For those who may not have seen these before
Evangelical Scientists Refute Gravity With New ‘Intelligent Falling’ Theory
Dude I think they’re right about the gravity thing. I mean, it just makes sense.
I mean just take a look at this. They’re onto something here.
Some evangelical physicists propose that Intelligent Falling provides an elegant solution to the central problem of modern physics.
“Anti-falling physicists have been theorizing for decades about the ‘electromagnetic force,’ the ‘weak nuclear force,’ the ‘strong nuclear force,’ and so-called ‘force of gravity,’” Burdett said. “And they tilt their findings toward trying to unite them into one force. But readers of the Bible have already known for millennia what this one, unified force is: His name is Jesus.”
What’s the difference between ‘intelligent falling’ and ‘dark energy’?
Science=religion. I’ll keep pointing this out until atheists stop thinking they’re so cool and hip and freethinking and admit that science is just like every other human belief system, i.e. in flux, subject to radical changes and in no way authoritative beyond the scope of people who believe in it.
=D>
yes but see there is a difference between science and religion. Science you can test with tangible/visible evidence and experimentation. Religion you must accept without any evidence. Sure they both require a level of acceptance, but how is it that you are comparing science to religion directly when the two methods of discovery are NOT similar at all.
Another thing about science is that it changes when necessary. Religion is unwaivering even in the presence of cold hard scientific fact and research.
You should e-mail the science pope to inform him of the mistakes in the infallible science bible. That’ll show those arrogant atheists to believe in the only possible alternative to theism.
Science is not a body of knowledge. It’s a higher standard for acquiring knowledge. Ultimately not perfect, and you’d even say completely completely false. You’d say this via your computer. I don’t suppose you pray for the message to reach this board, instead of pressing SUBMIT.
Then again, they’re both as likely, right?
Science and religion are similar in that they both rest on unprovable assumptions. That’s why science has to evolve and religion is criticized for not evolving, although some might say that religion does at least in its politics. The whole thing about science measuring observable things and religion not only implies a different standard of evidence, which is not really much of a distinction, (at least to alot of skeptical philosopher types). I don’t think that science and religion are necessarily at odds with one another. The fact is that if you stick with the notion of science that you can only make claims about observable things, then how can you make a claim about religion based on science? I think anyone can admit that God isn’t observable. I dunno where I’m going with this. Someone help me out here.
Dawkins won’t return my calls.
Hardly. I think that there are massive problems with both religious and scientific belief, and that we can do better than either. On the other hand, they both have a lot to offer, so I don’t think we should scrap either.
What’s the difference between hope, prayer and scientific prediction?
You ever actually been to a church or mosque or synagogue or temple or whatever and let yourself believe in the experience and rituals taking place? If not, then you haven’t scientifically tested your own opposition to religion. Many people have. Many people have testified to the validity of religious experience. What’s the difference between their observations and experiences and those recorded by scientists? Other than that scientists are part of a bourgeois elite intent on suppressing other forms of knowledge?
How do you think witchdoctoring works? How do you think that religions survive over thousands of years, if it isn’t how successful they are (at least to some people) at being tested in the same or similar ways to science?
Not true. The evidence is the experience, the shared rituals, the sense of commonality with others etc. etc.
And the occasional miracle, by which I mean something that utterly defies scientific explanation.
They are practically and logically almost identical.
Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn’t. There is such a thing as a liberal pope and a conservative pope. If there were no wriggle room in Catholic belief (about as dogmatic as Christianity gets) then this wouldn’t be possible. That’s a scientific argument, based on evidence, that religion is capable, even in its dogmatic forms, of adaptation, change, flux, difference…
A higher rate of accuracy.
I think you are incorrectly leveling the two. Where religion claims infallibility, science doesn’t. Science is open to change, in both the method of acquiring knowledge and knowledge itself.
Dawkins said what’s in everyone’s minds. Religion is shit. It’s about time it’s acknowledged.
Point still remains though. Religion is static, science is dynamic. Religion-truth revealed. Science-to be continued…(indefinitely)
Here’s what science will get you in being apparently the same as religion.
And a product of the identical counterpart:
youtube.com/watch?v=hC-2j0mnLHc
Tell me, what studies do you know of that have tested the ‘accuracy’ of prayer? To my knowledge, only two such studies exist and their results were inconclusive.
Religion is open to change too, otherwise it wouldn’t have survived this long. And plenty of science does claim infallibility, or at least divine authority. I keep being told by scientists that I’m descended from apes. I keep being told by atheists that this isn’t up for debate and that its an irrefutable fact.
What’s the difference between this attitude and one of religious fundamentalism.
Hardly, since he lives in a world primarily composed of religious people.
Terrific argument you’ve got yourself. Tell me, have you ever gone to a church, temple, mosque, whatever with a clear conscience and an open mind and observed your own reaction to the ritual? No? Well, nor has Dawkins, which makes both of you hypocrites.
I refuted this with the pope example. If religion was static, it would have died a long time ago.
Can’t be bothered looking at that since it’s coming from someone who
a) repeats refuted arguments
b) takes Dawkins (a biologist) as an authority on theological/philosophical issues.
about 50,000,000 people every month who lose the lottery.
Prayer insinuates a break from natural occurrence via an intervention by a deity–miracles. Since no such things have been recorded in history, no prayers have affected nature flux in any more of a proportion to the size of the person’s reach. Scientific prediction on the other hand gives you a missile that can intercept another missile flying at 2-3x the speed of sound. Que Sera Sera.
It’s not. You have about a 100 sects of the same religion all claiming infallibility.
One provides you with vaccines, the other 72 virgins. One’s correlation between disease and no disease is undeniable, while the other can’t be proven true, and neither can it be proven false.
Clearly, they’re the “same.”
Yes.
youtube.com/watch?v=hC-2j0mnLHc
…bodies hit the floor
Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, etc, were very real to vasts amount of people at one point in time. I don’t think they really were, but I suppose it takes an open mind to experience it. I say open mind, because some sense has to fall out of your head before those things can be experienced.
It should have died along time ago. But it doesn’t. What you get is new infallible religions, not evolved old ones.
Then either you or I are in a wrong forum since every argument ever conceived has been ‘refuted’. For example, recently the theory of relativity was disproven.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_falling
It’s you who brought him up. I haven’t said anything about him. Matter of fact, one point in my argument is that there is no authority in science; only a very high standard for proof. That’s all science is. A high standard for proof, which has thus far, by my very act of typing this, proven to be successful in perceiving nature’s function accurately.
Having an open mind does not mean you will let anything get in. What do you expect a person to do? Go to a mosque with an open mind and then, because of the openness, accept what they are saying as truth? Or go to a meeting of the church of the flying spaghetti monster with an open mind, and accept what they say as true simply because of an open mind? Or better yet, go to YOUR church with an open mind and expect acceptance based on open mindedness?
If something is ACTUALLY real, “having an open mind” is a superfluous quality. Tell a blind person that has never been to a big city before that skyscrapers exist. Are you simply going to tell them to have an open mind? Or are you going to try and prove it to them by possibly taking them to the city and having them go up to the top of a sky scrapper.
Your saying that a person needs an open mind when attending a service they don’t believe in is like saying to a horse “ok horse, walk this direction for a few miles and i assure you theres water there. I know you’ve never seen the water before but just have an open mind and you’ll find it.” As opposed to taking the horse to the water and actually proving to the horse that it is there and not expecting the horse to just believe you based on NO PROOF.
Do you honestly think that the most (in)famous critic of religion has NEVER been to a religious service? I guess he brainwashed all those amazon customers into buying his book so much that it made the top sellers list. Or were you positing that Dawkins might have gone to a service your two but he definitely did not have an open mind?
Say he went to a Scientology meeting with an open mind. He ends up believing and joining their church. He had an open mind. Are you still right in your beliefs? Is he still wrong in his?
“Have an open mind, but believe what I believe”? Great message.
How are they similar?
I would like you to start a topic on the, uh, topic.
Exactly what are you saying here, siatd? That because it comes from someone who does a and b it cannot be relevant to the discussion? That it will probably be easily refutable?
If the man repeats refuted arguments, it’s probably because he doesn’t understand how they were refuted, or because they were not refuted to his satisfaction. It’s nothing more posting won’t fix. Yet, you seem to be giving up. That clearly contradicts the statement made in this thread, only a few posts earlier that:
So, is “pointing this out” all you’re going to do, or are you actually going to continue arguing your point? (A point which deserves another thread.)
And you know they pray how, exactly?
Or it insinuates appealing to metaphysical forces to affect physical events. Science has never, ever, ever disproven this hypothesis. Millions of people will testify to its beneficial effects, including me. I’ve prayed before (not in quite the Christian sense but along broadly similar lines) with a 100% success rate, i.e. every time I prayed for something, it happened. And every time there was a possibility or even a likelihood that what I prayed for would not happen, we aren’t talking about me praying that my football team will win a game it is leading 6-0 with only 30 seconds left on the clock.
I can personally testify through experimentation I myself have carried out that it is possible. That’s a record in history. I’m sure if you cared to look you could find millions of others.
And no, I’m not religious.
It can. It doesn’t always. And that’s not science, strictly speaking, it’s engineering.
Since you’re obviously an expert, find for me a quote from Pope Benedict where he claims to be infallible. And one from the Dalai Lama too while you’re at it. Since you must have scientifically tested your belief that all religions claim infallibility you must already know of such statements. Otherwise you are talking the talk without walking the walk, which in scientific terms is bullshit.
Your attitude hasn’t provided me with any vaccines. Try again.
Undeniable? You mean ‘believed in by non-scientist religious believers in science who don’t understand that scientific theories require falsifiability in order to make them scientific’. Great, you’ve made the classic wannabe secularist mistake. Criticise religion for claiming its infallibility even when it isn’t doing so and in its place claim science’s infallibility even though that makes a mockery of the very method that gives science its credibility.
So ‘no’ would clearly be a more accurate answer to my question.
In other words, your only real criticism of belief in Greek Gods is that people who believe in them are stupid. Despite your own ridiculous belief in science’s infallibility.
Christianity is older than most countries in the world. So is Judaism, obviously, and also Islam. I’m not sure about the historical origins of non-Abrahmic religions, but it would surprise me if they have lasted longer than any building that any engineer built.
Do you see it yet?
You could apologise for such a blatant lie, but I won’t hold my breath.
Which produces ‘undeniable’ results…
Very successful in relation to what? And if you say ‘religion’, I’ll personally hunt you down and brainwash you.
Uh, no it doesn’t. You’re wrong here.
No, I expect some of them to be affected by it and some of them to not be. But until you’ve actually tried EVERY religion without prejudice then you cannot criticise religion in general without producing utterly contradictory and inconsistent arguments.
I have no church. I am not religious. Arguing against poor criticism of religion, particularly by militant secularists and scientific fundamentalists, is a sort of hobby of mine. I have no vested interest.
I’d try to make them believe by describing it to them, first of all. Taking them to the skyscraper might not prove anything, since they can’t see it.
I don’t see why you’ve chosen this analogy.
No it isn’t. I’m not saying that if Tristan or yourself went to a religious ritual with an ‘open mind’ (I used that as a shorthand for ‘without automatically adopting the role of the atheist critic’) that you’d become religious. I don’t know. I don’t claim to know. You, on the other hand, do.
You are suffering from a massive misconception common among militant secularists - that anyone not on the pro-science, kill religion bandwagon is religious. I’m agnostic, with an appreciation for a huge multitude of traditions, some of which are religious, some of which are not. Unlike you and Tristan and others, I don’t have to divide up my world in religious and atheist and loathe one group with every fibre of my intellectual being.
I know that he has - his parent brought him up to be religious. It’s pretty obvious that in his case it has far more to do with him identifying religion with his parents control over him and being obsessed with the notion that the only way he can demonstrate his maturity (i.e. his lack of dependence on his parents) is to wave the secularist flag as loudly and stupidly as possible.
And I consider Nietzsche much more famous than Dawkins. He’s sold a lot more books, for one thing.
No, there’s a waiting mass of people who like Dawkins want to prove that they’re free from the tyranny of their parents religious beliefs by buying Dawkins books and listening to Marilyn Manson. Dawkins didn’t have to brainwash them. They managed that by themselves.
Absolutely. Dawkins simply could not take a scientific approach to religion because it’d ruin his arguments.
I don’t see how this is relevant.
You’ve missed the point entirely. But of course, you misconstrued my motives for writing from the position that I have, and it all developed from there. I’m not religious. I’m not a rationalist or a scientist or an empiricist either.
They are both metaphysical explanations of physical events, like God.
I’d rather wait until other people bring it up. I’m not here to put myself on a pedestal or even that large a soapbox, and I’d quickly tire of being accused of being a closet Christian and all the rest of it, so it’s probably more trouble than it’s worth at this stage. But my comments on this subject litter several forums on this site so if people want to read them then they can.
No, that I can’t be bothered giving proper consideration to someone posting a picture and a link without explaining their point, as though if I just look at the picture and watch the youtube I’ll magically be transformed into someone who agrees with them.
No, just adopting a different tactic.
I am going to keep pointing this out, but I’m going to do other things as well. After all, I don’t want to look like a wacko. My statements perhaps do contradict, but I suppose I was just excusing myself from dealing with an argument that I found uninspiring.