Physics

» Brian Tubbs - Science and Religion

In reading your blog on science and religion, I agree with you 100% that science is secular. I'm not sure I agree, however, that modern science is completely separate from religion. I think the two overlap quite a bit.

Two questions....

Do you think Intelligent Design is a religious belief?

and...

Do you think atheism is a religion?

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» kaos42 - Science and Religion

In response to Science and Religion posted by BrianTubbs:
Personally, I think that intelligent design is a religious belief. Intelligent design is a weak theory for explaining the origins of the universe. Its main argument is that the universe is too complex to have originated through natural processes, and that an intelligent creator designed everything and in certain versions, continues to affect the universe. There are big problems with this argument which is why the vast majority of scientists easily reject it. Here are a few of the main problems:

1) If an intelligent designer continues to affect the present universe, by what process does this occur? There is no physical evidence of any such process.

2) Who created the creator? By what process did the creator come to be? If a creator always existed, why?

3) Although there are many physical processes in the universe that we don't understand, it's because we've barely begun to scratch the surface, not because we are stuck. We are far from throwing up our hands and blaming life, the universe, and everything on an intelligent creator

4) Intelligent design is rooted in the Christial bible, written and canonized thousands of years ago, by men, with extremely limited knowledge of the physical universe. As such, the bible offers potentially useful information about the nature of human society, but is unsatisfactory when it comes to explaining the origin of the universe. For instance, how do you reconcile M Theory with biblical origin? Or for that matter, anything that's happened in physics after 1905.

Personally, my main issue with intelligent design is that by offering a pat explanation, it requires believers to stop asking questions about how the universe works. Even if an intelligent designer created all of the branes in the multiverse, I think it is still important to ask how and why, and explore all of the nitty gritty details.

I think that atheism is not a religion since most atheists do not organize in communities. It could however be considered a spiritual belief system.

-- posted by kaos42

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» Simon Davies - Science and Religion

In response to Science and Religion posted by kaos42:

Hi Katherine,
I'm new here in Science and Nature, hopefully we'll be able to work together to make the section useful.

I think you presented your case very clearly here and I think it's one of those issues that can go round in circles and produce more heat than light.

I just wanted to respond to something you said:
Personally, my main issue with intelligent design is that by offering a pat explanation, it requires believers to stop asking questions about how the universe works. Even if an intelligent designer created all of the branes in the multiverse, I think it is still important to ask how and why, and explore all of the nitty gritty details.

In my experience intelligent design does no such thing. If you believe that a creator made the universe and gave it order, then you have a good foundation to do science. Don't forget that Isaac Newton developed his laws from the belief that there would be laws because there was a creator.

I am a Christian, I am also fascinated by science, because I get to study the amazing way God has made the world!

Hope you understand this, I won't go any deeper, but I'll check in and see what else is going on in Physics fom time to time, you're welcome in Chemistry too!

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» drpsholder - Science and Religion

In response to Science and Religion posted by siminspain:

HI Simon,
new here too!!!
Katharine has a point. Christians are taught not to question God, but in reality, they question every aspect of their lives.
If God says he created a woman from man's rib, then HE must have.!! No matter what science says, God can do it.

God says HE breathed the sun, moon, and earth into existence, so HE must have. No matter that science points to a much different story, God can do anything.

Accepting faith, without questioning it, is believing in dogmatic beliefs; ironically, your faith does not allow questioning in the first place.

If nature is religion, then I am religious. But 'nature' does not require that we pray or show our faith in it.

-- posted by drpsholder

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» drforbush - Science and Religion

In response to Science and Religion posted by drpsholder:

I've written on this topic before, and I'll write on it again and again.

Religion and science both arose from the human need to try to understand the world. We can look back to the tribal origins of humans by looking at primitive culture. This means having anthropologists whom traveled to the remote areas of the world and learned about the primitive culture that had not yet been influenced by modern culture. We have been able to learn quite a bit about these early human cultures. In addition to this, we also know quite a bit about the ancient Middle Eastern cultures at the times of Abraham, Moses and Jesus.

Based on what anthropologists have learned about ancient cultures and modern primitive cultures we can understand what the Bible was all about. Every primitive culture had myths that were used to explain the creation of the world, the greatness of their ancestors, the difference between good and evil and the meaning of life. This is because as humans became aware of their personal place on earth humans longed for meaning. Humans had a sense of purpose that may have been given to them by God, or may have evolved with them. This sense of purpose was expressed by humans through out all times by stories that were told orally and passed down from generation to generation changing along the way as each person felt the need to weave his idea into the tapestry of the tribal culture.

As time went on the clan treasured these stories, and the stories spread wide as the human population spread outward. When writing was invented these stories must have been one of the first things to be written down. The stories remained revered and yet fragile. Memorized stories could be lost if the people who had memorized them died suddenly before they had the chance to pass the story to the next person. Written stories also were revered and fragile. The scrolls or tablets could be destroyed almost as easily as the human who memorized the story could. But if they survived, the story is preserved exactly as it was written down. The idea became frozen in time. Suddenly it became important to reproduce the stories exactly as it had been written in the first place.

The Old Testament begins with a collection of myths telling the stories that had been passed down orally before they were written down. For example, the myth of Noah and the flood is also told in Mesopotamian culture. There are similarity and differences in the two versions of the story. The Hebrew version of the story emphasizes the idea that there is one God and Noah saved everyone by following the orders from God. The Epic of Gilgamesh is the Mesopotamian myth where the god Ea destroys a city with a flood. This flood was only seven days long. The Hebrew myth exaggerates both the extent of the flood, and the length of the flood, but this is to be expected when a myth is passed down from generation to generation orally.

The point here is not to say that the Bible is wrong. The point is to understand the meaning of the Bible. If the stories of Aesop were written into the Bible as part of the myths that were valued by the culture as a way to teach morals, do you think that people would be telling us that in ancient times animals could talk? Yes, there would certainly would be a group of people who would hold this opinion, but does it mean that it is true? No, it doesn't.

-- posted by drforbush

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» Isaac M. McPhee - Science and Religion

It is sad, I think, that many Christians and people of other religious faiths find it difficult to reconcile their faith with the discovery of the laws of science. As both a Christian and someone who feels a serious need to understand the laws of physics and the history which has brought them about, I find absolutely no such contradiction in my own studies.
To my fellow Christians I pose this very simple suggestion:
Take the Bible at its word. The Universe as a whole is a Creation which is supposed to manifest the power of God. That being the case, shouldn't it be us more than anyone else who finds themselves engrossed in the study of physical processes, of astronomy, of exploration, and of discovering the history of the universe?
If one has faith that God did indeed create the place in which we live, by studying our surroundings, we should be able to come to understand God more, not less. We should be driven to have even greater faith!
I am aware that much of the hesitation on the part of the religious to truly embark on a scientific journey is the problem of clinging to the "literal" 6-day Creation story. While I myself have struggled with that in the past, I have come to realize that one may continue to view the Bible as "literal" and still come to accept that the 6 days of creation may have been used as a literary device which symbolizes far more than simply literal days. One can reconcile science with the Bible. It is really not as difficult as one makes it out to be.
And with that, my rambling ends. Feel free to criticize my logic. This topic is ripe for debate.

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