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The great Sennheiser rip-off

My comparison of immoral scientists trying to distort data and theologians reinterpreting texts to achieve a certain conclusion is comparing the worst of science with what seems to be the only process for change in religious doctrine. If that supports your belief that science and religion are equivalent, I'm sorry, but further discussion is futile.
 
barrymidd said:
Personally, I live my life by the premise that true science and religion are mutually exclusive.
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It might have been true at one time, but that no longer seems to be the case. Peddlers of pseudoscience have become very apt at cloaking their quackery in a veneer of science and certainly some religious types have taken notice. The sheer immensity of scientific knowledge simply means that an outsider cannot readily judge for himself whether a certain claim has any validity or even why scientists may be challenging it. So, for example, now they no longer talk of the creation narrative/myth, but instead discuss intelligent design "theory" that seems to be just another theory, that is an alternative to evolution.

I find that a very pernicious development.
 
Johnny Blue said:
And what about us Christian Scientists and Scientologists, eh?
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IMO Christian scientists and Scientologists are at opposite ends of both the scientific and religious spectra. To associate them like that can only confuse.

As regards Genesis I and the Big Bang story, what is remarkable about them is the similarity of the accounts. Admittedly God took a whole 6 days to achieve what 'the singularity' pulled off in about 6 femtoseconds, but I can't say I ever took the Hebrew timings literally. In Stoic physics the cosmogenesis took place as a result of Zeus ejaculating into the womb of Hera, so The Big Bang isn't exactly a new fable.
 
In Stoic physics the cosmogenesis took place as a result of Zeus ejaculating into the womb of Hera, so The Big Bang isn't exactly a new fable.
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Zeus clearly did not subscribe to "don't kiss and tell", so that was what the big bang was all about?

I am not familiar with this specific coupling, I was under the impression that Gaia existed before Zeus was born, so I'd like a reference to that myth. I have access to JSTOR, so articles from journals are within reach.
 
The big bang is a logical theory, using what we know about the physical world and mathematically reversing the arrow of time. For this reason, right or wrong, it is a "scientific" theory and not a belief. There are no real similarities between science and religion that I have encountered.
 
That is, if we investigate further, we find that the statements of science are not of what is true and what is not true, but statements of what is known to different degrees of certainty: "It is very much more likely that so and so is true than that it is not true;" or "such and such is almost certain but there is still a little bit of doubt;" or – at the other extreme – "well, we really don't know." Every one of the concepts of science is on a scale graduated somewhere between, but at neither end of, absolute falsity or absolute truth.

It is necessary, I believe, to accept this idea, not only for science, but also for other things; it is of great value to acknowledge ignorance. It is a fact that when we make decisions in our life we don't necessarily know that we are making them correctly; we only think that we are doing the best we can – and that is what we should do.
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Richard Feynmann (Noble Laureate and one of the greatest physicists of the last century)

http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/49/2/Religion.htm
 
sonddek said:
As regards Genesis I and the Big Bang story, what is remarkable about them is the similarity of the accounts. Admittedly God took a whole 6 days to achieve what 'the singularity' pulled off in about 6 femtoseconds, but I can't say I ever took the Hebrew timings literally. In Stoic physics the cosmogenesis took place as a result of Zeus ejaculating into the womb of Hera, so The Big Bang isn't exactly a new fable.
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So who created God/Zeus?
 
Andrew B. said:
"That is, if we investigate further, we find that the statements of science are not of what is true and what is not true, but statements of what is known to different degrees of certainty: "It is very much more likely that so and so is true than that it is not true;" or "such and such is almost certain but there is still a little bit of doubt;" or – at the other extreme – "well, we really don't know." Every one of the concepts of science is on a scale graduated somewhere between, but at neither end of, absolute falsity or absolute truth.

It is necessary, I believe, to accept this idea, not only for science, but also for other things; it is of great value to acknowledge ignorance. It is a fact that when we make decisions in our life we don't necessarily know that we are making them correctly; we only think that we are doing the best we can – and that is what we should do."

Richard Feynmann (Noble Laureate and one of the greatest physicists of the last century)

http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/49/2/Religion.htm
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As my favourite lecturer at Portsmouth Poly (Stan Turner, for the record) used to say, "We are but children playing on the seashores of Science... ".

Love it... and him (best teacher of any kind I ever had).
 
Andrew B. said:
Richard Feynmann (Noble Laureate and one of the greatest physicists of the last century)

http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/49/2/Religion.htm
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Thank you for this link. Feynman is brilliant as always. However, I think there are some important mistakes, for example his suggestion that to be religious you must have absolute unquestioning faith. On the contrary, doubt is an essential part of religious experience, just as it is essential in science. Even Jesus is supposed to have said "My God, why hast thou forsaken me?" As for the futility of prayer, Feynman's position seems to race ahead to a time when science is finished, and all the mysteries are solved. So much for humility. Like many scientists he is more impressed by how far we have come than how far we have to go. In the meantime, we are all made of some ill-understood material whose perplexing qualities seem to proliferate with each new experiment. Leave apostasy till the GUT is complete.
 
sonddek said:
However, I think there are some important mistakes, for example his suggestion that to be religious you must have absolute unquestioning faith.
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I disagree. Religions are locked at the time they are formulated - they cannot evolve. For example, there's not been a second son of god. Why? Perhaps because those who claimed to be were burnt at the stake for being heretics on the basis that some texts 'say' there is only one son of god. No room for doubt there apparently.

This is in contrast to science that thrives on, and progresses through doubt.
 
Religion is based on power and science is not (at least true science). This self-evident truth is the reason the 2 are in opposition.
 
ultrawomble said:
I disagree. Religions are locked at the time they are formulated - they cannot evolve. For example, there's not been a second son of god. Why? Perhaps because those who claimed to be were burnt at the stake for being heretics on the basis that some texts 'say' there is only one son of god. No room for doubt there apparently.

This is in contrast to science that thrives on, and progresses through doubt.
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Bob Marley.
 
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