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yankee_doodle
Guest
this is not what the preponderance of the facts suggest.
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yankee_doodle
Guest
simplynoone:
I meant to say preponderance of the evidence (sorry bout that)
I meant to say preponderance of the evidence (sorry bout that)
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exan
Guest
If the son goes into quantumechanics, relativivy theory, then reads on hawkins, string theory, M theory, he will be sure there is no god, and certainly no christian god. There has been many speculation on how the universe came into existance, if certain theories are proven true, the universe is bigger than just what happened after the big bang and there was long something before the big bang.
Even in the USA deeply religious country 60% of science people are atheist (thats counting people who educate, do not do research) top level scientists the numbers go up to some 80% over all, 90% for physics and 98% for biology. Scientists in the majority are atheist or agnost, not religious.
Atheists may be the most distrusted group in the USA, but I never see christians protesting using stuff like TV, computers, advanced technology created by mainly atheists. Christians do trust atheists creations a lot and actually use forums which run on windows created by atheist bill gates. So yeah, do christians really distrust atheists? They too happily make use of things created by atheists.
Off course fearing is a powerfull manipulation tactic to try keep the son christian, tell him “atheists are distrusted”, but that only shows lack of moral. Manipulation and fearing people into things is inmoral and below the ground. But go on, scare your son into showing him zero moral, trying to force him, another inmoral tactic, will only make him run faster to atheism and dislike christianity more.
Let the dude read this thread, the way his mommy wants to manipulate him, the manipulating advices given, he will be cured of this “we have such great morality” religion forever.
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simplynoone
Guest
Is evolution a myth? No … as of yet, it is only still called a theory, but not a myth. Genesis 1, then, not a myth. Is social justice and self responsibility a myth? No! Then just look at Ezekiel 18 … not a myth! Perspective man! You only have your mind open to disproving it because you have reason for doing such. Don’t feel so threatened and read what is there as it is … not as you wish it to be.
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yankee_doodle
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Seriously, it’s somewhere between amusing and annoying (but I guess it’s more disturbing really) to know there’s so many people walking around this country who believe these ridiculous myths, who are so indoctrinated they actually can’t fathom how anyone could possibly disagree with them. While you like to tell yourself (and me) that you’re not one of those people, you clearly are.
A theory is an idea why certain things happen or exist (that we know happen or exist through observation). Biblical mythology cannot be equated with a scientific theory because there’s nothing to observe with mythology. With natural selection, if we know what we’re doing, we can observe changes in nature over time that confirm adaptive evolution. Darwin’s theory simply explains why those things happen (you make the same mistake of most religious fanatics, who don’t even understand the definition of the term theory, let alone the first thing about evolution). In other words we know adaptive evolution happens (we have skeletons of 14 different species of hominid to show it). The theories involve understanding how and why we evolved, not if we evolved.
Anyway, not much use talking about logic or science with religious fanatics, I’ve become convinced that it’s fruitless.
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yankee_doodle
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nice
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gearhead
Guest
And there’s not only the negative evidence. There’s positive evidence that speaks against the Exodus as well.
If one group moves into an area and displaces the people who were there, we would see this in the archaeologic record: different cultures have different styles of pottery, weaving, building, etc., etc., so when one culture displaces another, we would expect the remnants we have of these sorts of things would sharply change.
However, this doesn’t happen. The archaeological record is continuous. The civilization of ancient Judea wasn’t the product of conquering foreigners who drove out the natives; it was the result of organic, gradual change from the indigenous culture that had been there all along.
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yankee_doodle
Guest
excellent information
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josie_L
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That’s because it has been held since the “enligtenment” that there is a divide between science and religion which is false but it has been fostered nevertheless by our system of education (and our culture, mainly through communications, i.e., the media). So people who are educated in the sciences are felt to believe that religion is false or rather contradicts science, and therefore they are pressured to choose science or are convinced to choose science over religion when they don’t need to.
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yankee_doodle
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You think people who are smart enough to understand and master the most difficult academic topics (like quantum mechanics and biology) can’t think for themselves & are guided like sheep by journalists who are almost universally dumber than they are.
The **** you guys tell yourselves is really over the top sometimes
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camerong
Guest
I can’t speak to why scientists have wrong beliefs, but there are many things can keep highly intelligent people from making the best decisions. A field’s culture that strongly disapproves of faith in God is certainly one. Intellectual pride is another. Having one’s mind so deep in one’s scientific work that one never really thinks about religion is yet another.You think people who are smart enough to understand and master the most difficult academic topics (like quantum mechanics and biology) can’t think for themselves & are guided like sheep by journalists who are almost universally dumber than they are.
The **** you guys tell yourselves is really over the top sometimes
The most intelligent people throughout modernity and history have come down on both sides of this issue. It is not one that can be resolved through intellect alone.
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yankee_doodle
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Your latter statement is debatable. While yes a century ago (and earlier) there were many great scientists who were devout Christians, the fact that virtually none are theists today really does say something. The idea that there’s a uniform “culture” in a field as diverse as science is certainly not an adequate explanation.
I’m personally not an atheist because the vast majority of scientists are atheists. I came to my own independent conclusions based on the evidence. I actually was religious at one time, and now I’m not, because the evidence against theism is overwhelming.
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camerong
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I don’t think one can deny the a strong culture against theistic belief in science. But does this actually affect scientists? It seems it does, in the same way that a strong theistic culture in a particular community or even neighborhood will produce more theists. The fact that there is not a uniform distribution of believers and non-believers across the world strongly indicates that the culture one is in influences one’s beliefs. The same absolutely applies to occupations and fields of study. The strong bend against theism was discussed in a book The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief, written by Francis Collins, who was the head of the Human Genome Project (and who was also recently chosen by Obama to head the National Institute of Health, or some similar group). Collins discusses how he naturally turned away from religion the more he turned towards biology–not because there is any evidence against God in biology, but because that was the culture he experienced.
Even if there were no theists in science, that would really hold no importance in my mind. The whole purpose of religion is to look at things we cannot study with science–I don’t give any weight at all to a person’s belief about nonmaterial things simply because he is at the top of his field in studying material things. But, of course, it is simply not true that there are virtually no scientists who are theists. As Collins discusses in his book (and as his own theistic beliefs demonstrate) there are a significant number of theists in all fields of science.
You say the evidence against theism is overwhelming. That’s an interesting claim. This may not be an appropriate place for it, but I’m interested in hearing what evidence is out there against theism. My own conclusion is that there is very little evidence for or against theism. In fact, Collin’s book (badly titled as I think it is) does more for me to show that the existence of God is not implausible than that it is likely.
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exan
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Scientists in long history used to be religious, because there was no evidence of how else the world could have been created. When there was no evidence to contradict god, there was not much reason to state otherwis eithere. Science and religion did not always have problems with eachother when the theories were separate. However things changed at first with Charles Dawkin, giving science a theory on how life really evolved from one species into another, and later on with more scientific findings contradicted the abrahemic gods words.
A biblican god is very unlikely, and something which cannot be measured, which has no falsifiable theory, it has not much to do in science. Its as likely as a pink unicorn which created the word, both myth, both not based on evidence or falsifiable logic. The bible is supposed to be gods word, but if that is so god has been going through great lengths to hide his existance. A god who is ‘good’ would not be willingly deveiving people, thus is illogical. Thats how most religions are seen as illogical and not true today by scientists.
Scientific people not nessecarily are against religion when they start a science career. Darwing himself was a religious man when he started his journey on the beagle, but the more evidence he gained for the theory of evolution, the less likely it seemed that there was a god. God did not fit into the picture, in fact, it contradicted what was written in the bible. The cruelty found in nature did not match his idea of a benevolent god. Darwin turned atheist, he could no longer believe.
The same goes for further findings in chemistry, physics, the creation of the universe. Einstein became a deist/agnost after finding out so much about the universe, he could no longer believe in what he called a personal god who responeded to prayer or interfered with the world. It was his scientific findings that made a christian god not possible in his eyes, and turned him away from religion.
Hawking reportedly he is atheist at home, he himself states he only believes in the laws of physics, but he is friendly towards religion, probably because his first wife was a christian. And he is a popular book writer, his books sell better with ‘god’ in it, even as is its to him only a metaphor for science laws, to other people it means more. Hawking is not only intelligent but also a smart marketing person. “The mind of god” means different things to different people, which he knows very well.
He has met the pope at least 2 times, the pope trying to keep him from studying how the big bang happened when he was young, but no use.
Hawking joking later on:
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"He [the pope] told us that it was all right to study the evolution
of the universe after the big bang, but we should not inquire
into the big bang itself because that was the moment of Creation
and therefore the work of God. I was glad then
that he did not know the subject of the talk
I had just given at the conference - the possibility
that space-time was finite but had no boundary, which means that it
had no beginning, no moment of Creation. I had no desire to share the fate of
Galileo, with whom I feel a strong sense of identity, partly because of
the coincidence of having been born exactly 300 years after his death!"If you read enough of this science, the existance of a (biblical, or other worldly) god becomes very unrealistic. After all there are better explanations for the worlds than all the religions on the world which contradict those findings. Science is about evidence, theories, and finding the truth, believing in an unmeasurable, unfalsifiable god is not very logical, especially taking into consideration is claimed the bible is claimed to be gods word. If that is not true, what base a religion on? There is no proof against any god, but there is loads of proof the bible does not tell the truth. That would mean god either lied, made the bible unclear on purpose and put a lot of deceiving evidence out. Its not logical. A deisitic god, which has never done and does nothing in the word is not excluded by science, but commonly is just used as a metaphor.
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josie_L
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Wendy Freedman and her team at the Carnegie Observatories took the better part of a decade with the Hubble Space Telescope to calibrate the Hubble constant, which measures the rate of the universe’s expansion. Though there are complications, of course, to a first approximation, it seems one can run the movie of the universe’s expansion in reverse and calculate a beginning (now set at 13.7 billion years ago).
Is it that simple? Does a tight Hubble constant “prove” that the universe did, in fact, have a beginning? What impresses me are the multiple tests and independent measurements, all of which converge on a similar origin and age of the universe. Most meaningful is the cosmic background radiation, that “afterglow” of the heat of the big bang, which fills the sky in all directions and which shows the steady state universe to be false. Experimental astrophysicist George Smoot won the Nobel Prize for these measurements; he calls the pictorial representations “an ultrasound of the embryo universe”—galaxies and clusters of galaxies germinating from quantum fluctuations, seeds smaller than protons.
So it seems that our universe did have a beginning. We call it the “big bang,” but technically, under the most widely accepted cosmological model—inflation—the big bang was not the beginning. It emerged from the cauldron of cosmic inflation, when something infinitesimally small expanded majestically in an astonishingly brief instant, cooking up space, time, energy, and matter in a colossal cosmic stew.
The fundamental question is this: No matter the theory, was there ever a “something from nothing” start? In Guth’s inflation, no matter how high the number of universes that exist at any moment, inflation had to start with a beginning. Cosmic inflation may engender infinite universes forever into the future, but it cannot do so forever into the past. Under inflationary theory, there must be a finite number of universes in the past. Time’s arrow is not symmetrical. So unless something like the Steinhardt-Turok model of cyclical universes is correct, inflation demands that the universe had a beginning and that it had to start with some stuff, however small.
scienceandreligiontoday.blogs…beginning.html
The conclusion of this lecture is that the universe has not existed forever. Rather, the universe, and time itself, had a beginning in the Big Bang, about 15 billion years ago. The beginning of real time, would have been a singularity, at which the laws of physics would have broken down. Nevertheless, the way the universe began would have been determined by the laws of physics, if the universe satisfied the no boundary condition. This says that in the imaginary time direction, space-time is finite in extent, but doesn’t have any boundary or edge. The predictions of the no boundary proposal seem to agree with observation. The no boundary hypothesis also predicts that the universe will eventually collapse again. However, the contracting phase, will not have the opposite arrow of time, to the expanding phase. So we will keep on getting older, and we won’t return to our youth. Because time is not going to go backwards, I think I better stop now.
hawking.org.uk/index.php/lectures/62
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rdscheirer
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St. Thomas Aquinas wrote the best philosophical treatise on the existence of God.
Summa Theologica is its name.
Ask him this philological question- “Can we measure cold?”
“Can we measure dark?”
“Can we measure evil?”
The answers are in Summa Theologica. Also Einstein commented on this.
Summa Theologica is its name.
Ask him this philological question- “Can we measure cold?”
“Can we measure dark?”
“Can we measure evil?”
The answers are in Summa Theologica. Also Einstein commented on this.
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exan
Guest
Link 1 does not work.
If there was a start of “something” it certainly was not the biblical god. Unless you bend god in very strange ways to make him fit and make the bible fit. And make his omniscient mind having written the bible unlogically on purpose. Big bang, singularity and the bible tales do not go well together. But then again, so do genesis and evolution. One pope was against it, next pope stated that evolution and religion do not clash. The bible was only ‘symbolical’ on how life was created. The bible is also must be symbolical on the creation of the universe. Earth created before stars? The bible is often turns parts ‘symbolical’ when science finds something new and it cannot be denied anymore. Popes are commercial figures. Religion always runs after science, claiming god fills one less gap, because science has found out something.
I am sure the pope does not want to know all about the cyclic universe theory. If that is proven to be correct, what will religion do next?
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josie_L
Guest
There are many parts of the Bible that have not been interpreted by the Church, furthermore, the Church has never interpreted the Bible in the literal sense alone (there is allegorical, analogical. . . etc.) which leaves much room for science to fill in the gaps. You see the Church contains the fullness of truth with regard to faith and morals but this does not mean it contains all truth. The Church has made it explicit that faith and REASON are needed to understand Truth correctly that is why the Church has no problem with seeking out science or rather learning from it.
p.s. The cyclical universe theory would not put a dent in our understanding of who created space and time, i.e., an eternal cause which as theists we posit is God.
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exan
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Hawking commenting about his view of god, in a video together with Carl Sagan and Arthur C. Clarke. “God, The Universe, and Everything Else”
youtube.com/watch?v=K95mEZwfevE&feature=PlayList&p=6E5E0CA0629F86FF&index=4
youtube.com/watch?v=K95mEZwfevE&feature=PlayList&p=6E5E0CA0629F86FF&index=4
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mcrisp411
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I thought I would throw my two cents in. I haven’t read the whole thread because its really long. Anywho, I think he is not interested in trying to believe. The best thing you can do is pray and dont stop. Keep showing him love. Something I think is true that I have recently discovered is that you can talk a person to death, get them to read or watch, but if their spirit isn’t willing because they don’t want to believe, then they wont. No matter what you say. I have never really converted anyone or for that matter get anyone to change their mind on something. I try all the time to talk to people. I have hope that down the line the seeds we plant will grow some day. If God knows that your son would convert after some time then I am positive that God will allow him the time he needs. So there is no need to worry because everything is in Gods hands.His open-mindedness doesn’t include reading any book that would be about God or religion or even a plausible reason for belief. I have given him several of Peter Kreeft’s books in hopes that he would be willing to read a secular philosophy professors view on belief in God. The books remained untouched for quite a long time and then he finally gave them back saying he didn’t have time to read them. However, he had lots of time to read other books that support his way of thinking and he has a lot of free time to play soccer, play poker (of course it’s Texas Hold 'em
I don’t know if showing him anything about Stephen Hawkings will help or not. I guess I was hoping that an atheistic scientist that changed his mind MIGHT get him to begin reconsidering his belief.
The funny thing is…he told me that I had done a very good job in raising him in the Catholic Church and that his belief now wasn’t my fault. I can’t help but think that I obviously didn’t do a good job!
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Kdesiel**:
The instructor for the course he took was agnostic and I agree with you
that it’s probably not Philosophy itself that “convinced” him but the instructor he had for the course. Thank you for your prayers for him!!
Hisalone:
Yes, I know it will ultimately take the Power of God. I have been praying for him for quite a long time and I will continue as long as I’m alive. I offer the Rosary, The Chaplet of the Divine Mercy and Masses for his conversion. It just scares me that something might happen to him before he comes around. That thought terrifies me and keeps me praying for him.
If you want to try some reasoning try asking him how he knows God doesn’t exist. If its just because of what he believes then I think there isnt much you can do. If not then you can say that the only way to prove that God doesn’t exist is to be God and that cant happen. In order to show that He isn’t there or real you would have to be able to search every part of the universe at all places at all times and in all demintions. You cant do that unless you are God. Try to show him some of the designs in the universe and in us Humans. The chances of life existing on earth, with perfect temperature and atmosphere, land water ratio. The fact that we have a little hole near our eye to let the water from our eyes drain out in our nose, or the fact that our heart has valves. To me these things are amazing and we had to invent them before we knew they were already there in our body or existed in nature. There is a new movie called expelled and it talks about creationism and a guy I cant remember, he is a militant athiest, is interviewed and it doesnt look good in his favor.
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