What are your thoughts about science and religion?

[Sherue]

  Hello.^_^
    Awhile ago I met a man who was so religious he wouldn't accept anything that could be disproved by science and God and basically had took the readings of the creation of the earth word by word from the bible and says it was made in 6 days and evolution was a bunch of crap. Well I believe in God and reasonable science so I asked him how long would 6 days take?And He answered 24x6=144 hours.
    I then asked him why did he discredit evolution when there's so many facts that point out it happened? He then just said if it only took 6 days all that stuff wouldn't have been necessary. I then asked him by which days would God choose to fallow? He kind of looked at me puzzled and said the regular days. I then said since God created the whole universe and each planet varies in size that they would have either longer or shorter.
   He was surprised and said he never really thought of that before and told me to explain in more detail as we continued our friendly debate. I also told him if you want to get real technical we could use our galaxy as a clock. We have galactic equinoxes every 5,000 years or so and the planets are all aligned. If we use earth's style of clock we would have 24 equinoxes in a day so that'd be about 120,000 years and if you times that by six it's 720,000 years. in that amount of time evolution could have happened since he's God and is eternal I wouldn't see him having to rush things right away just start with an idea and work out the kinks.
    Also the last time we saw God in action was a few thousand years ago and suddenly seemed to stop coming by. Maybe we are on his day off and he will soon be back to work eventually and that might be the cause of all the people not believing in him because his scedule and day lasts a lot longer than ours do.
   The man seemed intrigued with this idea and said he was glad to meet some one with a belief in science and not trying to disprove God's existance and seemed refreshing than the whole God doesn't exist routine. We ended up deciding that both topics had points of their one and we ended our debate by deciding it is better to live how you believe and not to condone others and left with a friendly hand shake.
   I had fun talking to some one and seeing their point of view and discussing our different opinions. So here's the question do you follow a little of both or do you fallow only one of these and what are your thoughts and ideas? ^_^

[tekla]

I don't know anyone in science who is attempting to disprove g*ds existence, though I don't know of anyone in science who believes that particular version either.  Science works to prove, rather than disprove, and its proofs are open to all.  Don't like gravity?  Fine, find a way to prove its something else.  Its just that the proof has to be something that anyone, in anyplace, could work (more or less).  If you take that line In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.  G*d is creating day and night not just on earth, but throughout the entire universe, so that 24 hour day is by no means uniform, for example, what about planets that exist around a binary star?

Nor is evolution contrary to religion, even Christianity.  John Paul embraced it in 1996, which reaffirmed the position taken in the 1950s.  I went to Catholic School, and was taught Darwin, perhaps somewhat grudgingly, but taught it nonetheless.

Just yesterday...

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26747166/

[Alyssa M.]

Science works to prove, rather than disprove, and its proofs are open to all.

It's sort of the other way around: Science only "proves" anything by failing to disprove it after many serious attempts; also it implicitly favors simple descriptions. So the real question is: "Don't like gravity? Fine. Come up with an experiment that the current theory cannot explain, and come up with the simplest theory that accounts for that failure." It turns out, lots of people are trying to do just that.

Whenever I come across new-earthers, I wonder what part of "Lorentz invariance" they don't understand. Oh, yeah. All of it. Beliveing in galilean space and time (whether 6000 or 13.8 billion years old) is as utterly ridiculous as believing in a flat earth. It might be a good very local approximation, but that's just not the geometry that exists in this universe.

I don't know what universe your friend lives in, Sherue, but I live in a Friedman-Robertson-Walker universe, with a local Kerr geometry (albeit one with such a low angular velocity that you can use the Schwarzschild geometry most of the time). [/geek]

But there are some things science just doesn't explain. Most scientists either ignore these things altogether, or seek some sort of religion to deal with them. But fundamentalism just doesn't cut it. You can't make yourself believe something that you know is false.

[Sherue]

I was just stating an idea not a belief we really don't know how the earth was created just several ideas. I was just trying to merge religious beliefs with a idea with science. I know it probrobly isn't true but we can't disprove it. I was just letting him question how long God would consider a day. But in the end I really don't know.

[Alyssa M.]

Hi there,

I'd like to apoligize if it sounded like I was criticizing you -- or anyone else, including your fundamentalist friend. I was just sharing my personal thoughts on the matter, from my own experience. I wouldn't try to cram general relativity down the throat of a new-earther -- I think the approach you took is a lot more likely to generate a good conversation, and it sounds like it did. Yours is a very insightful way of getting to the heart of the issue in an accessible manner. But since I know a good deal about physics, these contradictions that I see as more important immediately come to my mind.

Cheers,

~Alyssa

[lisagurl]

"Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don't Add Up "

There is a difference between God as a divine providence and the dogma of religion.

[Natasha]

i think that faith in religion is irrelevant if selfless in nature and altruistic, however faith in science can be very consequential, especially if the science is flawed. take for example if we are wrong about global warming. how is introducing a carbon tax which will cut into the family budget on an already strained economy less detrimental than thinking that maybe there is life after death?

believing in religion or science shouldn't have to be contradictory. long gone are the days when religion was an oppressive regime, where the elite scorned the poor into repenting for sins the elite would indiscriminately commit. 

nowadays though, science has taken the foreground, and i see equally as damaging rhetoric coming from science as in the days long gone. it has everything to do with there being a dogma that prevents free thought as religion did once upon a time. for all the clever people out there, science can also repress if it discourages free thought.  take for example [again] having a different notion to global warming. in my field of work, you are crucified. so in this regard i can't say one is any more enlightened that the other although religion nowadays should be more of a personal pursuit, and not a repressive ordeal as in ages past.

[RebeccaFog]

take for example [again] having a different notion to global warming. in my field of work, you are crucified. so in this regard i can't say one is any more enlightened that the other although religion nowadays should be more of a personal pursuit, and not a repressive ordeal as in ages past.

You work in a field?   

actually, I don't believe anything anyone says on either side. "There are no truths outside the gates of Eden"   I think Bob Dylan said that.

"I don't think we're in Eden anymore."  - I said that.

"Arf!" - Toto said that.

[lisagurl]

however faith in science can be very consequential,

Science never claimed to be absolute truth as religion has. Science can only show proof of probability. Science is always changing as more evidence is uncovered. Marketing and religion have used the guise of science to manipulate people. Just as politicians have presented a one sided case and not give all the evidence. That is not science but rather faulty logic Gore included.

[Kaitlyn]

Scientists are people like everyone else, and have their own biases.  That doesn't mean that science is to blame.

Since science is all about putting ideas to the test, bias & dogmatism are anti-scientific.

[Sephirah]

[Sherue]

i think that faith in religion is irrelevant if selfless in nature and altruistic, however faith in science can be very consequential, especially if the science is flawed. take for example if we are wrong about global warming. how is introducing a carbon tax which will cut into the family budget on an already strained economy less detrimental than thinking that maybe there is life after death?

believing in religion or science shouldn't have to be contradictory. long gone are the days when religion was an oppressive regime, where the elite scorned the poor into repenting for sins the elite would indiscriminately commit. 

nowadays though, science has taken the foreground, and i see equally as damaging rhetoric coming from science as in the days long gone. it has everything to do with there being a dogma that prevents free thought as religion did once upon a time. for all the clever people out there, science can also repress if it discourages free thought.  take for example [again] having a different notion to global warming. in my field of work, you are crucified. so in this regard i can't say one is any more enlightened that the other although religion nowadays should be more of a personal pursuit, and not a repressive ordeal as in ages past.

I for one don't think we should have a carbon tax for global warming because we had a similar weather scare a couple decades ago called global cooling. Once I found out about that and nothing happened I'm kind of skeptical about global warming.

[tekla]

Once I found out about that and nothing happened I'm kind of skeptical about...

Pretty much my notion about g*d too.

[Kaitlyn]

I for one don't think we should have a carbon tax for global warming because we had a similar weather scare a couple decades ago called global cooling. Once I found out about that and nothing happened I'm kind of skeptical about global warming.

Ditto.  Doubleplus ditto when I look at the three P's who benefit from the global warming "crisis": pundits, politicians, and plutocrats.

[Sephirah]

Regardless of whether the science behind global warming is faulty, like it was with Global Cooling, the changes and awareness being brought about as a result of the possibility are leading to people living greener lives, reducing their carbon footprint, conserving energy and thinking about different energy sources, recycling more and shifting the focus away from fossil fuels... which is better for the environment whether it will have any effect on climate shift or not.

It's possible to reduce carbon use, and carbon emmissions... and so avoid paying a lot of carbon tax. Granted it may be a stick rather than carrot approach... but the alternative is to say "Here are some incentives for living cleaner lives, we urge you to take them up", to which the response is "Well that's nice and all, but we're happy as we are, thank you. Look at the size of my SUV!"

How long do you keep trying to urge change through reward when no one gives a damn about it as long as the standard of their life doesn't get any more detrimental?

*sigh*

Anyway, that's another topic, and might be worthy of a seperate thread.

[tekla]

Even a broken watch is right twice a day.  There are serious problems associated with the climate that have been ongoing for well into a decade now.  There is a lot of debate as to these problems being 'natural' or 'man-made.'  A prudent person would look at the scope of the change and think, well, just in case it's number two, we might want to try to change things.  Just in case.

[lisagurl]

a result of the possibility are leading to people living greener lives, reducing their carbon footprint, conserving energy and thinking about different energy sources, recycling more and shifting the focus away from fossil fuels... which is better for the environment whether it will have any effect on climate shift or not.

The fallacy is only looking at carbon or the climate or one effect. Everything is interconnected recycling also uses water, energy, and other resources. The total results might be even worse. The main political propaganda is just this type of promotion. Lobbyists  push the technologies that benefit those who they represent, even if the end result is worse for the majority. I could say lets reduce the world's population. That would save a lot of carbon emissions but not everyone would benefit the same way. If the solutions simple it usually is not correct or moral.

[Kaitlyn]

There's prudence, and then there's irrational terror.  The uproar over anthropogenic global warming has all the signs of a moral panic:

• the sudden onset*
• the media hype
• the outlandish claims unbacked by evidence
• the conflicting, incoherent, or biased testimonials by media-selected "experts"
• the designated enemy
• the vilification of dissenters
• the frantic pleas for intervention

We can't just give into every panic that comes down the pipes.  Even if there's some truth to AGW, the popular reaction isn't helping, and government reactions are too horrible to contemplate.  I'm half-convinced that if states begin heavily intervening in an attempts to curb carbon emissions, we'll be back in caves within a century - after tyranny, warfare, genocide, famine, and ecological destruction on a biblical scale.  Think about the sorts of nations that have thrown the weight of their governments behind popular interpretations of scientific theories, with no room for dissent.

* Although AGW has been simmering on the back burner for a long time, it's very suddenly become fashionable.

[tekla]

Well its not new.  Or at least to some.  The studied began in the fifties, and results started to trickle in the sixties.  That's its news to you, does not make it new.

[Kaitlyn]

It's not news to me.  I know that the idea of AGW has been around a long time, and I noted as much in my post.  It's the popular conception of it that I'm concerned with.  It's like HIV/AIDS - It's a horrible disease, but popular fears of it made people with AIDS into modern-day lepers, without helping anyone.  If we start rampaging around, enforcing naive but popular ideas for living "green", we're going to cause more trouble than we solve.

Take the idea of "Buy only locally grown produce".  If that gains traction, you can expect movement away from factory farms, which eliminates the economy of scale and lowers farming efficiency.  Overall expenditures on fuels, fertilizer, and other farm necessities will increase, diverting resources from other areas of production and raising prices.  More arable land will need to be devoted to farming to produce the same amount as before, with consequent ecological damage and increase in land prices.  Traffic on local roads will increase as food, fuel, and machinery shipments become more frequent.  Local & state taxes/tolls will increase to pay for road maintenance.  Carbon output may actually increase over the previous situation.  This sort of idea is a middle-class indulgence, not a policy prescription for "green living".