That's kind of what I am getting at. There's no point in arguing over which one is "right" because they aren't the same thing. One is a belief that people have "faith" in without needing proof or knowledge, the other is by definition the pursuit of knowledge. We can co-exist, as long as one side doesn't try to convince the other of anything.

So when a religion person tells an atheist that they are wrong, dinosaur bones were put there by the devil to trick them, all the atheist has to do is smile and nod and say enjoy your life.

Likewise, there's no need for an atheist to explain that no, the dinosaur bones weren't put there by some "evil force" to make people not believe in god. They just choose not to believe in stories, smile and nod, and say enjoy your life :)

Many people call science a religion in its own right. It's a system of belief which belittles others who do not believe it is the be all and end all. I can't entirely deny this, but there are some differences.

Science takes an analytical view. "I don't know why something is happening. I have an idea. Let's test that idea!" If the idea tests successfully, then we say that the idea is true (in technical terms, it becomes a "theory", in layman's terms it becomes a "fact"). If it does not test successfully, then we say "well, that can't be right. Let's try and figure something else out somehow".

Religion is not analytical--or if it is, it is so in a different way. Using the example of fossil evidence of dinosaurs (which is not to say all Christians disbelieve in the existence of Dinosaurs or deny that the Earth is greater than 6000 years old--it just proves to be an excellent anecdotal example), when confronted with this, several groups of Christians claim that the fossils were placed there as a test of faith. Essentially, the evidence is adjusted to fit the belief, rather than the other way around.


This is why people claim that Science is not the same as a religion. Certainly, people who rely on Science believe that there is a greater answer that we cannot prove. The difference is that Scientists seek to prove it, rather than seek to explain the "proof" that already exists.



As a sidenote, as someone mentioned earlier, I personally believe that Science is the how and Faith (not necessarily religion) is the Why. There's no reason why two things cannot coexist. Besides, us puny peons sometimes need to trust or believe in something bigger than us, especially in times of crisis.

Coming from a guy who continuously insult religion? LOL

Not true. He bashes idiots who believe everything that's showed down their throats like a fat horse dick and then swallow it up and pass it on to their children.

Look up the religion discussion in FC and you'll see what kind of religious idiots im talking about.

"God exists cuz muh book saiz so" and "Durr, everyone will burn in hell if they don't accept ______, never mind if they've never heard of _____".

Shut up.

What do religion and guns have in common? They are both the tools but not the means of destruction.
There is no religion out there that suggests or declares people must kill one another to progress said religion. It is the extremists in all these religions that go forth and do so for their own agendas loosley based on their practiced religion.
I am not overly religious, nor baptised or attend any church or religious institute as such I believe there is a balance between science and god. I also believe that a world without religion is a world that tear itself apart. Religion gives us our basis for morals and compasion based on a fear or respect of a higher power.

Old news:

The thread topic questions the existence of "heaven". Yet so much of the conversation surrounds organized religion.

These two things aren't necessarily related.

You're really gonna scrutinize why a topic of "heaven" would have a healthy involvement of religion or is arguing the technicality of semantics really one's only few avenues of defense.

Actually if you take a look @ David Hume, following science is faith. Science is just applying faith to the idea that there are rules to the universe that do not change. Eg We dont have any proof of gravity yet we assume it will always be there just based on having experienced it in the past.

Science does not assume that rules do not change. It's an evidence based system of testing and measuring the world around us. If something changes, it fucking changes. Science can then be used to investigate what, why, and how.

You test. release and object
you observe. the object falls
you repeat
eventually you see it enough times you conclude, objects that are released will fall.
you base this conclusion on what? the past? Can you say that the past predicts the future?

Using the same example
What? You say gravity. We don't actually know what gravity is. We don't know why it's there and we don't know how it works. If you're about to mention Einstein, please even he called it a "theory"

If you googled a bit, you'd know how to find out those answers.

http://science.howstuffworks.com/env...uestion232.htm


Also, give this a read, it might be a bit more down your alley.

http://www.theonion.com/articles/eva...-new-int,1778/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_theory just fyi

I have respect for hawking as a scientist but that theory of his is crap (IMO). and I say that because isn't one of the greatest mysteries of science human consciousness? the notion of heaven is explained by organized religion as the afterlife, however they are not the same. the concept of heaven was introduced by organized religions to keep people inline and to create fear in people who may not reach what they are calling heaven. a form of control.

the afterlife is, however, very real and does exist weather or not you want to believe it now. the afterlife is another form of conciousness.

hasn't science already proved that the reality we live and experience called "waking life" or whatever you want to call it; mearly just made up of light and vibrations that are decoded by the human eye and brain? hasn't science proven that at the core of an atom, the building block of all things to be hollow?

if anyone has pursued lucid dreaming or remote viewing and has been successful, you would know that there is a form of existance outside of our human bodies. science says that isn't possible, unless there has been some recent studies done that can prove what happens in those dream states and how our conscious and sub concious mind work.

the navahoe indians of the southwest have a spiritual tradition (story) about the great grandmother and how she weaved the web of creation that makes up the universe/world. the web of creation as they see it, encompasses all aspects of life and every person (soul/life expereince) is a fragment of that web. when we die we return to the source.

our "minds eye" draws from that source of knowledge.

everything we expereince here and the knowledge gained is returned to "the source" when we die. The source of knowledge is the creator, or god as most will say.

well i went on a rant and got kinda off topic there, ha! feel free to chew my story apart and give a good reason why I'm wrong or you think otherwise

It depends. Let's assume that when you are a wee little baby, you said "mama!" and your mother got excited. This gave you a good feeling and then every time you said it again, she got excited. This experience from your past seems to indicate that in the future, this person will enjoy or at least respond in some way to "mama". In this example, the past does predict the future.

Let's assume we're flipping coins. I say that I can accurately predict the fifth flip of a coin from the first four flips. The first four flips to as so:
H T H T

I decide to guess that the next flip will be Heads. There is, however, no way to predict whether or not I am right until the coin is flipped. There's just too much going on.


As far as in general: yes, the past does tend to indicate the future. Predict? No. But then any time that science discovers that the past DOESN'T predict the future, it works on why it doesn't and how we can figure out the rules behind unpredictability. This is why we have probability statistics which explains that *on average* we get roughly a 50/50 distribution with coin flips.

Science is crazy, eh?



You're right, we don't know what gravity is. We don't know why it's there and we don't know how it works. CERN, however, is working on trying to figure out how it works. They have a hypothesis: the Higgs Boson subatomic particle which gives mass. Now, I use this big fancy complicated word (hypothesis) because it's what you seem to think a "theory" is. Let me put it to you like so:


Science Layman
Hypothesis Theory
Theory Fact


When an idea is untested, it is a hypothesis. When an idea is tested and it passes the test, it is then called a theory. This is why we have the theory of Gravity and the theory of evolution and the theory of relativity. To this point in time, those theories reflect our best understanding of the principles behind those ideas.



Just a random aside: other than something that would basically read "and so god has made everything here in all its glory as it is and always will be", what do religious texts have as far as an explanation for Gravity?

I would agree that human consciousness is one of the greatest mysteries of life (for the time being), but I am not sure how you can say that it is "very real". I'd like to believe it, personally, but I can't be sure. It's one of the reasons I'm sort of an agnostic.

Yes, what we see and feel is actually all just different forms of particles and radiation interpreted by our various "instruments" (senses). And yes, what we think of as "solid matter" is actually hollow in many parts. Luckily the alignment of such sub- and atomic particles mean that for all intents and purposes for us they really are solid.

See, this is where you lost me. Lucid dreaming is one thing--it's something that you can do, that anyone can do with proper training. Lucid dreaming is a function of control over our subconscious minds--we stay very well in our own bodies and brains, and scans have shown it. Remote viewing, on the other hand, is a myth. The people who claim they can do it have never managed to pass James Randi's million-dollar challenge. When that happens, I may be willing to start thinking about remote viewing being possible.

That's a wonderful system of belief, but it is just that. It's a system of beliefs. There is no proof.

Done.

There are people far further than Einstein now. You may be interested in the work of Garrett Lisi towards the holy grail of science, a unified theory. This is particularly important in understanding gravity.

In the new Discovery documentary Through The Wormhole (Part 1, Is There A Creator) they interview him (among others) and attempt to explain a bit about his work in laymen terms. It includes both religious scientists, and non-religious. Neither dispute science, but the source of creation is not agreed upon.

That's just something I saw recently, there's a lot of great stuff out there if you're interested. Which you probably aren't.

I provide you with a criticism of the illogical nature of science so to rebut me you post more examples of it. You're acting like a religious person.

Religious person: Someone criticizes God so you provide examples of God's work.

You: someone criticizes science. You provide examples of ideas produced by science.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_induction
You might not want to bother though cause we live in a time period when having faith in science is the norm and I can't imagine humans moving on to any other faith. I have faith. Finding fault with science will not have any obvious practical use for you but to have a deeper insight into your own reasoning.

Not going to bother reading this right now. Not because seeing the words "evangelical" or "refute gravity" automatically turn me off but because you posted that just to ridicule someone that is questioning your beliefs. I.E. a tool of a fanatic.

Before you start using an "encyclopedia" you should use a dictionary
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/theory
Otherwise you miss the whole meaning of the article

Not questioning the practicality of it but I'm sure you have heard of mothers rejecting their babies.
You guys are getting my point. Science will never discover that the past doesn't predict the future. Science is the process of using the past to predict the future.




http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/law
I don't think you understand theory. It still has another step, law. And even as a law it's still not for sure. EG http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_...vation_of_mass
IE later on mass can be converted to energy

really? I didn't think that something that somebody said 60 years ago would already be questioned. Something you kids (well not just kids) outside the scientific community need to understand is that the word theory is used when the scientist says "I've done some tests and I'm pretty sure this is true" And that's not my opinion that's the meaning of the word.

If there is a God, why would He allow so much suffering in the world?

Is it fair that some people are born into lives of strife and hunger? Why do some people get everything handed to them on a silver platter, while others will never get anywhere no matter how hard they work. Why does God allow people with promising lives die in tragic hit-and-run accidents? Why does God allow wars to be waged in His name, wars that bring rape, starvation, and carnage? Why does God not come down and guide us to the correct path, rather than killing, fighting, and deceiving our way to it?

Religion has never given me the answers to these questions.

This is wrong on so many levels.

We use the theory of the water cycle because it's the best we got. Science does not claim to be the end-all source of truths in the world. Scientists always try to back up their data.

Religion claims to hold many truths, but it doesn't give any evidence of their validity. It's saying, "Look, this is how shit works. You're wrong no matter what." And that won't just do in today's world.

@ darkfroggy

I read a book called "Where is God When it Hurts?" by Philip Yancey which touches upon some of the questions which you have posed. However, I won't quote from the book. I will only talk about my own experiences in trying to answer the questions which you have posed.

Suffering in the World

Christians believe that the world we live in is a temporary one. It used to be perfect until Adam and Eve made a mistake. Then, the world went downhill. That's the textbook answer. The one that I have come to appreciate is: what do we do about it. Sometimes its not so much the why as to, what can I do about it now? How do we react to suffering? The classic example is the World Vision infomercials. Some people will flip the channel. Some will choose to donate. Driving by a homeless person who asks for money, some will choose to ignore. Some will choose to give. How we respond to suffering is probably more important than they why ... because focusing exclusively on the why may blind us from asking ourselves, "What can I do about this?"

Related to the question on suffering, is the question of fairness. I think we can all acknowledge life is not fair. Seemingly random things happen to random people. However, if life was fair, then who decides what the measurement of fairness is. What is a fair wage? What is a fair amount of food I should have today versus someone in another country?

Regarding your comment on tragic accidents, the one that comes to mind most recently is that young baseball coach who was engaged to be married soon and was killed by a drunk driver. I guess God could have come down and created a situation where a the girl would never have gotten into that vehicle. Perhaps she loses her keys. Perhaps she keeps her lights on and the car runs out of juice so it wouldn't start. However, the person who was driving drunk, I believe she left a party. I would like to believe those @ the party are now asking some soul searching questions about what they could have done to prevent this person from driving. Maybe there were one or two people who had the opportunity to stop this person from driving ... but they did not do what their conscience was telling them. Maybe these people made a choice not to do anything.

Everyone has a choice, even if you go right back to Adam and Eve. Its the classic dilemma: God created Adam and Eve and knew they were going to sin but still God created them to be able to choose. Life would be easier if everyone were robots but that's not how we are.

People choose to wage war in so and so's name. People choose to rape and pillage.

If God is omnipotent and God is everywhere, then how does God feel when he sees all this sadness going on around him? I believe God is weeping.

One could argue that He could stop all this evil from happening but He chooses not to. I sincerely believe He is trying by giving us the choice. We see what we see and we have to choose what we are going to do about it.

If anything, Hume is considered by literally all scholars as an atheist. Certainly Hume will not stop and say that fine, since we do not have the absolute certainty, we can conclude that God is the creator, end of discussion.

Life is about balancing likelihoods. Let's see, which is more likely, should I follow Family Radio that the world will end on May 21 or be it in 2012, or should I not quit my job? Can I be 100% the former is wrong, no, but you make a judgement call. Do you call that faith? I beg you not. It's an educated guess which comes from critical thinking.

Personally, I find it absolutely unacceptable science can be considered a religion whatsoever. Science asks questions which we may never find the answers, while religion provides answers which may never be questioned.