StrangerThan
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Joined: 4/25/2008
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quote:
ORIGINAL: asyouwish72
quote:
ORIGINAL: StrangerThan
The onus is upon those who would attack. Period. Doesn't matter which side of the pitchfork you stand. And in the age of science, science cannot confirm nor deny.
If you have a point past that, make it. I have no real beef with either side. The lack of faith in this arena is a type of faith in itself, and that's point.
Believe whatever the hell you want to believe but what you believe is just that.
That too, is the point.
This is partially correct. Science cannot prove or disprove the existence of God.We do not have the means. Science is simply a means of understanding empirical observations about the physical world. The fundamental questions of religion exist outside this framework.
That said, there is a complete absence of evidence for God as an active agent who has a hand in our physical lives. No 'miracles' have ever been documented (not a single one) that circumvent physical laws. For that matter, there is absolutely no reason whatsoever to believe that humans have any special place in the natural order of things. We're animals just like any other animals, save a talent for abstract reasoning.
Further, EVERY TIME organized religions have posited explanations for then-unexplained phenomena (flat earth/young earth/non-heliocentric solar system/creationism/what have you) science has eventually proven those explanations WRONG. This hardly suggests that anyone has a direct line to the Creator. Not even the guy in Rome with the big hat.
This all being the case, perhaps it is simply best to deal with what we *can* deal with, and to admit that on the largest scale of metaphysical questions, no one's guess is much better than anyone else's. In the more mundane physical world in which we live, however, science's batting average is awfully, awfully good.
I'll grant you that science can define weeping stones as the result of higher than normal humidity, or the Jesus face in a bowl of macaroni as nothing more than a random pattern. I'll grant you that vast bulk of supposed miracles that have occurred in the last couple of milenia can be explained - and in a lot of cases, you don't need a degree, but rather just some common sense. And while science itself may be little more than understanding what we observe, scientists are human and therefore prone to both error and creating explanations for things they don't understand - sort of in the same way people of faith create explanations for things they don't understand. Einstein believed space was filled with ether. Two or three times a year our understanding of one branch of science or another is shaken to its core by a new discovery.
Really.
Maybe that's because our understanding is based not upon science itself but the supposition that follows. ya think?
I agree that science's batting average is pretty good. The fact that I'm sitting here watching words scrawl across a screen that will shortly appear on yours is decent empirical evidence of that. I got no problem with it's batting average, and am simply saying what you said in other words, namely "on the largest scale of metaphysical questions, no one's guess is much better than anyone else's".
Science has its place. So does the abstract and the metaphysical. Hell, even Captain Kirk knew that.
Since I don't want to write two replies, this goes to Musicman. Its all semantics. Saying one is a non-believer when it comes to God can also be written as I believe there is no God. Depends on whether you want to paint it as a void or as a different belief.
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--'Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to reform' - Mark Twain
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