. This community can be global, and gods are the centres of power and wealth. Pardon me for any unintentional blasphemy. I forgot the name of the scientist who was given the task to prove/disprove existence of life in Mars. He, and all of his team members knew that NASA reports about bacterial fossils was a publicity stunt only to attract funds; yet it was an ethical question, how to defend themselves and say the truth at the same time. He went on to explain how there can be NO life form in Mars, from indirect means and references. All of us have heard about J.B.S Haldane and Oparin's "Coecervates". All of us know Miller has shown how life COULD have evolved in remote past when atmosphere was reducing, as opposed to oxidising (presently). We have heard stories about Adam and Eve, and some people consider it secrilage if you call these stories. I have a view unless anything is proven, nothing is a fact. If god exists, and we believe he exists we should have the proof. Then I try to ask myself the same question, why did my mom teach me that there is a god, he rules every being. He takes care of all of us. I ask myself how many times I called god or tried to understand what he is like. I have found, in times of despair and loneliness and in times of nerve splicing tension I often summon his help. What is this help? To know more about myself, to know more about my present and to understand more about my past. I think my god is a belief and it resides in me, MUCH like HOBBES, of the famous Calvin and Hobbes, whom no one else can understand. I feel this feeling is common for many of us, and I don't know how much my beliefs conform with others. But then any belief to be proven NEEDS a CONCRETE representation, a concrete structure. We are yet to prove that, we are EVEN yet to show anything in this front. Now, there CANNOT be a difference between scientific understanding of the world and religion or god COZ these two are different inventories & have their different determinants to approach life, source of life and proof. Science is trying to trace the origin of our universe, from indirect means, from gamma ray bursts recorded from distant galaxies billions of light years from us. Cosmology is an interesting subject, and upto general theory of relative it is very concrete and precise. When people tried to quantize everything, we have faced trouble. Quantum gravity approaches have been grossly unsuccessful, except for small predictions like Benkinstein's paradox (is that a paradox) in relating surface of event horizon with entropy of a black hole (should say singularity). Though I don't claim to understand all their eleven dimensional pyrotechniques I don't consider many of their approaches concrete, in fact most of the approaches land up on fancy grounds... We are yet to get to the point of a theory of everything, don't believe in newspaper headlines most of those popular science columns have their own hidden agendas... Solidus, Debashish

Many of us are looking for inner peace, we will only find it if we are true to ourselfs, especially in testing situations such as conflict. Some people claim they apsire to tranquility, often naively so. ''the heart of conflict'' by brian muldoon

When ever i ask some one what they think a Scientist actually dose, they nearly always reply that a 'Scientist Creates things'. I giggle at this and point out that a Scientist mealy happens across what is already their, and then spends all of his/her time trying to explain how it got their in the first places..

one worrying point a few resaerchers noticed in europe wa sthat a lot of religious people and they put a conservitive estmiate at 20 million could cahnge religions figthing to keep spiritual belief alive and could well within a year convert to one massive religion that would stand up and fight for god. I suppose in a way thgis was being done just now in the middle east and psain seeems to be going that way who HOLD NUCLEAR MISSILES and few other seem to be moving in that direction.

Boycott God!! Woohoo!!! -e.

Hey Stu piddle head, who you calling a retard?? Come here and say that bitch/dog!! Or you could grow up! Tai

What is it that prevents believers seeing the whole sorry deal as a fantasy? No, don't say 'belief', that's too easy, an excuse for not thinking analytically and not applying logic and commonsense to the question.

Science vs. God... I'm a skeptic, so I tend to trust science over religion. Christain religion says humans have existed for 10000 years. Until science and religion can agree on that one, I'll take a dim view of religious text. Seems humans need to worship their fathers after they kill them, no matter what the belief of the millennium...some things never change.

Andrew, have you considered that God might know how things turn out but not how it gets there? A bit like knowing how a film ends but fascinated as to how the plot progresses through various twists and turns to finally arrive at the known out-come. It always makes me laugh that George considers himself brighter than people like Einstein and the millions of other great minds who were firm believers in God and fails to see that it might not be a simple question of bible against chemistry book :o)

What, no mykle to enlighten us?

Funny isn't it? The question was, what if Sciences Proved God, would we believe in the Scientific evidences? Look how quickly it became Science Ve God. This always happens for some reason and I'm as guilty of it as the next person. As someone sayed, their both very Sexy subjects and people get very pationet about them.

Mykle, you tosser, I don't believe I'm brighter than many people (you being an exception), that's what makes me curious. Dumb people don't surprise me at all, it's the bright ones that mystify me.

I notice that the Newscientist site is down at the moment so here is the gist of the article which the above link points to: "Space-time fizzes with bubbles popping in and out of existence all across the cosmos - most are harmless but they could unleash a reaction which destroys the universe..."

Abouttimesomeonesaidit Alias prat, you gonna make me then? All talk no trousers, I'll do, say, be, what I feel like! At any given moment, because you see, I can. I'm free, matey. And if you mean Jasper....he's following me, not he other way around. Back of kiddy Tai

It's easy to forget that, at best, science can only be a description of what it's acolytes believes is there and how it's thought to interact. All is opinion and that's all it can ever be and so theories that are taken to be self-evidently true eventually collapse to be replaced by new ones which (hopefully) better fit the empirical evidence. So we get dark energy and 'bubbles that eat the universe' that are mere speculations trying to fill gaps in the present explaination, This is not really a fault in science but in man and hence religion suffers from the same weakness - men who do not know pretending that they do. God is no more limited by the opinions of man than the universe is by scientific theories and it's quite unliely we will ever understand either very well! Great minds like Einstein realise just how unlikely the Universe is and marvel at it's beauty and unexpected delights while the majority of fools take everything forgranted - missing it's majesty and complexity - and spend their time down the pub arguing that if there were a god he would have made their team win some current football match ;o).

What would this proof be? An example perhaps?

God drops in and turns you're misses in to a chicken.. Not Scientific, but pretty dam convincing if you ask me..

Have you ever self-harmed Mr Bates?

Hummm..?

*Groans* *Seriously considers suicide*

I believe his first name is really Norman.

So J-lo, since when did polar bears and penguins mix?

HaHaHa....

he'd never go for it, we may have to have him whacked

on the anniversary you persecute my poet one last chnace if man does not remove them disease shall....signs

If God dropped in and turned my misses into a chicken...well, not likely is it? Somthing a little more substantial perhaps? See, here's the problem. Some people believe in miracles, the hand of God made something happen that couldn't otherwise happen. Lack of kowledge or understanding lends one to believe in supernatural occurances. Back to Freud, the omnipotence of thought... I'm a believer in Ockhams Razor - the principle pronounced by the English theologian and philosopher Willam of Ockham (c.1285-1349) that, other things beings equal, the simpler of two explanations is to be preferred. What are the chances that something may be deemed a "miracle" as either... A. Never happened before and beyond our knowledge to understand, "it's a miracle." or... B. Can be rationally explained by known previously verifiable events. In reference to the chicken "misses"; I would doubt she was actually turned into a chicken, more likely, I got drunk and confused a chicken for my misses, which wouldn't be hard to do b.t.w....

OK Jasper. I will attempt to expand my concentration beyond 3 min, just for you. Firstly Jasper. There are many intelligent members on this sight. The fact that they 'chose' not to indulge in debate with you, is a mater of preference not lack of intelligence. Secondly. The Concept of a God, is not contestable Jasper. It can neither be prov en nor disproved. It is not falsifiable and can only be considered from a philosophical Stand point. Any attempt to consider the concept of a God form a Scientific treatment, is mealy pseudo Science. Thirdly. If you truly understood the arguments that lay at the heart of creationism, you would understand that the quetion..'Sience vs God' is an inaccurate statement. Science dos not verse God. More accurately stated, the question should have been.. 'Creationism' or 'Intelligent Design' vs ' The probability for random Chance' Its a philosophical argument Jasper, not an attempt to prove or disprove anything. Stated even more accurately Jasper. We could consider this question from a more fundamental treatment? How about.. The necessary Entropyical threshold necessary for the emergence of Life? Now that would be an interesting debate. *Have i broken the 3 min limit yet?*

ROFL ROFL ROFL ROFL ROFL.

>What you lack to see is that I have no respect for science or philosophy whatsoever!< The problem with this Jasper is that you are bound by your own thought processes. Your own thoughts, ideas and conclusions are by nature Scientific and Philosophic. Bit of a paradox their. Your thoughts are also informed and limited by three dimensional constructs based on the 3D world around you. I believe there have been some exceptions to this limitation though. Einstein for one, the ability to make that intuitive leap beyond 3D concepts. I have a little thought experiment for you Jasper, but it will only work if you have some understanding of the present Classical model for the behaver of the Electron orbits, 1s, 2s, 2p, 3s etc.? Do you understand the basic principals behind the idea of an Electron amplitude? Its a very interesting thought experiment that I come up with some years ago to demonstrate some very important principals in how we think about Physics and everything around us. But you will need to have some understanding of the later mentioned if you are going to grasp it.?

oooooooohhhhhhhhh. I'm lost now. Blinded by science!

Radio, leave Freud out of it.. Poof!.. Shit! Me misses just turned in to a Chicken.. Now how likely was that i ask you?

Me to.

What if monkeys flew out of our butt?

to be fair John, the name of this thread is 'Science vs God' so in answer to your quetion, no, it's not that funny at all.

To be fare Ely, the context of the argument is not..

Ase Ely! He's the butt expert..

Dweeb

Sir Dweeb to you mear nerd.

V

"Like any complex system of information storage, human brain is a database. It has its database designing, which has its rigid aspects and flexibility at the same time. To receive any information and store it as a meaning data, one has to ask questions...first about the nature of data...second about where the data may be used and stored. Third how efficient this data processing will be, if this goes there and that comes here! We all know the basic laws of thermodynamics, which require optimization of system parameters from entropic and free energy requirements. Entropy and free energy of system tend to maximize, one needs to keep handle over system parameters! This optimization is given by various feedback mechanisms like--homeostasis, reflex,...et al. I may err hear, will have to take professional help! " I could not disagree more with this... truly complex systems such as the brain are intertwined with the data such that it would be impossible to strip out data from the processing element in any meaningful way... The brains interesting properties are emergent, your ideas are very much in the reductionist vein which is increasingly being discredited as an attempt to understand what brains actually do in any meaningful way.