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Thread: The equivalence of religion and science?

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    Re: The equivalence of religion and science?

    Quote Originally Posted by TA Guy View Post
    Since religions are loathe to contemplate 'change' or moving forward, again, a fundamental dichotomy.
    If they do change its called 'jumping on the band wagon 'rather then changed

    Quote Originally Posted by Barry Shnikov View Post
    ...and that is called jumping on the bandwagon. Or cutting your cloth. It certainly isn't anything to do with whether genesis gives us any useful information about how we got here.
    --------------------------------------
    The cosmological debate acquired religious and political aspects. Pope Pious XII announced in 1952 that big-bang cosmology affirmed the notion of a transcendental creator and was in harmony with Christian dogma. Steady-state theory, denying any beginning or end to time, was in some minds loosely associated with atheism
    --------------------------------


    Quote Originally Posted by TA Guy View Post

    Sorry, anyway, back to faith...
    Science, or the scientific method do not require faith. They require proof, or at least, a facsimile of proof. Religion requires faith.

    God said let there be light and we have light that’s proof not faith

    The fact science says light-sun-galaxy-big-bang etc is just more ‘proof’

    That’s how some would see it

    what you require as 'proof' and whats someone else is just different thats all


    As Ive said before some people will think the moon is made of cheese and unless they go to the moon and taste thats what they will be believe. Most of us will accept a 1955 text book that says it isnt

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    Re: The equivalence of religion and science?

    Quote Originally Posted by TA Guy View Post
    In does bring up an interesting question tho. Why is religion.... certain groups within religion anyway, trying to perform this 'science is a religion' sleight of hand ?
    The obvious answer is the illusion of equal footing, but I'm sure there are some more subtle answers.
    The so-called 'wedge' document, unearthed by the claimants in the Dover School Board trial, shows that it is a calmly cynical scheme.
    1. Get ID or whatever it morphs into out from under the poisoned umbrella of creationism, so that it can appear like 'a science', maintaining that it's just the facts, ma'am, we have no idea just who the intelligent designer might be, omigosh.
    2. Get it 'equal time' in classrooms, and elsewhere in the curricula (so that, in fact, magical explanations for the universe get taught in a) Sunday School, b) divinity classes; and c) science classes too
    3. Use it's newly-strengthened position, as 'just another theory', to lever 'evil-lution' out into the cold, where it buh-longs.

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    Re: The equivalence of religion and science?

    Quote Originally Posted by stewart38 View Post
    God said let there be light and we have light that’s proof not faith
    Stewart, you wrote that before.

    The existence of light is not evidence, let alone proof, that it is there because of supernatural intervention. It is certainly not evidence for the first Chapter of genesis. If anything, it's the other way round - the existence of night and day required the writers of genesis to come up with an explanation for them.

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    Re: The equivalence of religion and science?

    Quote Originally Posted by stewart38 View Post
    God said let there be light and we have light that’s proof not faith
    The fact science says light-sun-galaxy-big-bang etc is just more ‘proof’
    That’s how some would see it
    what you require as 'proof' and whats someone else is just different thats all
    I do agree that to an individual, 'proof' is basically whatever an individual accepts as 'proof'. (In that some people have lesser (or greater) standards required before they accept something as 'proof').

    However, even if we go down this 'individuals proof' route rather than the accepted norms of society, some cogency of evidence is required before something is accepted as proof, and some consistancy is required as to how you interpret this.
    Therefore, if a certain amount of evidence is accepted as proof of something, then the same amount/strength of evidence should be accepted as proof of something else; (providing even stronger evidence doesn't exist for an alternative).
    Therefore, if you believe the bible proves God, essentially a collection of text books of very dubious origins, you must believe in Satan, demons and other bible favourites, as well as fairies, ghosts, Santa Claus, leprechauns, the Thunder God Thor and a whole host of other supernatural entities and other things not bible related, but with just as much 'proof', sometimes more, behind them.

    Either you do believe in all these other equally 'proven' entities, in which case I can only request some of what your smoking....
    ....Or you don't accept the dubious evidence in favour of these miscellaneous entities and accept that your belief in God, is in fact, something different. I.E. Faith.
    Last edited by TA Guy; 28th-January-2008 at 04:25 PM.

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    Re: The equivalence of religion and science?

    Quote Originally Posted by Barry Shnikov View Post
    Stewart, you wrote that before.

    The existence of light is not evidence, let alone proof, that it is there because of supernatural intervention. It is certainly not evidence for the first Chapter of genesis. If anything, it's the other way round - the existence of night and day required the writers of genesis to come up with an explanation for them.
    Nor does the evidence of light prove there was a big bang, you have lost me

    According to God there should be light

    According to the big bang there should be light

    The fact 'light' exists could be for a number of reasons and isn’t evidence of either although both parties would suggest it supports one

    If im big bang im light-sun-galaxy-big-bang- ????

    If im god im light-sun-galaxy-big-bang-god





    Quote Originally Posted by TA Guy View Post
    Either you do believe in all these other equally 'proven' entities, in which case I can only request some of what your smoking....
    ....Or you don't accept the dubious evidence in favour of these miscellaneous entities and accept that your belief in God, is in fact, something different. I.E. Faith.

    If you believe in everything written about science for the last 2,000 years your welcome to some

    ps was Santa Claus mention in the bible ??

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    Re: The equivalence of religion and science?

    Quote Originally Posted by stewart38 View Post

    If you believe in everything written about science for the last 2,000 years your welcome to some
    Science gets it wrong sometimes. I agree. Kinda proves my point tho doesn't it ?

    Whatever evidence/proof science had in favour of those 'incorrect' theories was either wrong, or mistakenly interpreted. What didn't happen was that despite better theories with more evidence and proof arriving, we didn't keep believing in the old, incorrect theories. We didn't have faith in them. You need religion for that

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    Re: The equivalence of religion and science?

    Quote Originally Posted by TA Guy View Post
    Science gets it wrong sometimes. I agree. Kinda proves my point tho doesn't it ?

    Whatever evidence/proof science had in favour of those 'incorrect' theories was either wrong, or mistakenly interpreted. What didn't happen was that despite better theories with more evidence and proof arriving, we didn't keep believing in the old, incorrect theories. We didn't have faith in them. You need religion for that
    Most religions dont now believe the Earth is flat

    40-30

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    Re: The equivalence of religion and science?

    Quote Originally Posted by stewart38 View Post
    Nor does the evidence of light prove there was a big bang, you have lost me

    According to God there should be light

    According to the big bang there should be light
    Ah, now I see.

    Conversation:
    "That's funny. Stars in galaxys at some distance from us seem to have spectrums exactly like those of our own Milky Way, if you think of them as being shifted toward the red end of the EM spectrum. Galaxies even further away, where we can't get spectrums from individual stars, are shifted even further. What's causing that?"
    "Well, one possibility is that the galaxies are moving away from us. That movement of course doesn't affect the speed of the light as it arrives at our telescopes, but it will affect the appararent wavelength."
    "Wow. But if all the galaxies are moving away from us...that means the universe must be expanding. Cool."
    "It also means that a billion years ago, the galaxies must have been closer together than they are now. And if we follow that logic - "
    "- we get to a point where the universe started to expand. I wonder how small it was, right at the beginning..."
    "Shazbat! We might get to the point where the universe was infinitely small - and then began to expand..."

    ...and so forth. In other words, it is the existence of observable phenomena - red shift - that leads to speculation, investigation and confirmation as to what is the explanation of that phenomena.

    "OK, what are we gonna put about the creation of the world?"
    "Hmm. That's a biggie. Well, we can put about god creating man..."
    "No, we have to go back further than that - he has to create the earth for man to stand on."
    "OK, so he creates the earth..."
    "No, no; still not far enough. We have to go right back to basics. What was the very first thing he created?"
    "Night and day."
    "Well, we know that if there is someplace dark, we can light a candle and the dark goes away, but we can't introduce something 'dark' into a room full of candles. It becomes light right away. So prolly the darkness existed first, and the first thing god created, therefore, was some light!"
    "OK! Good deal. So chapter 1, verse 1: God said let there be light!"
    "I like it, I like it. But it has to be verse 2. Verse 1 has to describe the darkness..."

    The difference is the second method is simply guessing. There's no deduction, no extrapolation, it's all supposition. It assumes a god, and simply asserts what he did. There's no evidence for the assertions made.

    The existence of light is not evidence for how it came to exist; although things we find out about light might help us work out how it came to exist (and in fact, did so).

    But there is no way in which pointing at the sun or a star or a low-energy lightbulb can rationally lead you to say 'OK, that means genesis must be right'. There could be another explanation of how light came to be. There only has to be one, for your statement to be wrong.

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    Re: The equivalence of religion and science?

    Quote Originally Posted by Barry Shnikov View Post
    "OK! Good deal. So chapter 1, verse 1: God said let there be light!"
    "I like it, I like it. But it has to be verse 2. Verse 1 has to describe the darkness..."
    Your nearly there

    Its this last bit your stuggling with

    ie nothing before the light, nothing before the big bang

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    Re: The equivalence of religion and science?

    Quote Originally Posted by stewart38 View Post
    ie nothing before the light, nothing before the big bang
    Read Genesis, Stewart. There was something before the light, it claims.

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    Re: The equivalence of religion and science?

    Quote Originally Posted by Dreadful Scathe View Post
    You are wrong. Atheism is not a religion.
    I disagree, for the reasons I have given before. Please either:
    a) Address those reasons, or:
    b) Agree to disagree.

    Thanks.

    Quote Originally Posted by Dreadful Scathe View Post
    In the case of theocracies, it is likely (for some anyway) a mix of strongly held beliefs that they are right coupled with power seeking. With "state atheism" its purely about power - removing power from religions to increase the governments control.
    What do you base that opinion on?

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    Re: The equivalence of religion and science?

    OK there's one very, very fundamental problem here.

    The essence of science is prediction. A scientific theory makes predictions about certain things. If observations conform with those predictions, then the theory is seen as not disproven (yes, the process is that convoluted...). Through this continual, incremental process, scientific knowledge progresses. The mere existence of light does not prove anything. The specific form and nature of light observed in the universe is consistent with predictions that arise from certain cosmological theories such as the big bang and inconsistent with other (rejected) theories of cosmology.

    The Bible makes no such predictions. It says that god decided there should be light - however it does not predict that there will be light. To assume that the existence of light proves God is a simple case of a logical fallacy - in this case, a fallacy of the consequent. To put this another way, a bunch of things other than God could explain the existence of light. To take light as proof of God's existence is a false conclusion.

    This whole debate is rather senseless. Religion, in general, makes claims about certain things - the existence of God and so on. Science makes claims about certain, different things - such as the law of Gravity. Each of these sets of claims are made based on specific and different metaphysical presumptions. Science's claims are founded on materialism - that the universe fundamentally consists of matter and energy. Religion makes claims based on some form of dualism - that there exists a universe outside of that which is materially observable. These two views are not necessary contradictory with one another, but they are necessarily not the same. To attempt to reconcile these ignores these fundamental differences.
    Last edited by geoff332; 28th-January-2008 at 08:40 PM. Reason: typos...

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    Re: The equivalence of religion and science?

    Quote Originally Posted by geoff332 View Post
    A scientific theory makes predictions about certain things. If observations conform with those predictions, then the theory is seen as not disproven.
    And if observations don't conform with those predictions, then the theory is, 99.9% of the time, seen as not disproven. (citation: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions)

    Quote Originally Posted by geoff332 View Post
    The Bible makes no such predictions.
    The Christian Bible makes a fairly specific set of predictions about what will happen when I die, for example.

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    Re: The equivalence of religion and science?

    Quote Originally Posted by MartinHarper View Post
    The Christian Bible makes a fairly specific set of predictions about what will happen when I die, for example.
    Those predictions lie outside of the material universe and cannot be tested by any form of observation. I was a little imprecise, but I stand by the statement that the Bible doesn't make testable predictions, which are the hallmark of scientific knowledge. Should we find ways of observing what happens to a person once they die, then that would be fairly major advance in our knowledge and technology.

    The key point - which was studiously avoided - is that the basic assumptions that underpin science are fundamentally different from those that underpin religion. The difference cannot be meaningfully reconciled.

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    Re: The equivalence of religion and science?

    Quote Originally Posted by geoff332 View Post
    I stand by the statement that the Bible doesn't make testable predictions, which are the hallmark of scientific knowledge.
    It also predicted that the age of the earth when human life emerged was six days. Tests determined this prediction to be false.

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    Re: The equivalence of religion and science?

    Quote Originally Posted by MartinHarper View Post
    It also predicted that the age of the earth when human life emerged was six days. Tests determined this prediction to be false.
    Not necessarily. That prediction presumes that the Bible presents literal (material) truth. The evidence from science demonstrates that to be a false presumption. However, if one takes it as a non-literal (eg poetic) description, then we don't have any predictions, but nor do we have any disproof from science.

    It all boils down to your assumptions...

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    Re: The equivalence of religion and science?

    Quote Originally Posted by MartinHarper View Post
    I disagree, for the reasons I have given before. Please either:
    a) Address those reasons, or:
    b) Agree to disagree.
    Religion: belief in a divine or superhuman power or powers to be obeyed and worshiped as the creator(s) and ruler(s) of the universe; expression of such a belief in conduct and ritual; any specific system of belief and worship, often involving a code of ethics and a philosophy the Christian religion, the Buddhist religion, etc.; Belief in and reverence for a supernatural power or powers regarded as creator and governor of the universe; a personal or institutionalized system grounded in such belief and worship; a set of beliefs, values, and practices based on the teachings of a spiritual leader.

    Derived from the latin religio, ~onis: respect for what is sacred, reverence for the gods

    Where do atheists worship? Where do they even gather regularly? What beliefs do they hold in common? Where/what are their basic texts? Who interprets atheist texts? Who are the wise men of atheism, and how do they exercise authority over their flock?

    It's simply non - sense to assert that atheism is a religion. The sole purpose of making such an assertion is to enable you to criticise atheists and atheism, and no other sensible goal is achieved thereby.

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    Re: The equivalence of religion and science?

    Quote Originally Posted by MartinHarper View Post
    The Christian Bible makes a fairly specific set of predictions about what will happen when I die, for example.
    It makes a very vague set of promises about what will happen when you die. This was refined over the next four centuries.

    Are you saying you believe those promises? What would be your basis for that belief?

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    Re: The equivalence of religion and science?

    Quote Originally Posted by MartinHarper
    The Christian Bible makes a fairly specific set of predictions about what will happen when I die, for example.
    Quote Originally Posted by Geoff332
    I stand by the statement that the Bible doesn't make testable predictions
    Quote Originally Posted by MartinHarper
    It also predicted that the age of the earth when human life emerged was six days. Tests determined this prediction to be false.
    Quote Originally Posted by Geoff332
    Not necessarily. That prediction presumes that the Bible presents literal (material) truth.


    Is anyone else dizzy? Four consecutive posts!

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    Re: The equivalence of religion and science?

    Quote Originally Posted by Barry Shnikov View Post
    {snip semantics}
    Just so I'm clear, was that option (a) or option (b)?

    Quote Originally Posted by Barry Shnikov View Post
    Are you saying you believe those promises?
    Are you?

    Quote Originally Posted by geoff332 View Post
    Not necessarily. That prediction presumes that the Bible presents literal (material) truth.
    Fair point.
    Perhaps we can agree that some interpretations of the Christian bible lead to scientifically testable predictions, some interpretations lead to predictions that are not scientifically testable, and some interpretations do not lead to any predictions at all?

    A difference I notice is that sciences generate millions more predictions than religions.
    Last edited by MartinHarper; 28th-January-2008 at 11:48 PM.

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