Science or Religion or Science & Religion

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_aussieguy55
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Science or Religion or Science & Religion

Post by _aussieguy55 »

http://www.abc.net.au/compass/s4840129.htm

This was a meeting on science on the Southbank of Brisbane Australia. The Program interviewed both scientists who believed in God and those who did not. Why do people hold these opposing positions. How did we develop this brain. Once we lived in circumstances where we had no electricity or things we take for granted. Once I stood at Southbank looking across the the river. Many years ago before white settlement indigenous people live there with their own customs knowledge of plants and laws even about incest. They actually started fires to replenish the forest. Now we have shops for food, rooms rather than caves to sleep in, people trained to heal us. Who were the first humans? Astronomers are now able to see planets come into being as they split from a star.
Hilary Clinton " I won the places that represent two-thirds of America's GDP.I won in places are optimistic diverse, dynamic, moving forward"
_QuestionEverything
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Re: Science or Religion or Science & Religion

Post by _QuestionEverything »

This looks interesting, but I can't find it as a Podcast, and when I click on the link to watch, it indicates some videos can't be watched outside Australia.

Any legitimate way of someone in the US watching this?
_huckelberry
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Re: Science or Religion or Science & Religion

Post by _huckelberry »

The order of the universe is a revelation of God. Those who study it, science, are studying that revelation. Religion may contain some revelation of God coming through the combination of our experience in living and the spirit of God giving us lead and inspiration.
_Physics Guy
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Re: Science or Religion or Science & Religion

Post by _Physics Guy »

The great biologist J.B.S. Haldane once answered the question, "What characteristic of the Creator can we most clearly see in the natural creation?"
J.B.S. Haldane wrote:An inordinate fondness for beetles.


(As famous quips go this one is moderately well attested. Stephen Jay Gould wrote a whole column on its origin once. As I recall the verdict was that Haldane certainly said something along these lines at least once, but the lapidary phrasing of the accepted quotation may reflect later polishing.)
_huckelberry
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Re: Science or Religion or Science & Religion

Post by _huckelberry »

Physics Guy wrote:The great biologist J.B.S. Haldane once answered the question, "What characteristic of the Creator can we most clearly see in the natural creation?"
J.B.S. Haldane wrote:An inordinate fondness for beetles.


(As famous quips go this one is moderately well attested. Stephen Jay Gould wrote a whole column on its origin once. As I recall the verdict was that Haldane certainly said something along these lines at least once, but the lapidary phrasing of the accepted quotation may reflect later polishing.)


It is a well crafted phrase, perhaps the beginning of wisdom about God.
_Dr Exiled
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Re: Science or Religion or Science & Religion

Post by _Dr Exiled »

If there is a god out there and behind all of this, I don't think religionists are the ones who can adequately explain what this god is all about. Science has shown time and again that the religionists are simply magicians or paul dunn like story-tellers that invent a reality where they are always put at the head of the table. Maybe "god" wanted us to discover him/her through science all along?
"Religion is about providing human community in the guise of solving problems that don’t exist or failing to solve problems that do and seeking to reconcile these contradictions and conceal the failures in bogus explanations otherwise known as theology." - Kishkumen 
_Physics Guy
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Re: Science or Religion or Science & Religion

Post by _Physics Guy »

There are certainly a few examples of religious beliefs decisively discredited by science. Geocentrism and young Earth creationism spring to mind. All the striking examples I can recall, however, have been religious side-issues that became symbolically important to some but were never really core beliefs. You can tell this because a substantial amount of the rhetoric on the religious side was directed at believers, to exhort them to care about the topic. If the topics had been religiously central that would not have been needed.

Preachers committing themselves to an otherwise insignificant issue may be an old religious tradition, but the wisdom of avoiding that kind of mistake is an old tradition as well:
In 414-ish CE, Augustine of Hippo wrote:Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens and the other elements of this world, about the motions and orbits of the stars and even their sizes and relative positions… Now it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of the Holy Scriptures, talking nonsense on these topics, and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn.

I don't think science has actually devoted much effort to debunking religious doctrines, however. Few of them are scientifically interesting one way or the other. Instead science spends most of its time attacking science. For every religious doctrine that has been scientifically debunked I think there must have been many scientific theories that were discredited and replaced with better theories. If having a few doctrines disproven were a damning mark against any religion, science itself would be much more deeply damned.

Of course revising our theories is a strength of science, not a weakness. My point is that scientific theories are allowed to revise details in response to evidence, while maintaining their basic principles, and are not condemned for doing that. Instead one even regards the successful incorporation of revisions as additional evidence in favor of the basic principles, because they have thereby shown their robustness. So it seems perverse to me to crow over scientific disproofs of a few religious doctrines as somehow invalidating the whole religions involved, let alone religion in general—if that is even a thing.

Certainly there are some religious believers who refuse to change anything. There have been scientists who refused to change, too; even whole scientific schools of thought. Clark Maxwell famously quipped that the only reason the wave theory of light superseded the corpuscular theory was that those who believed in the corpuscle theory eventually died. If we are going to excuse Science the collective enterprise for the pigheadedness of individual scientists or scientific communities then we have to allow the same grace to religions.
_aussieguy55
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Re: Science or Religion or Science & Religion.

Post by _aussieguy55 »

When one reads Genesis Chapter 1 it seems one can have light and darkness without a sun.Verse 3. In verse 11 it talks about vegetation etc.11 Then God said, “Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds.” And it was so. 12 The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. 13 And there was evening, and there was morning—the third day. Don't plants need the sun? Does this put the kibosh on the view that a day in Genesis could be thousands of years? On the sixth day it is the animals and man. Was the kangaroo created and dispatched the the great south land Australia? I cannot see how creationists can accept Genesis as literal. Did Noah make sure there was a Queen bee on the ark?
Hilary Clinton " I won the places that represent two-thirds of America's GDP.I won in places are optimistic diverse, dynamic, moving forward"
_huckelberry
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Re: Science or Religion or Science & Religion.

Post by _huckelberry »

aussieguy55 wrote:When one reads Genesis Chapter 1 it seems one can have light and darkness without a sun.Verse 3. In verse 11 it talks about vegetation etc.11 Then God said, “Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds.” And it was so. 12 The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. 13 And there was evening, and there was morning—the third day. Don't plants need the sun? Does this put the kibosh on the view that a day in Genesis could be thousands of years? On the sixth day it is the animals and man. Was the kangaroo created and dispatched the the great south land Australia? I cannot see how creationists can accept Genesis as literal. Did Noah make sure there was a Queen bee on the ark?

AussieGuy, To me I hear the author of Genesis emphasizing over and over in things you point out that this is not a literal story but an abstract representation of the principal of creation.
_aussieguy55
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Re: Science or Religion or Science & Religion.

Post by _aussieguy55 »

What do you consider as the age of the earth.There has been a program on astronomy on our national TV station where evidence was shown of planets spinning out of a start an then orbiting that star. Does that mean the planets in our solar system came about in the same way? The same group of astronomers have been trying to detect or send messages into out space in the hope of a possible response.If God created all this and man is in the image of God would he/she have created other worlds with alike people?
Hilary Clinton " I won the places that represent two-thirds of America's GDP.I won in places are optimistic diverse, dynamic, moving forward"
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