Science 'versus' God?

[RascalPuff]

Science 'versus' God ?

It has been posted that Carl Sandage wrote:
"People have attacked me because I do only one thing. But that one thing is to try to figure how the world is put together. The world is incredible, just the fact that you and I are here, and that the atoms of your body were once part of stars. They say I’m on some sort of religious quest, looking for God; but God is the way it’s put together. Anyway," he laughed,"I’m a nut, you know. Crazy."

The poster of the above message added:
Few agree with Carl Sandage, he admits this with his own words. He attempted to theologize science.

If you are making the point that unanimous agreement does not exist, you are correct but this has been known for some time. Astrophysics is a relative new field and theoretical. Attempts to formulate a Theory of Everything (TOE) continue much at the contempt of theists who oppose this.

Intelligent Design will not replace science.
_______________________________

K B Robertson (RascalPuff) wrote:
Your invocation of Carl Sandage and theism launches the endemic rhubarb between theology and science - as though the two issues were stringently antithetical.

Whereas, 'god' is routinely considered as the intelligent designer of the universe since the times preceding and including Pythagoras, to the present; where mathematicians and heuristic scientists daily and openly proclaim to prove the existence of a supreme being. In contrast to your direct implication that it is tantamount to scientific heresy to do so. It is a long and widely known fact that the exemplary Einstein not infrequently - and openly - said that his endeavors included an inquiry as to 'how God thinks'. Due to the nature of what scientists preoccupy themselves with, many are not only non-atheistic, but closer to God than many avid church-goers and pulpit pounders.

The posturing of contemporary practitioners of science is certainly not in league with the 'creationist' schools of thought who glibly speak of a time when an anthropomorphically assembled 'god' snapped 'his' prototypically unimprovable fingers and 'made' a universe and earth, oh, say, several thousand years ago. Thereafter, inhabiting the earth with people, perhaps at a time not long before the Monkey Trials.

Such organized beguilements do not at all parallel the endeavors of men and women in science who are in search of the parameters of the final frontier, aiming to go where no man or woman has gone before. In these circles, the - perhaps inevitable - issue of god emerges only inadvertantly and until further notice in such company, it is regimentally understood that:
God is on sabbatical.
Perhaps after stubbing 'his' irreproachable metatarsal over scientific expeditions in search of a Theory of Everything (TOE).

The debate over the Biblical presentation of the original creation of humanity and Darwin’s Origin of the Species - the adventures of the Bible (many of which continue to prove out as true) and the contrary facts of life - is an argument that may never end. Speaking for myself and no small number of others I find it no less divine or miraculous - no less an ‘act of God’ - that mankind exists and arrived in the here and now (on its way to a future of there and then), by way of an evolutionary process approximately or precisely as Darwinism reveals. The transition from a fertilized mammal egg to embryo to a recognizable human fetus, includes an intermission of the entire process of evolution, not excluding the reptilian feature of gill slits - this is a powerful station for Darwinism, which, in 1950, was pronounced by Pope Pius XII (and other popes since then), as non contrary to Christianity.

Of course these considerations are not unusual in discussions relating to the mystery of human existence and the despair that may accompany an unanswered existential question of whether or not there is a God. A major grist of devout atheism is that ‘believers’ are afraid not to believe in God... That the burden of human consciousness is unbearable without the comfort of a supernatural reason for being.

Whereas, the inescapable fact that inanimate matter organized itself not only to become animate, but to become sentiently self aware is manifest proof of ‘higher power’; a so called ‘intelligent designer’, aka ‘supreme being’. ‘Nature’ by any other name.
Such considerations tend to reverse the question of whether there is or not a God, to a question of how could there not be...

Anti-theism is marooned with the manifest self and others who came into being ‘inadvertently’; without any guidance from a higher power. It would seem in such contemplations that it is much more difficult to be an an atheist, or anti-theist, than to yield to what is apparently the inevitability of intelligent design, so far, beyond the mortal human ability to fully accommodate.

There is the issue of ‘divine intervention’; reasoning that if there is a God, why are terrible events - large and small - allowed to occur in the course of human existence. This question and the disappointment that accompanies it, is based, a priori, on the existence of a ‘personal God’ - a power which insures justice - per individual - in the corporeal world of mortality. Clearly, such expectations of God intersect with superstition.

That perspective leads to what is called ‘victimology’. Where it is reasoned that those who suffer - especially extreme - misfortune, are (invariably) slated to do so by ‘the will of God’, who metes out punishments for trespasses committed in this life, or, in cases applying to the suffering of very young children, those who have sinned in a (reincarnated) life preceding this one (Granted that life is inherently a struggle, and that some suffering is inevitable...). In other words, those who suffer severe misfortune are unsympathetically perceived as being pronounced guilty - with a sentence of punishment passed - by God. Such reasoning is commonplace (and a misapplication of the word, ‘karma’) as it is applied to the destitute masses in the country of India, for example.

In Western culture, these and other dilemmas led to the separation of church from state. The schizoid argument continues, with routine stories of religious ritual and regalia being prohibited and removed from government institutions, for example. While the federal government continues to mint certificates of currency bearing the inscription, ‘In God We Trust’.

Your vigilant awareness and defense of scientific method and its practitioners does not go without appreciation in this discussion.

Truly yours was just recently catching up on the bruhaugh dividing the creationist school from that of evolutionism. But I still can't see any significant beef - the Bible was written by inspired scribes for literate people to read and otherwise orate to and for masses of illiterate people in terms that could be understood by 'the common people'. The miracle of the typographic message here and the self aware sentience required to impart and read it is no less astounding and no less proof of 'God', since, otherwise 'Nothing begets nothing'.

As old as the (exemplary) Grand Canyon proves the earth to be, it's one of the newer kids on the endless/eternal measuring stick. Anyway I was thinking about contributing a post to this thread and realized that the initial post may indeed suffice to justify repeating itself. It's Austin Guru's inspirational incentive, as usual ('Hi RascalPuff', indeed...)

So, I reiterated the circuitous redundancy in the (above) 'reply'.

The word and world spinning 'Intelligent Design' advocates inspired my repetition, insofar as I figured one good round trip deserves another.
'Intelligent Design'... Imagine that... Must be some sort of a (24-7/365) revolution.
Who'da ever thunk? (Way over Darwin's cranial vault?)
Sort'a remindful of another fairly new school of thought founded by a guy who has cast his spin doctored lot in a spiral of DNA that started only a fortnight or so in the past.
In the shadow of these newly arrived revelations, the Origin of the Species is thenceforth 'out dated' (so the Intelligent Design - and New DNA - school is preaching), sorta like how 'string theory' cast itself in the 'mainstream of science' - in turn, sorta like 'The New Math', before it fizzled out along with all the other expendable stuff in the veritable 'dragnet' of Jesus (was indeed a carpenter and fisherman).

Perhaps Socartes and Plato, Herodotus and Homer, Darwin, Maxwell, Einstein and Planck were merely the avante garde representatives of an entire genre of what is becoming a New Age clustered compendium of rousing revolutionaries?

We here on the home front haven't been so filled with optimism since Mark McCutcheon Rethought Our Scientific Legacy and penned The Final Theory, way back in 2002. Tempus fugit it is then. Derailing Space-Time itself to a road less traveled. (More digital revolutions than there are ToEs?)

And by and by it came to pass that T. S. Eliot appeared; to observe that 'at the end of all our exploring, we may arrive where we started, and know the place for the first time.'
Or, in the exchanged words of the tandemly employed palaeontologist and archaeologist - 'Man. We're digging it as fast as we can'. : )

[melanie]

What's The Difference Between 'God' & 'Science'?
There isn't one.

GOD & SCIENCE are concepts.

the surround- is god
the knowing that knows the surround is god - is god
the seeing that sees the surround - is god

science - is god
mathematics - is god
nature - is god

the typing of these words - is god
the reading of these words - is god
the knowing what to write - is god
the understanding of words - is god
the misunderstanding of words - is god
an idea - is god
a thought is - god

every word is a concept

every concept - is god

god is a concept in this conception

and the conception is all there is


nowhere to go
nowhere to be
nothing to find
nothing to be
nothing to do

except to play on and on and on for what reason and purpose .... who knows?



welcome to the zombie jamboree

[austintorn@aol.com]

Zombie's have no consciousness.

[RascalPuff]

ZaZen is a state of 'empty mind'. Alpha waves. It is also the threshold and standard arbiter of all knowledge.

[austintorn@aol.com]

I, too, empty out every now and zen.

[austintorn@aol.com]

Coming soon—the new and revised(more rhymes)
Edition of my epic poem, in 8 parts on:

THE SUPER
HEAVYWEIGHT CHAMPIONSHIP
OF THE UNIVERSE:
GOD VS. SCIENCE

[austintorn@aol.com]

I, too, empty out every now and zen.

OIL AND A LUBE

I changed my mind so it would work better:
Cleaned out the clutter of some old letters,
Removed the cobwebs, that all unfettered,
Plus that to-do list, from those go-getters.

[austintorn@aol.com]

Schermer vs. Chopra:

http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/FaceOff/

[austintorn@aol.com]

Hi again, Rascal.

[austintorn@aol.com]

FOR THE SUPER
HEAVYWEIGHT CHAMPIONSHIP
OF THE UNIVERSE:
GOD VS. SCIENCE

R o u n d 1

In the Beginning…
God played an active role in the Universe,
After creating it, each and every verse,
And especially one upon the Earth…

Which is supposedly
Only a few thousand years old,
Or so it has been told.

God won this round, hands down,
For even those many science clowns
There were there at the time
Thought that man was prime,
Being the special center of creation
And that the sun and the stars, in elation,
Revolved around his nation…

And, furthermore,
That evil spirits caused physical ills
Along with all of our mental ills,
As aggravated by life’s frills—
Which were all called ‘sins’
That somehow still came from within.

Even fun was one of sin’s evil cousins,
For the Bible was made of old Jewish legends.

Thankfully, those hundreds of odd Gods
WHO had come to reign before GOD
Were crushed and by Jehovah trod .

However, about three centuries ago,
The realm of natural law was extended, so,
The Supernatural Kingdom
Began to shrink away, some,
Eventually vanishing from all of existence,
But, we get ahead of our own persistence…

God made Adam fully formed, without a navel;
But, now, an asterisk on page one of the
Philippine Catholic bible says “No”,
To not take it literally; it’s just not so.