When a scientist explains that energy is indestructible, they are not making an absolute statement about reality itself, but rather they are talking about physical reality alone. Thus they mean only that energy, in the context of physical reality, cannot be created or destroyed.
(#2 to your post #29)
Good scientists, such as most of those with and for whom I’ve worked, would not make such a statement. They don’t sort their understanding into categories For them, there is only one reality. That is why they are effective— they don’t equivocate.
I’m working a bit sideways from the opinions of conventional scientists, but within the realm of solid laws and good evidence. I believe in a Creator, and in the potential continuity of post-death human consciousness. But I also believe in a single reality, governed at the physical level by “laws” and at the conscious level by whim.
I find this an effective tool for understanding, because I seek an understanding of all things real and possible. Neither conventional religion nor conventional science can embrace that range of curiosity.
This is not the same as saying that there is no being in reality that can create or destroy energy.
It is exactly the same. The conservation of energy law is absolute.
Science has no way of determining that fact, just as much as the fact that science cannot be used in the attempt to prove the existence of God.
Here, my thoughtful antagonist, is where you have gone dreadfully awry.
Nevermind that science has a variety of ways to determine the 1st Law’s validity. More important to anyone who believes that we live in a created universe is that science
must be used to prove the existence of God.
Galileo knew this. It is why he was threatened with inquisitional torture and death. The Church bosses would not accept his idea that an understanding of physics must teach us about the nature of God.
Yet here we are, 3 or 4 centuries later, and religions remain pretty much stuck in their centuries-old dogmatic mud. You, and people with your quality of mind, might think about throwing some straw under the wheels instead of adding more water.
The scientific method has epistemological & metaphysical limitations in regards to what we can know and not know about reality.
You are exactly right. The “scientific method,” which is a term invented and described by non-scientists, has loads of limitations. It is an irrelevant description of how real science actually works.
. Some people study science from the outside. I learned it from the inside as well. I used to share rare meat, red wine, and rum buns with scientists at a place called the “Watergate Inn,” since destroyed and replaced with government buildings, one the center of Nixon’s demise. Real scientists are not like the images which have been invented for them. They are regular people with first rate minds who are capable of understanding things which people with second rate minds (such as mine) cannot. The good ones are neither pretentious nor arrogant.
They will tackle any subject, but tire of addressing, and re-addressing the ignorant who are determined to remain ignorant. They have the same psychological tendencies as you and I, in that they are reluctant to accept beliefs outside their knowledge without good cause. For a scientist, “good cause” is a higher standard than for a religionist. Or a philosopher.
Real science is not quite as it is characterized. The most powerful insights have nothing to do with the scientific method. For example, James Maxwell’s four equations of classical electrodynamics. He published these with a complex mathematical derivation, but that is not how he discovered them. He told friends that he woke up with those equations in his mind. This lore could be easily dismissed, except that a few decades ago some bright mathematician/physicist went through Maxwell’s “derivation” and discovered that it was incorrect. Upon correcting the errors, however, he obtained the same result.
Here is a simpler example. Benjamin Franklin’s historical experiment, capturing electric charge from lightning, was performed with Ben standing in an open doorway, and with the assistance of his son. (He needed 4 hands.) Subsequent experimenters who tried to repeat the experiment without doorway or assistant were mostly electrocuted. How did Ben know the correct experimental technique? What insights led him to do the experiment in the first place?
There is more to science than the formal method.
These are the epistemological facts; not the musings of sheepherders.
You do not need to take my sheepherder remark personally. It was not intended as an insult to thoughtful men who worked their butts off caring for animals useful to mankind, who rested in the meadows now and then and contemplated their world. It was intended as a wake up call to those who, centuries later, treat the musings of thoughtful sheepherders (or anyone else) as dogmatic truth.
The only real difference between science and religion is that when science makes a mistake, it eventually corrects it and moves on; but when religion makes a mistake it calls the mistake dogma, and when the error is exposed, religionists just sound a bugle call for their apologists.
When the apologists’ words are analyzed, assuming that they’ve deigned to address an issue, it will be found that they are all grounded in the beliefs of ancient sheepherders. Maybe some goat herders too. But a well-intentioned philosophically or scientifically minded sheepherder with an I.Q. of 200 living 3000 years ago would have had zero chance of understanding the ideas we are kicking around here.
). As soon as we discard the concept “source of all being”, we immediately wonder why things are in the first place. Thus we reintroduce the concept.
