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Pope Advised Hawking Not to Study Origin of Universe
BlueCup submits a link to an Associated Press article running in the Northwest Florida Daily News which begins "Famous astrophysicist Stephen Hawking said Thursday that the late Pope John Paul II once told scientists they should not study the beginning of the universe because it was the work of God. The British author, who wrote the best-seller 'A Brief History of Time,' said that the pope made the comments at a cosmology conference at the Vatican."
According to the article, "The scientist then joked during a lecture in Hong Kong, 'I was glad he didn't realize I had presented a paper at the conference suggesting how the universe began. I didn't fancy the thought of being handed over to the Inquisition like Galileo.'"
He wrote that anecdote himself in "A Brief History of Time". So, this *really* is old news.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
If you love God, why not read up on his work?
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
Pope Palpatine will advocate not studying conception...since it is an act of God. Great. Guess my girlfriend won't be putting out.
The Inquisition can't come for Hawking now: he's expecting it!
Being it's the work of God, it should be okay to study his work and know how he goes about things. Sure would be cool to know the recipe to making a universe.
[FROM TFA]...he had one more great ambition: "I would also like to understand women."
The Vatican was unavailable for comment.
Church versus Science. Not exactly a new story.
But, I'm surprised to hear the Pope said this. I'd thought the Catholic church was relatively progressive in terms of creationism. A few hundred years ago, it might have made a difference what they thought.
These days, this kind of comment makes the church look archaic rather than actually discouraging scientists. At least in Europe.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
...then shouldn't the Pope be against all science? Funny how they only do this with the sciences that threaten their beliefs. I find this interesting since this same Pope embraced evolution.
Pope, speaking in bad Italian accent: Yeah, you see, it's like this Mr. Hawking... the beginning of everything... that's God's work... he wouldn't be too pleased if you found out too much about what he did... he's very private that way... he tends to get upset easily... and we wouldn't want anything to say, happen to you... you wouldn't want to end up in a wheelchair or nothin'... oh wait...
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
No one expects the spanish inquisition!
It's turtles all the way down.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
They drag their heels on silly beliefs until it is apparant that the whole world is against them and they might lose new converts.
Like the loopholes they are introducing for contraception use.
I'm always amazed at how otherwise rational and intelligent people can be pulled in to this system of self-deception.
Blar.
It was originally published in 1988, though there have been other editions.
(S(SKK)(SKK))(S(SKK)(SKK))
Galileo got into trouble for asking the authorities to keep their adopted word (which it turns out was Pagan Aristotlean astronomy) rather than for any clash between science itself and church. This wasn't a case of science vs religion (n fact, the science in question clashes quite loudly with most modern science), it was a case of social politics within a large political organisation.
Many of the "scientific" disagreements which have happened recently are of a similar political or business-oriented nature, and typically have naff-all to do with any hint of genuine scientific principle.
I guess it's an almost-inevitable blame-shifting aspect of human nature.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
The Pope doesn't represent all of Chistianity or religion for that matter. Hawkings should study and theorize the origin of the universe as much as he wants. He probably will never determine if a higher being actually flipped the switch that made it happen, though. Science explains how, what, where, and when. Religion explains who and why.
Tired of being "punished" by the Slashdot $rtbl since 2002. I'm now over at http://soylentnews.org/ .
Since the current Pope used to be head of the Office of the Inquisition.
They renamed it in the late 19th Century, IIRC, due to the bad PR, but it's the same office.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Aren't things like hurricanes, lightning, and tornados all called 'acts of god', at least by courts and insurance companies?
Should we not study electricity? My god, what have we done? Maybe we should have asked the great spider queen for permission before all this studying of gods natural phenomenon...
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
Here is a little background about being burned alive
/..org readers could have been burned alive at a certain point in history.
:)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Inquisition
I guess we all should be proud of the fact that all of us
Im glad that it is not likely that this kind of history would ever repeat itself. I don't like pain
It's almost comical in light of your post...but if you don't follow their brand of faith, eternal pain and suffering is your reward.
Blar.
So, if I read a ten, fifteen, maybe thirty-year-old book, can I submit quotes from it as news, too?
Heck, tomorrow I think I'll submit a story about Sir Isaac Newton discovering gravity.
I can't think of anything more scientific than wanting to understand something onesself rather than having it shoved down one's throat by "people closer to ." Religion explains what science cannot. Science theorizes what religion explains too vaguely for human interests.
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
here is proof page 120 (middle of the first paragraph) sorry for replying to my own post :D
Truthiness
Regardless of when the Pope said this (as some have pointed out), this once again shows the stifling effect that religion can have on science.
We are curious animals by nature. If we weren't curious we wouldn't have been able to develop the societies we have and everything that goes with them. Why shouldn't we explore how the universe began? If by exploring how things got started we can gain some insight into a better, more efficient form of energy, why not explore?
Maybe what it comes down to is that by discovering that illnesses aren't caused by evil spirits or that mentally deranged people aren't possessed by the devil then the reason for religion ceases to exist. After all, if everything can be reasonably explained to come from natural sources then why have gods and goddesses?
The popes comment leads me to believe it was one designed to undercut the scientific realm so those in a position of power within religious circles could continue their search for new members. After all, we know for a fact that the Vatican has in its possession books which contradict portions of the modern bible as well as some which were written by others which provide a different perspective on what things were like way back when. But one cannot read these books, even if they know the title, because to do so would set off a firestorm of consternation at the hypocrisy of modern Catholicism and Christianity in general. Instead, they are held simply so others cannot expand their knowledge of the past. So long as these works remain hidden, the power of the Church cannot be questioned.
Is it any wonder then that the Pope, the keeper of the gate so to speak, would want to dissuade an eminent scientist from exploring the mysteries of the universe? Religion, as a whole, has become nothing but a quest for power. Not giving hope to the unwashed masses, not giving comfort in time of need. Power, pure and simple.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
If you look at all of the other statements that JPII made regarding science and faith, this would immediately strike you as out of character. Add that to the fact that I've never seen someone actually produce proof that he ever said it, like a transcription or something. So, I think Hawking either misquoted, misunderstood(given JPII's accent, understandable) or made up the quote. After all, it makes a good joke, right?
All that is necessary for the triumph of good is that evil men do nothing.
Science is to religion as truth is to politics. Incompatible and irrelevant. Honestly, when you consider the history of the Catholic Church, or most other religions and religious institutions, how can you believe anything they say? Of course they oppose science as science keeps exposing them for the phonies that they are. As more and more of their "truth" is exposed as fraud they lose power and influence. Take anything that anyone ever asks or demands that you accept "on faith" without ever backing it up with evidence with one giant fucking grain of salt. One a side note wouldn't John Paul II's time have been better spent trying to weed out and punish the child molesters in his own church? That, ladies and gentleman, tells you all you need to know about the church and its priorities. What a sick joke.
Algerath
"If you want to know my works... Pick up a good science book!" - God
This must be a really old quote, especially since God had supposedly disappeared into a puff of logic.
Guess old news is better than no news...
Just to set the record straight, Christians do not agree with what this looney says. God has nothing against science or discovery. If the pope says this, he might as well say "Don't study virii, because they were the work of sin and the fall." Both arguments are utterly rediculous non-sequitors.
There are priests who have done science too (maybe even scientists who became priests :)
:)
Take for example, Lemaitre who is credited with proposing the none too unsignificant Big Bang theory. He was a Belgian Roman Catholic priest. He convinced Hubble and Einstein of the expanding universe model using Hubble's experimental work and Einstein's theories.
Jokingly, I would say the Pope advised Hawking not to study the origin of the universe because the Vatican wanted to beat him to publishing the first paper
Just think about what a pathetic concept of divinity that is: a supposedly almighty God who dislikes it when his creation looks at his works. That's in addition to all the smighting, shame, pain, and torture that Catholicism says God inflicts on the world.
I'm agnostic about whether there is some higher power. But a world created and ruled by the kind of schizophrenic and conflicted being that the Catholic church postulates makes no sense to me, and my faith tells me that they are wrong; no omnipotent being could sensibly be as petty and hateful towards mankind as the Catholic church claims God is.
have an American accent. I have read a quote from him in which he stated that the only complaint he had about his computer/voice synthesizer was that he sounded american. I believe a California company built it for him.
While I don't have a reference for this, I seem to recall reading that Hawking misquoted John Paul. The Pope didn't say that scientists *shouldn't* study the beginning of the Universe, but that the scientists *wouldn't* be able to explain the instant of Creation, because that came from God; it was an expression of faith, rather than an admonition.
And as far as I know, the Pope so far is right; cosmologists will talk about t=1e-12 seconds after the Big Bang, and so forth, but few talk about t=0 (or t0) in anything but completely speculative ways. The Big Bang and "Let there be light!" are perfectly compatible if you're not a literalist.
...for a conference on cosmology, than the Vatican?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
A likely story ! It would really be a scoop if the new trend in religions was now to discourage studying the work of God :-D
Beware also abouth the word "should" : it can as well mean a possibility ("as there are big clouds, it should rain) than a will to do mething ("I should clean my flat"). When Darwin says somewhere that "least adapted leafs of manking should disappear", he mentions a plausible possibility, not an exhortation, as far as I know, to kill them !
We do not know either howJP2 said that. Even a pope is allowed to joke from time to time, and he did more than once :-)
Signature omitted in order to save space. Thanks for your understanding.
I was raised Baptist but am not religious these days. Many many scientists have a deep spirituality or faith and feel that science just gets you closer to the creation. I've never had a problem with science versus faith: to put it into religious terms, I presume that science is our attempt at explaining "how," and spirituality is our attempt at explaining "why." There's no disconnect here.
The bible doesn't explain how the universe was created, and explicitly says that God's timeline is nothing like man's timeline, so there's no point in parsing "six days" as meaning anything in particular to us. If I feel like parsing it at all, I'd say the seventh day of rest aligns quite nicely with the future era of calmness mentioned in Revelations, so maybe we're still in the sixth day as far as God is concerned. I've subsequently heard some Israeli theologians have put forth the same conjecture. But I don't parse the bible that much, as I already figured out what I want to figure out with regards to my own spirituality: do less harm than good, and the world will be alright.
Major organized religions (aka, Church Inc.) just don't want any explaining of either, as it impacts the bottom line. Come in, drop off your tithe, pat a homeless man on the head, and go watch your kids' soccer game. Questions come pretty close to questioning authority, and they like being the unquestioned authority. I mean, really, condoms in Africa...
[
what is the pope afraid of?
Why does it matter that someone like Hawkings studies it? If god is real, then he will discover that.. If god is not real, then that will be discovered. In the end only the truth matters, regardless of which answer is 'found'. ( not that i ever expect that question to really ever be answered, there will ALWAYS be doubt.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I for one, wholeheartedly embrace the concept of design...
Years ago I had a Religious Education teacher who talked about the "God Bin" which was a place to stick all the stuff we didn't understand by simply saying "God did it". Science has the job of emptying the God Bin and now all the easy stuff, night and day, why bees can fly etc are done there are only a few things rattling around in the bottom of the bin so it isn't any wonder that the Pope would grasp onto one of the last things and say science shouldn't touch. The only other stuff in the God Bin now is stuff that people just make up and is impossible to prove one way or another such as the existence of a 'soul'.
And yes, I read 'A Brief History of Time' several times and always enjoyed the bit about the Pope telling him to stay away from the beginning of the universe.
"I have the attention span of a strobe lit goldfish, please get to the point quickly!"
Isn't that what the church wants though? I mean, surely they value the truth more than the vast amounts of money made from weekly contributions from their millions of followers. Oh, did I mention that huge income they get is tax free? But yes, they love money... I mean... the truth.
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing.
"Galileo got in trouble for saying that the earth moves... in a book that irreverently satirized the current pope."
/. So Galileo proceeds to publish a book in which he thoroughly flames the Pope, and puts the Pope's words, in some cases distorted or taken out of context, in the mouth of a character whose name is just one letter away from "Stupid"... and is pronounced almost the same as "Stupid." In effect it's the kinda flamebait post that goes on and on about how the opponent is just too stupid to understand, only in print.
Read again the part after the "..." and there you have the real problem.
AFAIK, Galileo had had a pretty civilized talk with the Pope, and while the Pope wasn't convinced by Galileo's argumentation, he let Galileo go.
Before you blame the Pope of being too fanatical to accept science, remember that it wasn't just faith, but they did have their own explanations (derived from Aristotles) about how the world works. It may have been wrong in retrospect, but as far as any wise man at the time was concerned, they already had a science of sorts. Something that comes and turns the whole cosmic model on its head, damn better be convincing, and at any rate the Pope wasn't convinced. And remember that the Pope had been willing to hear Galileo's arguments, which doesn't strike me as too closed-minded.
Unfortunately, Galileo seems to have had the same kind of personality one can see often on
Now also bear in mind that the Pope at the time was debatably the biggest political figure. A king above kings, if you will. They weren't big on democracy and freedom of speech back then...
And Galileo goes and flames him in public and calls him stupid...
I don't know, seems to me like science-vs-religion had _nothing_ to do with what happened from there. You get in a public pissing contest with the dictator of the realm, you get roughed up in return. It's that simple.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
The Pope who advised Hawking to not study the creation of the universe is dead now.
Coding with assembly is like playing with Legos. Coding an application in assembly is like building a car with Legos.
But even so, it would be "viri", and not "virii". Come on, people, what's with the extra "i"?
I've read that "virus" was a mass term in Latin, and so it didn't have a plural.
...the pope was being silly.
The Catholic church does not object to evolutionary theory, on the premise that "life evolved" and "God created life" are compatible--by way of "God used evolution to create life". (In much the same way, no Christian I've heard of objects to the study of embryology, even though Psalm 139 talks about God "knitting together" the psalmist in his mother's womb.) The reason people like me remain creationists isn't because God couldn't create with evolution, but because common descent isn't compatible with the Genesis account.
So why should the pope object to the idea of God creating using a Big Bang? Theologically speaking, that would be no different from God creating life using evolution.
Hey, this sure seems to me that the only reason this story was posted and accepted by the /. zealots is to once again bash Christianity. Otherwise, this isn't news.
In any case, the Catholic church has been in a weird position for several years. Although they tend to be the most "up front" politically when it comes to such things as baby killing, baby replicating, and contraception (or lack thereof), they are surely not the only Christian organization to have opinions on such things. The Orthodox church, for instance, has welcomed science as a part of our lives. The idea we believe is that there are philosophical differences with what science will teach us. In the most common point of view, and the one espoused by the liberal nut jobs who frequent this forum, is that science will disprove God and religion. On the other hand, there are a fairly decent sized group of us within the Orthodox church that believe science will prove there is, indeed, a God.
I know the nut jobs will point to books like Genesis with responses like, "OMFG HOW CAN THE EARTH BE CREATED IN ONLY 7 DAYS ROFL THAT'S SILLY YOU STUPID CHRISTIAN", they fail to see the bigger picture and story of the book of Genesis, which is not necessarily about the creation of Heaven and Earth, but the creation of the relationship between God and man.
In any case, I'm sure you're fuming by now, so flame on! Ready?! GO!
No one expects the Spanish Inquisition!!
Oh, did I mention that huge income they get is tax free?
No. No it is not. Where did you get this idea? Can you cite a source?
And if you are referring to charitable giving being a tax write off, you'd do well to look at the standard deduction on your US tax form. For the vast majority of us, there is no tax incentive to give charitably, because we are well below the standard deduction.
But income earned by those working for a Church is just as taxable as for anyone else. Sorry.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
Only if he didn't know latin. In latin there is no plural form for virus. It's simply virus no matter how many plant toxins you are speaking about.
"I didn't fancy the thought of being handed over to the Inquisition like Galileo."
The whole "Galileo vs The Vatican" thing has been kind of exaggerated; the hierarchy in Rome didn't get upset with Galileo because of what he was saying, but rather the way that he said it. Galileo started off with a very good reception in Rome, but by the time he was done he had alienated almost everyone with his aggressive nature. He basically demanded that everyone in the Church either accept Copernicanism (which was unproven at the time) or else deny it, and he didn't want to allow Church authorities the third option of simply accepting it as a valid hypothesis until further proof could be found.
"It's OK to study the universe and where it began. But we should not enquire into the beginning itelf because that was the moment of creation and the work of God."
You sir, or madame, are full of shit. I know two people who insist on a literal and flawless interpretation of the bible. If it is in their KJV bible it is true with the translation to english fixing several lies in the vulgate because God inspired the translators. A very nice couple to be around as long as you don't bring up religion.
Viri is the plural of vir, which means man. Oh, my god, men are made up of multiple virus. This explains everything.
Kind of like "Moose", which stems from Canadian Latin ... ;-)
I will have to remember that. Now I'm off to clean the Mountain Dew off my monitor.
The Catholic church has learned its lesson after Galileo. See for example Evolution and the Roman Catholic Church. The main place it continues to fly in the face of scientific opinion is when science affects what it considers to be its own sacred turf of the traditional family, but outside that you can expect the Vatican to be pretty pro-science. (In fact, this is not wholly new. Many outstanding scientists around the time of Galileo were priests at the Jesuit university in Rome). Indeed the Natural Law tradition, which is traditionally strong in Catholic theology, is a motivation to study nature.
The big danger to science as I see it comes from fundamentalists, Christian and otherwise. When scripture is granted authority over actual observations, then science is in trouble.
Really? Then please explain this: http://www.godhatesfags.com/main/index.html. I guess it's just a figment of our collective imagination or yet another liberal conspiracy...
I have seen people misunderstand similar statements. A lot of Christians- and theists in general- say that there are aspects of reality that are inherently unknowable. If God is infinite, and we are finite, it is impossible to fully comprehend Him. To someone like Hawking, who has faith that there is nothing infinite, this can be taken as an afront. That said, Roman Catholics do have a history- especially since the Reformation, of attempting a more rational approach and getting in deep water back-pedaling when it breaks down.
Yes, a religious frontman asking that a subject of science not be studied* is very much like a group of people who execute people in public for such high crimes of rejecting their religion and adultery. Not to say that the church wasn't as bad at one point but how long can we continue to flog the corpses of long dead clerics? (ie, it's getting pretty old to compare todays church with that of the dark ages).
*As stated by many other users; this is likely not the case.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
That's the most recent one I can think of. I believe another poster mentioned the use of hormones for medical issues that also happen to prevent pregnancy.
Blar.
It makes so much more sense, how can two objects be attracted to each other? My monitor isn't hurtling towards my head, and the THEORY of gravity says that it should!
Blar.
Isn't the Bible the work of God?
Isn't everything the work of God in some manner or another? Doesn't that make all quests for knowledge suspect?
!gnineppah si ti ,on hO
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
What people don't know is Hawking didn't publish his alternate theory, because the Pope was afraid of the evidence his discovered that The Flying Spaghetti Monster actually created the universe, for the original book was called "A Brief History of Thyme", obviously referencing the spice which tastes good on spaghetti and meatballs. Yarr. Ramen.
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
Note: this is not mere crude abuse, but a clever reference to a popular British film of the 1980s, as well as a rational response to a god-botherer trying to give advise to a scientist. Honestly... is it just me, or should religion be classed as a mental illness? If not, why not? I mean, how delusional can you get? "There's a guy with a big beard floating on a cloud in the sky who created the world in seven days", I mean, really!! I honestly believe our species and planet is going nowhere until this perfidious nonsense is stamped out, wherever it's found.
Perhaps we could buy an island somewhere, like the geek-friendly Libertarian county some people were trying to establish in New England a few years ago... we could call it Dawkinsia.
Everything I needed to know about life, I learnt from Blake's Seven
How come the pope didn't complain about them studying the middle and end of the universe? I guess that means they aren't God's work?
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
.); enilemit eht nwod kcab yaw eht no swen neeb evah dluow siht os ,hcnurc gib eht sdrawot gnitcartnoc detrats esrevinu eht nehw esrever dluow emit taht deveileb ecno gnikwaH ,lleW .em erofeb ereht tog uoY
With the first link, the chain is forged.
I heard this same anecdote from Hawking himself when he visited Chile a few years ago.
I'm reminded of a story Carl Sagan used to tell. He once asked the pope (John Paul II, of course) what he would do if some scientific discovery proved once and for all and irrefutably that the precepts of Christianity were false. The pope lectured him for a few minutes about how this wasn't possible.
Sagan once asked the Dalai Lama the exact same thing. The Lama's answer?
"I would tell the world, of course! There are millions of buddhists in the world and if I find out their all wrong, I should tell them as soon as possible, and we should look for a better way to live then.
Very different mindset.
Slashdot: news from nerds.
The plural of virus in english is viruses.
He was probably confusing viruses with computer virii. An understandable mistake.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
And yes, I do believe that God created everything. But how everything was created and works is interesting.
Click Click Bloody Click PANCAKES!
And what, pray tell, does getting non-profit do for you? It means you cannot distribute and "profits". in other words, you do not get taxed on monies you do not have expenses for (normally considered profit). In a non-profit, those "profits" have to be retained and used toward business services and the like. They cannot go into someone's pocket.
In most Churches, this isn't an issue. More money would get spent on missions, community services, or just keeping the building from falling apart.
This is not a tax scam. Simply that non-profits can have wildly fluctuating income (people stop donating when economy sucks) yet have relatively steady expenses. The purpose of a non-profit is not to generate a profit, so I do not see the issue.
You may have a point about some organizations abusing this, but the original poster was making a "point" that was so incredibly off base that I had to confront it. Government is not subsidizing religion.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
- Genesis 15:5
He took him outside and said, "Look up at the heavens and count the stars..."
- Psalm 143:5
I remember the days of long ago; I meditate on all your works and consider what your hands have done.*
- Psalm 92:4
For you make me glad by your deeds, O LORD; I sing for joy at the works of your hands*
- Proverbs 6:6
Go to the ant, you sluggard; consider its ways and be wise!
- Luke 12:24
Consider the ravens: They do not sow or reap, they have no storeroom or barn; yet God feeds them. And how much more valuable you are than birds!
*Hebrews 13:7 Remember your leaders, who spoke the word of God to you. Consider the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith.When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
From the IRS:
I'm not an American, but that sounds to me like the church enjoys its income, all of it, tax-free... unless they violate the requirements of section 501(c)(3).
Read and learn about turtles.
damaged by dogma
It's a deliberately "wrong" plural, like "boxen." A common IT geek convention. The fact that more and more people have been whining about it on slashdot over the last couple years speaks volumes about how the site has slowly been taken over by Generation Y kids who probably have no idea what is so interesting about the number 2600.
I just had to point out to somebody that Bill Gates once wrote a port of Basic, for fuck's sake. The guy actually seemed to think that Gates was some MBA who became CEO of Microsoft because of his marketing savvy.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Author? He's an astrophysicist.
Of course he's published books, but anyone calling him an author first and anything else second obviously hasn't done their research.
Damn Journalists.
but that sounds to me like the church enjoys its income, all of it, tax-free
And that is just it. A non-profit is designed no to gain a profit. They are supposed to spend what they take in. They cannot give out a bonus or a dividend like a corporation. Employees still pay payroll taxes. The church still pays property taxes.
501(c)(3) gives donees the ability to right off donations. But as mentioned, the way things are set up, this is of very little value to most. In some cases, they can get around state sales taxes, but I believe this is a state by state decision.
And these "breaks" are available to all non-profits. It is a decision made by our gov't to not meddle in the volunteer activities of anyone -- whether it is the Heart & Lung Association, Bible Thumpers for Jesus, or Wacky Wiccans for Weekend Wiki-boarding. These organizations are voluntary, and gov't considers it an extension of the individual.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
His chair has an American accent, but he is British. His chair sounds like a computer geek from the '80s. Wonder why... :-)
${YEAR+1} is going to be the year of Linux on the desktop!
"Any religion that cannot survive a collision with the truth is not worth many regrets."
Catholicism is an irredeemable, bogus system that has historically been explicitly and specifically dedicated to the promotion of human subjugation and misery, and the prevention of human development at any cost. Hawking's motives are the diametric opposite of these things...so it makes sense that Ratzinger would dislike what he is doing.
I'm trying to figure out how the fact that the beginning of the universe is the work of God changes anything. Supposedly, EVERYTHING is the work of God. Why does it matter if we watch?
It's been a long time.
In regards to the origin of the universe, I believe that the great Donny Rumsfeld said it best at a 2002 press conference: "As we know, There are known knowns. There are things we know we know. We also know There are known unknowns. That is to say We know there are some things We do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns, The ones we don't know We don't know." --Feb. 12, 2002, Department of Defense news briefing
First you crawl back up into your mother then are sucked out of there by your dad. Wonderfull. I hope they have shrinks in the pre-life.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
So what exactly explains the people who insist on creationism, denying every shred of evidence and fact that supports evolution? Are they just pulling their 6 day creation story out of thin air? Did Answers in Genesis just have millions of dollars fall from the sky in their fundraiser to build a creationism "museum"? And I'm fairly certain that Jerry Falwell has some sort of audiance (unfortunately).
As to why these persons are conservative, I'll never know, however in case you haven't noticed, the US president is an evangelical Christian. Why the fundamentalists ignore the part of the new testiment that is actually about Jesus speaking in favor of the old testiment, Paul's writings, and revelations, I'll never know, but they do. Ignoring or denying that they exist is like ignoring the giant squid at the kitchen table.
THAT is an excellent observation. So few are willing to acknowledge it or even see it. The absence of skepticism perpetuates the behavior.
Opinion:=TMyOpinion.Create(Me);
Is it possible that the Pope was having a little toungue-in-cheek humor with Hawking when he made this comment?
I'm not Roman Catholic, but I would have to agree.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
Before criticizing Pope JPII, please read his encyclica "fides et ratio" (faith and reason). It's dangerous to comment on quotes taken out of context.
"I'd like to share a revelation that I've had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species and I realized that you're not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You're a plague and we are the cure."
-Agent Smith
Sorry, couldn't resist.
Hawking's reply was to tell the Pope to go fuck himself. Of course, by the time he was done typing it, the Pope was in another country. He now keeps this speedy come back loaded in memory, in case the situation should ever arise again.
"We shall party like the Greeks of old! You know the ones I mean." - HedonismBot
Actually, we're both right, since we're talking about different talks at different moments.
The civilized discussion I've mentioned and letting Galileo go was _before_ Galileo published that book.
The trial and imprisonment that you mention were _after_ he published the book.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
where did god come from?
He has been trying to figure out how to get into her pants, but the answer has eluded him!
Meh.
In the end, every fact you haven't personally experienced is based on faith.
Perhaps, but religious "facts", unlike scientific facts, require a large degree of doublethink to accept.
For example, you have never been into space. You may have never looked out the window of an aircraft, yet you are told that the earth is round. You can accept this fact, in contridiction to your own expieriences of a flat earth, as locally the round earth looks like a flat one. What you have accepted as fact, and what you expierience, are indeed compatable. There were no mental gymnastics required to accept the idea of a spherical earth, once given gravity.
However, for religious facts, virtually every one contridicts our expieriences and knowladge. We require doublethink to accept them. The definition of doublethink is one accepts a fact that one knows to be untrue or impossible, and simultaniously forgets that one ever thought or could ever have thought otherwise. The best example of this is clearly a physisist or indeed, any scientist believing in the miracle of loaves and fishes from the new testament. It's clear that numerous physical laws are grossly violated in the parable, yet there are learned, educated people who hold the story to be absolute fact, despite the reality that they would consider you mad if you recounted witnessing a similar event. Doublethink at its purest.
So scientific facts such as the conservation of mass, the theory of gravity, the theory of evolution, the average height of a population, the theory of flight, etc; are all acceptable facts which can be shown to agree, eventually, with our own expierience and common sense. Religious facts such as Noah's Ark, the miracle of the loaves and fishes, the ressurection of Jesus, meeting Gabriel on Hira, the incarnations of Vishnu, the visions of Joseph Smith, etc; are all facts which can never been shown to agree with either our own expierience or common sense. They are also, unlike scientific, completely unverifiable, uncheckable, unreproducable, and in general, poorly or ambiguously stated.
Doublethink is essential if one is to accept religious facts, especially if one also accepts reason and the scientific method. Only in this way is it possible to completely accept two totally contridictory facts. Humans are quite capable of believing that both A and not A will hold simultaniously, though this can hardly be described as a healthy state of mind. In the words of Mark Twain: "Faith is believing what you know ain't so". Science on the other hand is believing what you know, or what you can deduce, to be true.
May the Maths Be with you!
If ``atheist'' is the word for someone who doesn't believe in God, what's the word for someone who doesn't believe everything Hawking says?
Not at all dissimilar to the Republican War on Science. They have chosen to embrace those who make their livlihood causing global warming, so they naturally believe the energy industry think-tanks who say that global warming has nothing to do with the CO2 that we're putting into the atmosphere. It's all a coincidence. You can't believe those scientists; here, believe our scientists instead. Because we make campaign contributions.
That's because the Big Bang theory WAS developed by a religious person, namely Georges Lemaître.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Lema%C3%AEtr
A Roman Catholic priest!
From that link
I do agree though, that this is the best explanation of God. Something we can never possibly understand.
God is timeless. ~ The Universe had NO time before the Bang.
Where is God? God is everywhere. ~ The Universe is everywhere.
etc...
= The Universe IS God
Mind you, the theory DOES threaten the beliefs of the Fundamentalists. Of course, suggesting that the world has a history beyond 6500 years ago does as well.
Generation Y kids who probably have no idea what is so interesting about the number 2600
What is so interesting about the number 2600?
Abaddon: An Xbox 360 Indie game
Protestant or Catholic, they both have two major components in common... guilt and fear. I was a pentecostal for over 20 years and I know guilt and fear. Sure, you're free when you accept Christ, but you never REALLY get over your fear of "what if I'm doing/did something wrong, I'll go to hell". Go ahead and brainwash yourself into requiring some super god character to absolve you from your "sins". Religion is a scam. I am now agnostic/athiest and am TRULY FREE!
Meh.
Damn, i just commented, so i can't mod this guy up.(in this story)
I am unsure whether it is true though, maybe people have to be tought blind belief to need it, and only some can escape.
A well, i can live with people blindly believing stuff, as long as they don't bother stuff. Also there is a (maybe subtile)difference with blind belief and implict assumption, in that if a person discovers he has the second, he will admit it is an assumption. If he has the first he will continue saying it is true-as-in-true, not as in assumption.
Especially guilt for the Catholics. It is no wonder the Pope was afraid, he bases his entire existence on his guilt and fear... and actually believes in himself. The Pope is always one screwed up fellow, if he isn't when he starts, he will be very soon.
Meh.
If it is in their KJV bible it is true
Interesting, since we KNOW that King James REWROTE parts of the bible that didn't fit with his ideas. Yet people claim that the Bible cannot have been altered by man for his own purposes...
He who worked these wonders might not be God himself. Can he be so naive to believe that he is the only one? Maybe there is a God beyond and above him! Soon we will think we are Gods. The evolution of all beings is that they eventually think they are Gods. Even children reach vain Godliness from their point of view.
-- Betting on the survival of the media industry is a serious risk. I advise investing elsewhere.
As was correctly pointed out by many readers, this quote is nearly two decades old. It is only brought up by the news media from its obsession with attacking the Catholic Church. Apparently, the DaVinci heresy is not enough.
This re-circulated attack ignores the fact that Mr. Hawking didn't acknowledge that Pope John Paul II specifically expressed regret with the way the Galileo case was handled. Furthermore, it propagates the myth that Galileo was an unwilling victim of an aggressive inquisition. At the time, the Pope was one of Galileo's biggest advocates until he refused to use discretion in the presentment of his ideas.
The Church has always welcomed the discussion of new ideas but expects those that are not part of the Magisterium to use discretion in the presentment of these ideas. This is because the Church is charged with the responsibility to be the "buttress of Truth" and must be sure that it is, in fact, discerning that Truth. Sometimes that process can take centuries.
Galileo, Luther, and others who were consumed with impatience and chose not to use discretion were the very catalysts and equal cooperators in the circumstances that befell them.
Without the freedom to be born, there are no other freedoms.
NT
SearchIRC - Now with live chat directory!
Not only is there a direct command to Muslims to seek learning wherever it can be found, there has also been a prominent strain of thought that holds studying creation to be meritorious. You can see this in the life of Nobel-winning physicist Abdus Salam. He saw his faith and his research as inseparable.
This isn't flamebait, it's the truth. Religious leaders make a living by telling people what god is. If someone else comes along and contradicts them, that costs them some of their credibility.
When the Catholic church preached geocentric theory, they felt threatened by Galileo (despite the fact that the sun revolving around the earth is NOT a prerequisite for the existance of god). When creationists insist upon a literal interpretation of genesis, they fell threatened by biology and astrophysics (despite the fact that god's existance does not rest on a literal interpretaion of the bible). Neither heliocentric theory, nor the big bang, nor evolution contradicts the idea that god exists, but they do all conflict with the strict religious doctrine of the die-hard beleivers. People who insist that you can't beleive in god and science are setting up a false dichotomy.
All manner of anti-scientific doctrine are God(TM) instead of plain old fashioned "god". The difference between the two is that anyone with faith can believe in god, but only someone who subscribes to a specific religion can beleive in that religion's specific God. The people who simply beleive in god aren't threatened by scientific inquiry, while the people who preach about the existance of God get defensive whenever the facts contradict their specific scripture.
After all, if we learn more about the universe, that helps the people of faith better understand the being they beleive in - but if what we learn contradics what the preachers say, than those preachers are out of a job. It isn't science vs. religion, and never has been - it's people who sell their specific version of God trying to put down ideas that make them less creidble. Which is exactly why you get popes and such telling people like Hawking to "get off their turf".
It really annoys me when people mod down opposing views instead of posting a counter arguement. If you disagree with what I say, then state what you disagree with, and make an arguement.
Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
I would be surprised, if it were true, but it doesn't seem to be. First of all, it defies logic -- that the Church would a conference on cosmology at which the Pope would simply tell people not to study cosmology -- and second, as far as I can tell from a search of several archives of Papal speeches, the only Vatican conference on cosmology that John Paul II addressed was on July 6, 1985, and his remarks to that conference do not include even the remotest suggestion that the beginnings of the universe, or any other matter within the scope of scientific investigation, should not be investigated.
He does suggest that science alone is inadequate to completely understand the mysteries of creation, and that human understanding of our role in the universe must be informed by more than science, but that's not even remotely like discouraging investigation by science of, well, anything.
Wait a second here...I don't see how studying how the universe began has anything to do with God. Considering we really don't know the extent of the universe or beyond, the universe could be but a smaller part of something even bigger, similar how our solar system is to the galaxy. So, it's entirely possible that the space area is truely infinate. Now assume for a moment that God does exist. Assuming our universe was created by suppose natural or unnatrual means, it would in no way prove or disprove the existance of God. And regardless of our the universe was created, it's entirely possible that God created it anyway by method of the bigbang or what not. So, assuming the universe was created through natural or unnatural means(meaning following physical laws we are currently familiar with or not) by God would lead to confussion as to why the Pope would be concerned...maybe he's not so concerned about disproving God exists but actually proving God exists...
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. ~Albert Einstein
In a sense, JPII is actually right there: it's impossible for science to prove anything about an entity outside the observable universe.
Let me use WoW as an example. Let's say the observable universe is WoW. Even the wisest scholar living _in_ the WoW universe, even with the best gnomish instruments, can only observe and measure things that are _inside_ this universe.
What it _can't_ observe is the universe's creator: Blizzard.
Can such a scholar prove, with only the data in his universe, that Blizzard doesn't exist? No. He just doesn't have the data on which to base such a proof. The best his science can do is state that the universe can be explained well enough without this mystical "Blizzard" entity at the helm.
Same is it with RL science and God. Science _can't_ prove that God doesn't exist. All science can do is explain the universe well enough without needing some "God" entity. But that's all.
No, seriously, I know that we all love to troll and bait the christians. But put your thinking cap for a second and you'll realize the same: if a "creator" exists _outside_ the universe he created (just like Blizzard exists outside the WoW universe), science can't prove or disprove this creator in any form or shape. It just can't get any data from there. At all. Ever.
Not to mention that it's not even possible to prove a negative like that. As long as science can't know every single atom in the universe, _and_ go back in time and observe what happened at every single moment since Big Bang, you simply can't have enough proof that something _doesn't_ exist even _inside_ your universe. It's like proposing to prove that a green three-legged rabbit doesn't exist and never existed. You only need one specimen to prove that it does exist, but it's simply unfeasible to prove that nowhere in the universe such a creature ever existed.
The best science can do is apply Occam's Razor. Basically to say "well, we can explain the universe perfectly well even without some 'God' hypothesis, so we don't need such a hypothesis." But that's all.
Plus, some of the precepts of Christianity are pretty much notions, ideals or moral judgments. How do you scientifically disprove "love thy neighbour"? How would you scientifically disprove "thou shalt not kill"? No, seriously. They're moral precepts that reflect a certain set of values, not something you can run through a spectrograph or whatever other instrument.
So basically, yes, JPII was right: it's not even possible. So while it makes for some good christian-bashing material to compare the answers there, in practice it's about as relevant as asking "what would you do if gravity just suddenly disappeared?" It seems to me like "it's not even possible" is a perfectly valid answer there. Sure, it's not the most interesting or imaginative kind of an answer, but nevertheless it is a valid one.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Or God made Physicists?
Or God made physics?
Or God made the things that made Physicists make Physics?
[Headache]
Oh, the hell with it. The Universe was created 6735 years ago and My Grandpappy Warn't No Monkey!
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
No one expects the papal inquisition!
The only cosmology conference Pope John Paul II appears to have ever addressed at the Vatican seems to be the one he addressed on July 6, 1985. His remarks to that conference do not include any suggestion not to study the origins of the universe; if anything, it praises such research, though it cautions that such research should not be the sole basis of our understanding of our place in the universe, and that that understanding must be informed by disciplines that go beyond the empirical (and, likewise, that those disciplines themselves must be informed by the findings of science.)
The biggest fear of JP II was that we'd find their so called God. Imagine the embarrasment factor upon learning that they'd gotten it all wrong.
Why do science and God always have a problem co-exisiting? Its always been my understanding from the various history and physics classes I've taken that scientists like Einstein and Newton have acknowledged the existance of a God and his influence.
It's OK; he already has the comfy chair...
[ Damn, now I'm going to hell. ]
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
God doesn't want you peeking under his robe.
What?
Where did he get the "mutual" from? Obviously the church didn't comprehend Galileo or Copernicus, but I would say that Galileo understood their message quite clearly.
"Shut up or we'll make you sorry that you didn't"
Not too hard to comprehend.
"Science is like a blabbermouth who ruins a movie by telling you how it ends. There are some things we don't want to know — important things!" - Ned Flanders {The Simpsons}
"......if you can penetrate through the zones of the skies and the earth, then penetrate, you will not do so without authority." -Qur'an (55:33)
"Do not the Unbelievers see that the heavens and the earth were joined together (as one unit of Creation) before We clove them asunder? And We got every living thing out of the water. Will they then not believe?" -Qur'an (21:30)
"Travel through the earth and see how Allah originated creation." -Qur'an (29:20)
"We have built the universe with power; verily, we are expanding it." -Qur'an (51:47)
"We will show them our proofs in the horizons, and within themselves, until they realize that this is the truth. Is your Lord not sufficient as a witness of all things?" -Qur'an (41:53)
"And He has subjected to you (man), from Him, all that is in the heavens and on earth: behold, in that are signs indeed for those who reflect" -Qur'an (45:13)
No, that is not the Bible, but John Paul II stated repeatedly all Abrahamic faiths (Judism, Christianity, Islam) worship the same God.
And I'm sure someone remembers "Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?"
(%i1) factor(777353);
(%o1) 777353
So in other words, you're saying that God only had one publication (the Bible), which included no citations of prior work and would not hold up under peer review.
The Inquisition (here we go!)
My patience is infinite, my time is not.
And then read The Jury Is In, which carefully analyzes the infamous Evidence That Demands a Verdict.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
whatever 'God' may be, the singularity, or what not... at least those or he or she or it, who created us gave us brain power to look for 'God'. So what's the problem with looking for God, even if you never find God? It's kind of like looking for your true calling, and never finding it, which is what 99.9% of people do - they end up doing something not because it's their true calling but because someone or some thing, indoctrinated them at an early age into thinking, OMG, this is the next 'big thing', e.g. software engineering, or nuclear physics or whatever....
Whoever said you have to find what you're looking for? (sorry if this sounds a bit cynical, but it is what it is)
'A lie if repeated often enough, becomes the truth.' - Goebbels
I've never played WoW, but I see where you're going with the concept, and I can work within that framework.
You've got one major hole in your analogy, and the same hole drops back into the "real" world.
There exist people in your analogy who live outside the "universe" and yet can still act on it. In your case, the "God" of WoW (represented by "Blizzard") actually exists, and while the actors of God may not be corpeal inside the universe (ie, no Blizzard employee can physically manifest himself in the WoW universe) the ACTIONS of God CAN - and those actions are not bound by the laws of that universe.
So if we take the point of view of a WoW person, everything that goes on in that world is logically consistant with the "physical" laws that govern that universe. That person could, via the scientific method, eventually derive all the laws of his universe. But if God (via a Blizzard employee) mucks with that universe in a way that is inconsistant with the laws of that universe, then the WoW inhabitant who observes the consequences now has incontrivertible proof that some form of "God" exists. He may never be able to derive the true form and nature of that "God", but he CAN prove the existance of SOME God.
Still with me? If I'm sitting here, minding my own business, and suddenly the +10 Ultra Sword of Power pops into my hands, and there is no mechanism within the laws of the universe that would allow a +10 Ultra Sword of Power to pop into my hands, then I have proof that God exists.
Now here's the thing - there is no observable action within our universe that can *only* be explained via a supernatural act of God.There are many things that could POTENTIALLY only be acts of God (because we don't understand the physical mechanism yet) but the set of Potential Acts of God get smaller and smaller every day, as our understanding of the physical nature of the universe grows. Every time we discover a new physical truth, the amount of space that God has to work in gets smaller.
So far, it appears that EVERYTHING may have a physical explanation, and once that day is reached (assuming it will) then at that point, you've reduced the potential action space for God to a single point - the creation of the universe. And as that cannot be proven or disproven, and as that means that God, best case, created the Universe and then went away... well then, that pretty much wraps up God's utility, doesn't it?
Let me put it this way - 2000 years ago, God was responsible for everything - weather, seasons, birth, death, love... you name it. Slowly but surely over the years, science has chewed away at God's areas of action, such that now we're pretty well reduced to "God created it, but otherwise does nothing". That's a pretty good argument for the probability of the nonexistance of God, isn't it?
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
Sony ha
I'm not sure about payroll taxes, but churches do not pay property taxes in the US.
__
Do ya feel happy-go-lucky, punk?
Nothing against all that, and it's even insightful and all. I'm not discussing the probability of God existing, nor the utility of a God, nor saying you should pray to a God that may have buggered off on vacation. I'm just saying that it's impossible for someone to _prove_ that God doesn't exist, which is what Sagan asked and what JPII answered. I.e., that technically speaking JPII was right.
Mind you, it's the kind of "right" which, as you've noted, doesn't have any further practical uses. Still, it's a perfectly logical answer. That's all I'm saying.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Some states make exemptions. Some localities do. There is no federal mandate. If I am mistaken, cite a source.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
I mispoke (although some believe that King James did have slight altercates installed into the translation.
At any rate it seems that all christians are not in agreement about which books are or are not in the bible.
There are many who believe that parts of the bible have been corrupted by various parties. And before you discount them all as 'wackjobs' I'd like to point out that Muslims hold this belief as well.
Then there are the matter of the omitted books. The argument against which is 'well, God wanted the bible to be rearranged.' Ya, ok.
No, the real question is: What if a Blizzard programmer enters the game dressed as a Prior and starts demanding worship?
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
I thought there was finally some sense coming into thise group of backwards asstards and the non-thinking losers who follow their fairytales.
Condeming people to death for desiring to have sex....the urge for reproduction...the strongest and most neccesary urge of them all . And based on what? Much-edited stories of a cultist from 2000 years ago.
Oh well, if stupid people want to kill themselves I shouldn't be upset. Less load on the planet after all.
Blar.
science is an antidote to superstition which is a very different concept then blind faith.
Blind faith is the persistant, willful belief in something despite the complete absence of corroborating proof. I fail to see any practical difference between that and superstition. (This is coming from someone who up until a year or two ago self-identified as a Christian.)
Hope is blind faith and there is not antidote for hope
If your hope is based solely on blind faith then I pity you. I have tremendous hope for the future, both on a personal level and for mankind as a whole. It's based not on blind faith, but on an ongoing analysis of where we are, what our society is doing, and a reasonable projection of our current social and technological trends. I have "faith" in mankind because I see that despite the horrors that we bring upon ourselves, the general trend is very much in the positive.
My hope has nothing to do with invisible gods or forces outside of human capability. To claim that hope can't exist without faith is to devalue humanity.
Boundless Expansion, Self-Transformation, Dynamic Optimism, Intelligent Technology, Spontaneous Order- BEST DO IT SO!
Yah, but didn't Mooses part the Red Sea?
I would assume you're equally troubled that the Catholic Church no longer holds to the doctrine that the Earth is the center of the solar system. Should they have stood by their original beliefs "right or wrong"?
How did you come to respect this idea of "unshakeable beliefs?"
= The Universe IS God
Easy proof of this, with two simple premises:
Premise 1: The universe is "everything that exists", i.e. whatever it is that exists, summed up together, is the universe.
Premise 2: God is "the greatest thing that exists", i.e. God is not merely a part of some greater thing; nothing subsumes God.
Therefore God cannot coherently be something IN the universe, for to do so would contradict premise 2 (God being a part of something, while God is by definition not subsumed by anything).
But also, God cannot coherently be outside the universe, for that would contradict premise 1 (something existing outside the universe, while the universe by definition subsumes all that exists).
So any use of the term "God" to mean something other than just "the universe" is incoherent and such a "God" cannot therefore be real. So to coherently hold that such a greatest-of-all-beings "God" exists, one must equate such a God with the Universe. And back on topic, the investigation of the universe is just the investigation of God, as the old natural philosophers (aka scientists) said all along.
Of course, one could then question what kinds of things can be said to "exist" (e.g. are there "immaterial substances"?), but that's just what the scientific method addresses: the use of logic and experience to determine what does or even could exist.
And of course, if you want to mean something different by "the universe" (e.g. the "known universe" or the "local universe" or "this plane of reality" or whatever), or by "God" (e.g. some really powerful bearded guy flying around space shooting lightning bolts and such), then all this is null and void. But given the standard philosophical definitions of "the universe" and "God" used throughout western history, it seems pretty conclusive that the two must be one and the same.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
KRYTEN: Take war. War is a wonderful thing here! In fifty years
time, the second world war will start-- backwards!
CAT: And that's a good thing?
KRYTEN: Millions of people will come to life. Hitler will
retreat across Europe, liberate France and Poland, disband the
Third Reich, and bog off back to Austria!
RIMMER: We're smash hits here! We'd be crazy to leave.
LISTER: Rimmer, we don't belong here! This place is crazy!
RIMMER: Crazy? Death, disease, famine--there's none of that
here.
KRYTEN: There's no crime! The first night we were here, a
mugger jumped us and forced 50 pounds into my wallet at
knifepoint!
LISTER: Okay, okay! But look at the flipside of the coin. It's
not all good. Take someone like, say... St. Francis of Assissi.
In this universe, he's the petty-minded little sadist who goes
around maiming small animals! Or Santa Claus--what a bastard!
RIMMER: Eh?
LISTER: He's the big fat git who sneaks down chimneys and
steals all the kid's favorite toys!
Mr Davidson, founder of the Harley Davidson Company, died and went to heaven for judgement. At the gates, St. Peter told Mr Davidson, "since you've been such a good man and your motorcycles have changed the world, your reward is, you can hang out with anyone you want in Heaven."
Mr Davidson thought about it for a minute and then said, "I want to hang out with God. I have a question for Him".
St. Peter took Mr Davidson to the Throne Room and introduced him to God.
He then asked God, "Aren't you the inventor of women?"
God Said, "Ah, yes. Indeed I am".
"Well," said Mr Davidson, "Professional to professional, you have some major design flaws in your design."
1- There's too much inconsistency in the front-end protrusion.
2- It chatters constantly at high speeds.
3- Most of the rear ends are too soft and wobble too much.
4- The intake is placed way too close to the exhaust.
5- Plus the monthly down time and aggravation are outrageous, and don't even get me started talking about the maintenance costs.
"Hmmmm, you do raise some good points" replied God, "Lets have a wee look."
God went to his Celestial super computer, typed in a few things and waited for the results. After a moment God said, "Well, it may be true that my invention seems to be flawed, but according to these numbers, more men ride my invention than yours.."
w2^7me out.
All states (and DC) make exemptions. I didn't say there was a federal mandate.
__
Do ya feel happy-go-lucky, punk?
Okay.... So, when the ancient Greeks developed mathematics and philosophy, and began to question their own religious beliefs, eventually rejecting the idea of the Olympian Pantheon of gods residing in a great palace on the top of Mount Olympus ...they were IN THE WRONG?!
The Greeks even came up with an idea to explain the discrepancy between pre-scientific belief and scientific understanding: there was the "mythos" (the sum total of non-scientific belief -- myths, legends, folklore, etc.) and then there was the "logos" (the sum total of scientific knowledge and logical thought; the word "logic" is derived from "logos"). They recognized the fact that people have a natural curiosity about the world around them, they want to know how things work, but in the absence of science all they can do is make shit up.
Had it not been for the thorough vindication of Galileo in the sciences, the RCC probably would *never* have issued their apology for how they (mis)treated him -- and even then it was over 300 years after the fact! That is not something for the church to be proud of. It is something to be ashamed of.
"All hands, BRACE FOR IMPACT!"
It sounds like he meant to say that Muslims ALSO hold the belief that they are all wackjobs.
It's not a lie. It's the truth with lossy compression.
It's not just the truth, it's the definition of fundamentalism - the belief that what is written in a holy book is competely true.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Because most Christians seemingly ignore that the entire point of Christ was because Jeudaism* was seemingly following a flawed version of what god wanted and that Jesus was sent in to replace the old testament** with the new testament.
The problem is the new*** testament is about loving thy neighbour and giving up wealth to help the poor and not judging lest you be judged. None of this fits into the politcal spectrum of these people.
*out of interest not what I believe, each religion is equal in my mind but that is essentially what Christianity was founded on.
**which is for the most part a direct translation of the teachings Jesus was preaching against.
***new as in replacement, as in the old is deprecated.
Kinda makes me wonder how would you explain that kind of things to a Tauren. Or, heck, to a human living 5000 years ago. I can just see it :P
God: "So I saw that the database was corrupt and..."
Moses: "What's a database, Lord?"
God: "uhh... how do I explain this... uhh, you know there's this data representing your world..."
Moses: "I don't understand, Lord? Like a map or painting?"
God: "No, in a sense it _is_ your world, and everything in it."
Moses: "So the world was corrupt?"
God: "*sigh* Yeah, whatever, the world was corrupt. You all were more corrupt than a senator... err... than a Grand Vizier. Anyway, so our database admin Noah saved the game files on tape and I did a full format."
Moses: "I don't understand, Lord? Database admin? Game files?"
God: "*sigh* Uh, you know, the models and all for these animals and... *sigh* He put one of each animal in a big ark, ok? And then I formatted... (gah, how do I explain a format to this guy)... right, I _flooded_ it all to get rid of the old animals and people."
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
does anyone have the actual quote (in context) from JPII? I kind of find it hard to believe...
_______
DIY Linux virus removal:
1) [root@localhost ~]# rm -rf /
My understanding has always been that this is tongue-in-cheek, like "boxen", "unices", etc., though it does seem to be more widely-used than either of those other plurals. I've only seen it in IT circles though.
That is incorrect. Latin virus (roughly "gunge") is singular; the plural would be viri (though obviously, with the original Latin meaning, you wouldn't usually talk about multiple "gunges").
Duh, I just realised what you meant by a mass term -- I thought you meant plural. Yes, we mean the same thing. But I don't think there's nothing to stop people from using the plural now that the meaning has changed.
There is no reason that science is unable to make judgements about the universe as a whole, and no reason that philosophy cannot draw sound conclusions about the forces involved in creating it.
For example, Einstein was able to show that it was impossible for the universe to be completely unbounded, and according to his theory of relativity claimed that space behaved more like a sphere than a flat surface, in that it was unbounded but not infinite. Thats a pretty big claim, but he made it by simply observing the nature of the universe immediately available to us.
In the same sense, I believe that you _can_ disprove Christian philosophy (or any other philosphy for that matter), simply by beginning with its basic principles, and extrapolating them to their expected results. For example, suppose you believe that there exists an infinitely powerful, infinitely good, all-loving, all-knowing God, who possesses a form of intelligence similiar to our own, whose sense of morality is fundamentally the same as ours, and who is directly or indirectly responsible for the universe as we know it. I believe that accurately describes the Christian ideal. Starting with this concept, what sort of universe would you expect as a result?
A) A perfect universe full of beings in harmony with their creator and his creation, able to find purpose, understanding, and happiness throughout their lives.
B) A universe rife with pain and misery, where humans struggle to comprehend their place, and are so isolated from their creator that they argue with one another about whether the effects of his existence are observable enough to draw any conclusion about him?
So does this mean they still held the sun revolved around earth until 1992 :)
In an admittedly short search, the only address I could find by Pope John Paul II to a Cosmology conference is this one, which was given at a conference in 1985. It does not say anything about avoiding any particular aspect of the creation of the Universe. Another side note, it was never the teaching of the Church that the Universe revolved around the sun. This is a common misconception.
This can more appropriately be attributed to the word "banana" than the fruit itself.
...will you find an explanation about the epistemologial separation between faith and reason using an MMORPG as an illustrative metaphor.
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
I find this really hard to believe. Theologians have been talking about the moment of creating for millennia, no problems there. There has never been any Christian doctrine that anything should not be enquired into and analysed as best we can. I suspect the Pope meant something like "we will never have a complete understanding of the moment of creation because it is an act of God". He may have phrased it badly (he was not a native speaker of English) and Hawking misunderstood it. An account from someone else present of exactly what was said mich help clarify it./
Unlike other major religions which are centered around an infallible and omnipotent god(s), Tibetan Buddhism has no such show (or science)-stopper but all doctrines are open to argumentation and reinterpretation.
Since the Tibetan branch of Buddhism developed over the last two millenia in a region steeped in ancient animistic superstitions, the spirits and demons became part of the Tibetan tantric Buddhism as well. However alongside this lively inner world of spirituality developed a parallel scholastic framework studying the external nature of the world as well. In Tibet great discoveries in the fields of medicin, philosophy, astrology and astronomy were made not despite of the Buddhist world view but because of it. There was no god or Pope to dictate dogma "just because" but the monastic scholars were encouraged to debate and challenge existing knowledge. And they still are, although in today's Tibet occupied by the Gestapo-like Chinese the monasteries have been largely destroyed and neutered of independent thought.
Against that background the Dalai Lama's reply of being open to re-evaluating reality based upon new facts is exactly what one should expect from him. Perhaps the one thing he would be most hesitant to relinguish is the necessity of compassion as a force for good for the human kind, since he happens to represent the 14th reincarnation of the Buddhist deity of compassion.
If you must link "PR play" and the Dalai Lama, you need to leave aside the scientific domain and turn to issues of faith. With the Chinese regime hell-bent on extinguishing the light of the Tibetan civilization and nationhood, the Dalai Lama has put his, and his people's, faith in the power of compassion eventually winning over the doctine of brutality, greed and ignorance that drives the Chinese totalitarianism.
Unfortunately in this major issue of faith (instead of scientific reasoning), both the Chinese and the supposedly freedom-loving western world are proving the Tibetans' faith in compassion wrong. Instead, political and materialistic opportunism is making sure that the world remains indifferent to the Tibetans' struggle for survival. The Dalai Lama's calls for the world to adopt more compassionate policies (instead of the existing hard values) are only accepted as good PR in the west by the politicians who don't mind being associated with that message but who are unlikely to lift a finger to help the Tibetan people since business links with the occupying Chinese nazi regime would be affected.
Finally, it is interesting that neither the Vatican nor the religious world leaders like Bush or Blair are taking a stand against the Chinese genocide of the Tibetans, their religion, language and culture. John Paul II probably felt a lot of human, umm, compassion towards the plight of the Tibetan people, having himself grown up in the Russian-occupied Poland. But even the brutal military occupation he suffered from pales in comparison with what the Tibetans are facing in the hands of the Chinese...
Should invading one's peaceful neighbours be opposed, or rewarded with trade deals?
You can consider them wackjobs if you also include Christians and Jewish people under the same category.
If they could control their fear of an un-proven eternal torment, they would be able to use technology to nullify the threat of aids.
Man, did you go to a class or something to learn canned arguments to defend your *snicker* faith?
Blar.
So tell me. Why is it OK for people to neglect the most deep-seated biological need in order to push away a man-made system of fear with no basis in reality?
If they dismiss the unprovable claims of 'hell' and 'sin', then they can have their sex and avoid AIDS too!
Sounds like my way is more efficient and better for humanity in general.
But go on...feel smug in your happy little system of belief.
Blar.
Here's a tribute...test your Stephen Hawking reaction time, or maybe its time to get pro-wheelchair 2, outselling Tony Hawk
Hawking puts forward very focefully that our understanding of the Universe probes that a God is completely unnecessary, and thus irrelevant.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
For what it's worth, it was my Catholic upbringing that almost made me an agnostic. Science brought me back into the fold, though as a very strong Deist instead of a Catholic. I've noticed that many scientists, as pointed out above, are or become deeply spiritual (though not religious--there is a very fundamental difference) after enough time studying their field, especially if it's something like cosmology or biology. Newton, Einstein, all the great minds...I wouldn't dare presume to put myself up there as I've not yet even finished university, but it seems interesting that so many serious scientists trend this way...
I agree with the parent and another post higher up that the religious/institutional end of it seems to be more a social engineering scheme than anything, an institution designed to solidify and keep power for the ruling group. That's all well and good (not really), but I wish they'd come right out and say it, instead of insulting everyone in the fold with a triple-digit IQ...
~Eien no Inori wo Sasagete~ Searching for my Hatsumi...
... and creationism does.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
He vomits some cookies and milk in the process. :-)
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
I didn't investigate your statement "All beliefs are choices" enough to state if it was correct, if I didn't respond before I made a decision, you may not get a response at all! I simply wanted to express my initial doubt in that statement's validity.
I'm really starting to dig analogies more. I'm starting to think they're a wonderful tool for showing exactly where one's thought process is incomplete or lacking. Your refutation of this analogy has lead me to now accept your statement that "All beliefs are choices". My point with Newton, regardless if you agree, was that sometimes we're simply not given the correct evidence, tools or expertise to make the right choice about what to believe. This didn't disprove your assertion that beliefs are choices, and in fact you showed the two ideas are unrelated.
It's interesting we've sidetracked into science, because I'd like to connect this vastness idea about science back to religion and the burden of choice. Just as there are many different branches, fields and sub-fields of science, there are many different branches, sects and sub-sects in religion. Just as one cannot master all of modern science, I argue one cannot become an expert in all religions. For you, Christianity has brought you measured improvement in your life, so there is no compelling reason to leave it and some excellent reasons not to. For someone without religion, how can they devote enough time to objectively measure each in their ability to improve lives and disseminate truth? One possibility, like the book I mentioned, is to seek the common threads between the religions and use those for light. A thinking person may not just find Christianity to be comfortable, but other religions as well.
Again, I left off some words. I now understand the importance of belief over action, that is what our discussion was about. To reiterate, I came to realize that while people require evidence (actions) to illuminate one's beliefs, God is not as limited and can see what one truly accepts and what they merely project, actions are just a result of belief. I still cannot reconcile myself with the faith requirements that Christianity claims God has made.
Hopefully you have enough for a book by now. Don't worry, I won't demand a cut!
Easy. Analyze the lives of the teachers. Analyze the cultural conditions that resulted in the formation of the religion. Analyze the teachings of the teachers. Compared to the vastness of scientific knowledge, knowledge about most religious teachers is quite limited. Finally, you can look in the lives of those who adhere to particular worldviews. Although this is subjective, you can learn a lot by seeing the ways in which religions and individuals interact.
Though my assertions of truth may not hold much authority, I make them nonetheless. Of all the religions I have studied, Christianity is the truest, and Christian faith does indeed do wonderful things.
Faith should not be viewed as a requirement. Faith is a comforting, strengthening element that adds significant meaning to religion. It is something that is intentionally built over time through walking with God. To determine whose faith is most blessed, compare Christian stories of faith with Islamic, Jewish, or any other religion. The end result of this search led to Christianity, although the relative availability does vary.
:) I do not mean to impose, I'm m
I think that acknowledgement of Christ's teaching and merely admitting the possibility that He may have been divine may be enough, as I've elaborated on before. Acts 2:21 records Peter (who Christ referred to as the rock on which the foundation of the church will be built): "And it shall come to pass, that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved."
Mother Theresa once said "When He calls you, you will know it." I believe that by keeping an open mind about religion and acknowledging all possibilities, eventually you will find a sign, if you actively search for them. It worked for me.
There are two schools of thought about the random events of life. One is that the universe is impartial and obeys statistical laws. The other is that each choice and each situation is something new and novel, and that God works His plan in your life by directly influencing the outcome of each event. Like I explained before, if God's will and yours synchronize, He will do great things in your life. Where God's will contradicts yours, there are generally two possibilities: He is strengthening you, or He is teaching you. I admit that I've also incurred His punishment on occasion, though this is generally the result of repeated, habitual sin. By eliminating sin, your will is brought into alignment with God's, and you begin to live the life that He intended, which is absolutely optimal.
I propose an experiment that should be quick: Assume God exists for a moment. Pray, and ask God for wisdom, clarity, and understanding in your pursuit of truth. Then sit down and critically analyze the Gospels as deeply as you wish. Even concerted skimming may be sufficient. They are quite short, relatively. Biblegateway.com offers many translations, so pick the one that you're most comfortable with (they're roughly ordered by usefulness), and give it at least one pass through. Every time I've told a non-Christian to do this, they've been quite surprised by the picture that is painted of Jesus in the Gospels, and the responses tend to be quite unique.
I believe that is the single most valid method of evaluating Christianity that exists. Both the Old Testament and the remainder of the New Testament are reflected clearly in those four short books. If you still doubt, then just let it be. Accept your understanding and interpretation of the Gospel for what it is, and continue your process of knowledge gathering. You're not going to get any closer to understanding other religions without study in them as well!
Just to simplify, here's the link to the first chapter of Matthew. Feel free to skip the genealogy and start at verse 18. The genealogy does not add much of merit to the rest of the contents.