Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Fliguy2772
Well, it's not about forcing anyone's beliefs on anyone. There's truth and non-truth. There is a God, He did send His Son to die on the cross for the world's sins, and everyone is free to either believe that or not. On judgement day, everyone will be accountable for himself. God gives us all freewill, and people can use it to believe Him and in His plan for the salvation of mankind or not..............
...........What is mindblowing for me is that many people would rather believe that the earth, solar system, and the universe for that matter formed by pure random chance. That all living things on the earth formed by pure chance and luck, and that we evolved from single cell creatures up through ape-like creatures to what we are today. Have you any idea how complex the human body is?! Random chance? Yeah right. Would you believe that given 10 million, heck I'll give you a billion years, that a 747 could form on it's own in a field? Sounds absurd, right? The human body is a million times more complex.
Many people believe in things like carbon dating, yet know nothing about it or how it works. They are more willing to believe some scientist or group of scientists who will tell them that world is such and such years old. Many are willing to take on faith that the scientists know what they're doing and are willing to just believe them (Oh, they're scientists. They must know what they're doing). Have you personally run lab tests on anything? Do you know for sure that what you read in National Geographic is correct? Yet, I am stupid and naive for believing in the Word of God.
God, for His reasons, chose faith (believing without seeing the tangible) to be what pleases Him. The bible says that God chose the foolish things of this world, so that no flesh would glory in His presence. That makes sense to me... so no one can walk before God and boast how great they are based on heavenly principles. So you want tangible proof? The bible says that the world around you should be enough (the sky, the oceans, the stars, sun, moon, etc.) to know that this all couldn't have happened all by random chance................bah, blah, blah
|
The problem with your assumption is you have to ignore, in its entirety, nano-particle physics and the fact that scientists manipulate molecular particles on a daily basis to create new and interesting particles. The only difference between a diamond and the graphite in a pencil is the arrangement of the atoms.
Existing discoveries serve as the foundation for other scientists to build on. Science is cumulative and there lies the great tension between science and religion: religious creeds are static. Their foundation fixed, sacred relics preserved with high fidelity and passed down through the minds of their carriers from generation to generation over the centuries.
The funny thing about science is that you could teach Newton or Aristotle or Copernicus or any of the ancient gurus a lesson. Any one of them might have been smarter than any one of us, but we happen to know more than they did about the world and how everything works in it. Science advances cumulatively and, since we live later, even the nonscientists among us know much more about a lot of things than the great scientists of past epochs. It's that simple. Sure, aristotle could walk into a philosophy discussion and hold his own but in a modern day science class he'd be lost.
Here are some basic things we all know that he'd be shocked by:
1. the earth orbits the sun
2. there are more than four elements and none of them are earth, water, fire, or air
3. and we could forget about trying to explain electricity, magnetism, lasers, transistors, microprocessors, solar cells, quantum physics, or carbon nanotubes.
The peacefull coexistance of science and religion is an illusion. They are imcompatible and mutually exclusive. The scientific method is antithetical to religious doctirne and even non-theistic mysticism. Science rests upon testable hypothesis, repeatable results, empirical evidence, reason, experimentation, skepticism, and challenging established beliefs and conventional wisdoms.
Religion rests upon the unquestioning faith of its believers. Religious narratives contain beliefs about the creation of the universe, the creation of man, and concepts like afterlife or reincarnation. Science asserts itself not in value-laden beliefs but in factual understandings of the world and mechanisms and phenomena by which it operates, stripped of any theological significance and it lives by this creed: "TAKE NO ONE'S WORD FOR IT".
It's been suggested that religion exists to explain the unexplainable. Some humans feel cognitive dissonance in the absence of explanations. Part of the lure of spirituality and religion is that they appear to fill in the blanks in the questions where science has yet to answer. If you must fill in the blanks with religion than do it privately in your own home or church.
Science by its very nature is open and strengthened by the scrutiny of the public. But the integrity and usefulness of science is threatened whenever it is attacked on idealogical grounds. Thomas Jefferson said, "We are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it" (T Jefferson)
Einstein is often misreported to have believed in god. In his own words, "It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systmtically repeated....If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it"
(A. Einstein)
Many scientists have presented mathmatical models on our existence and the possibility of life in other galaxies as a function of random chance and chaos.
Hawkings, Sagan, Einstein, Lametre(a monk I might add), Wolfe.......shall I go on. The refusal of of the religiously blinded to see merit in those models does not mean the models are not there or are in-supportable.
Weigh those theories against the scripture which still says the earth is the center of the universe and everything orbits around the earth in round paths (copernican theory) and I'll stick with science--growing knowledge,
rather than religion--static belief in blind faith.