Alchemy was wrong then, and it’s wrong now. And the things he was right about often went against the religious dogma of the time (like the idea that there are one universal set of physical laws, instead of one for the heavens and one for us filthy mortals).
That’s great, but in practical terms, are you really giving away half your wealth to the indigent? For me personally, I’m okay with you obeying the law, paying your taxes and participating in the political process though not in a manner that seeks to eliminate hard-won freedoms.
Well, I daresay that are probably a great many nominal Christians who, if family pressure was removed, would casually cut their church attendance to minimum (baptisms, weddings, funerals, etc. the so-called “hatch, match, dispatch” trilogy) or zero. How many, I couldn’t say.
I enjoy doing this actually - I’m better than someone who gladly supports a theocratic dictatorship. If I want to stay better, then I have to oppose efforts to turn Canada into one. It’s not a strenuous duty, of course; efforts to “theocrize” Canada are fairly slight. It feels good (indeed, VERY good) to not live in fear of my government, or in fear of the largely-imagined enemies my government relentlessly propagandizes me about.
That’s not specifically responsive to your point, I realize - it’s just what comes to mind. I have no problem whatsoever feeling that my country and situation is indeed better than, let’s say, two-thirds to three-quarters of the world, and I’m a better man for it.
Well, such is the evolution of Christianity, from some idealized altruistic communal cult to the base of European power. Constantine the Great’s conversion to Christianity in the early 4th century meant that faith had made it to the big time, but it no way impeded Constantine from waging war and killing perceived enemies of the state. Perry is a mere amateur by comparison. There’s no more a “Christian contradiction” in his actions than in any Christian political leader over the last 1500 years. When has any Christian political figure embraced a strict “love thy neighbor as thyself” policy? If you know of examples, I wager they didn’t stay in power very long.
“Saul” happens to be my middle name, heh. I’m not joking. But, no, I don’t think Perry is given to much pause, and as far as I know, he may consider himself a very observant and devout Christian. He certainly presents himself as such, and millions of your fellow Americans see no contradiction.
Yeah, but that definition is just yours, really, possibly shared by a lot of your fellow Americans but very specifically not shared by many more.
Well, if mystical turtles, leprechauns and Jehovah all have exactly the same amount of supporting evidence, there’s no reason to pick any one of them. And if it seems that presenting two apparently ridiculous ideas (turtles and leprechauns) makes the third option (Jehovah) more plausible, I invite you to peruse Wikipedia’s “Creation Myth” page and its supporting pages, and you’ll find non-Jehovah beliefs that were (and are) very sincerely held and may or may not have common elements with the Book of Genesis, and may or may not be more interesting than Genesis.
Intelligent Design may as well be a religious theory (and for many of the people promoting ID, the term “design proponent” is a simple cut-and-paste replacement for “creationist” - see the Pandas and “cdesign proponentsists” story) since it invites no further study or analysis. Why did the Designer make certain choices? Who knows? What is the nature of the Designer? Who knows? What happened to the Designer? Who knows?
Big Bang Theory and related concepts have at least some evidence going for them, and they beat out competing ideas like Steady State Theory because observations that tended to support BBT can be made and ones that support SST cannot.
I’m concerned about evangelicals in general, more so if they collect in sufficient numbers to form a “wave”. This is a group with a determined indifference to reason, if not a hardened contempt for reason, and their message is strangely compelling to a great many people. I am indeed concerned about the possibility of (another) evangelical U.S. president, and evangelicals elected to congress. These are people in a position to do a lot of harm, all while telling themselves it’s for a greater good.
Maybe, but it wouldn’t matter. For every passage in the NT you can find that these men violated, they can probably find one in the OT or NT (I’m not sure why “falling back” on the OT is a failure, even modern American evangelicals selectively reference Leviticus) that rationalizes their actions, and even if there isn’t, it’s only you who is trying to judged how well they conformed to the NT. Reagan gets judged by the American public; the Popes get judged by the power structures they control (and if a Pope steps too far out of line, assassination is not unknown); Columbus was judged by those who financially backed his expeditions. These men didn’t conduct their day-to-day operations by consulting the NT. How could they?
Well, I’m sure there’s an NT passage somewhere about not questioning God. In any case, anyone whose ever been mollified by “God moves in mysterious ways” and continued to believe in God has been more accepting than I would be.
Well, I was alluding to Martin Luther and the 95 Theses, and the beginning of the Reformation and the resultant major schism in Christianity and the subsequent wars and persecutions and whatnot. I’m not sure what you mean by “the Restoration.”
That’s not a quote, that’s your paraphrase; and it’s inaccurate. Hawking says that a deity is not necessary for creation to occur; he has not said there is no deity (although he clearly does not believe in one; but that’s an aside - he has not asserted the absence or presence of a deity, he’s merely pointed out that the current theories don’t require one).
I’d be very interested in seeing an actual quote where he publicly asserts that there is no deity.
Jon55, I ask that you stop misrepresenting what Mr. Hawking says. He puts forth that God is not necessary for the creation of the universe-he does not say that God doesn’t exist.
It’s not like there’s some grand council of scientists that determines when a theory is proven. As more and more evidence mounts up that confirms a hypothesis, more and more scientists agree that it deserves to be called a theory. Adding other terms won’t help that process.
Exactly. Inflation is just a word that’s used to talk about a time when the expansion was particularly rapid. And scientists have agreed for decades that the expansion is ongoing.
Sooner or later. But some things are so far away there hasn’t been enough time since the big bang for the photons to get here.
Eventually the redshift becomes so extreme we can no longer detect the photons.
The farther away something is, the faster it recedes. We can see closer objects just fine.
An anomaly just means “something that doesn’t agree with the theory”. It might be because the theory is wrong, or it might be because of a glitch in the experiment. The usual approach when an anomaly is observed is to run the experiment more times to try to figure out if the data is good or not.
For example, last year scientists announced they seemed to have detected neutrinos traveling faster than the speed of light. That’s an anomaly. Lots of other scientists are working now to try to figure out if it’s a real effect, or just a measurement error.
You need something like inflation to explain certain observations. It’s a refinement to the big bang theory, but was not part of it originally.
Think closely about what you just said. If looking at distant objects is akin to time travel then we can DIRECTLY OBSERVE the past expansion of space. It’s not a guess or belief or interpretation. We can literally see it happening.
Not quasars. The cosmic microwave background. The CMB is the light coming from the cloud of hot plasma that defines the farthest back in time we can see.
No, it’s scientists arguing over which theory best fits the evidence.
Understand that there’s near-universal consensus among physicists about the existence of the big bang. What they’re debating is the mechanics of the first few microseconds of the event. They’re trying to refine the theory so that it provides the best explanation for ALL the data.
You understand neither what science is or what philosophy is. I’m done with you.
I’m not sure it’s considered well-tested because of difficulty in replicating the conditions of the Big Bang in a lab. However it’s considered a well-supported theory because it does a good job explaining the evidence. Inflation makes it work better. If you’re proposing that the theory needs to be torn down and physicists need to start over from scratch, you haven’t offered a good reason.
OK, then I understand your point better: yes, theories are discarded when they are discovered to be fatally flawed. That happened with the steady state theory after the discovery of the CMB, but it hasn’t happened with the Big Bang Theory. It’s true that theories are often modified along the way. You made this confusing by talking about a theory being downgraded to a hypothesis and a hypothesis being upgraded to a theory. That’s not how it works.
I think the actual problem is that you don’t understand these terms very well.
While you may believe this personally, it is bullshit. Intelligent design is a vehicle for getting Biblical creationism into science textbooks. There would be no interest in it otherwise.
Can you provide some examples? Hawking certainly isn’t.
In science, the simplest explanation is generally preferred.
You should be aware that Sagan was a planetary scientist, not a cosmologist. Plus, his popular writing and TV is now very much out of date. However his goal was to get people interested in science, so he succeeded with you.
TV shows are just a start, but are terrible ways of getting the last word. Remember, those on commercial channels exist to sell ads, not to teach science.
The problems with ID are twofold. First, no one has shown a place where ID is required. Second, no one has ever demonstrated ID taking place in the natural world. ID happens all the time - it is called plant breeding and animal husbandry. Your dog is a product of ID. But there is no evidence of it in either the universe or the fossil record.
Behe, the inventor of the modern concept, keeps on looking for structures requiring ID, and keeps on failing. He accepts evolution by the way, but seems to have agreed to serve as the creationists poster child because I guess he get a lot more recognition than he would as a professor at Lehigh.
And of course science has plenty concrete to say about origins, even if you want to ignore this.
I don’t care about discrimination against atheists. I care about discrimination against the facts. If scientists discover X, and religionists want it to be Y, that is no reason to teach Y also.
If you want kids to get interested in science, the Big Bang is a lot more fun than F=ma and rolling things down ramps.
At a guess, it would seem that the other posters would prefer that you not interject some sort of philosophical discussion, tinged with theology, into a scientific discussion. That you persist in posting, (rather off-topic), provokes them to continue challenging your off-topic assertions.
This forum has lots of “god/God/no-god” discussions, but this particular thread was not posted to be one of them.
Feel free to participate in or start your own theist/deist/agnostic/atheist discussion, but you would probably do better to drop the philosophical discussion in this thread.
[ /Moderating ]
Tycho Brahe was funded by a church.
But lets explore your assertion did you know that men are much more violent than women?
"Although women comprise more than half the U.S. population, they committed only 14.7% of the homicides noted during the study interval. "
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1635092
Using your logic we should get rid of the men?
Maybe keep a few for breeding purposes?
If you want to twist people’s words to make silly extreme examples, your assertion that Hawking meant that God didn’t exist when what he actually said was that God wasn’t necessary for the creation of the universe means that, since ice cream isn’t necessary for the survival of the human species, ice cream doesn’t exist.
Why do you hate ice cream?
For all who think I am misrepresenting Stephen Hawking I did post a link (I will post it again) earlier in this thread the writer of the article is Sean Carrol, cosmologist and desccribes himself as a “hard boiled atheist”.
He was on the aftershow panel.
He credited Hawking with the quote: “God does not exist.” End of the second paragraph.
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2011/08/02/hawking-and-god-on-the-discovery-channel/
But I know quotes can be taken out of context so I have found the whole show on you tube. Please watch the whole thing. If you are interested enough in this subject to post here you will surely enjoy it. But for those without the patience start at about 40 min in.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQhd05ZVYWg
Selected (by me) quotes both between 40 and 42 minutes.
“Time didnt exist before the big bang so there is no time for God to make the universe in.”
“It is my view that the simplest explanation is there is no God no one created the universe and no one directs our fate.”
He laid out a case and then he pulled the punch a little bit at the end I think out of compasion but he still make a bold assertion and I have responded to it.
Well, that is the simplest explanation.
Thats kind of my point in using the term ID you do not close the door on anyone. It is inclusive.
I believe my religion is the right one but I do not believe in forcing others to pretend they believe it also by using “Some people think God did it.”
You are leaving out Allah and I dont know who else.
Your POV is your prerogative but many atheist and theists on this board disagree me being one of them. If you will please watch the show you will see that Hawking disagrees with you as did Carl Sagan.
The better question is “What difference does Hawking’s opinion make?” He’s not rewriting scientific theories to prove there’s no god. He’s not the Pope of science, and science doesn’t work that way.
Allah is the Arabic word for “God.” It’s not a different character.
Does Hawking say schools should teach students that there is no God?
Intelligent Design is linked to religion through the very simple fact that every single person who advocates Intelligent Design does so from a perspective of promotiong their brand of religion. Since Intelligent Design is opposed to science, there is no point to including it in any scientific discussion.
Theistic Evolution is a different belief then Intelligent Design. In Theistic Evolution, the Creator sets the rules and intitiates the process, then allows the process to move forth naturally on its own. This creator might be a Deist’s clockmaker or a Theist’s personal God, but in neither case does the Creator tamper with the process of natural evolution on anything resembling a regular basis. Now, there was an unfortunate incident a couple of years ago when the Discovery Institute coaxed the scientifically illiterate Archbishop of Vienna to write a piece for the New York Times in which he described Theistic Evolution, (as he understood it), while applying the term “Intelligent Design” throughout his article. This muddied the water quite a bit because a number of believers in Theistic Evolution who happened to share his lack of knowledge of biology, began to use the phrase “intelligent design” when they were actually discussing Theistic Evolution. When Cardinal von Schönborn originally published his little exercise in confusion, he was immediately corrected by the scholars at the Vatican. Unfortunately, the Discovery Institute folks had been successful in getting the phrase out in a misleading context. If one wishes to use the phrase “intelligent design” when discussing Theistic Evolution, it is more honest to acknowledge that one is not actually discussing the anti-scientific Intelligent Design proposals of Phillips, Behe, and Dembski.
Actual Intelligent Design, (note the capitalization), does require frequent interference by the designer in order to push evolution along. This is true in all the works of Phillips, Dembski, and Behe and any claim that Intelligent Design is merely another phrase for Theistic Evolution or that it is compatible with genuine science reflects a serious ignorance of the way that ID’s actual proponents use the word, themselves.
Some ID supporters, (Michael Behe) accept that generally Natural Selection is the engine driving evolution, but insist that some evolutionary events just can’t be explained by random mutations and natural selection, so they have to invent a belief that some Designer steps in every once in a while and tweaks the process to keep it going. (Unfortunately for them, all their examples of events that could not possibly occur through natural selection keep getting disproven. Pretty nearly every single one of the examples in Behe’s proposed “irreducible complexity” have, in the short time since he first published his ideas, been proven to be further reduced and, in several cases, explained.) Behe has also demonstrated on many occasions that he is driven by religious belief. When trying to appeal to readers of science, he avoids talking about God, but when he addresses religious groups, he explicitly rails against the “atheism” of Evolution.
Some Intelligent Design supporters, (Phillip Johnson, William Dembski), are put off from Natural Selection for philosophical reasons having nothing to do with science and make outlandish claims (both about Intelligent Design and Natural Selection), that have no grounding in science (or reality).
Phillip E. Johnson is a lawyer who believes that secular humanists are going to destroy civilization by eliminating a belief in a god and he has decided to make biology the battlefield on which to thwart them. All of his publications are opinion pieces trying to demonstrate why evolutionary science must be false on philisophical grounds that ignore actual science (in which he has no training).
William Dembski attempts to claim that evolution could not have occurred because it is simply improbable from a statistical perspective. No serious mathematician, statician, or actuary has found any of his arguments to be anything other than laughable, (and I have heard that he got much of his math wrong, as well, although I cannot confirm that).
I perhaps was not clear. The issue is not whether you use the term God, Allah, or Intelligent designer, it’s that saying “fill in the blank did it” is not science. As TomnDeb points out, there is no consensus on when an intelligent designer stepped in or what he/she/it did. Furthermore, the BBT theory is not in opposition to some sort of God existing. In the after show of that program they talk with a cosmologist who is a theist as well as to a Catholic Priest. Both of them say that cosmology is not inconsistent with religion if all the creator did was create the initial conditions and the natural laws. Where there is a conflict is when you say that a creator stepped in to do something specific that otherwise could not have happened. If that is your claim, then you need to show what that was. ID proponents can not even agree what it is that requires a creator, and when they have given examples of irreducible complexity they have been wrong.
The actual quotes you pulled from the show do not include Hakings saying "God does not exist.” Are you going to stop claiming that he did say it?
Nah about 30% and I do things and fail to do things that in my own opinion fall short of my ideal.
But I am trying.
No way to really know I am thinking 50% plus.
I think both Constatine and Perry are no brainers based on their actions.
Once the advantage of being a Christian is gone they will look for another hook.
Actually you made a comment about the kingdom of God that I never did respond to maybe this will suffice as answer to that as welll
Christ said “My kingdom is not of this world”
His kingdom is here on earth right now in the hearts and souls of his followers. It was never meant to be a country. If someone claims to have established a Christian empire you will know he did not read his bible or he has other motives.
I promise you it is not hard but so few actually read the scripture they are easily misled. The ones doing the leading have no such excuse.
E]It is a sign!
Bryan in the greek means “the one they will follow”
Kidding…did I getcha?
The bible also says our generation gets no sign.
So you can add the miracle healers to the list of the people who obviously BSing.
Or are just plain nuts.
Yep.
Thats why we use it. I am not in favor of using goverment to promote what I believe in. I also not in favor of teachers telling children that mom and dad are wrong and that their faith is not valid. Do you think that does not happen?
ID is neither a religious theory nor a scientific one it is just a placeholder.
And I am not fixed on the wording “intelligent design” but anything that acknowledges that science has nothing to say (at least at this point) on our ultimate orgins
Now we are back to better equals good.
Hamster has suggested some good avenues for me to study and I plan to do that but for now I do not see enough empirical evidence to say that BBT is at least close to what the reality is.
You know I have wrote alot trying to convince you that they know better but I am sure they lie to themselves but just like a cheating spouse who has built a network of excuses to justify him/herself…deep down they know better.
To understand why they cannot fall back on the OT you have to suspend your disbelief for a moment.
Jeremiah 31 "“Behold, days are coming,” declares the LORD, “when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not like the covenant which I made with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them,” declares the LORD. “But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days,” declares the LORD, “I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people”
Not to be condesending but covenant is not a word used often these days it and it wont be just you reading this. Covenant means agreement or contract and in this context it is often referred to as law.
So it was foretold that the old law would be done away with and the “on their heart I will write it” is very important it is a reference to the golden rule or “love your neighbor as yourself” The hard and fast comples rules were done away with and in their place was put simplicity and motive became just as important as actions.
Then in the NT.
I could quote many verses that show what was predicted had now taken place.
Colossians 2:14 ( The first half of Colossians is an argument that the new law is here and in effect)
“Having wiped out the handwriting of requirements that was against us, which was contrary to us. And He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross.”
It cannot be misunderstood by a person of average intelligence.
You think these men couldnt conduct their lives constantly consulting the NT?
Lets span of time on earth not much over 100 years if we are lucky and do the things to help us get that far. Span of time in the next existence unlimited.
Like I said before suspend your disbelief for one minute and pretend you think that eternal paradise could be had by studying a book that has less than 200.000 words in it.
How would they not consult it?
Your quote is from a hymn written by William Cowper in the 1700’s but there are many who call themselves Christians who think it is in the bible.
I really dont think so…if you can find one I will eat my crow like a man.
2Timothy 2:15
Study to shew thyself approved unto God a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.
Yeah Reformation my mistake.
Luther and Calvin were non violent tho and the movement they started ended up with the bible being took out of the hands of a privledged few and being read by all.
I was not aware it was credited with starting any wars.
It is my contention that it is being presented in at least some textbooks as a well tested backed up with empirical evidence but I am not having alot of luck finding anything online to back up my claim at the moment. I will withdraw it for now due to lack of proof.
BTW wiki is having a 24 blackout the page says congress is considering legislation that will shut it down. Not sure what that is all about.
I am not proposing that and I do understand that if you only deal in what you can prove not much progress will be made. I just think that the evidence is a lot thinner than most of the board seems to think. I have some new lines of inquiry thanx to Hamster and will be pursuing them.
Just in response to your last sentence explain please using string theory as an example. Several on the board said it was more of a hypothesis when I brought it up earlier.
Do you think it is hypothesis or theory and why?
Slippery slope?
It is a valid concern but I think most ideas should measured on their own merits and this is one of them.
I linked the entire show so you can judge for yourself you can skip to the end if you want to but the man deserves to be heard in context.
I disagree but I hope you enjoy the link.
simple
You were clear enough we just disagree.
I would just like this “BBT theory is not in opposition to some sort of God existing.” to be pointed out in a very clear way. You say there is no need too.
But if I am understanding majority opinion on this board the consensus thinks the act of pointing out the possibility of a creator lends to much credit or weight to the idea.
I watched the show in its entirety when it aired.
I did not watch the whole thing tonight.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQhd05ZVYWg
So I am not sure he used those exact words but there is little doubt as to what he meant.
I did remember the show during this debate and I went looking for quotes from the show and found one on Sean Carrolls website. Carroll is a colleague of Hawking and seems to think a great deal of him so I trusted that it was an actual quote. My mistake. Here is the paragraph it came from and it seems that Carroll came to the same conclusion I did. Why he put it in quotation marks I do not know.
The Hawking special is the kick-off episode to a major new Discovery program, called simply Curiosity. I predict it will make something of a splash. The reason is simple: although most of the episode is about science, Hawking clearly goes all-in with “God does not exist.” It’s not a message we often hear on American TV.
I withdraw the assertion that Stephen Hawking said it. I am not sure now.
He did however assert that there was no time before the big bang. How does he know that?