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If you want or need science to be the ultimate answer to things than yes it can and will be at odds to everything. Claims about liberty, equality, loyalty, love, free-will, fate, art, etc all involve things that exist in nature so can presumably also be proved or disproved by science.
However if you just want science to be the trial-and-error method by which we study the things in nature we can study than their shouldn't be a problem. We can't put the virgin birth in a lab and see how it works or if it works. We can't repeat a one-time miraculous event over and over to see if it's a miracle. For repeatable natural phenomenon science is great. If you believe everything is a repeatable natural phenomenon, or reducible to such, fine for you. I don't and I don't see why that would effect my view of repeatable natural phenomena.
If one needs some overarching "reason" for all the hows and whys that science explains, I can see that.
Thomas R.: Virtually everything in the natural world does repeat. It's just the way things work. Virgin births and "miracles" are not the way things work, and since all the information about them comes from primitive folk whose testimony has been reworked many times over the centuries, I have little regard for its veracity. But to each his own as long as it doesn't interfere with my right to disagree.
If one needs some overarching "reason" for all the hows and whys that science explains, I can see that.
Thomas R.: Virtually everything in the natural world does repeat. It's just the way things work.
I think there are a fair amount of one-time events. The Big Bang, certain astronomical collisions, etc.
Quote:
Originally Posted by catman
Virgin births and "miracles" are not the way things
I accept you see it that way, but for me they are a part of reality and my life experience. Sure maybe I can explain away these things in my life, but I see no compelling reason that I must do so. For you there maybe has been no such things or you would tend to disbelieve people who told you what they've told me.
Quote:
Originally Posted by catman
since all the information about them comes from primitive folk whose testimony has been reworked many times over the centuries, I have little regard for its veracity. But to each his own as long as it doesn't interfere with my right to disagree.
There have been incidents in the 20th-21st century that had medical examination, etc.
However I agree on my side that I have no interest in restricting any rights for atheists, agnostics, and deists. I think science and religion, while not friends necessarily, are not inevitably at odds either. And I have the right to think that. If an atheist wants to think science will disprove religion I guess that's indeed their right too. Still it does feel a bit hostile to me.
"Note that almost all religions make specific claims about the world involving matters such as the existence of miracles, answered prayers wonder-working saints and divine cures, virgin births, annunciations and resurrections."
This is very true, especially if "religion" is defined to be Christianity.
If one needs some overarching "reason" for all the hows and whys that science explains, I can see that.
Thomas R.: Virtually everything in the natural world does repeat. It's just the way things work. Virgin births and "miracles" are not the way things work, and since all the information about them comes from primitive folk whose testimony has been reworked many times over the centuries, I have little regard for its veracity. But to each his own as long as it doesn't interfere with my right to disagree.
Why do subatomic particles come together in certain combinations to form elements? Why do certain subatomic particles come together to form helium and not twice as much hydrogen?
And where's our nuclear-powered DeLorean? You know, so that we can all travel through time...
You are using that as a proof for religion? It takes nuclear fusion to make hydrogen into helium, which until recently could only be done inside of stars (would that it were still so).
Thomas R.: We don't know that there has been only one 'Big Bang'. I won't attempt to discredit 'personal revelation'. You are one of the more thoughtful theists here.
An ability to say to oneself the words "I don't know" is quite useful. That leads to scientific progress in order to find out. Religion takes the easy way out and invents answers from On High, IMO. But as I've said, to each his own.
I was just using those two because they had the fewest particles. I could have asked why particles come together to form iron, instead of carbon. Obviously, both carbon and iron exist, but why do the particles combine in so many different combinations? There's somewhere around 100 elements found in nature (let's not get into the ones scientists created). Why did the particles combine to create the ones that they did? In those quantities that they did.
I would be surprised though, if ALL scientists were atheists, or even agnostics.
When parents start programming a kid at a very early age, the effects can last a lifetime, sadly
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