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Tomorrow's Science Heroes?
An anonymous reader writes "As a kid I was (and still am) heavily influenced by Carl Sagan, and a little later by Stephen Hawking. Now as I have started a family with two kids, currently age 5 and 2, I am wondering who out there is popularizing science. Currently, my wife and I can get the kids excited about the world around them, but I'd like to find someone inspiring from outside the family as they get older. Sure, we'll always have 'Cosmos,' but are there any contemporaries who are trying to bring science into the public view in such a fun and intriguing way? Someone the kids can look up to and be inspired by? Where is the next Science Hero?"
I am currently going through a Neil deGrasse Tyson phase.
I'm 19, and Dawkins has been an enormous influence on me. A few years back he was one of figures that helped me jetisson religion, and ever since I've had a greater curiousity about science.
They teach the heart of the Scientific Method and show it as being FUN. Test the hypothesis - then retest it, just like Jaime and Adam do every episode.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
With all this buzz about climate change being thrown about, you can't go wrong there. ;)
Besides, they tend to visit schools, and have a high level of visibility and impact.
On a serious note, Stephing Hawking and Carl Sagan are still around, right? So why do you need new heroes?
Al Gore and Jim Hansen......heh.
check out his book "The pluto files" http://www.amazon.com/Pluto-Files-Neil-deGrasse-Tyson/dp/0393065200
If only there was a "Science Man" cartoon. Fighting the delusional forces of creationism. Curb stomping his nemesis Dr Dino and able to calculate PI to 30 digits. All while working at the LHC in his secret janitor identity.
Be you Admins? nay, we are but lusers!
Bill Nye.
Religion and Science are 100% incompatible. Religion = "I Believe", Science = "I can show/demonstrate/repeat". These two ways of looking at the world are not, and never will be, compatible. Those who "combine" the two really are saying, "I believe this or that, but, I can't completely ignore this incontrovertible evidence over here, but, for anything else, I'll just BELIEVE!" Horse-Puckey!
Over-the-top Response Guy! Giving "Over-the-Top Responses" since 1970.
Richard Dawkins is a pretty solid popularizer, if you are interested in biology.
A fair number of the bloggers at scienceblogs.com are also worth a look. Some tend more toward politics/culture; but there is plenty of science stuff, including scientists and science writers doing layman-accessible writeups of interesting peer-reviewed research(Not Exactly Rocket Science does pretty much exclusively that; but many of the others do it as well, from time to time, as do those on their blogrolls).
Beyond texts/video, of course, is equipment. Talking heads are all well and good; but microscope(should be good enough to avoid pure frustration, doesn't have to be anything fancy) will let you see the sort of crazy stuff living in your average drop of water. Even a cheap and nasty telescope will let you see more than Galileo was able to. A run through the Illustrated guide to home chemistry experiments might also be a worthy endeavor.
look him up...
Because of him your children won't be threatened by Manbearpig
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Dawkins He is my science hero! :)
When 1person suffers from a delusion,it is called insanity.When many people suffer from a delusion,it is called religion
Just try to find some old episodes of Beakman's World in rerun. Square One TV is a good choice as well.
For kids science books, I'm not really sure. Richard Dawkins is said to have one in the works.
Sometimes I crack myself up.
I find his stuff on the science channel to be pretty interesting. Beakman and Bill Nye are the best for kids, though. And Mr. Wizard. I tell you what, though, if H. David Politzer ever did a science show, it would be fantastic. I learned freshman E&M from him, the year before his Nobel.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Chu
Dean Kamen: he started FIRST Robotics, has many many inventions to his name, and a genuine interest in doing good for the world. You just have to get past the denim and eccentricity.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dean_Kamen
If Bill Nye hadn't been cancelled he'd be the perfect place to start, though I'm sure you could find old episodes on youtube or find torrents.
The other is Mythbusters. It may be a little over the head of a 5-year-old and a 2-year-old, but I think it has a fair chance of grabbing them. How can kids not love a show whose two most commonly repeated phrases are "If it's worth doing, it's worth over-doing." and "When in doubt-- C4!"
This sig is false.
Take them to the creationist museum when they are a little older.
I am sure they would be bright enough by the time they are 3
to underanstand and see the rediculous
How about Elmo and Curious George?
You've got years before they give a rat's ass about Cosmos or David Attenborough wildlife documentaries. It's OK, they're little kids.
I have to agree. Kids love nothing more in high school science than to sit down and watch an episode or two of Bill Nye. Plus, the added bonus is that his more adult themed shows (The Eye of Science) for kids slightly older than the targeted segment of the original series. Also, I'm stunned at how much Magic Schoolbus comes up in conversations with my children about our world. With topics ranging from the digestive system to how heat transfers between objects good old M.S. can captivate your kids and teach them to appreciate learning about natural systems and processes.
PBS has Nova ScienceNOW, hosted by Neil deGrasse Tyson:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/3210/02.html
It's pretty good, and surprisingly current.
Can You Say Linux? I Knew That You Could.
Maybe the religions you have been introduced to are incompatible with science. But, there is a lot of science that cannot be shown/demonstraited/repeated. Do you not know of the heisenberg uncertainty principle. Do you not know that many scientific discoveries were postulates before they could be proven? What about all the postulates that are proven wrong? What about the particle theory of light and the wave theory of light, should you not study them, because one theory seems to contradict another? Many people believe in religion as what it is claimed, faith is not something you can prove, but I believe that being kind to fellow human beings will bring me a reward, am I deluded? Possibly, but isn't it worth testing the theory out during my short life-time. If it is a theory that proves to be false, I still believe that for the space of my human life that I will be better off. Do you refuse to use the equations for Newtonian Physics because they are only valid for objects around the mass of things we use everyday and not for very small or very large objects? So, you still maintain that there is not reason to follow religious beliefs because God hasn't knocked on your door? The golden rule do unto others as you would have done to you is bogus because your limited knowledge of religion cannot be met? Yes you are better off without religion and without science, because, you don't believe in science, you only believe in known science. You're not much better than the people who wouldn't believe the world was a sphere because you couldn't see the whole of it in your day. I am very religious, I see no conflict between religion and the theory of evolution, Darwin was a Monk and prayed every day, how do you think he was able to get past the limited scientific views of his day and propose a theory that has since had so many proof? If I didn't believe in God, I wouldn't feel so strongly that we can successfully clone humans, full or parts to solve some of the defects in our physical bodies. Does that shock you that religious people not only believe in science, but that religion encourages that belief? I went to a religious university, the professors there said God wants us to learn these things, that is why we are here.
Science should be practical. It's good when it helps people. Any individual scientist who has done science to help people is worth looking up to. That also goes for anyone else of any profession.
You're asking for celebrities. Celebrities are not famous for helping people, they're famous for appearing on TV. Do you really think it's wise to teach your kids to look up to whoever the TV producers want to put on TV? Are TV producers wise?
Why not teach them to value practical virtue rather than vanity?
In a poll, Cowboy Neal is the only reasonnable answer.
... the creator of what? If you demand Carl use science, you do the same. Let me guess, I'll have to place faith in repeated memes instead...
I'll bank on evidence and hold to theories backed by substantial evidence.
Brian Greene has written two really good books on physics for the interested layperson. One is specifically on String Theory (The Elegant Universe). The other covers a broader range of physics topics (The Fabric of the Cosmos). Both books are very well written. I personally like TFOTC a bit more since it's not so focused on a single topic. I really hope he continues to write physics popularizations in the future.
This is a no-brainer!
1. Check out Neil deGrasse Tyson, who hosts the excellent show Nova ScienceNOW, currently in it's third season. It runs just after NOVA for several weeks in a row.
2. Try Robert Krulwich, who co-hosts the great NPR show & podcast RadioLab, with the equally wonderful Jad Abumrad. They are great for driving and listening.
Both are brilliant at making complicated sciencey topics seem fun and interesting. My 13 year old daughter enjoys both shows immensely with me. RadioLab, especially, is fun and funny, and you can gather up all podcasts on iTunes (there are about 25 full shows presently, plus lots of smaller in-between podcasts).
Both of these guys appear frequently on public radio shows too, like Ira Flatow's Science Friday, which is also good but a little more current eventsy.
Hope you enjoy these!
He could also be thought of as somewhat of an antihero in biology. He did, after all, try to fund the human genome project with profit as a motive. There is a pretty good argument that he would have wanted to patent the entire genome, had his group succeeded in completing a draft of the human genome first.
Had that happened, then the promise of genomic medicine might be even more remote.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
I don't think the submitter was asking for a Sunday school answers to a request for science instruction. While it is perfectly acceptable to use God to fill the holes in knowledge for the time being (if a society must because it has a sever phobia of areas of uncertainty and doubt), it is not acceptable for a society to refuse to acknowledge scientific findings, or refuse the future possibility of what science may find simply because it has already answered that particular question with the stock "The Creator did it."
Is it sad that I am more likely to recognize you and your posts by your sig than your name or UID?
Dr. Karl. He has nice colourful shirts and plenty of books.
Michio Kaku does it all. Theoretical Physicist. Constantly on the television and has two radio shows, in addition to teaching at City College of New York.
I dislike that Neil deGrasse guy, he was quite the smirking "I'm smart and you're not" during that whole Pluto isn't a planet anymore crap. I'm with Michio Kaku as my favorite science enthusiast and speaker. He's smart, he's enthused and he didn't go around on the Tonight Show smirking about how Pluto isn't a planet. I'm also looking to punch whoever it was that decided Brontosaurus wasn't a proper name for the Brontosaurus too. (shakes fist in fury)
Enjoy your Karma, after all you earned it. Feel your Karma Joe, feel it burn.
Each science has its own heroes in the current day. If you really want to establish a science hero for your kids, choose which science you want to teach them about first. Much as Einstein isn't a great hero to evolutionary biologists, Darwin isn't a great hero to modern physicists. You could, of course, try to cover a wide variety of scientific disciplines (and their respective heroes) in a short amount of time, but you would probably do better to start with more approachable subjects and bring up the heroes of those.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
You can't be serious. Surely this is an attempt at humor?
Sagan was a well-respected scientist before he wrote anything.
So if you aren't joking, then you must be trolling. Knock it off.
And if you aren't being a troll, then you're just a dick. Fuck off.
Honestly, to all openly religious people who consider yourself modern thinkers (at least the ones that read slashdot), you need to start to separate yourselves from the religious people who believe in an endgame. Not to quote a hideous documentary, but humanity will never survive until we get over the psychological addiction to hoping for an end to it all.
I think Steven Pinker is a very fun, intelligent person to learn about brain sciences and philosophy. He has a great skill in conveying complex ideas in ways that would make Sagan proud.
We need to teach our kids to get away from the idea of having "heroes" per se. Have a look at some of the greats of the past and you'll find they had character flaws that you do not want children emulating. Read biographies on Newton (sociopath who enjoyed humilating and disgracing others), Einstein (mysogynist who refused to accept QM), Feynman (womaniser who enjoyed conning people). Teach them to admire and focus the work and aspire to doing great work, not to have fuzzy hair and charisma but patchy people skills.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
as opposed to one or two specific "heroes."
There are so many different sources for information to be had out there, so many more science programs, than there were when Sagan was big, that I think there will be many more low-to-medium-grade "scilebrities" vs. just one or two superstars.
Other than Bill Nye, I'd say take a look at some of The Universe episodes (though they might be a bit intense for younger kids), and there are some really interesting BBC shows featuring Michio Kaku.
Mythbusters is fun stuff, and a nice sort of vicarious "making shit to blow it up" kind of thing, but it doesn't do a good job with the science (nor does it really try to, I don't think.)
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
Sagan used to be my science hero, when I was a kid and I watched a regular show of his on TV.
Then one show I was watching there was some topic about visits from extraterrestrials, interstellar travel etc.
Carl came out and said "There is no possibility of visits from other worlds. The distances involved are so great that it would take thousands of years for them to get to our solar system."
My jaw dropped at that statement. Up to that point I had thought he was an imaginative and intelligent guy.
Evidently he could not conceive of alien beings for whom thousands of years was a very short time and who could even make such a journey 'just for the hell of it'.
For him this was completely impossible, inconceivable.
Thats pretty sad for a guy with his reputation.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
typo: This is similar to idiots in high school that thing education isn't a cool thing either.
should be: This is similar to idiots in high school that think education isn't a cool thing either.
God spoke to me.
A good physicist and excellent TV personality.
Honorable mention goes to Christopher Lloyd and Jonathan Harris (Lost in Space).
Steven Pinker is how I found Psychology, Cognitive Science, and Linguistics. Best popular writer on the subjects, even if you dislike his theories. His writing on Philosophy is a little weaker, but still engaging.
If you train your kids to want to be scientists, you will get posers. They will become scientists because they want to be scientists, not because they want to do science. There's a huge difference. They won't enjoy what they are doing and they probably won't be very successful.
Put the conditions in place that will allow your kids to naturally develop an interest in science. For example, you could take up bird watching. Take the kids out on bird watching expeditions. Let them learn about the environment that supports each different kind of bird. Pretty soon, you have a budding wildlife biologist.
Does it work? Yes it does if my kids are any indication. Each has pursued a different subset of my wife's and my interests. The careers they have chosen are directly traceable to the things they had fun doing as children and teenagers.
But things are different now than in the Carl Sagan days - that was back when there were 3 tv stations (if you were lucky) and so most of your informal science education via TV probably had to come from one person - there just wasn't room for more. Now you have a whole slew of places to get good quality science content in an informal and entertaining way - the Discovery family of channels are a great source for this (especially Discovery Channel, Discovery Health, the Science Channel, and Animal Planet). Oh and don't forget History channel and History International for some of the "softer" sciences like archaeology, sociology, etc.
Give em Feynman's books. :-) In addition to writing well for laymen, he makes it clear he finds science fun, and he's not a stuffed shirt.
Dr. Karl is the man (http://www.abc.net.au/science/drkarl/). Entertaining and informative.
All the names listed above do the trick and a special note goes out to the cognitive scientists: Pinker, Dennett, Minsky, etc.
Carl Sagan was an even rarer breed though. More than just popularizing science: making it understandable and curious, he brought it to a deeper almost spiritual level and let you see both how your day to day life was a part of something so unimaginably huge and fantastic while simultaniously making a good case for our species to push the frontiers.
I don't think anyone can compare. If I had to try I'd pick Michio Kaku, he's a definitely more down to Earth than Sagan, but still great.
P.S. For a bit of history and sociology in the mix I really really suggest you pick up Connections (Season 1) and The Day the Universe Changed by James Burke. It stands beside Cosmos as my favorite TV series and will get your kids interested in economics, sociology and history on top of science.
...Got a bit of a man-crush going...
Goofy, Geeky Gifts and More!
How about watching with them some of the talks from TED?
http://www.ted.com/
Interesting, challenging and inspiring presentations from some of the best, brightest and innovative among us.
Dr Karl has written a few books and publish papers, is on TV and Radio in Australia http://www.abc.net.au/profiles/content/s2193276.htm?site=science/k2
The main difference between science and religion is not that one is true and the other is false. It's that one is falsifiable and the other is not.
The following statement is true
The preceding statement is false
What broke me from being interested to moving to hardcore was finishing off 14 of Asimov's foundation series with the help of a well stocked library and summer vacation after 7th grade.
Mr. Wizard was the highest (I'll never forget the cage full of mousetraps and ping pong balls -- first primer to supercritical chain reactions.
"This Old House" and "New Yankee Workshop" was possibly the best practical application of engineering.
I'm still enthralled when I get to see James Burke's "Connections" or "Beyond 2000."
A little over topic: The 14yr perv in me loved the late night showings of Desomond Morris's "The Human Animal". Those taught me more than ol' Mom's little "talks" or any magazine could.
It all depends on what they like. I love reading Richard Feynman, what difference does it make tha the's dead? QED is still one of the most accessable books about quantum physics EVER.
I know you're looking for outside influences, but don't forget to be a science hero yourself. When the kids ask "why?" don't be Calvin's Dad and make up some whacky explanation (funny as that is), say "let's find out" and devise an experiment.
Of course, there's going to be some questions that don't lend themselves to experiments ("Where do babies come from?" is easy enough to explain but probably not a good practical, "Why is the sky blue?" is hard to do right without an understanding of Raleigh scattering and quantum mechanics), but wind and water are fun and relatively safe to play with, while gardening and cookery are practical and lend themselves very well to the scientific method.
Be careful. People in masks cannot be trusted.
Great scientist. Great writer. Great advocate for bringing science to the masses. For example, http://www.worldsciencefestival.com/staff
He has a website here: http://www.drkarl.com/ and you can listen to him on the ABC website here: http://abc.gov.au/science/drkarl/
"Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing." -- Salvador Dali
Dr. Tim Flannery is someone whose work I have introduced all of my young relatives too. He may not be as well recognised outside of Australian and I can honestly say I don't always share his viewpoint; but he conveys the points well and with great passion.
Dr. Karl Kruszelnicki has been doing a scientifically credible, entertaining and honest version of what the mythbuster's do on radio in Australia for donkeys years and is pure gold when it comes to making science fun and accessible.
err!
Jak.
Ron L Hubbard!
I'm a huge fan of Drs. Tyson and Kaku, as mentioned elsewhere. I'd suggest looking at some of the newer popularizers for your own younglings. People like Richard Wiseman, Bad Astronomy's Phil Plait, the colorful crew at Deep Sea News, and probably any number of other blogs linked from the above.
Get the little nibblers interested from the start! We can use all the scientists (or at least science-literate) that we can get.
Today's kids are being taught that feelings are more important than logic, that 'social justice' is more important than the actual kind, that there's no difference between winning and losing, and that causality is just a conceit of the rich. They'll grow up and become government housing administrators, or city employees, or socialized/unionized construction workers. They'll grow up with a hatred of science, of objectivity, and of individuality, it will all be replaced by compassion, empathy and team spirit.
Sorry for your loss.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
I know he's not a scientist per se, but David Attenborough had a huge influence on me as a child, along with BBC nature as a whole. As a child I'd watch them over and over and that interest passed over to the other sciences as a whole. He's the perfect person to get your kids into science as a whole. (I teach physics now).
How about encouraging them through a subscription to a non-pulp magazine when they're a bit older. Having something like Popular Science or National Geographic lying around they're bound to dip in and read from time to time. It certainly got me more interested in a whole bunch of things (not only science, history and other cultures too) and might get them interested by osmosis - without shoving it at them so they eventually reject it. Meanwhile, how about you do cool stuff with them, encourage questions and explain as best you can (plenty of parents can be inadvertantly dismissive when tired). Don't discourage tales of legend and magic, but it turns out that you can get quite a few stories out of history and science itself. They probably won't end up as scientists, but that's ok too as long as they're happy and fulfilled in other ways.
If you want to go outside the cosmos, consider a "pop culture" figure. I, for one, enjoy the science of Alton Brown's shows. My 3 yr old loves AB as well. My mother is a family and consumer sciences teacher and uses his shows to demonstrate the science behind cooking. I'm a physician and enjoy the way he takes difficult topics and presents them in a (off-the-wall) manner for everyman. Don't limit your science to astronomy...
'But I don't want to go among mad people,' Alice remarked.
I got the privilege of appearing on stage with Mr Wizard way back in gradeschool. Now there's someone that will be missed. He got us hooked on science in like 4th grade. That's what we need, not more people to fascinate us in college, we need to build interest in science in our youth much much earlier.
RIP Don Herbert
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Get out there in the dirt, show them worms. Put an apple on the sill and watch it rot. Boil an egg until it explodes. Shake a soda can and watch it blow up into a ball.
Science is all around you, it's active, it's alive, it's fun! They don't want to sit in front of the TV.
Your 5 year old may be old enough for Grossology, but whatever, Take them fishing, Watch birds. Climb a tree. Look at stuff with one eye closed.
Grab the bull by the horns. Bonus points if you can teach them the difference between theory and fact. Most scientists seem to get that one wrong these days.
http://www.gocomics.com/tomthedancingbug/
Bill Nye, my kids have the theme song memorized.
Sid the Science Kid. Not bad really, drives the whole "it's not magic, figure it out!" thing.
And just to throw in some non-TV things:
Lego for the fine motor skills and figuring out how to make something cool
Find a sport your kid is into. I can't stand baseball and I like soccer (playing at least), I don't know if it's genetic or what, but my son is much the same. Sports are cool because of things like gravity and all his friends.
and when your kids are old enough not to eat them, some iron filings. If they ever get bored with the magnet (who could, really), get a magnifying glass. Continue on this thread. Only drop to celebrities when ADD takes hold.
For physics and astronomy, nobody better demonstrates the excitement to be found in science than Neil deGrasse Tyson.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Ai-VvboPnA
For brain science: V.S. Ramachandran. He works with the weirdest neurological disorders. Phantom limbs, split brains, and people who feel that they have one limb too many.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rl2LwnaUA-k
Something old: Buy "Martin Gardner's Mathematical Games" on CD-ROM. Not for them to read (yet) but for you to read and get ideas for things to do with them.
Something new: Since you're Anonymous, I don't know where you are. But take them here. There is so much amazing hands-on stuff here. There may be similar places elsewhere, but this place is just outstanding.
Something personal: Find ways to bring in things Right Now, as they happen. What you show interest and excitement in will be worth 2x the others, or boost their value. On a suitable occasion (birthday, etc.) give them a small unopened geode. Give them a hammer and safety glasses and let them break it open (well, not the 2-year old yet). If someone sends you steaks kept frozen with dry ice, put the meat away. Instead, get a bowl of warm water, gloves, the hammer and glasses again, and make sci-fi effects. If you're ready to retire that old, dead VCR, then get out the screwdrivers and take it apart with them.
We can all agree or disagree with the statement that science and religion are incompatible - personally, I agree, because at least for the religious people I know, to be religious is to decide not to shine the same spotlight on one part of your life that you would shine on all of the rest - the light of falsifiability. Most religious people are unwilling to consider anything as capable of falsifying their beliefs. This is an inconsistency - why are these ideas separate and unsuitable for such scrutiny? I suppose this will be modded down as flamebait, too, but if the GP is "insightful", I'd rather be flamebait.
I know this is far from contemporary but Douglas Adams is the way I would start my children on science. This may seem strange to a lot of people as Adams' science is very much hidden under a veneer of bizarre and fantastic fiction. Nevertheless the lessons which to me are the most important any scientist should learn are that anything is possible and that one should maintain an open mind and expect to always be wrong, always be surprised, and always be changing your assumptions. I think a better education of these principles would prevent much of the 'bad science' in our society. Adams bypasses the how and why and moves right to 'what would it be like' which means the ethical and global issues of science are explored in a unique way. I also think that science is a form of exploration and if you teach someone a codified set of rules for exploring they will only ever discover what you yourself could have discovered or even what an automaton with the same set of rules could discover. Teach your children that the scope of what is possible, both via scientific exploration and also simply by the nature of the universe, is infinite and beautiful and each will find his own way to explore, and hopefully ask you for help if s/he gets stuck.
"God wants us to learn these things, that is why we are here"
If only more people believed in that same God.. or at least that said same God wants these same things, there'd be a whole lot less problems.
However, I take issue even with that statement, due to the second half. It seems like it is meant to be an answer to the question "Why are we here?"
To illustrate why I take issue with that.. I saw a cute little German book about gemstones earlier today. I opened it up somewhere in the middle, only to find references to where the gemstone is mentioned in the bible and whatnot (something about 12 breastplate stones? my memory of The Bible is entirely too vague to recall the details). So I flipped to the first page of text and it had this question and answer (from iffy memory from a translation from German):
That answer seemed silly to me (I'm agnostic-ish) at first... it doesn't answer the question of why they exist, it answers the question 'why did God put them on Earth', which wasn't asked. But then I realized that I wouldn't ever ask the original question anyway. I would ask what gemstones are made of, how they are formed, chemical composition, color ranges, any special characteristics (asterism? chatoyance?) etc. and simply admire the photos in the book taking them for what they are.. pretty sparklies. I wouldn't ask -why- a gemstone exists any more than I would ask why a grain of sand exists.
Similarly, no scientist would ask -why- we are here any more than -why- a gemstone exists; that's material best left to philosophers and, indeed, theologians.
When you say that "there is a lot of science that cannot be shown/demonstrated/repeated", you're not really talking about science - although there are certainly elements that we can't just 'show' (such as stating that a certain star contains much iron though we're not able to just scoop some up and show you), we can certainly scientifically infer them with high probability (spectral lines etc.) and more plausibility ("'cos God made it so").
Now if you move into the realm of where scientists say "we don't know (yet)", that's where you can certainly have room for "God did it"-type arguments. I'm not a big fan of those, but quite likely there's no way that we'll ever determine what caused the Big Bang event and saying "God did it" makes perfectly good sense to me - though it certainly doesn't mean I think we shouldn't try and figure it out anyway... which is where I'm glad your University taught you "God wants us to learn these things", even if I disagree with the second half.
If you really want to interest your two rugrats in basic science, you need to go back to the basics: Watch Mr. Wizard. Not only did Mr. Wizard teach basic science, he did it with experiments that you could easily duplicae at home. And, he did it live, with no editing, no retakes, no special effects to make things come out right.
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Is you.
I read this somewhere else, but: "If youth doesn't wannabe, they don't trytobe and they won't become. Creativity should be the #1 thing encouraged." Get them involved.
I like big butts and I cannot lie.
Seriously. His show good eats does a wonderful job of investigating the science behind the food. He does so in such a way that makes you want to know more, which renders his detractor's accuracy claims moot. His show has helped me inspire my 5 year old daughter to question how things work the way they do. What better hero could you ask for?
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
That's gotta be Tom Strong, or perhaps the Five Swell Guys...
No really. Seriously. Just YouTube the guy. Check him out on The Colbert report. Look for his homage to Issac Newton. His passion for science is really infectious.
Brian Greene (the Prophet of String Theory) is also really good, but I don't think he's as compelling for younger folks as Neil.
I actually like watching Dr. Michio Kaku on the science channel's SCI-Q. He seems to take abstract topics (Quantum Mechanics, String Theory) or stuff out of science-fiction (like time travel) and answer them in a easy to understand (but not Sesame Street) level. Here's 10 example questions from the show's website: http://science.discovery.com/questions/michio-kaku/michio-kaku.html
Looking at our local PBS fare as an example, most of the good science shows seem to have disappeared. NOVA is about all that's left. The rest is cooking shows, sewing shows, yoga shows, self help shows, etc. All the good science and engineering stuff is over on the Spanish language subchannel.
Have gnu, will travel.
In the realm of physics science Brian Greene (The Elegant Universe) is the new "pop-star" of the popular science. The NOVA series are a good show.
This is exactly the kind of a dumb-ass comment that prevents a dialog from happening. I suggest that you start by re-reading all Dawkins just to make sure that he never says anything even remotely resembling your... I can only describe it as a cognitive equivalent of a premature ejaculation.
This is moderated Interesting? This isn't any better than the parent it derides! In fact, I might try to argue against the original post by providing examples of where science appears to be little more than faith, or perhaps where religion can demonstrate something. I can't do anything with the ad-hominem attack of "dumb-ass comment" and "cognitive equivalent of a premature ejaculation." That's more like "Troll" or "Flamebait" than it is "Interesting". If you really wanted to have a dialog, you sure didn't take the opportunity.
...and you may even learn how to spell.
Jay Ingram of Daily Planet on Discovery.ca, and Bob McDonald or Quirks and Quarks, a CBC radio show. Both great, don't talk down to you too much. Daily Planet has gone downhill; used to be really sciency, now it it is more like Scientific American- they have to make it palatable to the kids.
If you're looking for the ultimate science hero, I don't think you can go past Richard Dean Anderson, aka. Macgyver
Brian Cox.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Cox_(physicist)
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm2207118/
You don't get a more classic science look. And his stories are great. http://periodicvideos.com/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martyn_Poliakoff
There are a lot of people who work in science education and public outreach. Staff at museums and planetaria, for example. Outreach people from research facilities (here on Mauna Kea, just about every observatory has official outreach people). And people who just think what they do is so fun and cool they want to share it with people.
I'm fortunate enough to work in astronomy, and I love bringing my daughter up to the visitor station for stargazing or hiking, or video-chatting with her while operating or observing. I also volunteer at the visitor station, lead tours of the summit, and generally "reach out" to anyone who's interested. I don't get any observing time on the 8-meter I operate, but I just got offered some time on a 2-meter and am going to work with my daughter, my nephew and my neighbors' kids to come up with a project.
These are 8-14 year olds, so they can probably weigh in on whether we should look at asteroids, kuiper belt objects, supernovae, black holes, or whatever. But I started in the field when my daughter was 5, and even though the first few years she was mostly just wanting to look at stuff in the sky, and not caring so much about what it actually was, she's grown up knowing that her dad gets to do really cool stuff, instead of just sitting in a cubicle. Probably also doesn't hurt that she has autographed photos of a couple NASA astronauts she's met. :)
There are a lot of science outreach activities in our town, like AstroDay and Onizuka Science Day and robotics competitions and all that... plus public talks, the world's first 3-D planetarium, and... okay, okay, the whole farkin' island is one giant playground for any kid (or adult) who's into natural sciences at all.
Find your local science museums or science centers or observatories or planetaria or whatever, find out who handles the local robotics competition, etc. Plenty of unknown heroes out there.
Oh, one word of advice, though: don't expect the kids to go for your favorite science. I may be an astro-geek, and her mom's a social scientist, but my daughter tends more toward chemistry.
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
We'd have an easier time "separating ourselves" if it didn't appear a choice between dickish fundamentalists who call all science retarded lies and dickish atheists who call all religions retarded lies.
My current favorite tools are a DVR with DirecTV. Browsing the science channels and recording an assortment of things for later examination, and watching what is interesting and good quality. And laughing with my children at the occasional movie with awful science.
How incredibly disappointing it is that otherwise rational slashdotters believe in a god.
Sounds to me like you need to lay off the acid there fella, you are halucinating.
Your nick is very appropriate though....
And a lot of people willingly recognize that once you start onto a rational path, there is no turn back toward religion. It takes a lot of cognitive dissonance to keep being religious, and accept rationality and a good method based on evidence at the same time.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Actually, I do.
For example, I don't say "Man evolved from ape, that is fact." I would, however, say that it is highly likely that man did evolve from ape. As far as I know there is no way to be sure.
Any type of god or religion I have seen have had next to 0 evidence promoting it, and a lot against it. And more so-the believers were almost all born in families that also believed in the same religion. They didn't decide on their own that it was right, they decided because their parents told them so. Sure, some people do decide on their own, but most don't. Most would read this now and say to themselves "You're wrong I don't have to prove it to myself but I still know you're wrong."
Scientific theory on the other hand, is not inherited. I don't believe man evolved from ape because my dad or mom did.
If god appeared in the sky and said "Guess what people? I'm real! You don't need to argue about it anymore!", I'd believe it. However, whenever science comes out and do the same thing, you just change your religion the slightest bit and claim it doesn't affect your beliefs.
The biggest difference is, if your god isn't real, none of your beliefs make sense anymore. If evolution doesn't actually happen, or I have physics all wrong, other theories can still make sense.
For Kids, Dr Karl Kruszelnicki's books would help to generate a fairly broad interest in science. His books are written in fairly short chapters on various topics which would help with kid's attention spans.
.
See wikipedia or Dr Karl's Page on ABC Science
that rocked, tons of companies/engineers/scientists set up booths from companies and offered interactive science stuff (oriented for kids and adults).
I really really enjoyed the couple of hours I spent there - I would have spent alot more time on-site if I had known it was going on :P
Anyway, there was a pair of "scientists" who were putting on a show (basically mad scientists) old-school style, they had bunsen burners, hookah's, old-school acetylene oil-can torches, shrinkwrap and the like and they did a skit that had me _rolling_ in the aisles. And mind you I dont speak a word of french :P :)
Very talented fellows, I think they were hired by Merck (or work for them) - either actors or scientists who _really_ like getting kids excited about science.
My hats off the gents they did a fantastic job.
Stephen Hawking is still around. In fact, he has written two children's books George's Secret Key to the Universe and George and the Cosmic Treasure Hunt. I think that's the type of things that would hook kids on science pretty young. Other than that I would say maybe Richard Dawkins if we're talking about current living scientists and to a lesser extent and on a different level (maybe controversially) Ray Kurzweil. As far as all time heroes who are still influential to this day, of course Albert Einstein, and I personally like Oppenheimer and Feynman.
Well, all religions are simply retarded lies, no different from Santa Claus, the tooth fairy, and the Easter bunny. Sorry, but that's the plain truth and you need to come to grips with it, instead of expecting to be coddled. It's the adult thing to do.
We waht ridgidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty thanks. If you keep causing trouble I will get the union of philosophers and other thinking people onto you.
Whats the point of us staying up all night arguing about the existance of god if this website can give you his phone number?
I don't understand the thinking behind several parts of your last paragraph - but I am deeply interested in why you think they are so:
- If god is omnipotent / all powerful etc - why do you need to tell others about him? Can he not do this himself if he felt it was the thing to do?
- If god is generous rewarding etc. - why is there evil in the world>=? Why does he allow situations to occur that turn good people into bad people? (trauma, post-traumatic stress etc.)
- Why heaven - why not just make the real world nice.
- Why do you believe you know the mind of god? (sorry if I read that wrong - but from your post you seem convinced you do). You may believe that god cannot be mistaken - but do you believe that you cannot be mistaken for thinking you know his mind?
I am deeply interested in hearing what you have to say on this.
Control is an illusion, order our comforting lie. From chaos, through chaos, into chaos we fly
Currently, my wife and I can get the kids excited about the world around them, but I'd like to find someone inspiring from outside the family as they get older.
Quote from the summary. Emphasis mine.
See, I know you read more than the headline, because you quote the ages 5 and 2. But if you had gone just one more sentence in, you would have found out he's okay with now - he is in fact talking about "years" from now.
One last thing: Sometimes I wonder; "Is that someone's signature? Or do they type that at the end of each post?"
For sure, Alex Filippenko
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexei_Filippenko
I don't expect you to coddle me, Anonymous Coward. I expect you to give me more respect if you want me on your side. If you want me on the other side, against you and alongside my batshit insane coreligionists, just keep behaving as you are.
I wish I was born earlier so I could have met Paul ErdÅ's. I can only dream to be half the mathematician he was.
1&1 - Cheap domain and web hosting.
- If god is omnipotent / all powerful etc - why do you need to tell others about him? Can he not do this himself if he felt it was the thing to do?
God wants to use people to spread the Good News because it seems foolish to people who want to put God in a box. It makes a ton of sense. He wants to see people's reaction to it.
- If god is generous rewarding etc. - why is there evil in the world>=? Why does he allow situations to occur that turn good people into bad people? (trauma, post-traumatic stress etc.)
Sin is the reason there is evil in the world.
And there is no such thing as "good people", as we've all done wrong.
- Why heaven - why not just make the real world nice.
Again, it goes to sin. Those who choose to do evil need to be allowed to do their evil and be convicted. If God stepped in every time that someone wanted to do evil and stopped him, that being never really could be guilty of doing evil could they? God is allowing the tares to grow along side the wheat. At the end of time, God will throw the tares into the furnace.
To put it another way: If only one being knew how to rule justly, and you didn't accept to live with this being, you'd be spending eternity in an unjust universe which is referred to as Hell. By accepting Jesus as savior, he'll make it possible for you to live in peace with others.
- Why do you believe you know the mind of god? (sorry if I read that wrong - but from your post you seem convinced you do). You may believe that god cannot be mistaken - but do you believe that you cannot be mistaken for thinking you know his mind?
I know qualities of God. The Bible speaks of them. I cannot say I know what God is thinking, but God knows what I am thinking. He knows what you're thinking as you read this.
Let me know if you have more questions,
Jim Sager
God spoke to me.
the Mythbusters have been making a pretty good run at putting a scientific spin on the bustation of myths. Plus they blow stuff up. Kids like that.
Maybe the religions you have been introduced to are incompatible with science. But, there is a lot of science that cannot be shown/demonstraited/repeated. Do you not know of the heisenberg uncertainty principle.
The imlications of the uncertainty principle are certainly repeatable and demonstrable.
Do you not know that many scientific discoveries were postulates before they could be proven?
I'm not really sure what you are getting at here - very little can be "proven" - in science, theories are given greater and greater credibility as they continue to be able to enable us to make accurate predictions, and as they survive tests that would falsify them (often, by looking for incorrect predictions). What do you mean by "postulates before they were proven"? What would you consider to have been proven?
What about all the postulates that are proven wrong? What about the particle theory of light and the wave theory of light, should you not study them, because one theory seems to contradict another?
See, this is part of the beauty of science - you can refine or replace theories that do not survive tests against reality (not sure why you use postulates - if they were assumed to be true, why would we test them?) But no, I would not continue to "study" a theory that had been proven false by repeated experiment. If I could not find a flaw in the experiment, I'd try to refine or replace the theory with a better theory.
Many people believe in religion as what it is claimed, faith is not something you can prove, but I believe that being kind to fellow human beings will bring me a reward, am I deluded?
I'm not sure why you need to be religious to hold this position.
Possibly, but isn't it worth testing the theory out during my short life-time. If it is a theory that proves to be false, I still believe that for the space of my human life that I will be better off. Do you refuse to use the equations for Newtonian Physics because they are only valid for objects around the mass of things we use everyday and not for very small or very large objects?
No, but I do realize they have limitations, and I don't reject relativistic physics because I'm a Classicist and the book of Newton says p=m0v.
So, you still maintain that there is not reason to follow religious beliefs because God hasn't knocked on your door?
I would say there are literally millions of religious beliefs you don't follow (e.g. from religions you don't follow) - I just follow a few less.
The golden rule do unto others as you would have done to you is bogus because your limited knowledge of religion cannot be met? Yes you are better off without religion and without science, because, you don't believe in science, you only believe in known science. You're not much better than the people who wouldn't believe the world was a sphere because you couldn't see the whole of it in your day.
It would seem to me that you want to claim the idea of treating others in the way you would like to be treated as a religious idea. Do you think it is impossible for rules of social behavior to be adopted by anyone unless they are religious?
I am very religious, I see no conflict between religion and the theory of evolution, Darwin was a Monk and prayed every day, how do you think he was able to get past the limited scientific views of his day and propose a theory that has since had so many proof? If I didn't believe in God, I wouldn't feel so strongly that we can successfully clone humans, full or parts to solve some of the defects in our physical bodies. Does that shock you that religious people not only believe in science, but that religion encourages that belief? I went to a religious university, the professors there said God wants us to learn these things, that is why we are here.
Get them to follow F1. The competitive nature and the inherent coolness of racing cars will get them hooked. The breadth in sciences covered by the sport is pretty cool ranging from the biology of weight loss from dehydration of the drivers to the electronics behind precision timing. It is a breathtakingly awesome sport even when none of the competitors are performing well.
P.S. Be very careful to make sure they do not start watching any other programming on SpeedTV!
Cheers!
--
Vig
Atheist: Buddhist in a Prius
gotta go with Forrest M. Mims III. I know there are some people out there rolling there eyes because of his stance on intelligent design, but you are missing the point. This is the guy who wrote all the books about electronics radio shack used to sell. Those books are still available, although the price is a little higher now that the shack doesn't stock them. I just saw them at Fry's though, so I know they are readily available. I started reading those books and tinkering with electronics in the 4th grade. It gave me a lifelong love of electronics and science. I still rely on the stuff I learned from those books twenty years later. Check out his website. Whether or not you agree with his conclusions, his inventions and experiments are exactly the kind of stuff I would want my kids to do.
Obama is a twitter sock puppet
I grew up SDA (Seventh Day Adventist). I went to K-12-Electrical Engineering degree in the Adventist school system. I grew up in an environment that mocked those silly scientist who believed that the earth was millions of years old. SDAs are semi-fundamentalist who believe that the earth was created ~7k years ago and was once covered by a world wide flood. There are also some good aspects of our religion such as the health message. Some pretty basic science shows that this world origin idea isn't true. Take the decay rate of C14. Take the forest from Germany or Santa Barbra. Prove the world has been around for greater than 7k years. Show the world was never covered by a world wide flood. This is trivial to do even with a fundamentalist science education. In my experience so far (I still go to church), there are a couple religious rebuttals to the above evidence. The first one is that the atmosphere was different before the time of the flood and this is why the C14 dating is "inaccurate". Since the tree rings are bookended for greater than 10k year the record of what the C14 was is recorded and calibrated. If the C14 generation was wonky, it would show up in the tree rings. This rebuttal is just silly. The second religious rebuttal is that some things just have to be taken on faith. Faith is defined as believe in things not yet seen. The other one is that Satan has created false evidence to confuse the scientists. Nice. I asked in Sabbath School once, "What is the continued belief in things that can be seen to be not true?" That wasn't popular... I don't see much religious value in the fundamentalist view of the origins of life. I do see big risks. When I realized that some of the things that I had believed for the first 20 years on my life were bogus, I started wondering what else was bogus. I asked myself if I believe in God. When I tell people in my church that I believe there has been life on the planet for significantly longer than 7k years, they ask me if I believe in God. In people's minds, if you don't believe that the world is only 7k years old, you must not believe in God. If Satan has indeed done anything, it was to weave scientifically disprovable doctrine into the core of my religion. Bummer. I do have faith. I have faith that there is a God. I have faith that there is a heaven. These things are not the realm of science. If a scientist says he has proven there is no heaven, there is a 100% chance that guy is an idiot. Similarly, when a religious nut says they world is only 7k years old because that is what they bible says, they are also just ignorant. I started a small group discussion at my religious college before I graduated. I had two questions, the answers which I currently use to deal with this clash between religion and science. I asked, "Should we even be questioning this stuff, or should be just believe the bible and move on?" The answer from the physic professor who was about to retire was, "If God wanted you to think about this stuff, he would have given you a brain." Sweet. My other question was, "How do you deal with people in the church?" The same retiring professor said, "I keep coming to church whether they like it or not." If you are looking for a science model for your children, find someone who as managed to integrate their belief in God with science.
Whether you're down with String Theory or not...
-The Fabric of the Cosmos
-The Elegant Universe
-Icarus at the Edge of Time (this would have tripped me out if read to me as a kid!)
Check out the NOVA documentaries for the Elegant Universe too
Thanks for your reply Jim - I would like some further thoughts from you (+) if you have the time:
- If god is omnipotent / all powerful etc - why do you need to tell others about him? Can he not do this himself if he felt it was the thing to do?
God wants to use people to spread the Good News because it seems foolish to people who want to put God in a box. It makes a ton of sense. He wants to see people's reaction to it.
+ What do you mean by this? Why is their reaction important?
- If god is generous rewarding etc. - why is there evil in the world>=? Why does he allow situations to occur that turn good people into bad people? (trauma, post-traumatic stress etc.)
Sin is the reason there is evil in the world.
And there is no such thing as "good people", as we've all done wrong.
+ But as the creator of the universe is he not the origin of the sin?
+ What about the criminally insane?
- Why heaven - why not just make the real world nice.
Again, it goes to sin. Those who choose to do evil need to be allowed to do their evil and be convicted. If God stepped in every time that someone wanted to do evil and stopped him, that being never really could be guilty of doing evil could they? God is allowing the tares to grow along side the wheat. At the end of time, God will throw the tares into the furnace.
+ but as you say god knows your thoughts - could he not just punish those who would do evil and save everyone else suffering - he could then arrange it so that nobody would know that the evil doer ever existed thereby not "ruining" the test.
To put it another way: If only one being knew how to rule justly, and you didn't accept to live with this being, you'd be spending eternity in an unjust universe which is referred to as Hell. By accepting Jesus as savior, he'll make it possible for you to live in peace with others.
+ I'm not sure I understand this - if people are changed after they accept Jesus - why not just change everybody to live in peace? Or let god weed out the sinners as he is all-knowing?
- Why do you believe you know the mind of god? (sorry if I read that wrong - but from your post you seem convinced you do). You may believe that god cannot be mistaken - but do you believe that you cannot be mistaken for thinking you know his mind?
I know qualities of God. The Bible speaks of them. I cannot say I know what God is thinking, but God knows what I am thinking. He knows what you're thinking as you read this.
+ but for you to accept that the bible is definitely the word of god does that not imply that you believe you could not be wrong about it?
I look forward to your reply,
Cassius C. Corodes
Control is an illusion, order our comforting lie. From chaos, through chaos, into chaos we fly
... Feynman.
I think you are missing the point by searching for someone in the present. To understand the breakthroughs of today you need an understanding of yesterdays science. Introduce them to Feynman and Tesla. Teach them the beauty of the mysterious and the undiscovered it'll teach them what real science is about - understanding nature.
Phil Plait is pretty good as a crusader for critical thinking / science, though not one particularly aimed at children.
You don't have to be a great scientist or a great communicator to inspire a child with science. All that you really need to do is ask key questions that will encourage your children to observe the world around them, and to think about it rationally.
When the time comes, your children will probably find their own heros from the world of science. These will people will reflect their own ambitions, may they be in physics or biology or chemistry (or even something as unscientific as mathematics).
And if they chose to go somewhere else in life, that should be fine to. As long as they have a clear vision on how they can contribute to the world, they will probably find some sort of direction in life. After all, even artists and tradespeople help to make our world a much richer and better place.
Perhaps not a *scientist* (though he's eminently conversant with its history and methods), and perhaps not a hero for tomorrow (I don't know of recent productions of his), but James Burke is a brilliant entertainer and expositor about science. Any of his earliest reports, up through The Day the Universe Changed (unmatched, in my opinion, by any TV series except Nova or Nature), through Connections^N, are unparalleled productions, equal parts one-man-play, documentary, and science history as it should be.
Amazon *finally* has The Day the Universe Changed on DVD for less than $200; one was hard-put to find it for less than $700 for a long time, and torrents were a fan's friend.
Do you not know that many scientific discoveries were postulates before they could be proven? What about all the postulates that are proven wrong?
Bingo. I doubt you meant to, but you've just hit the nail on the head as to why science is self-correcting, and religious faith is not.
He is the guy presenting "Quarks & Co" in German TV. Unfortunately most of you won't be able to follow it because it is in German. But he is really great.
I was interested in science for most of my youth, entered into computer engineering in university and after spending 5 years in the field, couldn't get out of it fast enough. Did an MBA and switched into finance, and now, even in the midst of this economic downturn, am making more 4x what I did as an engineer, and without the threat of being outsourced too. In retrospect, I wish I was more interested in humanities in high school, and gotten into my current career path earlier instead of wasting 5 years.
I am still interested in science and technology, but only as a hobby.
Those who "combine" the two really are saying, "I believe this or that, but, I can't completely ignore this incontrovertible evidence over here, but, for anything else, I'll just BELIEVE!" Horse-Puckey!
Your reaction is an understandable one, if all you've been exposed to is literal biblical creationists. It's a frustrated reaction to an immature (but still often beneficial, compared to the realistic alternatives) mindset.
The best, most concise way I've heard it phrased is this: The Bible tells us what God did, Science tells us how he did it.
Let's take Genesis, for example. I'll talk as a believer in the God of creation, and please stay with me for argument's sake. Try to keep your loathing at bay long enough to consider my point.
Genesis describes God creating the stars, the Earth, and all life on it. This story is over two millenia old.
The implications of that fact are never considered by the Literal Biblical creationists you clearly despise and are reacting to. As a consequence, your reaction does not account for those implications.
One must consider the point of the story. God gave Moses much of the Torah, including Genesis, on mount Sinai.
Would God give a treatise on the physical laws He wrote, and the raw material He provided, and the occasional divine intervention required to create the universe?
Would He bother the Israelites with scientific axioms about gravity, solar fusion, biology lessons, and a million other details that would be meaningless for thousands of years?
No, because that wasn't the point.
The point was this- God said "I made this world, everything you see, and you. This is not an accident. You are here for a reason."
The point is delivered as parable. The parable is not a scientific discourse, as it would be utterly meaningless at the time.
With me so far? Have you already furiously started typing about what an Idiot I am? No? Good.
We clearly live in a world of cause and effect, of basically reliable physical rules that govern the Universe. Even the most ardently devout will admit God isn't in the practice of conducting routine miracles.
My faith as an Engineer boils down to this: God created the physical laws and the initial state of the universe with the intention of causing the current state of existence. This belief is both non-falsifiable and completely irrelevant to science. Science discovers the laws of the Universe. How and Why those laws came to be is a philosophical question, not a scientific question.
Given the assumption we are placed here on earth to exercise our free will and make of our time here what we will, there would be no other way to do it.
If God simply blinked everything into the current (or last 6,000 years) state of existence, as Genesis suggested, then humanity would eventually uncover this fact.
Once discovered, free will would be meaningless. We would not obey God because we chose to. We would obey God because the blatant miracle would prove His existence, and the peril of disobeying Him would be certain.
Religion and Science are incompatible because they have seperate uses. Oil and Water are 100% incompatible, but we don't toss out one in disgust because they don't mix. We simply use them for different purposes.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
If you are looking for a science model for your children, find someone who as managed to integrate their belief in God with science.
Here's my ultra-short version:
1)The Bible uses parables to instill useful values. It is largely NOT literal. Children and simple adults believe it literally because they lack the capacity to grasp the deeper lessons present. This is okay, because the alternative methods of instilling the same useful values to a wide variety of people have no solid track record.
2) God created everything. Science helps us discover the method He used to do so. If God created all of existence, He created the physical laws governing existence, and we discover those laws with science
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
He tried his damnedest to kill the Cassini/Huygens mission that has given us knowledge about Saturn and Titan second only to the Voyager program. ("OMG teh evil Plutonium is going to be magically smushed up n an asplosion and kill us all!")
Never mind that the risks were virtually nonexistent, even if you didn't bother to weigh them against the knowledge we stood to gain. He's no different from the tin-foil hat crowd who tried to shut down the LHC with lawsuits because we might all get swallowed by a black hole.
Michio Kaku has little credibility in my book, because I have no idea whose side he's on... science's, or woo-woo Earth First nutcases.
Going back on topic here, what you really want is a way to get them into science. Kids are already curious and easily amused, so you've already won half the battle. Just get them science toys, videos, and equipment, and take trips to aquariums, science museums, and planetariums. I remember my first microscope. I was eight and I wouldn't put the damn thing down. You'd be surprised how much people get inspired by the sheer beauty of science. And if you really want to geekify them, get them Lego Mindstorms. A science hero to look up to usually comes after they start learning more and see who discovered what.
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Seriously, you can be their scientific hero for a long time still.
All you need to do is reward them for being curious! Answering their questions and help them make observations. Grant them your time to help them figure out things, and they will learn to think for themselves. They will find their (other) heroes themselves, once they have learned that finding things out is fun and when they actually need them.
Actually, the laws of the universe, is based on the assumption that the laws of physics are the same everywhere. This assumption CANNOT be proven! So this "science" (which I am a fan of, actually) is only falsifiable within the bounds of this assumption!
There's a great deal of science that's not currently or possibly ever falsifiable.
Whether that's because the pool of people calling themselves scientists is too large or things just aren't that simple is up for debate.
Nothing's ever that simple.
Seeing as everyone else has Adam Savage, Neil deGrasse Tyson and Richard Dawkins pretty well covered, and you already know about Carl Sagan and presumably Richard Feynman and J. Bronowski, I should probably add Brian Cox to the list.
He's a particle physicist at CERN, and has an unrealistic level of enthusiasm for absolutely everything. It seems a good bet that the physicist in Sunshine was based on him, especially considering that he was the science consultant for the film. He's in a whole bunch of documentaries enthusing about how great the latest scientific discoveries are.
Bollocs.
Most of what you can read in any sacred text (Christian or otherwise) is falsifiable. You know, religions have that nasty habit of telling you how the World is. Did you knew that the Earth is flat?
Feynman. Richard Feynman. Always.
And Carl Sagan too...
And hey! Why not George Gamow???
Religions are falsifiable (science is the un-falsifiable thing: it is a tool, not a proposition. How do you falsify a hammer? How do you falsify science?). Any decent religious system has ideas of the type, if you do X, then Y will happen. Let's investigate a bit, and see what some religions say:
Buddhism: if you follow the eight-fold path, your suffering will end. Extremely testable. If you follow the eight-fold path, and you are still suffering, then man, they led you astray.
Tantric yoga: do these exercises and meditations and eventually you will have a kundalini rising (enlightenment). So if you do them, and you don't have a kundalini rising, then you know tantra is worthless (either that or your teacher sucks).
The Bible: Those who believe shall be able to do miracles, such as drink poison and not get hurt, or heal the sick (Mark 15:17). So if you follow Christ and you can't do those things, then......yeah, you've just falsified it.
Daoism: 99% of the battle of daoism is figuring out what you are supposed to do. That is an ancient Chinese way of teaching.....but, if you ever do figure out what it is you're supposed to do, then you will be able to tap into the mysterious power of the Dao. If you figure out what you are supposed to do, and do it, and still can't tap into that power, then you've just falsified Daoism.
Mormonism: fast and pray oft, grow in humility, and you will be filled with joy and consolation. I really like Mormonism because it is even more scientific: it says all over the place things like, "if you have faith, God will give you anything that is good." It gives examples of people who became good enough that God gave them anything they asked for, and it says that you can do it too. It even directly gives an example of how to test these claims, and verify/falsify them. I like it because the more clear the promises, the more easily it is falsifiable.
See? If all you are saying is that some being out there exists who affects life on earth in some undetectable way, then yeah, it's pretty pointless. But any preacher who preaches that doesn't know his religion.
Qxe4
I have to second Michio Kaku for the stimulation of young minds, he's an astoundingly great communicator, quite funny and he "bottom-lines" things so well. Also, though, I think you should look into a few scientists who play the wider field, so to speak, of what is possible on the edges of mainstream science. I am speaking, in this case, about Russell Targ, also maybe Hal Putoff. These guys, although pretty rigorously qualified, tend to take a fairly broad view of reality and all of the wonderful things that the great "formalists" may be overlooking in some areas. Try not to inculcate youngsters too strongly in the status quo, I'm not advocating pseudo-science...necessarily ;); but allow them to sense that not only is science fascinating, but that there may yet be great mysteries out there still waiting for them. Put an enormous juicy carrot on the end of the stick that is your hope for your children's science future...
but Ben Goldacre's book is fun and informative.
My web domain.
The irony of statements like this is that much of science starts as a hunch - - a belief that something is true, which then gets tested.
Incorrect. Science starts with observation. Then, it follows observation with a question, usually something along the lines of "Why/How is this happening?". Then it follows the question with possible, testable answers to that question (a good scientist will try to think of more than one plausible hypothesis). Then it follows the possible answers with a test, trying to control as many variables as possible. It then either rejects or tentatively accepts those answers pending further data. It then repeats the process.
The longer an answer goes without contradictory evidence coming to light, the stronger that answer is. Now, notice that, in the entire method, there is no place for believing something is "true". The only thing science says is "This explanation, which CAN be proven false, has not yet been proven false." There are no assumptions of truth anywhere (except for the most basic assumption of science, which is that empirical observations are representative of reality, and belief in that assumption is not requisite to use science)
Science only acknowledges what it can prove is either true or false.
No. Science cannot prove anything true. This is impossible, because it is impossible to observe every possible factor that affects an observation. The best science can do is reduce the likelihood that a hypothesis is false, or it can prove a hypothesis false. That is, science does not prove, it only supports or refutes.
Oh, and as for the GPP, the empirical observations that science starts with are known as "facts".
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
I can't believe no one has mentioned Ray Kurzweil. He and Vernor Vinge are the proponents of the Technological Singularity, perhaps the most technologically important upcoming development that mankind will ever witness--and forever be changed by.
You think the development of the microchip or the cellphone changed people's lives, what happens when we begin integrating both into our brains. The Singularity is the true beginning of the next stage of evolution.
"I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist"
I learned as much basic science and math from Dr. Asimov's essays as I did in secondary school. A truly great and prolific science writer.
There's a great deal of science that's not currently or possibly ever falsifiable.
Please give examples. And remember, falsifiable simply means "can be proven false", not must or will be proven false. If we can set criteria by which a proposition can be proven false, then it is falsifiable, regardless of whether or not those criteria ever actually happen.
For example, the Theory of Evolution Through Natural Selection and Genetic Variation is falsifiable. There are many ways to falsify it. Spontaneous generation would falsify it. Lamarckian evolution would falsify it. A lizard giving birth to a chicken would falsify it. Finding the bones of a human among the bones of a dinosaur both being radiologically dated to 65 million years ago would certainly falsify it. etc. (note well, if any of these things were to happen, the theory would be modified to try to account for it, but the modifications would also be falsifiable). However, the statement "An omnipotent being exists" is not falsifiable, because there is no criteria by which you can prove it false, as it, being omnipotent, can always alter the rules of the game.
So, with that in mind, please provide examples of science that are not falsifiable.
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
While it is perfectly acceptable to use God to fill the holes in knowledge for the time being
is it?
At some point I think we can safely say science and logical reasoning has given humankind enough answers to enough questions that we can safely assume that a god wasn't involved.
Gods have always been in the holes of our knowledge thus far, yes, but they've only been there: in the holes of our knowledge. In our knowledge we find no gods. People do not look in any microscope or telescope and observe "the part where God works". Physics equations don't include a god variable.
Furthermore, it's safe to say that in almost any situation where people have had the technology, opportunity, and determination to gather sufficient data, we have been able to explain most any given phenomena.
I agree with your post save for the above statement. Unfalsifiable ideas have no place in a person's notion of "reality". If it's something one still insists on personally believing, keep it that way: personal. No one else should be negatively affected by one's inability to view reality as we best know it. Children should NOT be taught the personal digressions from common sense their parents are afflicted with. Places of worship do not deserve tax breaks. Silly iron-age reasoning has no business impeding research that could very well save one of our lives.
I realize this is a hopeless argument (we're talking about people that have the ability to explicitly ignore reason here...), and that this question is essentially rhetorical, but exactly how much shit does science need to figure out before religious people realize that filling gaps of knowledge with the supernatural is getting them nowhere? What's so wrong about answering questions with "we don't know yet"? Why can't gaps of knowledge be just that?
In addition to names of the people themselves, can anybody recommend any good science documentaries/talks/books? I'd recommend the following:
If anyone can add to this list, I'd appreciate it. It'd be nice to seek out more science shows and related things.
I'd also recommend the following on YouTube:
(And now I need to ramble on for ages because Slashdot's software claims I have too few characters per line... A curious requirement. Just ignore this paragraph, it contains absolutely no meaningful information at all. Seriously, though, check out the above YouTube clips if nothing else. Really, Cosmos and A Short History of Nearly Everything should be given to everyone at birth...)
I can think of nothing that would encourage them more than reading works by K. Eric Drexler or Robert Freitas. Though they deal more in the realm of engineering than science and are generally create a picture of possible future paths (molecular nanotechnology & nanomedicine) which can easily inspire people to learn science. The best book for nanotechnology would be Engines of Creation 2.0: http://e-drexler.com/p/06/00/EOC_Cover.html (the paperback 1987 edition is somewhat dated at this point) but you would have to go browsing through the papers by Robert @ http://www.rfreitas.com/ to find something which is for a younger age level. You might even have to read them with your children and explain them. But exploring the realms of the small (nanotechnology) and the large (astronomy) both serve as windows to get children to wonder about the world around them, how it can be understood, and potentially how it can be explored and developed. Tools that allow these explorations (I grew up with both a microscope and a telescope in the house) are helpful as well.
I can't stand baseball and I like soccer (playing at least), I don't know if it's genetic or what, but my son is much the same.
...
No, I don't think there's a gene for that.
TV has changed too much in the last 30 years to be able to create lasting heroes like Sagan and Attenborough. The golden age when the big broadcasters could afford to put on these epic series, and they were still original, has passed, and been replaced with material that is largely one-off and oriented around what advertisers want from it.
Heroes take a long time to make, and modern TV assumes that its viewers (and advertisers) are too impatient. That's the view I get, anyway.
Cosmos is and will remain timeless.
You feel sleepy. Close your eyes. The opinions stated above are yours. You cannot imagine why you ever felt otherwise.
The main difference between science and religion is not that one is true and the other is false. It's that one is falsifiable and the other is not.
While that's the distinction that is commonly latched on to today, as if it were always the golden definition of what science is, it's only since around the early 1900s that definition has been popular. Indeed a great many aspects of science are only "potentially falsifiable" (as in "we don't know how you could devise an independent test for this now, but we hope someday someone will"). A vague and fuzzily explained example (that might even be out of date): Dark matter was inferred from a discrepancy in the mass of visible matter and the motions of distant galaxies. But because it's "dark matter" it would be extraordinarily hard to falsify the theory that the mass discrepancy is due to dark otherwise-undetectable matter: "not detecting the matter by any other means" is insufficient -- it's dark, so of course you can't detect it. So you are left still just repeating the original technique that led to the inference (comparing galaxy motions to what you'd expect) rather than having a genuinely independent test that could falsify the theory.
Ironic twist: of course, the invisible teapot in space "but honest it's there" was supposed to be a rhetorical attack on religion; little did we expect physicists to claim that 70% of the galaxy is made of invisible teapots, honest guv.
Was there ever a more appropriate nickname ?
Let me give you a hint: One of the first things people do when they start speaking is to try to agree on what words have what meanings. Those
who fail to do that will be able to claim just about anything, black will be white, up will be down and days can be any length of time because a
day is no longer a concept with any fixed meaning. If your words don't have a fixed meaning then you have to ask yourself why you are
stretching them so much. Is it so hard to admit that something is simply wrong that you have to stretch the meaning of words to make it right ?
MP3 Search Engine
> What about the particle theory of light and the wave theory of light, should you not study them, because one theory seems to contradict another?
/me/ deciding what I want to do. I guess I'm the entrepreneurial type ;)
After studying them we found out that they don't contradict each other because we were merely observing the effects of a new type of particle called photon. This has lead to jaw-dropping theories like QED (BBT: Richard Feynman's book QED explains the theory in all detail in a very accessible way - it was a revelation to me after physics teachers told be "ah we don't know what light's made of" ) which can explain this apparent contradiction.
As to your moral arguments. Good manners, morality etc are not exclusive to religiously brought up people. I don't like seeing this argument every time this discussion comes up because I feel like you're implying I have no moral and do not know how to be kind to people.
> the professors there said God wants us to learn these things, that is why we are here.
To me it always felt better to learn for myself, my own goals, set by just me. Maybe that's a personality kind of thing, but the idea of being good/doing good things because god want's me to does motivate me a lot less than
Your quote gave me an epiphany:
For all that some people act smug about being enlightened and scientific, the fact of the matter is, their beliefs are as faith based as the beliefs of the unsophisticated religious types they are mocking.
I thought about it a few seconds and realized that YES I do 100% and without equivocation believe in hypothesizing, experimenting and observing. No one can live without doing so. On the other hand, MORE people would be alive if there had never been the concept of 'GOD', and people willing to use that concept to make other people do what they want.
One of these days I'm going to cut you into little pieces. - PF
Browse www.ted.com. Personally I think everything about selfassembling nanomachines is fascinating.
First time I have posted here but this is an area that I am very passianate about.
I go around schools, parks, hotels you name it doing science shows and workshops for kids.
I know there are also a lot of very good people who do similare things here in the UK. We also have quite a few sceince centers that also have out reach programs.
I am also noticing more and more childrens programs with science as the main idea behind them.
I personal feel that in the UK today there is more exposure for children to science thanever before but the question is will it last?
Is all this work actual doing any good and will we get more scientist because of it. Not if the teachers do not contiune all this good work and keep that energy going. They can only do this if education is funded correctly and they are given the freedom to do so. I have worked wih many frustrated teachers that are having to teach science parat fashion.
Please do not get me start on sceince in infant and junior school.
I am going to get of my soap box for awhile and let others comment.
Sorry about spelling and gramma but I am dyslexic and not run this throught a word proccessor
dude, your god sucks.
He's not omnipotent, omniscient or even benign. He's a friggin' unsupervised 6-year-old with a magnifing glass, an ant-hill and a sunny-day. Bitter, jealous, cruel, capricious, mean-spirited, unfair, misogynistic, indecisive and generally not the kind of person you'd want running the DMV, let alone the whole universe. Pretty much the definition of a closet misanthrope.
What good is there to find in "If God stepped in every time that someone wanted to do evil and stopped him, that being never really could be guilty of doing evil could they? God is allowing the tares to grow along side the wheat. At the end of time, God will throw the tares into the furnace."
Believe whatever drivel you want, but keep it to yourself, for fuck's sake.
Steve -- If you have to call it a system, you don't know what it is.
Sam Neil did a six-part series called "Space" that I rate alongside Sagan's "Cosmos". I went back and re-watched "Cosmos" and I have to say it was a tad disappointing, mostly in terms of special effects. It still holds a special place re getting me interested in science.
Beyond that, Dawkins is still good and early Douglas Hoffstadter (sp?) too, even though most of the music stuff goes way above my head.
And just to weigh in the the science/religion debate, I think religious people are weak-minded. Civilizations, like children, eventually need to learn what's right and wrong irrespective of their father figures. No siree, no pulling punches for me. Religion is a crock, well beyond its usefulness.
Sorry to tag this to the top, but I went through this thread and missing from the discussion are the TED talks! They are broadcast via podcast and they are very every day science and about the future.I thoroughly enjoy the discussions they have because they are based on science, maths, and logical thinking... So there is no single person, but there are a number of people...
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
Richard Feynman - Seems like an obvious choice, he was smart, charasmatic and there are many quite funny stories out there about him. Thats all aside from the fact he's revolutionised quantum theory, helped solve the Challenger disaster and built the atomic bomb. If you see any interviews with him he's also very modest.
When I was a kid, Einstein was long dead. But I did not care. My mom did a nice trick by calling me "her little Einstein".
This made me read everything and all about him, I could get my hands on. (At 9 years old).
Relativity theory? Quantum physics?
It's nice: If you do not care if you are supposed to be too young for that stuff, you will notice that you actually got the brains to understand it.
(Just don't expect grown-ups to take you serious, when you talk about things that go way over their head. ^^)
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
I can think of two scientists who have done some great TV work recently.
Dr Alice Roberts, presenter of BBC's The Incredible Human Journey http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00klf6j
and Dr Iain Stewart, presenter of the BBC's The Power of the Planet http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/earthpoweroftheplanet/
Well that and the fact that religion will tell you how the universe IS and attach a requirement to believe in that view, even if the evidence eventually made available to us through science points to something completely different. Science will probe for all the answers where religion will tell us those answers are already an (ignorant) foregone conclusion. Science encourages inquisitiveness and skepticism, where religion requires closed-minded absolute faith. And yeah, I smell a rat any time a moderate tells me you can mix science and faith. As Sam Harris so eloquently put it: "God is not a moderate" In light of that thought, Science and religion are incompatible 100% where ever they cross and differ.
The only thing I foresee science having difficulty ever proving/disproving is what lies completely and totally outside perception in our universe. The Cave itself, essentially. Even that I think could be explained if only we could just measure and touch it, but we may physically never be capable of doing so.
I still don't think religion has any place claiming to "know" about that place, but at least there's no harm in letting them brainwash people in to thinking they do. But religion claiming to explain "morality" (in a violent and self-contradicting sense), and telling us God interacts with us through prayer (when he clearly doesn't in statistical studies), and undermining personal self-confidence (as it did to me for years) for control over people? Stunting scientific growth and rewarding willful ignorance in order to further the growth of its control?
I think there's even more differences than falsifiability, but they all continuously reinforce the view that science and religion are 100% incompatible. "I believe" vs. "prove it" just scratches the surface, in my opinion.
Someone has to mention Simon Singh. So far I read and loved his book on cryptography and 'Big Bang'.
See http://www.simonsingh.net/
My current science heroes are all grass-roots enthusiasts like Brian Dunning, Phil Plait, Pamela Gay & Fraser Cain, The Skeptical Rogues, Derek & Swoopy and the like.
Listening to all those podcasts and recommending them to all my friends has brought an interest in science out from purely occuring inside my own head into being a regular dialogue with people I know. It also makes you feel like the human race is actually going somewhere, instead of the general impression you get from the mainstream media that we are perpetually circling a gory hate-filled drain.
And, of course my original inspiration that started me listening to all these podcasts, Micheal Shermer, whose book "Why People Believe Weird Things" should be given to every 13 year old as part of their school education.
If I had 500 quid to get to Las Vegas I would love to have gone to this. Defniately doing it next year.
(1.21 gigawatts) / (88 miles per hour) = 30 757 874 newtons
For me personally my science heroes were (in some sort of order of importance in supporting my nerdly science interest): 1: My parents who didnt have the answers to my questions but took me to a local library to find them myself 2: An uncle who taught Applied Physics while I was a kid (now a school administrator) and was always showing me cool stuff and getting me geeky gifts for the holidays/birthdays 3: A few good teachers. A middle school teacher who gave me a college geology text after I asked too many questions about plate techtonics and a few others who kept the interest alive and made it fun 4: Bill Nye. Say what you will about him when I was a preteen/teen he was making science cool and fun. Mr Wizard was cool but being from the cable tv Mtv generation Bill was the bomb Now I still enjoy Bill Nye when I see it on PBS. A little dated but good. There was also Beakmans World but it was a little odd. The OPs kids sound a little young for it but "The Universe" on the history channel is always interesting
No one had the time to mention Kari or Grant from the Mythbusters, but they had time for a 200 post off topic flamewar about religion and science? Yes not exactly post graduate education there, but the question was about "excited" and "heros". Whats not to like about Kari and Grant?
No one mentioned Shawn Carlson and the SAS?
http://www.sas.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society_for_Amateur_Scientists
At least Forrest Mims got like one comment, even if people shun him for his peculiar church beliefs (not exactly a very enlightened attitude).
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
The main difference between science and religion is not that one is true and the other is false. It's that one is falsifiable and the other is not.
Not true, there are many true statements in mathematics that cannot be proven - look up Goedels theorum.
with the obvious selection... Cmdr Taco.
The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim.
Brian Cox has presented loads of stuff on British TV. Richard Dawkins needs no introduction. Simon Singh has written lots of books and presented many TV shows.
Eccentric, but engrossing none the less
...get them on netflix. Neil deGrasse Tyson is OK, and I like David Attenborough's stuff too, but its amazing to go back and listen to Sagan and Cousteau. Almost everything coming out today seems dumbed-down in comparison.
Or they're able to compartmentalise the two. Though I have to say, I'd find it rather odd that someone can do that.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
New kids' album "Here Comes Science", coming soon:
http://www.amazon.com/Here-Comes-Science-Amazon-com-Exclusive/dp/B002FKZ4UO
Greetings and Felicitations, "Darwin was a Monk and prayed every day" I don't know where you got this piece of information from but it is incorrect. Darwin was not a monk. I think perhaps you are confusing the life of Gregor Mendel with Darwin. Sincerely Yours, C. David Neely
Beliefs
He said 'science', not 'science fiction'.
This isn't exactly on topic but Wired has a page up with the "top 10 science music videos." Screen them first, obviously.
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/07/sciencemusic/
When the axe came to the forest, the trees said, "Look out - the handle was once one of us."
You got the order wrong... Science has nothing to do with faith. It is about choosing the absence of faith. It matters not how strong your faith in an ordered universe is if there exists data that it is not so;
To do science you must assume three things:
1. The universe exists.
2. That it contains order (the ancient Romans didn't under their world view).
3. That it's worth doing.
These three assumptions were (generally speaking) only assumed to be true in Western Europe (basically where Catholic Christianity took hold). While other cultures had engineering / mechanical accomplishments (e.g., the Chinese), there wasn't a systematic effort to understand how the world worked.
"Boskone 45: The Rise of Modern Science (Part 1 of 7)"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_eSGEr-FJ4U
The main difference between science and religion is not that one is true and the other is false. It's that one is falsifiable and the other is not.
To put it more bluntly, when the scientist tells you water is hydrogen and oxygen and you say "prove it," there's an experiment to do just that. And for as many claims that science makes that you ask for proof of, it will be provided, until you're absolutely sick of it. There's a great book called a Short History of Nearly Everything that takes the great claims of science you learn in school and walks you back to how they were discovered and who did the work.
The priest shows you bread and wine and tells you it's the body and blood of christ and you ask him to prove it, you get your ears boxed and sent to the nuns.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Gotta give a shout out to Ed Yong, who writes Not Exactly Rocket Science. He has a knack for summarizing research papers and show why they're cool.
Phil Plait at Bad Astronomy is also good at sharing his enthusiasm for astronomy. And the Astronomy Picture of the Day has pretty pictures.
That in itself is an untestable assumption.
Heck, Buddhism believes that the self does not exist. So before you go proving that the Universe exists, you have to prove that you exist yourself.
Not very many scientists are religious: http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/sci_relig.htm Those that are do have a problem, they just choose to ignore it.
First, the National Academy of Sciences self-selects its members. I'd say that there's a good chance that a feedback loop could form that builds in a bias as to who gets in.
Second, I'd lay odds that most of the religious folks who are actually part of NAS (where the survey was taken) probably didn't bother to return their ballots. Basically they would be thinking "what business is it of yours what I believe?".
The survey has been discussed quite a bit, and it's been mentioned that it's not worth much.
Dawkins. And Craig Venter.
produces much less regurgitation than sitting through another dora episode
I honestly can't say that the guy's inspiring, but he's been getting a decent amount of face time on TV when astronomical facts are called for. He at least informs, and what he says isn't obviously incorrect. Perhaps not a ringing endorsement, but he at least deserves mention here.
On the other hand, I once saw an interview of Richard Feynmann on TV. The guy was absolutely stunning. You see others on TV and say, "He seems reasonably intelligent, despite being a celebrity/politician/whatever." Feynmann was the real thing.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Well, I do what I can...
"Dr." Kent Hovind ;-)
Anyone from the Discovery Institute
Ray "Bananas" Comfort
I just noticed this a couple of days ago, but Steven Colbert does an amazing amount of science reporting on his show. I stumbled across a science reporter's blog that showed guest shots from his show, and the number of them he has had on is just incredible. He's done multiple reports on Eagle conservation and multiple interviews of astronauts in orbit. The guest with the most visits of anyone else isn't a politician, pundit, or reporter. It is Neil deGrasse Tyson.
He's probably singlehandedly responsible for more than half the hits on Wikipedia's elephant page.
Oh, and let's not forget his continuing coverage of the great Bear menace.
My understanding of "why we are here" is based on God's desire for a family of autonomous and willing people.
He could have built completely predictable robots, but the moment he turned them on he could calculate exactly what they would do for the rest of their existance. He could have made his existance unavoidable, but if we could never choose to ignore his presense would we really be willing?
So instead we are left with a world where a few bad apples can make life unbearable for everyone they come in contact with. Where the biggest reward that has been promised must be taken on faith. Where the position and momentum of a particle cannot be accurately determined, a universe based on randomness and uncertainty. A universe where even an omnipotent God cannot pre-compute the outcome, though the outcome would still be known to him.
Now I don't believe that God depends on our involvement to tell everyone about him. I think he's perfectly capable of ensuring that everyone is given enough clues to his existance that they can make up their own mind. In fact I would go as far as saying there is no argument I can give that would force you to believe in the existance of a god. No argument that could back you into an intellectual corner leaving you no escape route. I believe the existance of such an argument would go against the very nature of this universe that God may or may not have created.
09F91102 no, 455FE104 nope, F190A1E8 uh-uh, 7A5F8A09 that's not it, C87294CE no. Ah! 452F6E403CDF10714E41DFAA257D313F.
And philosophy comes in for the one-punch kill:
http://www.iep.utm.edu/b/brainvat.htm
Your life is regulated by "I believe" including that you believe you and physical reality exist, with zero evidence to that point.
Stop arrogantly oversimplifying complex arguments just so you can feel superior to someone who is religious. It's the intelligence of the person that determines the clarity of the religion, not how the masses interpret it.
Futurist Traditionalism
Of course it is great to have heroes to point out to kids (or adults) but I believe that the greatest inspiration comes from sources closer to home. If you are always pointing to outside sources for inspiration it is easy to forget the world around us. It begins to be easy to forget that the physics, biology, economics, and all the other great things that popular scientists are talking about is all around and is directly affecting our lives. We forget to study the world by looking around ourselves and asking the simple question.
http://www.whydoesgodhateamputees.com/ Maybe this will throw a wrench into your faith.
http://www.whydoesgodhateamputees.com/
Will the sun rise tomorrow? (You can answer - Are the perceived laws of physics immutable? - if you prefer). Do other minds exist? (Other than mine, obviously, you're just an automaton). Can we trust sense data? How was the universe created? (Not how did it expand, bonus points for where and when).
Make sure to answer with evidentiary statements and not to say "I think" or "I believe".
Perhaps you'd like to start with something basic - prove Godel's incompleteness theorem is wrong and that in fact we don't need axioms (that's the science word for unprovable beliefs) to establish a consistent and complete arithmetic.
Once you've done that you'll no doubt go on to show Einstein didn't need to simply believe that c is constant in order to establish relativity.
Sid the Science Kid is indeed horrible. I mean, I seriously consider shooting myself each time it comes on. Sid spends half the time repeating the exact same rituals, and the other half hammering home some extremely inane scientific point that could be summed up and understood in 30 seconds for most any child. "Things can be measured." "Muscles make my limbs move." Gerald always demonstrates poor self-control, which is always seen as "humorous" by the others. Gabriela shows so little self-confidence, it's a wonder pre-school girls aren't developing bulimia already. And "Teacher Suzie" is a fucking moron, first for letting the kids call her Suzie, and second for letting the kids set the agenda every day. Memo to earth - teachers call the shots.
It's all so politically correct and hippie-dippie it makes me barf, and I say that as someone who has felt more than comfortable attending the hippie-iest universities in the nation. I can't wait until my kid outgrows it and/or our local PBS affiliate burns to the ground.
Ten minutes with Bill Nye (who has recently released all old episodes on a series of DVDs) will teach kids more than the entire canon of Sid the Science Kid.
Phew... OK, thanks, I feel better now!
Except for the references to Baywatch and 90210, that sounded kind of like a Tom Lehrer...
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
I also have a 5 and 2 y.o. I put iron in primer paint and put a couple of coats on their bedroom wall. That allows me to stick magnets on the wall. In particular, I have grabbed a number of the felt cut-outs that are available. I simply put magnets for business cards on the back of these and pix. On my daughter's room, I have the planets and sun up top. Below that I have the alphabet, digits, more pix and felt layouts of spaces, and as well as pix of cells. Both of my kids know the planets name, and my 5 y.o. is learning the parts of cells. Last night, I had them watch SpaceX's Falcon 1 launch, and they love to watch the SpaceX animation. There is a book that my 5 y.o. loves to read which is the "see inside science". Some of their puzzles are rockets, airplanes, trains, etc.
Right now, I am simply trying to get the kids INTERESTED in science. For a 2 and 5 y.o, that is your best bet. That is your best bet.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Watch some TED talks with your kids, or the Tech Talks at Google. These are about cutting edge technology and current issues, and the speakers are generally excited about what they do and interesting to listen to. You'll also hear people from a wide variety of fields, which will give your children the opportunity to decide for themselves what they're interested in.
Fetch! with Ruff Ruffman. I Highly recommend this show.
Bill Nye
The Magic school bus - Both the show and the books.
Be wearing of religious texts masking as science texts.
I've thrown more then one book doing hand waving to explain the dinosaurs.
Of course, all this pales next to just doing fun science with your kids.
Neat things like raising butterflies, growing plants, and always asking them why they think something happens, then test it in some manner.
Turn no the sprinklers on a sunny day and look at the rainbows. Teh creat one with a prism.
There young, you don't need to go into detail. Just teach them the wonder and excitement of finding stuff out. That is the core to a science education and critical thinking.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Sid the Science Kid on PBS is a surprisingly good science show for young kids. It encourages kids to ask questions, try experiments, make observations, draw conclusions, apply what they learn to real life and so on. On fairly basic subjects, but treated in a fun and serious way. http://muppet.wikia.com/wiki/Sid_the_Science_Kid
My kids are also hooked on The Magic School Bus. A little bit fantastic, but it covers complex subjects. The immune system, ecology, properties of fluids, etc.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
...God is real, Jesus is Lord
or not!
That is my argumant in its entirety.
For the curious, the ISBN of that little booklet is: 9783892873563. Title: "Edelsteine erzählen ihr Geheimnis" /anon
Connections and The Secret Life of Machines. Not the most purely scientific shows, but excellent, fascinating and entertaining to boot.
It is very clear in his many letters that Einstein did NOT believe in God.
He was using God in the Jocular form.
"I do not believe in immortality of the individual, and I consider ethics to be an exclusively human concern with no superhuman authority behind it."
"The mystical trend of our time, which shows itself particularly in the rampant growth of the so-called Theosophy and Spiritualism, is for me no more than a symptom of weakness and confusion. Since our inner experiences consist of reproductions and combinations of sensory impressions, the concept of a soul without a body seems to me to be empty and devoid of meaning."
Look it up before continuing to besmirch his reputation.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
1 - God does not force himself on people because he gave us free will. If God told you to your face he exists you would be enslaved to do what is right for fear of Him. He's nicer than that, and allows us to do what is right out of love. :)
2 - Evil is the lack of good. Once again, if God didn't allow evil, this would take away our choice
3 - Heaven is a place for people that are eternally choosing to do good. That doesn't happen on Earth.
4 - we can't know the mind of God, since he is infinite and we are not. However, God tells us so much about himself in so many ways. Ever listened to music, seen art, eaten great food, watched your baby's ear, etc.. and felt the enveloping presence of something entirely... metaphysical? I know many people dismiss that; after all we have free will
Unfalsifiable ideas have no place in a person's notion of "reality".
I have two questions for you. First, do you actually believe you can objectively and empirically prove this idea you expouse? Second, if you do believe it have you considered the full ramifications beyond simply the rejection of religion (i.e. what other ideas and concepts are intrinsically unfalsifiable, and therefore must be discarded)?
I loved Timothy Ferris' "The whole shebang (1998)" and wish there was something similar written more recently (with up to date information).
T. S. Venture~
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Personally, I say forget celebrities, TV, etc. Mythbusters may be fun, but that damned hat is completely inexcusable ;) ...
While my generation had Beakman (of course, less serious but great fun) and Bill Nye, what personally got me fascinated in science was my father.
We did all kinds of fun, magical things together when I was growing up that were hands-on and FUN (which was wonderful) but which were tied closely enough to science so that as I grew I could learn more and more about a concept or field that had been introduced to me in an impressive and usually very tangible manner (way more wonderful).
For example, he and my brother and I would build and launch model rockets (well, until a certain age, we read the schematics and handed him pieces, but the 'fun, tangible, attention-grabbing' part is of course launching the finished project).
When I was maybe 6 or 7 he got me a little microscope for my birthday or christmas or something and we scooped up pond water from a little pond behind our house and I had my first look into the microscopic world. It really gives me chills to think about it now actually; it's so powerful seeing bazillions of little squiggles all moving around in there. It's even more powerful when you're informed that they're all very tiny living creatures living out their existences; I can't think of a more powerful, direct way of showing a child that there is much more to our world than what directly meets our senses.
Finally, STARGAZE with them! If you live in or near an urban area, take regular trips outside the halo of the city and talk planets, constellations, galaxies, stars, light-years. Nothing ever, EVER captured my imagination more as a young child than the mind-boggling vastness of space, the concept of infinity, black holes (WTF?!), the possibilty of other life-forms somewhere out there, maybe even intelligent ones (oh, the daydreams!), desperately wanting to experience weightlessness and wash down floating M&M's with floating, semispherical kool-aid... Not to mention that it's an excellent way to spend time with your little crew :)
(A telescope capable of seeing a bit of detail on Jupiter is nice too and $200. you can see big photos with great detail all day on TV and it doesn't AT ALL hold a candle to seeing lines on a pinhead-sized circle through a telescope with your own eyes. Not. At. All.)
Also I'd keep an eye on the Maker community. Hands-on is where it's at for younguns IMO.
(Blowin' stuff up never hurt either, if you're safe about it ... When my brother and I were really young we were shown the ol' vinegar + baking soda miracle and "blew up" all sorts of corked bottles, etc. that way. :) )
Good luck!
Richard Feynman influenced me tremendously even though he's been long gone for a while. Pick up "Surely your joking Mr. Feynman" and his other compiled lectures for a fun and easy read for children and adults. In college I managed to catch a populist science lecture from Kip Thorne which was remarkably good, but he's getting up in age like Hawkings.
I get the feeling some of you folks are hopelessly off the page. Most of the Slashdot crowd are familiar with the 3 Abrahamic religions and think that other religions are vastly different or diverse. Not so; while the details differ, here is the basis of every religion:
Every religion is based on faith, which is a belief which must be accepted without evidence. This central premise is the scaffold on which all other trimmings of a religion are hung, including
The "item of faith" is almost always a supernatural being, one or more supernatural events, or both. Examples:
None of these supernatural claims are provable. Faith is belief in the absence of proof, and that's exactly what's underneath all religions. Anyone who fails to believe the unbelievable supernatural claims drops out of the religion.
Now, was that so complicated? Or do you have any good arguments or examples to the contrary?
When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called Rel
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Greene
Also he is ethnically Japanese which could account for a neurosis towards nuclear weaponry. Scientists are human, like everyone else, and usually have at least as many irrational anxieties as the average man.
34.5 of Japan's electricity production is from 65 nuclear plants. Japanese have a neurosis for nuclear weaponry? WTF does that have to do with other uses of nuclear energy? GTFO!
Scientists, above all, are supposed to be RATIONAL.
I don't understand the thinking behind several parts of your last paragraph - but I am deeply interested in why you think they are so:
I'm not the parent poster, and not religious by any stretch of the imagination, but I'll have a go at giving rational* answers to the questions asked.
- If god is omnipotent / all powerful etc - why do you need to tell others about him? Can he not do this himself if he felt it was the thing to do?
How do you know that He is not? Perhaps he really is speaking through vessels. Due to the existence of free will, others choose to mimic his "chosen" and subvert his message for their own gain. It is your responsibility "to separate the wheat from the chaff", after all.
- If god is generous rewarding etc. - why is there evil in the world>=? Why does he allow situations to occur that turn good people into bad people? (trauma, post-traumatic stress etc.)
Because there is no "good" without "evil". People are given outside influence and are allowed to make choices based on that influence (free will). Lead a "good" life and honor God, you receive eternal reward. If you fall to temptation you suffer the consequence (as it was with Adam and Eve).
- Why heaven - why not just make the real world nice.
It was. Garden of Eden, and all that.
- Why do you believe you know the mind of god? (sorry if I read that wrong - but from your post you seem convinced you do). You may believe that god cannot be mistaken - but do you believe that you cannot be mistaken for thinking you know his mind?
This I can not begin to answer. I certainly don't know the mind of God. I can't know the mind of God. I can't even truly know my own mind.
I am deeply interested in hearing what you have to say on this.
Hopefully my answers were not boring... :o)
*Given the context of an unverifiable story, how rational can any answer based on it be?
There is no conflict between science and religion when you realize that a day for The Flying Spaghetti Monster can be any length of time... though generally one long enough in which to enjoy a meal involving his holy noodles. The Ragu word Yada-yada-yada used to denote day is also used to denote thousands of years or eternity in other places in The Menu. Look up the Long Sauce Theory or Pastafaric Evolution. It is the Christians who think that Cooks are a threat to dinner... those who have not eaten, yet that do most of the harm to pushing away people who would otherwise be believers in his noodly goodness. And no longer hungry.
I'm very serious about The Flying Spaghetti Monster as would anyone who realizes that The Flying Spaghetti Monster is real. You can't take a serious matter such as The Flying Spaghetti Monster and treat it trivially or foolish even though I've seen many people who do it. I think there is a pervading wind in youth culture that tries to deride believers. Instead of engaging believers rationally, the insults and old jokes are hurled, where noodles should be hurled instead. For many people, it simply isn't the cool thing to be a Pastafarian. This is similar to idiots in high school that think HomeEc and Chess Club aren't cool things either.
Everyone (yes, every person on the entire frickin' planet.. one needs only think on it, and the knowledge is freely theirs) knows my website where I tell people The Flying Spaghetti Monster is real is at: http://www.venganza.org
If you're interested in articles about ancient truths for modern living, can't help you.. the ancient's don't have a frickin' clue about moden living.. they didn't have medicine, electricity, or even a rudimentary knowlege of basic physics. Honestly, few of those ancients could pass a third grade science test... JC and Moses among them. But if you need a cool hat, please visit: http://www.phobe.com/fsmhat/index.html
Some people are religious zealots through belief, but I'm a zealot through magical hallucinations I think are the same as actual knowledge. If you sit and think, particularly over a simmering vat of meatballs and sauce (mind the proper spices!), all knowledge will come to you... you won't have to actually work at it... let the scientists take the hard road. I try and get to many places on the web: mass email, twitter, forums, even video games (http://www.venganza.org/games/index_large.htm). Anywhere there am be people, I is going around telling people The Flying Spaghetti Monster is really really really real. This is how The Flying Spaghetti Monster wanted it to happen too. Structurally it is said that The Flying Spaghetti Monster likes to see the thoughts of people as they're preached to through his followers, and all Italian eateries. Yes, The Flying Spaghetti Monster eats your thoughts. And when you become a believer, you can even it change or the way an you think if as to become pleasing unto up and under to him. Its all pretty radical stuff, not even a small bit of knowledge of things like the English language am need beed to grok this myasmya... but its all good, The Flying Spaghetti Monster is generous, rewarding, loving, compassionate, noodly and noodly and noodly and he's the only being that knows you completely. The Flying Spaghetti Monster will be with us for eternity, though we can only be with him though mindless devotion, which we am willing to deliver unto us. When you start thinking of Dinner as being a place where anything is possibly real, and that The Flying Spaghetti Monster is more creative and way more magical than any human, also way more tastey, and that he wants us to enjoy time, it is just more than imagination. And it is truth, and the truth is lies, which begats more truth. You can learn any truth this way... how to make a new microprocessor, how to play the guitar, how to fly without an airplane.. trust me on this. All you have to do is ponder the miracle of his noodly appendages, nothing more, and you're well on your way to the knowledge you need... next weekend, I'm building an 83" HDTV in my garage, from corn and fava beans, using this very technology.
--
The Flying Spaghetti Monster spoke to me. [venganza.org]
-Dave Haynie
Don't pretend for a moment that evangelicals and vocal atheists have much in common. Atheists who choose to be vocal do so because they see some serious problems in the world which need some addressing. They tend to be a lot more knowledgeable about the Christian mindset than the Christian proselytizer understands the atheist mindset.
Christian holy warrior says:
Don't pretend for a moment that atheists and vocal Christians have much in common. Christians who choose to be vocal do so because they see some serious problems in the world which need some addressing. They tend to be a lot more knowledgeable about the atheist mindset than the atheist proselytizer understands the Christian mindset.
This is exactly the kind of pointless "I'M RIGHT AND YOU'RE WRONG DAMMIT!" argument the GP is talking about. An easy way to identify one is if it still works with this kind of subject swapping (this technique is handy for making racist statements more obvious as well).
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
How about George Bush? As in don't be like him!
It's kind of like how otherwise rational slashdotters believe climate change is a hoax.
1)The Bible uses parables to instill useful values. It is largely NOT literal. Children and simple adults believe it literally because they lack the capacity to grasp the deeper lessons present. This is okay, because the alternative methods of instilling the same useful values to a wide variety of people have no solid track record.
I have to disagree about your statement that simple adults believe the Bible literally because they lack the capacity to grasp the deeper lessons. I grew up in a literalist "the Bible is the inerrant word of God" church. Sermons and lessons were chocked full of deeper moral lessons from both the Old and New Testaments. Some of the most subtle insights into human nature I've ever heard came out of sermons based on Jesus's parables.
That said, there were doctrines where my church would not bend, eg those beliefs unique to our denomination that really weren't supportable by any reasonable reading of the Bible or were in direct conflict with scientific observation. If you questioned them, you would typically get either a) an unsatisfactory misreading of one or more biblical verses b) a glassy eyed look c) an unsupportable rationalization ("well you know to God, a billion years is like a day") d) or a quick change of subject.
I think that basically what this represents is not that the believers of that church were somehow cognitively inferior, but that they simply were caught in a set of self-reinforcing memes that required them to have mental blind-spots when it came to entertaining certain questions, thoughts, or observations. It was a powerful and compelling force.
It took me years after I figured out that they believed a bunch of unsupportable fantasy before I finally broke away. The draw to believe in the group consensus view was strong enough to keep me trying for years after I had effectively lost faith and begun finding my own truth (of which science figures in prominently).
"These laws they're passing won't even compile anymore, let alone execute." - anon
Quite so riverat.
Cassius C. Corodes, + What do you mean by this? Why is their reaction important?
God is the judge of all creation. He judges our secret thoughts. One's reaction to hearing the Good News preached is going ahead of them to judgment day if they do not accept Jesus.
+ But as the creator of the universe is he not the origin of the sin?
He created beings with free will. When you allow for free will, the ability to rebel against his wishes is possible. Sin is defined as disobeying God. Many beings in the old Heaven allied against God to do evil, but it was not God's wish at all. The origin of sin on Earth comes from the serpent which many refer to as Satan.
+ What about the criminally insane?
I think this also is lumped into people that don't know any better. A child can also shoot his family members with a gun and not know any better. It is the same question as saying,"Who goes to Heaven and who doesn't". Friend, God is the only judge there. There are people who never heard of Jesus Christ that are going to Heaven. That doesn't mean you can ignore Jesus in today's society at all. If you accept Jesus and repent of sin, you're certainly going to Heaven. It is that easy. It is God's gift. We're not to worry about difficult to understand cases on our own. But if the person involved is a loved one who died, we can pray on their behalf and God listens and can be merciful to our loved ones.
+ but as you say god knows your thoughts - could he not just punish those who would do evil and save everyone else suffering - he could then arrange it so that nobody would know that the evil doer ever existed thereby not "ruining" the test.
If God predestined Satan for hell with everyone knowing what he did today, I think many people would be happy. But lets say God predestined all of the wicked to hell at the beginning of time. God's people who are meriful would ask God,"Why are there beings in hell?" Indeed God's people who don't have the ability to see the future like God would have sympathy and plead for the evil beings to God. This would make God to look like an evil being himself because he judged the beings on what he thought they would do against what they did. If you want them to never exist, there are similar problems if you can identify what beings were never brought into existence down the road. The most important thing to realize is that this is a cosmic matter above which mortals do not have enough information to understand one option against another. God is smarter than every man combined so he picked the right course of action.
+ I'm not sure I understand this - if people are changed after they accept Jesus - why not just change everybody to live in peace? Or let god weed out the sinners as he is all-knowing?
The plan to use Jesus who died for our sins in order to convince people to repent and stop doing evil is God's master plan. I don't expect many people to understand it, but it is one of God's most wise actions. It is directly how God won the victory of "Good vs Evil". Because people realize there is Jesus who gave up Heavenly pleasures to suffer and die for them, they get a better sense of realizing how bad sin is, and how much Jesus loves us. Once they realize this, they may repent of their sin, thusly going from an evil being to a good being. Jesus changes evil sinners into good saints! This is the process by which evil is defeated. Even the angels in Heaven didn't understand this at first, but there is a track record of Jesus turning sinful souls into good souls.
+ but for you to accept that the bible is definitely the word of god does that not imply that you believe you could not be wrong about it?
I was directed to the Good News Bible through the power and word of God. You can read about it at www.faithclub.net.
If you want to talk more to me: James_Sager_PA@yahoo.com
In most forums, people just hurl insults and do not talk rationally. Slashdot is a nice place to be
Thank you for the discussion,
Jim Sager
God spoke to me.
Have you heard of Dr Karl Kruszelnicki. Has an answer for all things science, and gives his answers in an entertaining manner.
http://abc.gov.au/science/drkarl/
Also, I have an article I wrote a few months ago on my preaching website.
God spoke to me.
You know, just playing devil's advocate for a moment, and while I've always held what you've said to be true, you gave me pause for thought. Is science falsifiable in a way that religion is not? I mean, it's not like we can actually take a look at each particle and verify that it behaves the way we think it should. Even if we could, and we found one that didn't, we'd just invent a new theory to say why, and pat ourselves on the back! It just seems to me as the moment that what science tells us isn't quite universally falsifiable, and ultimately about as falsifiable as the consequences of faith...
There's a cool show on the History channel called "The Universe". They have very intelligent and interesting people talking about science while entertaining with mind-blowing cgi graphics. Check it out.
Thanks for all your insightful answers Jim, I appreciate you taking the time to respond.
Although I don't see things as you do, I wish you all the best in the future.
Cassius.
Control is an illusion, order our comforting lie. From chaos, through chaos, into chaos we fly
You'll be happy to know the purpose of my existence is to tell you that you're full of shit. Can't tell you about yours though, maybe you should ask a theologian for his opinion.
This is great for kids, and it's real science:
http://fold.it/
It's childish to fill in the gap left by science with stupid stories (God). I don't know why we're here, whether we have an inmortal soul, etc, and I DON'T NEED TO! Living with that conceptual vaccuum and not being worried really differentiates mature persons from 40 year old kids.
geeze mention dawkins and religion and everything gets off track!
BBC planets works for me. Perfect inspiration for young students.
Though its a bit old already, just follow up with a visit to the JPL website for updates after each episode.
Its not as far out as Cosmos was; seing stuff about hinduism and debunks of superstition really
shook me up in grade school. BBC Planets just feels more focused and the music is spot on.
The graphics may eventually get stale, but the music narration and tone will keep it valid for a long time.
The Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics have some great public lectures that you can view on the net under their OUTREACH program.
http://perimeterinstitute.ca/
The Canadian Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics have some great public lectures you can watch in their OUTREACH program.
http://perimeterinstitute.ca/
Also, what about Adam and Eve's parents? Presumably, they weren't defined as "humans"?
That's an important observation.
Science is very good at the who, what, when, where and how.
It's not so good at the Why.
In a vacuum; I think that people who want an answer to that will probably tend towards something faith based... And that faith will tend to be something that aligns with their personal opinion, intuition, or sensibilities; since that's the only way they can validate them. Hence why people can get personally offended when they're challenged on the basis of their faith.
In your case, your "faith" is that the "why" isn't relevant.
Thanks dipships for completly derailing an interesting topic. /thread
He is the host of "Earth: The Biography" and I find his enthusiasm infectious. He is one of my favorites. On a side note, I read some of the criticism towards Michio Kaku, and deserved or not, is that not good science in its own right? To make people question things and then to set off to prove or disprove their theory? Even if his opinions can be controversial they serve a purpose. How many people would call the original Star Trek good science? But then, look at how many scientist were inspired anyhow.
I don't have any kids, but I think Nova ScienceNOW is a great program. I think its by Neil DeGrass Tyson. It's on PBS, highly entertaining, simple enough for anyone to understand, but not condescending. Here's the website if you want to check it out. They have some streaming video. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/
I know he is not contemporary, but I was deeply influenced by Richard P. Feynman , his books are must read, his great lectures and visionary thoughts are valid even today, his love for nature and truth and physics are something everybody will appreciate
I do believe your are moral, otherwise my argument would have been in vain.
>As to your moral arguments. Good manners, morality etc are not exclusive to religiously brought up people. I don't like seeing this argument every time this discussion comes up because I feel like you're implying I have no moral and do not know how to be kind to people.
The fact that my study of religion has introduced me to a moral view of the world and other people's approach, that I assume did not include religion both lead to the same views on morality is proof that religion and other approaches are not 100% incompatible as the original poster claimed. Quite contrary to what you are saying I do believe that most people believe in morals and good manners, Athiests included. Since most people accept the morals values I listed as valid and most people know teaching morals is one of the primary purposes of religion, that is why I used it as the support to why discounting religion 100% is an invalid argument.
You are right, Darwin was the minister, Mendel was the monk. Thanks for the correction.
Does free will imply that one's thoughts and actions are not predetermined?
Because if it does, it means that one's thoughts and actions cannot, by definition, be known in advance by any entity, including divine ones. Which in turn means that omniscience is not possible.
Otherwise, if one's thoughts and actions can be known in advance (i.e., predetermined), free will does not exist.
If said God is omniscient and omnipotent, how can anything be done against his wishes?
Unless you are implying that said "beings" are at least equal in power to said God? That, apart from advocating polytheism (which I am sure you did not intend to do) also breaks the concept of omniscience and omnipotence, because two entities cannot both possess such qualities at the same time if their wishes clash.
Ah, so you are advocating a particular religion (yours) and a belief in a particular god (yours). However, there are other religions, with their own "holy writings", which are incompatible with yours. How can one then judge which religion to follow and which god(s) to accept without a-priori deciding on a single set of "holy writings" as true?
In particular, since several religions claim that the punishment of people that believe in other gods will be more severe than of those that follow no faith at all, isn't rejecting the lot of them the safest course of action?
I am sorry, but your claims need to be reconciled with Mathematics (not even science) before I can give them any weight.