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Old 03-27-2014, 04:09 PM
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Amaznjohn View Post
I notice that there are no contemporary scientists on your list, and likely for the reason that science has learned so much more which debunks many of the old religious myths. Ignorance alone is not to be ridiculed, but willful ignorance is worthy of ridicule.
These same people who believe in God are also the ones responsible for promoting religious "values" into our civic life, making laws that forbid anyone who doesn't believe in the Christian God from holding public office, forbidding equal marriage benefits, and pushing creationism into the Science classroom. As long as theists continue to push their beliefs on me, I will continue to expose their ignorance and demagoguery.

If you understand the scientific process, why would you make the statements you did concerning scientists?
No "contemporaries"?
Well...that brings to mind...What could be considered the hallmark of recent scientific discovery about the creation of the universe...the "Big Bang"...was figured out by a PRIEST!
But don't pay any attention to that nitwit Georges Henri Lemaitre ...he was one of those "willfully ignorant" that "is worthy of ridicule"...what with being a Roman Catholic Priest and all.

How about Dr. Francis S. Collins...director of the National Center for Human Genome Research?
Is he "willfully ignorant" too?! Try reading his book "The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief"...it's really great.

I have noticed a pattern throughout history: Other than Darwin, it seems the "litmus test" for scientists to rise above the ordinary, even above superior, to achieve "superstar status"...is that they in some way believe in a God.
That list DDan put up is basically a "All Time, All Star Scientist" line-up. Strange that those "willfully ignorant" (according to some) would be so superlatively brilliant!
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Old 03-28-2014, 12:03 AM
 
Location: S. Wales.
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Originally Posted by GldnRule View Post
No "contemporaries"?
Well...that brings to mind...What could be considered the hallmark of recent scientific discovery about the creation of the universe...the "Big Bang"...was figured out by a PRIEST!
But don't pay any attention to that nitwit Georges Henri Lemaitre ...he was one of those "willfully ignorant" that "is worthy of ridicule"...what with being a Roman Catholic Priest and all.

How about Dr. Francis S. Collins...director of the National Center for Human Genome Research?
Is he "willfully ignorant" too?! Try reading his book "The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief"...it's really great.

I have noticed a pattern throughout history: Other than Darwin, it seems the "litmus test" for scientists to rise above the ordinary, even above superior, to achieve "superstar status"...is that they in some way believe in a God.
That list DDan put up is basically a "All Time, All Star Scientist" line-up. Strange that those "willfully ignorant" (according to some) would be so superlatively brilliant!
I had a read on Collins He says:

"Now, I might say that particular conclusion is, itself, all wrong. There will never be a scientific proof of God's existence. Science explores the natural, and God is outside the natural. So there is going to be no substitute for making a decision to believe, and that decision will never be undergirded by absolute data-driven proof."

The Question of God . Other Voices . Francis Collins | PBS

In other words, his science provides no case for god-belief. It is faith-based.

I read his conversion account and it is sad reading indeed. He has taken on board the first cause argument which is ok so far as it goes, but he makes the leap from a possible unproven creator to Biblegod without even stopping to think. Perhaps his reading of C.S Lewis,a very effective Christian propagandist, practiced in all methods of false arguments, had something to do with it. Perhaps just the pump -priming of being brought up in a nation full of Churches.

It is evident that his God-belief is based on faith, not reason and I have to say that, once he steps away from the discipline of science, reason and evidence goes out of the window.

He is not the only one. I watched a Nobel-prize winner yapping about how atheism was illogical because 'have we looked everywhere in the universe?' It seems that Scientists keep science in one part of their brain and Faith in another and they don't so much check their brains at the church door but flick a switch to another tank when they walk in.

P.s I had a look at the 'Language of God' blurb. It has DNA on the cover so I don't doubt it is pushing the DNA language code 'irreducible complexity' argument. In a way, it is no better than First cause- the leap to Biblegod is still a leap of faith.

What it did say was that Collins pulls the 'no morality without God' argument. Dear,dear. Or rather, yes, I suppose these argument all looked convincing, but really don't stand up under examination. Effectively, Collins has been fooled as soundly as poor old Anthony Flew was.

I would like to see him put his intelligence to rethinking his reasons for God-belief and listening to a few of the problems with it - that's if his Faith will allow him to even listen.

Last edited by TRANSPONDER; 03-28-2014 at 12:12 AM..
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Old 03-28-2014, 02:07 AM
 
12,595 posts, read 6,627,329 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by AREQUIPA View Post
I had a read on Collins He says:

"Now, I might say that particular conclusion is, itself, all wrong. There will never be a scientific proof of God's existence. Science explores the natural, and God is outside the natural. So there is going to be no substitute for making a decision to believe, and that decision will never be undergirded by absolute data-driven proof."

The Question of God . Other Voices . Francis Collins | PBS

In other words, his science provides no case for god-belief. It is faith-based.

I read his conversion account and it is sad reading indeed. He has taken on board the first cause argument which is ok so far as it goes, but he makes the leap from a possible unproven creator to Biblegod without even stopping to think. Perhaps his reading of C.S Lewis,a very effective Christian propagandist, practiced in all methods of false arguments, had something to do with it. Perhaps just the pump -priming of being brought up in a nation full of Churches.

It is evident that his God-belief is based on faith, not reason and I have to say that, once he steps away from the discipline of science, reason and evidence goes out of the window.

He is not the only one. I watched a Nobel-prize winner yapping about how atheism was illogical because 'have we looked everywhere in the universe?' It seems that Scientists keep science in one part of their brain and Faith in another and they don't so much check their brains at the church door but flick a switch to another tank when they walk in.

P.s I had a look at the 'Language of God' blurb. It has DNA on the cover so I don't doubt it is pushing the DNA language code 'irreducible complexity' argument. In a way, it is no better than First cause- the leap to Biblegod is still a leap of faith.

What it did say was that Collins pulls the 'no morality without God' argument. Dear,dear. Or rather, yes, I suppose these argument all looked convincing, but really don't stand up under examination. Effectively, Collins has been fooled as soundly as poor old Anthony Flew was.

I would like to see him put his intelligence to rethinking his reasons for God-belief and listening to a few of the problems with it - that's if his Faith will allow him to even listen.
Of course, you danced around the point you know I was making with my post.

By noting scientists...and not just any scientists, but some of the greatest ever...that were/are also God believers, serves to illustrate that "God Belief" is not demonstrative of "willful ignorance" or something that "is worthy of ridicule".
Matter of fact...THAT kind of biased and prejudicial view is what is ignorant and worthy of ridicule.

Theists aren't willfully ignorant...they just have intuitive and perceptive abilities that serve them to be able to know something that Atheists don't. That would be on top of, and in addition to, everything else that they know...which in the case of those exalted minds is at its pinnacle.

No matter what one thinks that they "know"...the best you can ever do is "believe" that what you "understand" to be valid and accurate info/data/knowledge, actually is valid and accurate. Because it might not be. Nothing is infallible...NOTHING.
No matter where you got your information from...it always comes down to "belief" that your "understanding" of anything...whatever it may be...has merit.
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Old 03-28-2014, 06:06 AM
 
Location: S. Wales.
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I did miss you point- but it isn't a new one and has been answered many times. Succinctly, any scientist before Darwin had to be some kind of God-believer, because there was no other explanation for how we got here.

(I must say that discussion does at least show why Evilushun is such a focal point of the debate even though in fact accepting evolution doesn't preclude God-belief, or even Bible-belief, if one is willing to do some creative interpretation of scripture)

I am inclined to think that Copernicus, Galileo, Newton and the rest,if they had the information we have now, would be as agnostic as Dawkins.

Even if they still believed in God, then it would be by keeping science in one part of their head and faith in another- just as Collins who I have no doubt is a very fine and respectable scientist. But his rationale and arguments for God-belief are pitiful.
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Old 03-29-2014, 09:17 AM
 
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I am inclined to think that Copernicus, Galileo, Newton and the rest,if they had the information we have now, would be as agnostic as Dawkins.
Come to think of it....I'd be curious if there has ever been a poll, study, experiment etc which exmained the belief of
scientists towards a 'fist mover'. What would that percentage would be? Seems to me it wojld lay out like looking back when studying the universe. So far and way when the world was 'young', the results would show an expansion to an almost 100% believing God made 'everything everywhere forever and ever'.

But another thing happens as we ply the secrets with each millenia and bring out truths where that percentage of belief apparently isn' as unanimous as it once was. Kind of really ironic I think. Here we are excavating the truths of the absolutely beautiful and brillaint universe but yet it brings the existence of a 'first mover' into more questionable discussion by those whom practice science.

Man is kind of funny here in that complicated astronomical equations define our universe and fits us here in our 'home'.
The 'weight' of all those equations apparently makes some believe 'no God no way'. It's just all there like paint on wall!
I'd suggest that those who negate a 'first mover' under these circumstances probably like art but kind of ignore the 'artist' issue. We see a great 'painting'. Now where is that 'artist?' Where is hding? Why is it so 'easy' to negate?

Equations' can only go so far and no doubt another part of the mind has to take over to try, of course, with limitations to understand and think about creation.
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Old 03-29-2014, 08:42 PM
 
Location: S. Wales.
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That would be an interesting poll. In fact, First mover (or First cause) is one of the stronger arguments for 'God' as indeed the Goldilocks zone argument and the abiogenesis argument.

They are gap for god arguments or arguments from ignorance (which means not knowing the answer, not being stupid), and indeed there are some plausible hypotheses for Abiogenesis that makes denial of the possibility rather blinkered, and I have pointed up some indications that our position in the Goldilocks zone is luck, rather than planning.

For first cause, we really don't have a reply. Big Bang is ok so far as it goes but of course it just posits the question;where did the material that came together to make the Big Bang come from? Big bang is in fact a red herring in the debate.

I don't know and nobody knows (Except Hawking,perhaps but.He.Is.Not. Tell-ing). I have vaguely toyed with the emergence of matter from a numerical potential of nothingness,but this is just a stray comment that I picked up about mathematics as a fundamental reality ..or something...It hardly is an explanation or hypothesis. At bottom, I don't know and nobody knows.

But let's say there is a will or intent behind it,we could call that 'God'. As Mystic phd does,and he might be right. The question of how it relates to religions and their very personal gods comes up, and it can't be explained with: 'It is all one God'. That merely re-presents the argument: which one is that? It is really asking which religion and which God associated with it is the right one?

There are really two arguments, one academic and one fiercely being engaged in.

First cause is academic because nobody knows and it doesn't necessarily affect us,anyway.

The religion and Personal god debate affects us very much indeed and which one is the right one -or are any of them right, and are they not all, every one of them, merely man -made guesswork,speculation and faith-claims based on nothing credible? - are pertinent, important and far from academic arguments.

I say they are and that we should not suppose that they have any divine authority in their messages and admonishments for us, but should be evaluated using the reasoning and evaluation we apply to any other claims about how best to live.

And in that respect the First cause argument is really rather irrelevant.
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Old 03-30-2014, 11:27 AM
 
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Originally Posted by GldnRule View Post
I have noticed a pattern throughout history: Other than Darwin, it seems the "litmus test" for scientists to rise above the ordinary, even above superior, to achieve "superstar status"...is that they in some way believe in a God.
Believing in God was the politically correct position to take throughout most of human history. Of COURSE they're going to at least pay lip service to their so-called belief in God. But who really knows if they actually believed or how devout they were.

What can be proven, however, is that for a very long time - even here in the USA - shirking your religious duties made you about as credible as Pinnochio on his worst day. Atheists, after all, have no morals. Right?

So given the political and social pressure to believe in God even in this day and age, it is nigh impossible to know for certain if ANY of these scientists truly believed as much as they claim they did. It is akin to holding political office in this nation. Even a die-hard atheist would have to pretend to be deeply religious in order to have a chance at election - and I'm pretty certain that several atheist presidents did exactly that.

Why would it be any different among the early scientific community?
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Old 03-30-2014, 02:11 PM
 
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But let's say there is a will or intent behind it,we could call that 'God'. As Mystic phd does,and he might be right. The question of how it relates to religions and their very personal gods comes up, and it can't be explained with: 'It is all one God'. That merely re-presents the argument: which one is that? It is really asking which religion and which God associated with it is the right one?
Jaysus!..how many people on earth, how many have lived, have died through the millenia opening up that road through their own particular 'window.' The killer here: so many conceptions of 'God' conceivably through those portals....religions......they appear to look like simply the nebulae massing and aggregating somehow to direct and concentrate the thoughts of all into some glorious whole on the subject.
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Old 03-31-2014, 06:42 AM
 
Location: S. Wales.
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Originally Posted by travric View Post
Jaysus!..how many people on earth, how many have lived, have died through the millenia opening up that road through their own particular 'window.' The killer here: so many conceptions of 'God' conceivably through those portals....religions......they appear to look like simply the nebulae massing and aggregating somehow to direct and concentrate the thoughts of all into some glorious whole on the subject.
Yes. Th myriad of takes on the religious instinct convinces me utterly that man - made religions are not worthy of belief, nor their man -made gods.

The instinct itself might indicate,as I believe you suggest, that there is a reality,which is a cosmic sized spirit that we can spiritually access. Perhaps.

I am more inclined to think that it is an evolved social-group survival instinct and as such something of a delusion. I do not believe that it is a cosmic spirit that we are accessing.

But of course, I could be wrong.
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Old 03-31-2014, 08:59 AM
 
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The instinct itself might indicate,as I believe you suggest, that there is a reality,which is a cosmic sized spirit that we can spiritually access. Perhaps.
Two oreos for anyone who can peek to a trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth behind the ostensibly propagation of that 'gravitational wave!'...........;-).....
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