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Science Cannot Prove the Existence of God
StartsWithABang writes: This past weekend, Eric Metaxas lit up the world with his bold article in the Wall Street Journal, Science Increasingly Makes the Case for God. As a scientific counterpoint, this article fully addresses three major points of that "case," including what the condition are that we need for life to arise, how rare (or common) are those conditions, and if we don't find life where we expect it, can we learn anything about God at all?
It's not that hard. Somehow I make sure that I use the science part to understand the physical world and not poison living things or get hit by a bus, and I simultaneously use the spiritual part to understand people can behave and how to treat them better. But I don't make the mistake of using science to worry about which bed linens might be Jesus' and I don't use the religion part to pray my way out of jams or explain why butterflies look nice. I know science is always subject to new data, and that the Bible was a milleniums-long game of telephone (OT) and written by at least four people each with an agenda (NT). So take it all with a grain of salt and read for deep meaning - it's not a day planner.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
http://www.sacred-texts.com/ao...
"During the last century, and part of the one before, it was widely held that there was an unreconcilable conflict between knowledge and belief. The opinion prevailed among advanced minds that it was time that belief should be replaced increasingly by knowledge; belief that did not itself rest on knowledge was superstition, and as such had to be opposed. According to this conception, the sole function of education was to open the way to thinking and knowing, and the school, as the outstanding organ for the people's education, must serve that end exclusively.
One will probably find but rarely, if at all, the rationalistic standpoint expressed in such crass form; for any sensible man would see at once how one-sided is such a statement of the position. But it is just as well to state a thesis starkly and nakedly, if one wants to clear up one's mind as to its nature.
It is true that convictions can best be supported with experience and clear thinking. On this point one must agree unreservedly with the extreme rationalist. The weak point of his conception is, however, this, that those convictions which are necessary and determinant for our conduct and judgments cannot be found solely along this solid scientific way.
For the scientific method can teach us nothing else beyond how facts are related to, and conditioned by, each other. The aspiration toward such objective knowledge belongs to the highest of which man is capabIe, and you will certainly not suspect me of wishing to belittle the achievements and the heroic efforts of man in this sphere. Yet it is equally clear that knowledge of what is does not open the door directly to what should be. One can have the clearest and most complete knowledge of what is, and yet not be able to deduct from that what should be the goal of our human aspirations. Objective knowledge provides us with powerful instruments for the achievements of certain ends, but the ultimate goal itself and the longing to reach it must come from another source. And it is hardly necessary to argue for the view that our existence and our activity acquire meaning only by the setting up of such a goal and of corresponding values. The knowledge of truth as such is wonderful, but it is so little capable of acting as a guide that it cannot prove even the justification and the value of the aspiration toward that very knowledge of truth. Here we face, therefore, the limits of the purely rational conception of our existence.
But it must not be assumed that intelligent thinking can play no part in the formation of the goal and of ethical judgments. When someone realizes that for the achievement of an end certain means would be useful, the means itself becomes thereby an end. Intelligence makes clear to us the interrelation of means and ends. But mere thinking cannot give us a sense of the ultimate and fundamental ends. To make clear these fundamental ends and valuations, and to set them fast in the emotional life of the individual, seems to me precisely the most important function which religion has to perform in the social life of man. And if one asks whence derives the authority of such fundamental ends, since they cannot be stated and justified merely by reason, one can only answer: they exist in a healthy society as powerful traditions, which act upon the conduct and aspirations and judgments of the individuals; they are there, that is, as something living, without its being necessary to find justification for their existence. They come into being not through demonstration but through revelation, through the medium of powerful personalities. One must not attempt to justify them, but rather to sense their nature simply and clearly.
The highest principles for our aspirations and judgments are given to us in the Jewish-Christian religious tradition. It is a very high goal which, with our weak powers, we can reach only very ina
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
But hey, the word has a meaning.
Only by consensus...
All language, as an artificial construct representing ideas and not being the ideas or things itself, is based on consensus. "What sequence of noises shall we make to represent the object of that brown furry large thing there? b-a-er? All in favor say aye." The abstraction then moves a level up - 'ah-ni-mul'. 'Mah-mul'. 'Sentient'. 'Eee-goh'. 'Id'.
Nobody has yet seen a "black hole", but astrophysicists have a good idea what they are, and mathematicians can chat about "string theory" without having seen these mythical strings. I.e., the fact that language is a consensus created by humans does not prohibit the existence of things to which words have been applied that are not fully understood, or that can be fully understood. It was a long time before "star" was as fully understood as it is today, and aether is still a concept despite it not being what we thought it was when the word was coined.
I'm not Christian. Never claimed to be. So stop lying about what other people have said. Atheists seem to do that a lot.
You seem to be have some kind of demonic picture in your head about what an atheist is. Simply not believing in a deity does not magically transform everyone into a cunt, you know.
It supports the wonder and joy of being human. Further affiant sayeth not,
You are welcome on my lawn.
If you, along with everyone else, in addition to everything that can or ever could be knowable by mankind, were figments of some higher being's imagination, and you had determined a framework that existed in this imaginary realm that described its behavior and appeared to offer some predictive power within that framework, which you decide to call "the laws of physics", but in actuality is nothing more than a description of how the being happened to decide to imagine everything, how, exactly, would you begin to extrapolate from your so-called laws to explain the nature of the being that actually imagined that enter framework in the first place?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'