Why do scientists want to prove we are an accident?

[StrawberryJam]

Im familiar with the scientific method but it doesn’t answer my question.

I replied to what you said here:
Scientists want to prove we are accidents.THey don’t believe God creates anything or works through evolution either.Why do they want to prove we came from the stars?What difference would it make for them or anybody else?

The Scientific Method does not start out with theory and work backwards. It has no reason to test untestable things. If God exists or not would be personal speculation of any scientist to hold, but it would not be science.

 

[Nec5]

I can only wonder where you ever got your degree.

Probably at the same indoctrination school you went to, only that poster didn’t get completely brainwashed.

 

[valentino]

I replied to what you said here:
Scientists want to prove we are accidents.THey don’t believe God creates anything or works through evolution either.Why do they want to prove we came from the stars?What difference would it make for them or anybody else?

The Scientific Method does not start out with theory and work backwards. It has no reason to test untestable things. If God exists or not would be personal speculation of any scientist to hold, but it would not be science.

maybe you don’t understand what im saying.I didn’t say anything about testing?All I said was that they want to prove we come from the dust of the stars.That’s what this big bang was supposed to produce.Molecules forming and over millions of years finally a human is created from the rearranging of the molecules.maybe you’re saying that the scientist don’t use the scientific method when they describe how life came into existence.Truefully I don’t I don’t know what you are saying.

 

[Iron_Donkey]

maybe you don’t understand what im saying.I didn’t say anything about testing?All I said was that they want to prove we come from the dust of the stars.That’s what this big bang was supposed to produce.Molecules forming and over millions of years finally a human is created from the rearranging of the molecules.maybe you’re saying that the scientist don’t use the scientific method when they describe how life came into existence.Truefully I don’t I don’t know what you are saying.

Scientists try to prove by testing. That’s what they do. So yes, you did say something about testing. They test theories that seem to fit the data, and theories that don’t fit the data are discarded. Not fool proof, but you can be reasonably sure that any theory that stays around for a while does an ok job of explaining what we see.

As for the rest, “remember you are dust and to dust you shall return.” Seriously though, you’re reading way too much into this. These theories have surprisingly few philosophical/theological consequences, at least as related to whether or not we were created by God and/or human life has meaning. And by “surprisingly few,” I mean “none.”

 

[valentino]

Scientists try to prove by testing. That’s what they do. So yes, you did say something about testing. They test theories that seem to fit the data, and theories that don’t fit the data are discarded. Not fool proof, but you can be reasonably sure that any theory that stays around for a while does an ok job of explaining what we see.

As for the rest, “remember you are dust and to dust you shall return.” Seriously though, you’re reading way too much into this. These theories have surprisingly few philosophical/theological consequences, at least as related to whether or not we were created by God and/or human life has meaning. And by “surprisingly few,” I mean “none.”

My friend "from dust you are…return.is not a theory.According to the bible its a fact.

 

[didymus]

My friend "from dust you are…return.is not a theory.According to the bible its a fact.

And also according to physicists. They just go further back farther in time.

imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answers/050921a.html

physics.org/article-questions.asp?id=52

We are all made of stardust. It sounds like a line from a poem, but there is some solid science behind this statement too: almost every element on Earth was formed at the heart of a star.

Next time you’re out gazing at stars twinkling in the night sky, spare a thought for the tumultuous reactions they play host to. It’s easy to forget that stars owe their light to the energy released by nuclear fusion reactions at their cores. These are the very same reactions which created chemical elements like carbon or iron - the building blocks which make up the world around us.

After the Big Bang, tiny particles bound together to form hydrogen and helium. As time went on, young stars formed when clouds of gas and dust gathered under the effect of gravity, heating up as they became denser. At the stars’ cores, bathed in temperatures of over 10 million degrees C, hydrogen and then helium nuclei fused to form heavier elements. A reaction known as nucleosynthesis.

This reaction continues in stars today as lighter elements are converted into heavier ones. Relatively young stars like our Sun convert hydrogen to produce helium, just like the first stars of our universe. Once they run out of hydrogen, they begin to transform helium into beryllium and carbon. As these heavier nuclei are produced, they too are burnt inside stars to synthesise heavier and heavier elements. Different sized stars play host to different fusion reactions, eventually forming everything from oxygen to iron.
During a supernova, when a massive star explodes at the end of its life, the resulting high energy environment enables the creation of some of the heaviest elements including iron and nickel. The explosion also disperses the different elements across the universe, scattering the stardust which now makes up planets including Earth.

I would also recommend the Catholic Laboratory podcast.

 

[Iron_Donkey]

My friend "from dust you are…return.is not a theory.According to the bible its a fact.

This is true. Also somewhat irrelevant to the point at hand. Science is the study of creation. It does the best it can. It does so independent of other influences because if it does not, it does not progress. It is occasionally wrong. In fact, you could say that it progresses because it knows it’s wrong. But it progresses through different stages of wrongness to less wrong stages.

For example, when Newton did his thing, the universe began to seem deterministic. This spilled over into philosophy/theology, and you had a lot of people who tried to take the incorrect (excellent, but still not correct) theory too seriously, use it as certain truth, and base other stuff off it which they therefore believed to be certainly true. Lots of boneheaded ideas came out of this period. And lets not even talk about the social abuses of “survival of the fittest.”

Then the deterministic nature of Newtonian physics was blown out of the water, more or less. Quantum Physics introduced an element of non-determinism - disputed by some but generally accepted. And people misinterpret that as authoritative too, and get all kinds of random ideas about the universe acting randomly. I don’t think we’ll ever go back to a deterministic model as standard (though we may, I suppose), but if we do then it’ll be just as silly to let it slop over into philosophy/theology as it was the first time people did it.

In short, science is not certain, and treating it as if it is supposed to be - whether by using it to found incorrect philosophies, or railing against it because you think it goes against your philosophy/theology (which at the moment it really doesn’t, despite what you say) is taking it entirely too seriously.

This is an error common to the Dawkins crowd (basing world philosophy off of it), some of the young-earthers (trying to jump straight to something that agrees with philosophy/theology without due respect for intervening space), and the people who reject modern science altogether (thinking that because a model goes against their philosophy/theology, it must be useless as a model and not worth examining). One of the few things these people share, in fact.

 

[Nimzovik]

@valentino,

Why should we keep the Earth in good shape? Well, if there is no divine purpose to life and what we’ve got here on Earth is all there is, you’d want to keep the planet in good shape so you can enjoy life, which is fun and pleasant. You’d want to keep it in good shape for your children and their children and so on.

@Nimzovik,

Morals as in the “Golden Rule” is essential for survival. You do not want to be killed, so do not kill other humans unless it is the only means to prevent an unjust intruder trying to kill you. You wouldn’t like your stuff stolen, so why steal others? It causes anger and potential death. Animals even show some form of morals, thought not in a complex way, but ones that look out for the community. It’s essential for survival.

What we would remove from morals is some things we have imposed on ourselves due to some religions.

Bold lettering mine.

Au contraire! The cleverest sociopath would then be the pinnacle of evolution. We have seen what happens in cities when there is an electrical blackout yes? Chaos- yes? If the light of God were gone from men’s souls -well… figure it out yourself. Animals show morals because God is indeed in this multiverse. The said morals of animals existence is **not **a given.

You need to extrapolate from the premise more thoroughly. Once again I state consider the shark. Even *this *sociopathic predator would perhaps loose it’s pack mentality I dare say.

 

[valentino]

This is true. Also somewhat irrelevant to the point at hand. Science is the study of creation. It does the best it can. It does so independent of other influences because if it does not, it does not progress. It is occasionally wrong. In fact, you could say that it progresses because it knows it’s wrong. But it progresses through different stages of wrongness to less wrong stages.

For example, when Newton did his thing, the universe began to seem deterministic. This spilled over into philosophy/theology, and you had a lot of people who tried to take the incorrect (excellent, but still not correct) theory too seriously, use it as certain truth, and base other stuff off it which they therefore believed to be certainly true. Lots of boneheaded ideas came out of this period. And lets not even talk about the social abuses of “survival of the fittest.”

Then the deterministic nature of Newtonian physics was blown out of the water, more or less. Quantum Physics introduced an element of non-determinism - disputed by some but generally accepted. And people misinterpret that as authoritative too, and get all kinds of random ideas about the universe acting randomly. I don’t think we’ll ever go back to a deterministic model as standard (though we may, I suppose), but if we do then it’ll be just as silly to let it slop over into philosophy/theology as it was the first time people did it.

In short, science is not certain, and treating it as if it is supposed to be - whether by using it to found incorrect philosophies, or railing against it because you think it goes against your philosophy/theology (which at the moment it really doesn’t, despite what you say) is taking it entirely too seriously.

This is an error common to the Dawkins crowd (basing world philosophy off of it), some of the young-earthers (trying to jump straight to something that agrees with philosophy/theology without due respect for intervening space), and the people who reject modern science altogether (thinking that because a model goes against their philosophy/theology, it must be useless as a model and not worth examining). One of the few things these people share, in fact.

Its very relevant.God said we are were created from the dust of the earth.Man wants to prove that we are an accident and we had our origins in the stars.Im not debating whether man came from the stars Im debating the scientists who say God hade no hand in evolution and that we are accidents who came about by the accident of the big bang.If you say the big bang was not an accident then what would you call it?Afterall its something which is supposed to have taken place for no reason.If it did have a reason than God had to have cause it.

 

[Planty_Business]

It’s not that scientists want to prove that we are accidents, per se. It is just the conclusion that some scientists have reached. Personally, I think that the idea of a universe in which everything happens for a reason is disturbing, in that it robs us of our moral integrity. If God’s will is sovereign, and God intended for the events of the universe to play out in such a way that Adolf Hitler committed genocide, then I have no reason to condemn Hitler’s actions. I like being an accident, for the same reason Catholics probably think God likes being an accident.

 

[bmonk]

It seems to me that scientists wants to prove we came from the dust of the stars and we evolved through many forms and became human. In other words we are accidents not guided by anything but keep on evolving. Let’s just assume this to be true. How would it change their lives or ours?

Scientists usually prescind from the idea of God (that is, use a working axiom that God does not exist, or has no measurable effect on how the world works) because they are working at a level that makes it difficult, at best, to postulate God and to account for any changes God may create. Their ideal is “objective, observable reality”–and God, by definition, is a subjective reality, not objective.

Given that, let’s take your assumption that the universe has no guiding principle. How would it change their lives or ours?

I might question then how consciousness arises, including a consciousness that can question existence itself. That leads to the observation that, say, with social insects we can postulate that the individual bees and ants have no volition; they simply act in accord with their surroundings.

With, say, dogs, it’s not so easy to maintain this purely “objective” stance. Dogs clearly seem to have personalities. One loves to play “fetch,” another is more lazy, a third is most often watching what goes on so as to protect his master and his master’s property, a fourth loves to lay there in rapt adoration, and so on. And, within their abilities, they can reason and make choices.

With humans, we clearly can plan, think abstractly, communicate, make tools, be altruistic, and all sorts of other things. We can also be evil, broken, vicious to others. Where do these options come from? How do we decide what is better, for us as individuals, as a group, as a species, and for the universe? I think that without God, these questions become very difficult to answer, especially to answer coherently and consistently.

Science doesn’t even ask many of these questions, and certainly not as “science”.
Is the atom bomb possible? Science says “Yes!”
Is it a good thing to develop and deploy? (something the scientists tended to ask only when it was too late) “Probably not.”

 

[tonyrey]

It’s not that scientists want to prove that we are accidents, per se. It is just the conclusion that some scientists have reached. Personally, I think that the idea of a universe in which everything happens for a reason is disturbing, in that it robs us of our moral integrity.

Welcome to the forum!

The existence of God does not imply that everything happens for a reason. There is an element of chance within the framework of Design. In an immensely complex system unwanted coincidences are bound to occur.

If God’s will is sovereign, and God intended for the events of the universe to play out in such a way that Adolf Hitler committed genocide, then I have no reason to condemn Hitler’s actions.

Not if one of God’s intentions is that we choose how to live!

I like being an accident, for the same reason Catholics probably think God likes being an accident.

Do you prefer being an insignificant, valueless freak of nature with no raison d’etre, free will or responsibility?

 

[ThinkingSapien]

Scientists usually prescind from the idea of God (that is, use a working axiom that God does not exist, or has no measurable effect on how the world works)

Or as Eugenie Scott of the National Center for Science Education says “You can’t put God in the Test Tube.”

It seems to me that scientists wants to prove we came from the dust of the stars and we evolved through many forms and became human

I kind of wish this question had been worded such that it avoided asking about a stereotype. Others have already addressed that though. If there’s a specific scientist you can think of that has expressed “wanting” to prove this (and if said scientist is still alive) finding out why he or she wants to prove something could be a matter of just sending him or her an e-mail.

 

[cerad2]

I do the see rationale of evolution on a genetic level (genetic drifts and shifts), especially at the molecular level and in bacteria/viruses. Oh well. I’d rather be seen as a “poor” biologist than to go against my belief that human life is sacred and that we were created by God in His own image.

So how do you justify singling out human evolution? I’m assuming that in any test question concerning human evolution you would accept “Goddidit” as a valid and complete answer. But if the question concerned, say, cellular mitosis then only science would be accepted?

 

[valentino]

Or as Eugenie Scott of the National Center for Science Education says “You can’t put God in the Test Tube.”

I kind of wish this question had been worded such that it avoided asking about a stereotype. Others have already addressed that though. If there’s a specific scientist you can think of that has expressed “wanting” to prove this (and if said scientist is still alive) finding out why he or she wants to prove something could be a matter of just sending him or her an e-mail.

Im sorry Its just that I don;t like to type.Im referring the modernist thinking scientist not all.

 

[valentino]

Scientists usually prescind from the idea of God (that is, use a working axiom that God does not exist, or has no measurable effect on how the world works) because they are working at a level that makes it difficult, at best, to postulate God and to account for any changes God may create. Their ideal is “objective, observable reality”–and God, by definition, is a subjective reality, not objective.

Given that, let’s take your assumption that the universe has no guiding principle. How would it change their lives or ours?

I might question then how consciousness arises, including a consciousness that can question existence itself. That leads to the observation that, say, with social insects we can postulate that the individual bees and ants have no volition; they simply act in accord with their surroundings.

With, say, dogs, it’s not so easy to maintain this purely “objective” stance. Dogs clearly seem to have personalities. One loves to play “fetch,” another is more lazy, a third is most often watching what goes on so as to protect his master and his master’s property, a fourth loves to lay there in rapt adoration, and so on. And, within their abilities, they can reason and make choices.

With humans, we clearly can plan, think abstractly, communicate, make tools, be altruistic, and all sorts of other things. We can also be evil, broken, vicious to others. Where do these options come from? How do we decide what is better, for us as individuals, as a group, as a species, and for the universe? I think that without God, these questions become very difficult to answer, especially to answer coherently and consistently.

Science doesn’t even ask many of these questions, and certainly not as “science”.
Is the atom bomb possible? Science says “Yes!”
Is it a good thing to develop and deploy? (something the scientists tended to ask only when it was too late) “Probably not.”

Yes you put that first paragraph very well much better than I could.In fact its a very good IMO.IMO a lot of today’s scientist’s do believe in a God but being scientists(as you said)that’s not part of the issue.

 

[valentino]

It’s not that scientists want to prove that we are accidents, per se. It is just the conclusion that some scientists have reached. Personally, I think that the idea of a universe in which everything happens for a reason is disturbing, in that it robs us of our moral integrity. If God’s will is sovereign, and God intended for the events of the universe to play out in such a way that Adolf Hitler committed genocide, then I have no reason to condemn Hitler’s actions. I like being an accident, for the same reason Catholics probably think God likes being an accident.

It robs us of our moral integrety?What would this world be like if Jesus had never came?Would their be a world or people?this world had no morals.Ceaser was king in Rome and the barbarians were all over.Slavery was a normal practice in all societies.There were people with morals of course but they were few and certainly never enough to change a whole society.The Greeks i suppose had to best society at the time but it was far from ideal.Jesus’s influence on the society and the world is unmeasurable.

 

[FaithBuild18]

It appears to me that few have ever actually met a scientist or worked in a scientific field. Many atheists I know haven’t the slightest understanding of the scientific process and have an occupation that has nothing to do with science, but arrogantly speak of it as if they’re experts. I think these are the sort of people you’re getting your knowledge from.

Of course there are atheist scientists, and agnostic scientists, etc. But there’s more religious ones than you would think. The vast diversity that the word “scientist” encompasses is impossible to generalize the way people do. Scientists, in general, make absolutely no attempt to “prove we are an accident.” If you read pop science magazines I can understand why you’d think that they make such an attempt. But the vast vast vast majority of scientific research going on right now has NOTHING to do with spirituality or existence in even the most remote of ways. For example I’m currently doing Alzheimer’s research. I’m still just a student but I network with a ton of scientists. I don’t know of a single instance of research at my University (which is a research University) that concerns itself in any way shape or form with spirituality or our origins. Granted such research does indeed exist, absolutely it does, but to showcase that work as the typical work of science is pure fantasy at the hands of media outlets.

You present the word “scientist” in a somewhat distancing way, but in reality these people aren’t much different than your typical business man, or mail carrier, or next door neighbor. If you saw a scientist in the supermarket you probably would have no idea. There are Christians in my lab. I can wear a cross around my neck to work no problem. Some of the women in my lab have young children and I sometimes overhear them discussing which local Catholic school they’re going to send their kids to.

And please stop using the word “prove” in relation to science. Science does not prove. It falsifies hypotheses, and supports hypotheses. That is all it is capable of doing. During my first two years we would lose a significant portion of points on our lab reports if we used the word “prove” anywhere in our papers.

The Scientific Method is a myth. This was dictated to me in my first year, by scientists. There are many different “methods” which can be utilized in the process of science, none of which are universal. Many, perhaps even most, breakthroughs are the result of sheer chance, not a standardized protocol. Science is not a nebulous crystal ball without flaw capable of revealing anything. It’s a man made construct used in our current paradigm to help us solve highly specific puzzles. Rarely does it ever go as planned.

I highly recommend Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions for anyone interested in how science ACTUALLY works, as opposed to the perverted fantasy that people like Dawkins put forward.

 

[300WhiteKnights]

I completely agree with Iron Donkey on everything he has said. To me, it also sounds like you are trying to force a wedge between science and religion when it is not so.

This video is from a very inteligent Catholic priest who has multiple degrees in Philosophy and Theology and has inspired me in many ways. I think he can help you understand here:

youtube.com/watch?v=B8yRWrUjnL8

 

[StrawberryJam]

Let’s start with the false premise that scientists want to “prove” we (I assume he means humans) are an accident.

Let’s go OP. Show us where scientists are out to do this and how.