Churches rejecting science altogether

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ChinoCoug said:
We need a category

Science: Discussions of scientific theories and developments, with an emphasis on Catholic contributors like Galileo, DesCartes, Mendel, and Ayala.
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I would assume that the theories of Mendel and Ayala would fall under the ban on evolution and atheism discussions.

forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=410885

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kbachler said:
A responsible citizenry needs to understand enough about science and the scientific method to understand what informed people have to say about it.

This paragraph makes no sense to me:
  1. Why would an educated voter be a hindrance?
  2. Why would this be a strategy to keep people from voting? In what way?
My point is that we have people who believe in horoscopes, even on this board we have flat-earthers and geocentrists. The world is difficult enough without having votes rely on mysticism rather than reality.
BTW - in terms of education - it took me a dozen years to put myself through college, working full time and attending part time, because couldn’t afford to go any other way. So I don’t think I really need to be told that education is not an entitlement - do you?
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Hi, kbachler,

I see where you’re at and I understand where you’re at.

Now, I’m going to give your post the benefit of the doubt. I’m going to accept that you really are that naive about elitists, progressives and internationalists hi-jacking our educational system and government.

The crux is this, and I can only go by the words you write to me, in response to my post.
Each type of education, whether college, street, self-educated or vocational and any other type of education you can think of, have value. Every type of education has value.
There are no uninformed voters. Every voter has the information which they choose to take to the voting booth. And, not you, not me, nor anybody else is the judge of what information a citizen brings to the voting booth. Period.

To paraphrase Mother Teresa, If you’re busy judging people, how can you love them them? And our God commands us to love Him and each other.
And if people trusted God to work His will through every kind of voter, there would be a lot less squawking, griping and complaining. On my part, as well.

And, our nation had a much healthier atmosphere, union and solidarity when people respected the variety that made America, instead of tolerating diversity.

This nation still has professed Christians in government. And, it’s every Christian’s duty to admonish, exhort and encourage each other in the Gospel truth and faith. So, we can disagree with those who govern us…this is NOT Europe where people got in the habit of being told what’s good for them century after century by first Monarchical and now by Socialist forms of government. Rather, this IS America, where any type of education and all kinds of information goes into elections.

People are told by science types, you need to be scientific; by law enforcement, you need to know how we think; by Economists, don’t talk about the economy unless you have read these certain books; told by so and so we need such and such from all around us.
No.
We don’t.
We need to go with what we got, because the time is now. That’s what made this nation great.
Quit your complaining. Respect different types of education from yours. Respect viewpoints different from yours.

God loves you,
Don
 
kbachler said:
Science doesn’t present itself as elitist and political (or for that matter, elitis OR political.) ANYONE can learn about science on TV or at the library, there are many programs and books today that explain even complex scientific ideas in lay terms. How much LESS elite does it need to get for you to take off your elitist lable?

That said, science does try to describe reality and get it right, which means there is a “performance bar” - namely - correctness/reality. Are you implying that reality is elitist?

No one is saying that people who aren’t scientifically literate, are stupid. But there does need to be a basic understanding of science to grasp science.

By comparison - I can go to a museum and look at paintings and appreciate the art on a certain level even though I know very little about the techniques of painting. But if I know about the techniques, I can appreciate it more.

OR - I can go to a concert and enjoy music. Although, if I know more about musical technique and composition I might have a better understanding of Bach and “golden braids” than I would otherwise.

But, for example, if I look to the art of – CHESS – it is difficult to understand on a purely visceral level. I need to understand something about chess, about chess technique, about the science of logic in order to appreciate chess. That’s not elitism, that’s simply the nature of chess.

Science is similar. It’s difficult to have an understanding or appreciation of it without some modicum of understanding of the scientific method. That understanding increases if there is some modicum of understanding of say elementary probability and calculus.

There are not “elitist” comments, they’re simply observations on what it takes to understand a complex subject.

And unfortunately, many of the answers that the world needs today require some understanding of the subject.

You find it elitist. I find the attitude of calling it “elitist” somewhat biased and a bit hateful perhaps, and a poor excuse for not making more of an effort to understand.

My “elitism” is that I would like everyone to have a good rudimentary understanding of modern science. How that is “elitist” (when I want it for everyone" I don’t quite understand. What I do understand is that there is a quality level that needs to be reached for this understanding. If you’re mistaking “elitism” for the pursuit of quality, then I’ll take the label and continue to pursue quality.
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Hi, kbachler,

I understand more than you think I do.

I’ve learned a lot about science just the way you’ve enumerated in your opening paragraph.
My point is, science is not the only thing we need to understand. We need to understand our choice of religion, understand our history because from those two, over the millenia, came first philosophy and then all the other accouterments of civilization. Religon nourished science, history recorded scientific findings and philosophy carried science out of the reformation into the public arena. And, science can neither understand nor be understood without the light of Christian faith, the records of history and the concepts of philosophy.

Science has never, can’t now and won’t ever stand alone.
Can you understand that?
Science must be held accountable by the public, that I understand. Do you?
Excuses don’t cut it to your employer and what sounds like excuses doesn’t cut it with the public, which is science’s employer.
Science advances on my nickel, that person’s dime, another’s dollar and yet others’ money.
And we have a right and duty to demand that science answers to us whose tax money funds its activities.

And, that’s where the bear poops in the woods.

A lot of what you write comes across as put downs and excuses. I can’t be the only voter who goes by results.

And, there’s just too many unpalatable and ungodly results reported by the media.

There’s a whole lot more I could say. If you want to know about me, the important things are in my profile. It’s late, I’m tired and I’m not going to rant.
So, this will have to do it.
If you can’t understand it, maybe you should learn more about human nature.

God loves you,
Don
 
Pssst! Don’t tell the creationists, but scientists don’t have a clue how life began

Exactly 20 years ago, I wrote an article for Scientific American that, in draft form, had the headline above. My editor nixed it, so we went with something less dramatic: “In the Beginning…: Scientists are having a hard time agreeing on when, where and—most important—how life first emerged on the earth.” That editor is gone now, so I get to use my old headline, which is even more apt today. Dennis Overbye just wrote a status report for The New York Times on research into life’s origin, based on a conference on the topic at Arizona State University. Geologists, chemists, astronomers and biologists are as stumped as ever by the riddle of life.

more…
 
buffalo said:
Pssst! Don’t tell the creationists, but scientists don’t have a clue how life began

Exactly 20 years ago, I wrote an article for Scientific American that, in draft form, had the headline above. My editor nixed it, so we went with something less dramatic: “In the Beginning…: Scientists are having a hard time agreeing on when, where and—most important—how life first emerged on the earth.” That editor is gone now, so I get to use my old headline, which is even more apt today. Dennis Overbye just wrote a status report for The New York Times on research into life’s origin, based on a conference on the topic at Arizona State University. Geologists, chemists, astronomers and biologists are as stumped as ever by the riddle of life.

more…
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That is the God of the Gaps argument you are using. Scientists have been able to create life; they just don’t have an account of how it happened spontaneously yet. But they are working on it and believe they can solve it in the next decade.

I’m interested in reading your article though.
 
ChinoCoug said:
That is the God of the Gaps argument you are using. Scientists have been able to create life; they just don’t have an account of how it happened spontaneously yet. But they are working on it and believe they can solve it in the next decade.

I’m interested in reading your article though.
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Just to be clear, that was not my article.

As to a God of the gaps, there will always be at least one gap or we would be God. The Creator will always stand above the created.
 
ChinoCoug said:
That is the God of the Gaps argument you are using. Scientists have been able to create life; they just don’t have an account of how it happened spontaneously yet. But they are working on it and believe they can solve it in the next decade.

I’m interested in reading your article though.
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Scientists can’t create life.

Peace,
Ed
 
PerfectTiming said:
They seem to believe science to be this vicious evil and that all science is lies from the Devil, etc. This seems to come from a variety of churches, since there’s no predominant denomination among the community. Without any bias, and with no offence intended to those who do this, I have noticed many of them are home-schooled (how relevant this is is obviously debatable).
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Many home-school curricula teach this. For example, Bob Jones science books depict man and dinosaurs coexisting.
 
I don’t believe science is a bad thing; it’s interesting and even crucial at times to understand the way things work. God has given us so much we still do not understand, so the scientific method can help advance medicine, astronomy, pyschology, and other studies.
The problem is, sometimes science tries to deny faith, when ultimately faith matters more. God has given us science so we know how to find cures for diseases, how to help the enviroment, how to create computers so we can even use this website, and everything else that is deemed a regular part of modern life. We Catholics have the duty of drawing the line when science tries to take over religion or ethical issues, and prove our Church right!:):)🙂
Ora pro nobis, Nostrum Eternus Era!
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_JnSrxGjaqnQ/TBKwwEBET3I/AAAAAAAACKs/39JnimkbUO8/s400/immaculateheart1.jpg
 
edwest2 said:
Scientists can’t create life.

Peace,
Ed
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To be more particular, scientists can’t even make life from inert matter.much less CREATE matter from nothing and establish the “laws” that scientists observe. To bring order from chaos. Of course some say that chaos IS the norm, and that it is the human mind that imposes order on that chaos.
 
ChinoCoug said:
you mean like this?

guardian.co.uk/science/2010/may/20/craig-venter-synthetic-life-form
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No - Venter did not actually create life.
Is the “Synthetic Cell” about Life?
Code: 
   **A bioethicist explores the soul of Venter’s new life form and of his experiment**
…First, as many have noted, the technical accomplishment is not quite what the JCVI press release claimed. It’s hard to see this as a synthetic species, or a synthetic organism, or a synthetic cell; it’s a synthetic genome of Mycoplasma mycoides, which is familiar enough. David Baltimore was closer to the truth when he told the New York Times that the researchers had not created life so much as mimicked it. It might be still more accurate to say that the researchers mimicked one part and borrowed the rest.

The explanation from the Venter camp is that the genome took over the cell, and since the genome is synthetic, therefore the cell is synthetic. But this assumes a strictly top-down control structure that some biologists now question. Why not say instead that the genome and the cell managed to work out their differences and collaborate, or even that the cell adopted the genome (and its identity)? Do we know enough to say which metaphor is most accurate?
Read more: Is the Synthetic Cell about Life? - The Scientist - Magazine of the Life Sciences the-scientist.com/article/display/57523/#ixzz1GRWTYleU
 
Synthetic Life? Not By a Long Shot

…
No life was created

Clearly the scientists have not created life or the bacterial cell. There is a yawning chasm in the physics and chemistry of the living state [4] (The Rainbow and the Worm, The Physics of Organisms, ISIS publication) that the team hasn’t even begun to address, let alone bridge. They did not create the genome that was used to transform the bacteria cell, only copied it from another species of the genus, adding a “water mark” for identification, and no doubt, for staking their claim to the synthetic genome. This synthetic genome was not even made from scratch, but cobbled together from pieces found in a catalogue, and then ‘transplanted’ into cells of the recipient bacterium species (a close relative of the donor) using an antibiotic to select for cells that have accepted the artificial chromosome and allow them to grow. The procedure is similar to the nuclear transplant experiment that made Dolly the cloned sheep in the 1990s and other animals since.
Anthony Forster, a molecular biologist at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, lauds the “pretty amazing accomplishment”, but is among those stressing that the work did not really create life because the genome was put into an existing cell [2].
In many ways, synthetic biology is a linear progression from genetic engineering, only much more extensive and sophisticated, thanks to quantum leaps in DNA sequencing and synthesis techniques, and exponential growth in information technology within the past decade.
 
buffalo said:
Synthetic Life? Not By a Long Shot

…
No life was created

Clearly the scientists have not created life or the bacterial cell. There is a yawning chasm in the physics and chemistry of the living state [4] (The Rainbow and the Worm, The Physics of Organisms, ISIS publication) that the team hasn’t even begun to address, let alone bridge. They did not create the genome that was used to transform the bacteria cell, only copied it from another species of the genus, adding a “water mark” for identification, and no doubt, for staking their claim to the synthetic genome. This synthetic genome was not even made from scratch, but cobbled together from pieces found in a catalogue, and then ‘transplanted’ into cells of the recipient bacterium species (a close relative of the donor) using an antibiotic to select for cells that have accepted the artificial chromosome and allow them to grow. The procedure is similar to the nuclear transplant experiment that made Dolly the cloned sheep in the 1990s and other animals since.
Anthony Forster, a molecular biologist at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, lauds the “pretty amazing accomplishment”, but is among those stressing that the work did not really create life because the genome was put into an existing cell [2].
In many ways, synthetic biology is a linear progression from genetic engineering, only much more extensive and sophisticated, thanks to quantum leaps in DNA sequencing and synthesis techniques, and exponential growth in information technology within the past decade.
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Makes one thing that Pythagoras had an insight. The math is kind of the “form” of things.
 
RobbyS said:
Makes one thing that Pythagoras had an insight. The math is kind of the “form” of things.
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Hi, RobbyS,

I’ve always thought of advanced mathematics as a language, which I do not comprehend as my abstract competence is towards music and words.

I wonder if the kind of research we’re discussing on this page has been done in ancient times? The Greek myths of strange creatures could be a lingering wisp of an earlier age of biological experiments? The Minotaur, centaurs and satyrs are surely strange creatures.
 
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