Politics & Religion: A Simple Question

[`Eylan Ayfalulukanä]

There are plenty of scientists around who are practicing Christians. Always have been, aways will be. Both the scientific method (which is a methodology, not a belief system) and the Bible are believable. And although the Bible speaks in metaphors in many places, it has also been shown to be mostly correct.

The whole 'created in six days' thing is due to the fact that time is relative to God (and apparently, Einstein as well). 2 Peter 3:9 states this. So yes, the world was created in six God-days, but also 13.7 billion years. I do not at all subscribe to the 'created in six literal days' theory.

'4  corners of the earth' is a metaphor commonly used today, as well as back then.

And the process God used to create things as we know them (and measure and test them) is a method that we can hardly distinguish from evolution. So, I don't believe in evolution, just a God-driven process (because it 'runs uphill' against thermodynamics) that looks very much like it.

We aren't meant to fully understand God and His creation in this life. There is far more to reality than what we can experience.

[Kekerusey]

There are plenty of scientists around who are practicing Christians.

Based on a survey of the AAAS the majority (the largest single group) were either agnostic or atheist (it's actually the same thing but that's another argument) ... that was in 2009 and religion is sliding so it will almost certainly be more.

Always have been, aways will be.

"See the future now can you?" (with apologies to Yoda).

Both the scientific method (which is a methodology, not a belief system) and the Bible are believable.

No they are completely at odds with each other ... science is a philosophy based utterly on validatable observation. Claims with no supporting evidence (such as the essential claims of the bible) are ignored until relevant evidence is acquired.

And although the Bible speaks in metaphors in many places, it has also been shown to be mostly correct.

It is regarded, quite correctly as an historic source, BUT NOT as history. That status DOES NOT confer any degree of correctness on the central biblical claims.

The whole 'created in six days' thing is due to the fact that time is relative to God (and apparently, Einstein as well). 2 Peter 3:9 states this. So yes, the world was created in six God-days, but also 13.7 billion years. I do not at all subscribe to the 'created in six literal days' theory.

Stop bringing Einstein up ... he wasn't religious!!!

Peter 3:9: The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.

That says nothing about the days of the claimed biblical creation ... get real. The fact that you do not believe in a specific part of the bible yet do believe others is, as I have already said, problematic and you haven't justified yet why that is so.

4  corners of the earth' is a metaphor commonly used today, as well as back then.

So what? Language is a complex beast ... people still say, "I love you with all my heart" yet the heart is little more than a biological pump. The point you seem to be desperately trying to evade is that the bible is supposedly your god's word or divinely inspired ... if so, why the hell isn't it absolutely, A1, 100%, utterly correct? I'll tell you why ... as my good friend, Reverend Rob Miles wrote, "The Bible? A book written by ancient, ignorant, superstitious mystics who had no clear understanding of the world around them and made up stories that sounded good at the time. What little truth is contained in the Bible is accidental, at best. Fundamentalists & creationists? Ignorant, superstitious moderns who have no clear understanding of the world around them and believe made-up stories that sound good to them. What little truth is contained in what they say is accidental, at best"

And the process God used to create things as we know them (and measure and test them) is a method that we can hardly distinguish from evolution. So, I don't believe in evolution, just a God-driven process (because it 'runs uphill' against thermodynamics) that looks very much like it.

And as I've repeatedly said to you, in a debate that effectively argues over the existence of your deity you CANNOT claim that deity does things as a method of pushing the argument ahead ... you have to DEMONSTRATE that deity to be real first and that you have FAILED to do.

We aren't meant to fully understand God and His creation in this life. There is far more to reality than what we can experience.

EDIT: As I say above you cannot claim things your deity can do and expect that to be considered valid until you have demonstrated that deity's existence to be true. This you have not done.

Keke

[Toruk Makto]

Topic has been locked. The tone of some recent posts was progressing past acceptable debate and becoming confrontational. We respect the right of the members of our community to hold whatever beliefs they wish without being rebuked for them. There are other venues on the net for those wishing to disagree in an aggressive religious debate.

Markì

[Toruk Makto]

I am going to try reopening this topic. Kekerusey refused to work with me on softening the tone and he is no longer with us. Religion is a touchy subject that can lead to unfriendly dialog. Let's keep the conversation engaging, but not aggressively judgmental.

Thanks, ma smuk,

Markì

[Irtaviš Ačankif]

I am going to try reopening this topic. Kekerusey refused to work with me on softening the tone and he is no longer with us. Religion is a touchy subject that can lead to unfriendly dialog. Let's keep the conversation engaging, but not aggressively judgmental.

Thanks, ma smuk,

Markì

Is he banned? It doesn't seem so..?

[Clarke]

There are plenty of scientists around who are practicing Christians. Always have been, aways will be. Both the scientific method (which is a methodology, not a belief system) and the Bible are believable.

Christianity is, inherently, non-scientific; there is no place for any sort of faith in scientific reasoning. The fact that one can do science while being Christian (or Muslim, or Hindu...) is a credit to the objectivity of the scientific method - it can be used reliably even by those who disagree with it and/or have wildly varying external opinions.

If versed in inductive probability - one essentially works backwards from science's reliability - it is quite easy to see that the combination of Christianity's conflict with science and science's proven reliability suggests with very high certainty that Christianity is wrong in the places where Christianity and science disagree. Of course this is a very logical and scientific way of looking at things...

The whole 'created in six days' thing is due to the fact that time is relative to God (and apparently, Einstein as well). 2 Peter 3:9 states this. So yes, the world was created in six God-days, but also 13.7 billion years.

2 Peter 3:9 is about how God is patient. I think you've quoted the wrong verse.

However, you cite Einstein's correct supposition that time is relative. You forgot, however, the context in which the Theory of Relativity states that time scales change: high energy gravity wells and velocity differences. Are we going to say that God either speeds through the universe at a high fraction of the speed of light and/or exists in a very, very deep gravity well?  

(An omniscient perspective exists, in which the universe is 4-dimensional instead of 3; but that remove all sense of time, which makes the various verse about free will nonsensical.)

And the process God used to create things as we know them (and measure and test them) is a method that we can hardly distinguish from evolution. So, I don't believe in evolution, just a God-driven process (because it 'runs uphill' against thermodynamics) that looks very much like it.

Evolution doesn't run uphill against thermodynamics - and it's also unguided. To say that evolution is drivn by God puts you at odd with the evidence.

We aren't meant to fully understand God and His creation in this life. There is far more to reality than what we can experience.

Sour grapes!  

[wm.annis]

So, I don't believe in evolution, just a God-driven process (because it 'runs uphill' against thermodynamics) that looks very much like it.

Evolution does not run uphill against thermodynamics.  I assume you're referring to the second law ("entropy increases"), which refers to entropy in a closed system.  The earth is not a closed system. There's this rather large star pumping energy into it...

(Edit: get quotation right.)

[Clarke]

So, I don't believe in evolution, just a God-driven process (because it 'runs uphill' against thermodynamics) that looks very much like it.

Evolution does not run uphill against thermodynamics.  I assume you're referring to the second law ("entropy increases"), which refers to entropy in a closed system.  The earth is not a closed system. There's this rather large star pumping energy into it...

That's not my quote.

[wm.annis]

That's not my quote.

D'oh!  Fixed.

[`Eylan Ayfalulukanä]

I know some Christian scientists credit their scientific work to their faith. And indeed, there are scripture passages (which are hard to find, but are in the Pauline epistles) where God encourages us to learn about His creation. And indeed, every time we 'unravel' a layer of creation, we find something even more amazing underneath. Even the organized church practices science. The Catholic church has quite an astronomy program, with research grade telescopes at the Vatican and in Arizona. A friend of mine is one of the astronomers in this program. He has not trouble combining faith with legitimate scientific inquiry.

I did get the scripture quote wrong-- by one verse. It is 2 Peter 3:8. In that verse, Peter states that to God, a day is a thousand years, and a thousand years is a day-- time is relative. We have just explored one corner of the relativity of time. I suspect that we will find others.

As far as entropy goes, the entire universe as we understand it is a closed system. And since we are within the universe, our system must also be closed. We might be 'locally open' here for a time, but eventually we will hit entropy, and there will be no escaping from it.

As a thought experiment, consider evolution running uphill, and also unguided. It just doesn't work. Try not maintaining your car. Does its performance improve? Do you know anyone who has neglected their car and found it works better in time? Have you ever seen a dead plant or animal improve? Even the sun, our energy pump, is running downhill. So to me, the fact that life has grown more complex with time is completely at odds with any other physical process.

As I stated before, it is no mistake on God's part that He intended that we not be able to reconcile all of science and faith. If we could, then faith would not be faith. And we would have instruction manuals from God, not the Bible.

keftxoa fì'u nìtxan lu nì'aw concerning Kekerusey. Sometimes, I don't understand how some people have to be right so badly that they ruin their world for themselves. In any case Irayo ma Toruk Makto fpì var pivängko kerä

[Clarke]

I know some Christian scientists credit their scientific work to their faith. And indeed, there are scripture passages (which are hard to find, but are in the Pauline epistles) where God encourages us to learn about His creation.

Sure, but He never encourages you to apply it to Him. It appears to be a big thing in Christianity that the Lord rewards faith in Him - not reasoned thought.

I did get the scripture quote wrong-- by one verse. It is 2 Peter 3:8. In that verse, Peter states that to God, a day is a thousand years, and a thousand years is a day-- time is relative. We have just explored one corner of the relativity of time. I suspect that we will find others.

Energy densities warp spacetime because, essentially, that's the only way of preserving the principle of relativity, Lorentz invariance, and all that cool stuff. I don't think we have any reason to believe there's any other gotchas hidden in that particular branch of physics, unless we're completely wrong about what happens at the Planck energy.

As far as entropy goes, the entire universe as we understand it is a closed system. And since we are within the universe, our system must also be closed. We might be 'locally open' here for a time, but eventually we will hit entropy, and there will be no escaping from it.

That's not going to happen for trillions of years, though.

As a thought experiment, consider evolution running uphill, and also unguided. It just doesn't work. Try not maintaining your car. Does its performance improve? Do you know anyone who has neglected their car and found it works better in time? Have you ever seen a dead plant or animal improve?

Excuse me, I think I need to take a laser scalpel to some of those stone tablets you have lying around:
11. Thou shalt not use bad metaphors!

A car, or a dead organism do not share the most important property of living things; they self-organize, and self-sustain. They consume energy from the environment to do work, and that work is used in basically in the same way your refrigerator does: the entropy in a small volume is decreased and/or held steady, but at the cost of a larger entropy increase outside the small volume. They run uphill, but only for a limited time, and require constant energy input to be able to do so. The 2nd law of thermodynamics has no problem with this, because it is a statement of entropy in closed systems - and isn't even a "law" as such, only a consequence of the statistics that govern large swarms of randomly moving particles. In a system that is not closed, and not randomly moving, (e.g. a cell) it doesn't apply.

As I stated before, it is no mistake on God's part that He intended that we not be able to reconcile all of science and faith. If we could, then faith would not be faith. And we would have instruction manuals from God, not the Bible.

Considering the stupendous amount of problems generated by the varying interpretations of the Bible, why didn't He? We clearly don't know what we're doing.

[`Eylan Ayfalulukanä]

As far as entropy goes, the entire universe as we understand it is a closed system. And since we are within the universe, our system must also be closed. We might be 'locally open' here for a time, but eventually we will hit entropy, and there will be no escaping from it.

That's not going to happen for trillions of years, though.

Its happening right now. Look around you. Entropy is a continuous process.

As a thought experiment, consider evolution running uphill, and also unguided. It just doesn't work. Try not maintaining your car. Does its performance improve? Do you know anyone who has neglected their car and found it works better in time? Have you ever seen a dead plant or animal improve?

Excuse me, I think I need to take a laser scalpel to some of those stone tablets you have lying around:
11. Thou shalt not use bad metaphors!

A car, or a dead organism do not share the most important property of living things; they self-organize, and self-sustain. They consume energy from the environment to do work, and that work is used in basically in the same way your refrigerator does: the entropy in a small volume is decreased and/or held steady, but at the cost of a larger entropy increase outside the small volume. They run uphill, but only for a limited time, and require constant energy input to be able to do so. The 2nd law of thermodynamics has no problem with this, because it is a statement of entropy in closed systems - and isn't even a "law" as such, only a consequence of the statistics that govern large swarms of randomly moving particles. In a system that is not closed, and not randomly moving, (e.g. a cell) it doesn't apply.

You did a pretty good job of supporting my argument! Living things run uphill FOR A WHILE. But eventually, entropy catches up with them, too. And dead things don't consume a lot of energy-- they give energy back.

As I stated before, it is no mistake on God's part that He intended that we not be able to reconcile all of science and faith. If we could, then faith would not be faith. And we would have instruction manuals from God, not the Bible.

Considering the stupendous amount of problems generated by the varying interpretations of the Bible, why didn't He? We clearly don't know what we're doing.

God knows exactly what He is doing. He is only interested in having folks follow Him out of their own free will. Now, if His handiwork in everything was plainly evident (or totally lacking), then there would be little reason for faith. But instead, we find just enough of God's handiwork to know that all this stuff didn't just occur at random.

I hope you can make it to AvatarMeet this year so we can have some more late night chats! 

[Clarke]

You did a pretty good job of supporting my argument! Living things run uphill FOR A WHILE. But eventually, entropy catches up with them, too. And dead things don't consume a lot of energy-- they give energy back.

But they don't produce nearly the same amount of work as they used in order to live. Anyway, it's only uphill for "a while" because the work available across the entire universe is finite - there's no physical reason why a single organism can't live until that work runs out, which as mentioned will take trillions of years. (Although, they may be ways of getting computable intelligence to run literally forever, but that's a different story.)

That is assuming you can't do something like violate the null energy condition and thus achieve useful spacetime-warping. If you can do that, you can  build completely physics-breaky things like stable time loops, warp drives and TARDISs. 

God knows exactly what He is doing. He is only interested in having folks follow Him out of their own free will. Now, if His handiwork in everything was plainly evident (or totally lacking), then there would be little reason for faith. But instead, we find just enough of God's handiwork to know that all this stuff didn't just occur at random.

Overwhelming evidence would not be violating free will. Indeed, it sounds almost the opposite - withholding critical information means we can't make an informed decision; that hardly sounds like we are "free" to choose.

I hope you can make it to AvatarMeet this year so we can have some more late night chats! 

You could always talk to me on Skype. (Also, I sent you a PM a while ago, which you haven't responded to. Did you see it?)

[Toruk Makto]

I thought the jury was still out whether the universe is a closed or open system. String theory has a few options in that regard

Markì