There are studies, really cool ones, going on right now that deal with the origins of the universe and creating "something" out of "nothing". The frontier of science is ALWAYS going to be about the unobserved and unknown... doesn't mean it is based on faith though. Thinking something will happen (based on evidence and past experience) and knowing something will happen (based on nothing) are two entirely different things.
I think abiogenesis has a lot of hokum to fill in the blanks we don't know. I wouldn't really consider its theories science...more like an "emerging process". While we don't know the exact details of Macroevolution, I think it happens given how 15 or so generations can change an animal's behavior and appearance through active intervention.
there are quite a few folks who seem more than convinced they KNOW how it all went down. and seem quite smug when you suggest it might have happened otherwise. i think this is true in both "camps" it feels like we're having this discussion in a bubble. i agree with you, in concept...but in actuality, it's different.
Well I'll say this much. I know very few people, even my most ardent agnostic and atheist friends, who claim to know "how it all went down". They claim to know "how it all came up"... i.e. the history of the solar system, earth, and life therein... all of which has been pretty much nailed down. But hardly anyone claims to know where matter itself originated from, or how it came to be. And if they look down their noses at people of faith, then that's mostly because they have evidence and proof that supports 98% of their theory... meanwhile faith is still batting .000
wait...we have enough evidence and proof that supports 98% of the theory that things that weren't living suddenly sprung to life with no intelligence behind that? faith is batting .000? in what game? faith and science aren't seeking to answer the same questions...and to the extent one believes in a Creator, science is nothing more than an explanation of what He has done and/or how He did it. honestly, now i'm just sorry i brought the whole topic up. if i could delete the thread myself, i would. i didn't intend to engage in a debate over this...and your post kinda proves the point i'm trying to make to begin with.
Yep. The game of life? and yes, they are... unless you care to give an alternate explanation of the point of faith as it pertains to this discussion. You may be speaking of the origin of morality, instead of the origin of the universe, so fair enough.... but we all know that A TON of the morality portrayed in schools of faith is totally messed up... Cop out alert... this is the crux of it... falling back on the this, no matter what we find out there in the cosmos... weakens/cheapens the argument for creation. I think posting the facts I brought up about the scientific community consisting of people of faith might have been a better idea, instead of an anecdote. But it is a silly thing to dissect anyway, because, like I said, it gives no more or less credence to the idea of an ethereal creator.
It is a cop out because there is no way to disprove it. A claim which cannot be tested is simply invalid/moot until you can bring forth evidence or proof, however slight it may be, that such a thing is plausible. Of which, to this day, none exists for the creationist theory. And faith has been batting .000 on the issue of creation (all of the schools of faith's recounts of the creation of man and earth have been proven wrong). If I could explain all of the mechanics and history of the universe to you, down to the very moment existence began and WHY it happened... all you would do is simply put the cherry on top of "he/she/it willed it to be so". Sorry, but faith is not a virtue. I find nothing admirable about believing in something without cause. You're a good man, a great man, even, but this one of the times I must defend reason/logic.
Is this the Rice University Chemistry professor who takes out full page ads in the student paper promoting Christianity?
Hold on now. There are some problems with your logic here. -Macroevolution cannot be tested. We can’t build a planet and a run a test for X millions of years to prove it. It has to be proved indirectly, based on things you would expect to see, in the fossil record for example, if it was true, and this is the same general way you would test the theory of creation. Non-creation based engineered earth theories would be tested this way as well. -There is in fact a significant amount of evidence for the theory of creation. Let’s start with the fact that somewhere around ¾ of the people on earth believe in a God or Gods. This is compelling evidence that a God or Gods do in fact exist. It’s not iron clad proof, of course. There could be another explanation, but the most obvious explanation is that it’s true. All kinds of questions follow this, of course, like questions about how someone would come to this belief, but at the highest level just the fact that so many people believe in a God or Gods is good evidence, but not conclusive evidence, that it or they do exist. -“And faith has been batting .000 on the issue of creation (all of the schools of faith's recounts of the creation of man and earth have been proven wrong).” This is obviously an overstatement. Would you kindly clarify the point you were making and include a reference or two?
I would agree that that's a possible bias to watch out for, and the same is true in the other direction. Richard Dawkins, for example, seems to be almost rabid about denying God, and you really have to wonder how much that has coloured his work.
It can't be tested because we don't have the technology yet. You cannot test creation. That is the crux of the entire argument. It is not a provable or disprovable argument, so it has no place in the forum and we can gladly keep it in our back pocket as we more forward discovering more about the universe and dust it off should the day ever come. No, there is none. Belief is not "proof" of anything. People believed the sun went around the Earth, it didn't "prove" a damn thing. The only thing that has been proven about people's belief in god is that it stems from lack of knowledge (even the greatest scientists invoked divinity at the edge of their ability to explain the natural world) and family lineage.... and then you have weirdos like MadMax who just wanna help people and make the world a better place n' stuff :grin: Can you name me a single school of faith that has accurately accounted for anything involving the creation of man, the earth, or this universe?
Personal opinion has nothing to do with the validity of one's work and the facts they present. I would judge a believers thoughts on the matter equally as I would any atheist or agnostic, simply based on the evidence they present and if it stands up to scientific scrutiny.
Hmm, if we evolved from monkeys, why do monkeys still exist? Why don't we see apes and orangutans, or whatever we evolved from, that are around us in the process of evolving into us? And if we did evolve from something, I wonder what we will evolve into next.
I'm not sure this really matters in the faith vs science debate. It's just a lot easier to interpret religion these days. So the line between science and faith can be blurred if you want it to. But science and hardcore religious stuff still doesn't mix.
I think I remember reading Dawkins argues that mass religious belief arose from natural selection. So for some reason, humans that believed in Gods were more adept at surviving (his example, two primitive groups of humans fighting each other in war, religious ones would survive because of 'heaven reward' and not afraid to die.
MadMax, Ask your friend if he remembers Dr. Shyam Shukla. Then ask him if he remembers him getting a grant to study the manufacture of carbon nanotubes at Rice back in '01. I wrote that proposal for Dr. Shukla. (I aced that class.)
