Muhahahaha!

[billybud]

WoVeU...

LOL...I am not a scientist (nor a humanities major). I am, however, more broadly knowledgable about science than you might think. Most of my adult life has been spent in the realm of law, lobbying, and public policy and my math is limited, that is true....graduate level research statistics is about as far as I go. I am not a physicist.

But, I am knowledgable...As you may be aware, the majority of what we know, is knowledge that we did not aquire in school. Learning has been a lifelong interest of mine.

I am very broadly informed re history, science, archeology and anthropology. And I would be very surprised to be bested on a standardized test about broad science knowledge ( with such subjects as DNA sequencing, genomes and haplotypes, the science of archeology {Clovis versus pre-Clovis}, dark matter and dark energy, hereditability, etc.). Ain't talking about a mining engineer exam here...but the knowledge that appears in human discourse (we rarely need to integrate trapezoidal and Simpson's Rule or solve non linear equations in our discussions).

I don't claim to be an astrophysicist or engineer...I'm just a simple guy with a Mensa level IQ (so, shoot me for lack of modesty, LOL!) who likes to read and research.

[donovan]

I am a simple person. Not bright. But here are my observations. (Observation is a valid scientific protocol.)

Humans live their lives entirely by faith. I will define faith as, "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." Good as any, better than most.

Religion's basis is having hope in things that can not been seen nor totally understood. People act certain ways because they are concerned with the results of their actions though they are not able to understand the process generally other than by their belief. Not a bad way to live. "Do unto others..." seems to be a good core value.

Science is not much different. If you take a basis physics principle, gravity. Now there is a subject that nobody understands. We understand so little about gravity....UW got a 20 million dollar grant to study a part of gravity that would be like .00002 percent of of the subject. But what we all do is live by our observations on the effects of gravity. Nobody jumps off the roof because we do not want the splat. Electricity is basically an unknow subject. We know how to make it..we know that is exists...but we do not understand it. I think most people do not stick their finger in the socket because we know the effect.

The list goes on and on. The more basic the science, the less our understanding. Most science tries to find the effect of what we do, so we can operate accordingly. Not a bad thing.

In medicine...I think somewhat of a science...we do not understand hardly anything. Aging...we do not understand why people age. Healing...We do not totally understand why the body heals. Physicians try to create an environment that allows the body to heal itself...but the process we can not duplicate. Stem cell research, which I favor if you would live it to the scientists and keep the government out of it....is looking for the effect and they try to understand the process to better understand.

So I do not see a problem with Religion and Science. The problem comes when either religion or science is used to control others. Science in religion has been used for years to deceive people. The bad guys in Moses's day...dare I mention his name...used science to make the masses think they had mystical powers. (Making a well bubble is easily accomplished if you dig trench to outside the city wall and have another well that you can dump water into....water seeks its own level principle.) Many other examples....

Science is used to control people. The idea that we do not openly allow information to the masses...the idea that science is sacred and can only be used by the morally superior especially in the area of trying to say it is either or and destroying religious faith....

For me...I am comfortable with both. I think ....if you take away the salvation part of religion...which is important..I understand that....is a good way to live life. Be kind, don;t kill...say you are sorry...believe that you have responsibility to earth and its inhabitants. Not sure that is bad.

Using science to make life better...a good thing.

You see, inanimate objects are neither good nor bad..it is the use..the effect that makes the determination. It is our morals that dictate our usage.

When President Obama, the other day said we are letting our moral values get in the way of science...I thought...This is the most egregious, untenable, ridiculous, revealing statement I have heard from anyone. That statement made Rep. Brown look like Winston Churchill as far as content. Our morals, wherever they come from should dictate our behavior. Morals can come from religion. Atheists can be moral. Religion, from my viewpoint can preach immoral behavior that hurts others. So can science.

Football is a great game....covers both science and religion.....just look at Southern Football....Its a religion and when you throw that pass...it must come down....

[billybud]

Football is akin to religion, you're right Donovan.

But Barbeque is a true mixture of art, science, and religion.

[billybud]

I am a natural skeptic re religion. I come by it honestly.

My mom and dad were from two different worlds in both culture and religion. In the 1940's, their tribes never really mixed. Yet my mom and dad met and fell in love and raised a family (although it took more than a decade for one side of the family to talk to them). And they talked to us about what they knew, and about religion and God, and tolerance, and skepticism.

My son and I have grand conversations regarding God, man, and religion. He is young and starting his exploration. We really enjoy the philosphical back and forth. And I can only hope to be as good as my parents were at allowing him to find his "truths" without too much parental imprinting.

I reckon only Spence knows my last name and last names tell stories. Stories of roots, religion, and country of ancestral origin.

Find me an O'Leary who doesn't have a touch of the "old sod", or a man named John Wesley Whatever who isn't of a protestant family. My name tells a story...a story that I have been working on for years to unravel. And religion in europe, believe it or not, is a major part of the story.

Actually it probably is a part of most of our ancestor's stories...be it Irish catholics fleeing Ireland, french huguenots fleeing persecution, along with puritans and pilgrims and quakers and jews.

[Spence]

For me...I am comfortable with both. I think ....if you take away the salvation part of religion...which is important..I understand that....is a good way to live life. Be kind, don;t kill...say you are sorry...believe that you have responsibility to earth and its inhabitants. Not sure that is bad.

I agree. Religion is a little different then faith in a creator. Religion offers lessons that often get twisted by interpretors as literal translation where it fits their need. Faith, true faith, doesn't really need the literal perception. I don't have to believe that God created the earth in 168 hours to have faith that he did it. I don't have to take anything literally to have faith. I don't have a problem with accepting science as fact when the evidence is laying before me. I have faith that this is the way things are meant to be. I have faith that people have within them the power to be good or "evil". I have faith when I die, even if I am wrong, I will not be sorry about how I lived my life. That can not be bad.

[WoVeU]

To me,

Faith is something that stands before you, yet holds you up.
Religion is something people stand on top of, and drag along.

Religion brings wars, faith brings peace.

Religion happens when people attempt to defend God or want to play an awful tight second fiddle to him. I don't get much into religion, I rarely even read the scholars. I went on a search to find God for myself, I know this can't happen, as I neither grew up in a vacuum or reside in one. (I can barely stomach many churches, sadly, though there are some good ones.) I have learned enough that I enjoyed college (recall that was just 5 to 9 years ago for me) in large part because of the discussions that arose and a chance to pass on knowledge (or at least bring researched opinion to the table). I spent my time until Senior year at the Humanities building, conversing on religion, philosophy, soc/psych, eco, etc. I enjoyed and was yet scared when other students (older for the greater part, non-traditionals) would come running to get me as they wanted me to present Christian argument. I have since then always thought it my job to simply correct common miss-truths on the Bible, and let a person recenter from there. I present some of these in the following so I can say I have done my job, probably poorly, but nonetheless...the early obvious ones always brought up:

1. The Bible says the Earth was created in a week or 6 days. No it does not, it does speak of a transition period from being void.
2. The Bible says we all came from one man, Adam. It absolutely does not (please refer to day 6.) Adam starts the Adamic line, thus the Abramic, thus Israelite, thus Davidian, this is Christ's Lineage.
3. The Bible dates the Earth betweeen 6 to 7,000 years...does it? You can reasonably count and ascribe a time to the bible time line (to the void period) this will sum to between 6,500 and 7,000 years. This gets you to the 8th day. The Bible also says a day with the Lord is a thousand years, God walked the Earth in those days. (It has long been held by many scholars a "day" is not literal and some linguists say it doesn't necessarily translate that way either. Note: I thought similarly from reading,not researching. I think the life spans of Adam to about Noah make a nice converging line back to 1000 yrs as well.)
For me this aligns with science, 6.5 to 7k + 6 to *8 days (*8k) gives 14.5 to 15k. When was the ice age, wasn't that going on 14,5 or 15,000 years ago. Adam is then at 8k years ago or 6,000BC. This puts Adam and the go forth and prosper events at the very end of the Ice Age.

4. Man was condemned for eating an apple. No! Man was condemned for eating fruit. No! The entire rest of the Bible shows the Tree of Life was symbolic of Christ, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil was symbolic of Satan. (I admit up front some people call my perception as Heretic thought, what I later found others had theorized, Serpent Seed Theology.) "Eat" through out the rest of the Bible is far wider than eating...it is any consumption, partaking, etc. "Fruit" (similarly) is any result of sewing, by word, works, and on... I think the original sin was Eve being seduced by Satan and Cane was the offspring thereof. Then Eve takes this "knowledge" back to Adam, fathering Abel. It fits awful well, "we are born in sin", they knew they were naked, magnifying woman's travail in birthing, God commanding they work the Earth to sustain their life---counter to them going about making life on their own (before God ordained it at least surely we were designed for it. Kids are always jumping into sex before they are ready for the consequences.) If not this, it wasn't apple eating, perhaps giving heed to Satan words or the like...but not eating fruit!

Long I know...but just 4 quick points from the first few pages that "Science Arguers" so very often point to in the Bible and then disregard the whole thing.

[WoVeU]

Just thinking, if we can talk about football without biting heads off. Politics and religion ain't much more difficult.

Fighting starts not because of the subject so much as the casting of aspersions. Though subject does help this.

[Spence]

Religion is just one of those topics where everything is cool until it isn't. Probably a subject not to go into very deeply on a message board. People have been fighting over religion since the beginning. No resolution has been found in all that time. I know a girl that believes catholic confession is bad because you should confess to god and not a priest. I'm not catholic, but I understand that the priest doesn't claim be God. I let it go and saved myself an hour of futile argument.

[WoVeU]

Religion is just one of those topics where everything is cool until it isn't. Probably a subject not to go into very deeply on a message board. People have been fighting over religion since the beginning. No resolution has been found in all that time. I know a girl that believes catholic confession is bad because you should confess to god and not a priest. I'm not catholic, but I understand that the priest doesn't claim be God. I let it go and saved myself an hour of futile argument.

At one point I would have agreed with her. I even recall saying nearly the same. Now that I know man and me better I think differently. Confessing to God is great...but finding the strength to tell another human your flaw(s) in total truth is liberating. And even like the atheists have found, that kind of admittal is truly the first step in conquering a problem or at least get on top of the wrestling match. Maybe I don't set my sights high enough but I have come to think that is the best we can do with flaws that run deeper...just stay on top during the wrestling match. And if you get turned over, struggle to get back on top.

Oh, and I'd have probably never found myself wrong if religion wasn't discussed with someone. I agree on work, not there, you are getting paid to work! Others say save it for church or the similar. That then means save it to talk with people who have very similar opinions. Add this to PC, and you get the isolated world we now live in. Then you get the same you get in a marriage or friendship when you don't discuss differences. There is no growth and things get suppressed...soon there is no relationship. And we wonder why we are so fractured as a society! Discussion and argument are great...fighting is most always a waste a time. I find it to be pompous as Hell for a person to think they can defend God and equally as pompous if somoeone thinks they can defend science or nature. If either is as powerful as the holder sees it....then neither needs your defense.

[Derek]

I am a simple person. Not bright. But here are my observations. (Observation is a valid scientific protocol.)

Humans live their lives entirely by faith. I will define faith as, "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." Good as any, better than most.

Religion's basis is having hope in things that can not been seen nor totally understood. People act certain ways because they are concerned with the results of their actions though they are not able to understand the process generally other than by their belief. Not a bad way to live. "Do unto others..." seems to be a good core value.

Science is not much different. If you take a basis physics principle, gravity. Now there is a subject that nobody understands. We understand so little about gravity....UW got a 20 million dollar grant to study a part of gravity that would be like .00002 percent of of the subject. But what we all do is live by our observations on the effects of gravity. Nobody jumps off the roof because we do not want the splat. Electricity is basically an unknow subject. We know how to make it..we know that is exists...but we do not understand it. I think most people do not stick their finger in the socket because we know the effect.

The list goes on and on. The more basic the science, the less our understanding. Most science tries to find the effect of what we do, so we can operate accordingly. Not a bad thing.

In medicine...I think somewhat of a science...we do not understand hardly anything. Aging...we do not understand why people age. Healing...We do not totally understand why the body heals. Physicians try to create an environment that allows the body to heal itself...but the process we can not duplicate. Stem cell research, which I favor if you would live it to the scientists and keep the government out of it....is looking for the effect and they try to understand the process to better understand.

So I do not see a problem with Religion and Science. The problem comes when either religion or science is used to control others. Science in religion has been used for years to deceive people. The bad guys in Moses's day...dare I mention his name...used science to make the masses think they had mystical powers. (Making a well bubble is easily accomplished if you dig trench to outside the city wall and have another well that you can dump water into....water seeks its own level principle.) Many other examples....

Science is used to control people. The idea that we do not openly allow information to the masses...the idea that science is sacred and can only be used by the morally superior especially in the area of trying to say it is either or and destroying religious faith....

For me...I am comfortable with both. I think ....if you take away the salvation part of religion...which is important..I understand that....is a good way to live life. Be kind, don;t kill...say you are sorry...believe that you have responsibility to earth and its inhabitants. Not sure that is bad.

Using science to make life better...a good thing.

You see, inanimate objects are neither good nor bad..it is the use..the effect that makes the determination. It is our morals that dictate our usage.

When President Obama, the other day said we are letting our moral values get in the way of science...I thought...This is the most egregious, untenable, ridiculous, revealing statement I have heard from anyone. That statement made Rep. Brown look like Winston Churchill as far as content. Our morals, wherever they come from should dictate our behavior. Morals can come from religion. Atheists can be moral. Religion, from my viewpoint can preach immoral behavior that hurts others. So can science.

Football is a great game....covers both science and religion.....just look at Southern Football....Its a religion and when you throw that pass...it must come down....

Dude, this was the best post EVER.

I have friends that always say that we cannot believe anything that cannot be proven by the scientific method therefore I am silly and wasting my time.

I believe you cannot prove God exist using the scientific method....anymore than you can PROVE evolution using the same method. Belief in God is faith, and Science is not about dis-proving God. Watching that movie "Expelled", I could not believe how angry these people were and how these incredibly smart people were using science to advance their own agenda.

"A scientific method seeks to explain the events of nature in a reproducible way, and to use these reproductions to make useful predictions."

If someone can show me a transitional fossil record, then I would say that God used evolution, until then I still believe in the miracle of creation.

If you don't, that's cool....I'm not an angry scientist about it.

[Spence]

But even if someone does show you a transitional fossil record, who is to say that God didn't create the process? Science doesn't work against faith or against the idea of creation. It just discovers the process that God used to create the universe. If you work from the notion that a creator made everything happen, then science will never disprove it. The way God works doesn't have to fit a literal interpretation that a man needs to wrap his head around. He wouldn't be God if he did.

[Eric]

I understand what you're saying Spence, but you're starting off from a premise that assumes there is a creator when that may or may not be true. I realize that's what faith is all about, but if I say the universe revolves around a little invisible teapot in the center of the vast cosmos, you can't prove me wrong. Therefore, if there is a book written about the teapot meant to be an explanation of how things began, I can manipulate science to fit the book's interpretation.

I don't really pretend to know what to believe. I'm kind of playing Devil's Advocate, pardon the pun

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot

[Eric]

He is the most language challenged president that I have heard....

So.....He's slow in the head but able to put together a staff that can dupe an entire nation? A pretty conniving moron if you ask me

Obama and Biden aren't that great when they aren't behind a teleprompter. Say what you want about Bush, but Obama does some similar stuff. Special olympics, Iowa not Ottawa, 57 states or whatever it was, all of the presidents that are alive, children with asthma getting breathalyzers, etc. I'm going to assume you don't know what I'm referring to because you watch CNN and don't search "Obama screw-ups" on Youtube to laugh your rear end off at a president that you despise (I'm just guessing ). Bottom line is, when you have politicians giving speeches every day of their lives, they're going to screw up. Just like we would.

But I guess Obama is elegant because he speaks in vague generalities that don't mean anything.

[Eric]

I realize that's what faith is all about, but if I say the universe revolves around a little invisible teapot in the center of the vast cosmos, you can't prove me wrong.

A little teapot? That presumes a creator, doesn't it? Plus, who would have a teapot if they weren't planning some sort of 'shin-dig' which implies, multipicity. Bascially, you have proven God exists, by your rather unorthodox (pardon the pun) analogy.

Well, I didn't make it up. It's Russell's Teapot. You can Wiki Invisible Pink Unicorn or Flying Spaghetti Monster if you want. If you grew up being told your whole life that the world revolved around Russell's teapot, you wouldn't question it and think others are strange for not believing in it. Again, I don't know for a fact what to believe and I don't have the answers.

[Dossenator]

For me, I get my proof that God exists everyday when I take time to pray and receive that affirming strength and calmness that comes only from the Holy Spirit. That's all the proof I need. I know that many do not believe this and some would say that I am crazy. That's fine. I don't try to push my beliefs on others but I will share when asked. I can't imagine living my life without having faith in a creator and belief that there is something greater to experience after this life.

Derek...I have seen the documentary "Expelled" and was appalled at what happens to scientists who believe in creationism. Most don't speak for fear of what might happen...those that do speak are ridiculed and often times lose their jobs and their place in the scientific community. Ben Stein does a great job of just showing the facts of what is happening in our society today. Great watch!