Science the end all and be all

[C Elegans]

@Fas: I didn't see any smilies or other indications that your statement was a joke, but ok, it's fine, my comments were not directed specifically to you even if I quoted your post, but to everybody who has a lot of opinions regarding things they demonstrate they are ignorant about. Regardless of topic, it always becomes meaningless and boring to communicate with people who just hold "personal opinions" and have no knowledge about the thing they have opinions about, since as I stated, all real discussion get hampered by sematics and invalid arguments. For a discussion to lead anywhere, one must first agree to use the same definition of term and not hide behind "well, the dictionary may define "logics" like this, but I define it according to my own fantasy language so in my language, "logics" and "dreamtime" is the same thing so therefore I am right when I say visionary experience is logic" a la IK And, the combination of lack of use of predefined standard terminology plus lack of sufficient knowledge about the topic at hand, it results in communcation problems at several levels.

Consider a statement like "I don't like islam, it's like a cancer disease. Islam forces everybody with brown hair to wear red glasses, and red glasses are dangerous because they spread Ebola."

As you can see this statement contains both factual errors, invalid allegory and strawman fallacies. From this statement it's a long way to go and a lot of things to clear up before you can start a meaningful discussion. That's why I think it's so tireing and meaningless to try to discuss with people who lack knowledge about what they have opinions about.

[ik911]

"well, the dictionary may define "logics" like this, but I define it according to my own fantasy language so in my language, "logics" and "dreamtime" is the same thing so therefore I am right when I say visionary experience is logic"
I must've been more subtle than that, CE...

[CM]

Re-read my post there is a " " smilie there.

[Arrylium]

Magrus:
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As to my personal beliefs regarding that issue, you assume. I may not follow your religion, but who's to say I don't believe that happened? I may believe IN your god, but who's to say I have to follow him in order to do so? I feel it's a flawed view to buy the first car you see on the lot, I took the same view with deities and religious beliefs.
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I'm really sorry if I assumed something about your beliefs that isn't true. And I agree with you about 'looking around' for cars and beliefs. Looking around doesn't mean that none of the main options are the best one, though.




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Your arguing with me about something I agree with. I discount things based on my beliefs yes, but I never discussed what those were for anyone to disagree with me on individual points with them.
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I didn't even really realise I was arguing with you! I was just thinking that while, for an atheist, it makes sense to discount anything that seems totally illogical, for a theist things are possible which are outside human understanding or logic, and I realise you're not an atheist. I wasn't really trying to argue.




C Elegans:
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Are you from the US, Arrylium?
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Um.... no, I'm an Aussie. Why do you ask?




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Do you see now why evidence in the scientific sense differs from evidence in everyday language, and why there (in the scientific sense) is evidence that oxygen exists but not a god?
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I understand your example but I don't see how evidence is different in the scientific sense than in the everyday sense - as far as I can see, the main difference is that in science you need more evidence (or more reliable evidence) before something is taken as true, than in everday life, which I think makes sense. I'm really sorry if I sound dense, I am trying to understand.
I agree that proving the existence of oxygen is far more scientific than proving there is a God. But, as an example, we exist. This is a fact and I guess it's scientifically verifiable (I don't know about the philosophy of it), and I don't see why it isn't "independently replicable empiric observation" so I think it should count as evidence. I take that fact as evidence for God, but you don't. Doesn't that mean evidence is subjective? And even if it doesn't, do you understand what I'm trying to say?




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You have never heard before that every step needed in the development from non-life to life has been demonstrated in laboratory? Then you must not have followed the life sciences well over the past 20 years.
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Forgive me as a non-scientific ignoramus for having to verify this, but is that synonomous to saying that science has proved that life can come from non-life? That is, that spontaneous generation is possible?




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But there is not need for a god.
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So science has proven that 'something' can come from 'nothing'?




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Are you familiar with the concept "god of the gaps"?
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I can't say I am. What does it mean?




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Not in science. In maths and logics there is a different kind of "proofs" because they, like religion, are not based on replicable observation but on internal consistency. In science however, you must be able to observe, measure and quantify.
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Hmmm.... This is a thought that just came to me - it's not meant as an argument about God or anything - What is the scientific viewpoint on love? Can love be observed, measured, and quantified?



I read what you were saying to Magrus, and I agree with what you're saying - if 999 people agree on something, they are much more likely to be right than the one person who disagrees with them. I just want to clarify one thing though - do you agree that it is possible that the one person is right and the 999 are wrong? Yes, I know it's ridiculously unlikely and that unlikelihood increases with every new experiment and piece of evidence, and I acknowledge I would be following the 999 myself, but is it actually possible that the one person is right, or have the 999 defined an unquestionable truth?

[ik911]

Originally Posted by Arrylium

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But there is not need for a god.
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So science has proven that 'something' can come from 'nothing'?

Something often comes from something else. History is unendingly long. I don't know what the current theories are, but I think that before this Big Bang there must've been another universe, and because space is unendingly big there is a great chance there are infinite Big Bangs going on right now resulting in an infinite amount of universes and an infinite² amount of stars and planets.
So something comes from it's previous something. Something has always been in one form or another, be it energy or matter.

[Xandax]

Originally Posted by Arrylium

<snip>
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Do you see now why evidence in the scientific sense differs from evidence in everyday language, and why there (in the scientific sense) is evidence that oxygen exists but not a god?
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I understand your example but I don't see how evidence is different in the scientific sense than in the everyday sense - as far as I can see, the main difference is that in science you need more evidence (or more reliable evidence) before something is taken as true, than in everday life, which I think makes sense. I'm really sorry if I sound dense, I am trying to understand.<snip>

I actual think you are getting it.
Evidence in a scientific sense needs to be "reliable" (to put it mildly) - it needs to be all the things CE points out.
Evidence in your daily life needs not be these things because of your trust (faith).

Originally Posted by Arrylium

<snip>
<snip>
I agree that proving the existence of oxygen is far more scientific than proving there is a God. But, as an example, we exist. This is a fact and I guess it's scientifically verifiable (I don't know about the philosophy of it), and I don't see why it isn't "independently replicable empiric observation" so I think it should count as evidence. I take that fact as evidence for God, but you don't. Doesn't that mean evidence is subjective? And even if it doesn't, do you understand what I'm trying to say?
<snip>

You have "evidence" that we exist yes (naturally - I'd almost say), but you have no evidence or "proof" if you will, that we are the product of (any) God(s). You have nothing that shows or indicates there is such a deity and he/they has created all we see.
You have your faith which tells you that, but faith isn't evidence it is trust.
Because you (we) can't explain everything or even much about the creation of our universe and timeline, dosen't mean the universe is connected in the means described by your faith. It is a possiblity yes, but so is the "Big Bang"-theory.

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But there is not need for a god.
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So science has proven that 'something' can come from 'nothing'?

Uhhh - this so makes me want to go off topic, but I'll refrain myself, because this comes up in (almost) every religion thread on this board.
Move along, nothing important to say here. (I'll just say that imo - religions tend to trust that you have faith in "something" from "nothing" to begin with)

[Joku]

Hi

"Well then, how DO people interpret the information and evidence presented to them without using their own senses in the process? That one just boggles the mind."

It is extremely unlikely that all people would interpret the information incorrectly in the same way. If they would interpret it incorrectly, you would see very little concistency.

"I read what you were saying to Magrus, and I agree with what you're saying - if 999 people agree on something, they are much more likely to be right than the one person who disagrees with them. I just want to clarify one thing though - do you agree that it is possible that the one person is right and the 999 are wrong? Yes, I know it's ridiculously unlikely and that unlikelihood increases with every new experiment and piece of evidence, and I acknowledge I would be following the 999 myself, but is it actually possible that the one person is right, or have the 999 defined an unquestionable truth?"

Yes, it is possible, that the 1 would be right, it is just far more likely that the 999 are right. As CE has said, in science there are no absolute truths and everything that science considers to be true is "just" the most probable alternative. So in science "believing" in something means considering it the most probable alternative.

I think that faith is believing in something without evidence that proves it to be true with a large probability. This is probably what CE means with faith.

[Arrylium]

Xandax:
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You have "evidence" that we exist yes (naturally - I'd almost say), but you have no evidence or "proof" if you will, that we are the product of (any) God(s). You have nothing that shows or indicates there is such a deity and he/they has created all we see.
You have your faith which tells you that, but faith isn't evidence it is trust.
Because you (we) can't explain everything or even much about the creation of our universe and timeline, dosen't mean the universe is connected in the means described by your faith. It is a possiblity yes, but so is the "Big Bang"-theory.
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But what I meant is that our existence is (I think) a scientifically qualifiable piece of evidence, and the dispute arises in whether or not that evidence supports (or falsifies) a certain theory.




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Uhhh - this so makes me want to go off topic, but I'll refrain myself, because this comes up in (almost) every religion thread on this board.
Move along, nothing important to say here. (I'll just say that imo - religions tend to trust that you have faith in "something" from "nothing" to begin with)
-----Well you've been around here far longer than I have so if you think the same arguments are getting tiring that's probably fair enough. I would describe my view more as being that humans cannot explain a universe with either (a) no beginning, or (b) a beggining that came from nothing, because we are mortal created beings, but God is outside of time. I don't think it violates logic and I don't think it allows the possibility of a spontaneous Big Bang or of an infinite regress because they both involve science, and what is impossible with science is not impossible with God. If you don't want to discuss it there's certainly nothing I can do to make you!




Joku:
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I think that faith is believing in something without evidence that proves it to be true with a large probability. This is probably what CE means with faith.
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I guess that is what she means but I don't want to discuss it without knowing that is what she means because I don't want to assume things about her or argue against a viewpoint no-one holds. Come to think of it I won't be arguing because I agree with that to some extent but it really gets me wondering where 'large possibility' is defined, whether it can possibly be objective, and whether it is possible or logical to have a situation in which something is a belief and then with one more experiment, a tiny increase in the probability, it becomes a scientifically accepted theorem.

[C Elegans]

Originally Posted by ik911

I must've been more subtle than that, CE...

Yes, you were a bit more subtle, but the principle of reasoning is the same

Originally Posted by CM

Re-read my post there is a "" smilie there.

Yes, I see that now, I didn't see it the first time...either I was too tired, or my lousy modem fooled me - when I post from home I am on this horribly slow modem so often the graphics (buttons, smilies, avatars) don't load properly.

Originally Posted by Arrylium

Um.... no, I'm an Aussie. Why do you ask?

Because of some of your statements and questions are the same as I have previously heard when I have had discussions with christian people from the US. I have understood that often, there are cultural differences betwen christianity in the US and christianity in Europe. Part of this is due to big differences in educational system. So the reason why I asked was that if you had been from the US, I would perhaps have been more familiar with your line of reasoning based on what I know about the US school system etc.

I understand your example but I don't see how evidence is different in the scientific sense than in the everyday sense - as far as I can see, the main difference is that in science you need more evidence (or more reliable evidence) before something is taken as true, than in everday life, which I think makes sense.

That's it, you do understand the main difference. In my example of my husband in Paris, there are some leaps of faith (ie believing without objective evidence) but in science leaps of faith are not allowed.

I agree that proving the existence of oxygen is far more scientific than proving there is a God. But, as an example, we exist. This is a fact and I guess it's scientifically verifiable (I don't know about the philosophy of it), and I don't see why it isn't "independently replicable empiric observation" so I think it should count as evidence. I take that fact as evidence for God, but you don't. Doesn't that mean evidence is subjective? And even if it doesn't, do you understand what I'm trying to say?

I think I understand what you are saying, but correct me if I am wrong. You take the example that we humans exist, and that fact is an evidence of a god. That we exist is a fact in the same sense as the earth is round or gravity exists. But there are alternative explanations that can explain our existence. Scientific data says we could have come into existence without a god, it is possible.
In science, evidence are not only stricter than in everyday life, and also, alternative explanations must be considered. Consider this example: A women is ill in ovarian cancer. She goes to church and pray. The whole community is praying for her. 6 months later, she is cured. Some people will claim this is evidence for gods existence. However, if this was science, we will ask: what are the statistical chance to recover spontaneously from ovarian cancer? 1/2000. How do we know this woman was not this 1/2000? Was the diagnosis correct from the beginning, not a benign tumour, or not only something the woman made up? Check this. Did the woman receive any treatment during this 6 months, such as cytostatica or radiation therapy? If so, how do we know that was not the cause of her recovery? And so on, and so on.

Thus, we have again confirmed that the main difference between scientific evidence and everyday evidence, is that in science have much stricter requirements and demands investigation and discarding of alternative hypothesis as less likely in order to accept something as "correct" or "fact".

Forgive me as a non-scientific ignoramus for having to verify this, but is that synonomous to saying that science has proved that life can come from non-life? That is, that spontaneous generation is possible?

I have no idea what "spontaneous generation" is, so I am not going to say "yes" to that since it would be like saying yes to the question "is 39fhf2op#eewl possible?". The only time I have heard the term before was from an American Jehova's witness guy here at SYM, and that guy claimed "spontaneous generation" was the same as abiogenesis, which cannot be true since abiogenesis is a precise scientific term in biology and "spontaneous generation" is not a term that exists in neither biology or life sciences.

What I am saying is the following:

Science has demonstrated that all steps between non-life and life, can happen. Simplified, the steps can be described as:
primordial soup -> polymers -> replicating polymers (for instance hexanucleotide or RNA-ribozomes) -> protobiont -> hypercycle -> protobacteria -> bacteria
In hundreds of experiments, it has been shown that the proteins necessary for RNA to form, can spring from non life. Read this:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/q...&dopt=Abstract
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/q...&dopt=Abstract

So science has proven that 'something' can come from 'nothing'?

This appears to be a strawman - nobody has been discussion whether "something" came from "nothing", if anyone should ask that question it should be the religious people, since it provokes the question "where did god come from"?

Science has evidence that life can develop from non life, as I described above. From polymers to bacteria is not from nothing to something. Astrophysics has demonstrated the universe could have started with the Big Bang, but before the Big Bang it was not "nothing", it was probably a singularity.

I can't say I am. What does it mean?

It's an expression used when religious people use the fact that science cannot explain everything, as evidence for the existence of a god. It's called "god of the gaps" because the idea is that whereever science has a gap, you fill it in with god. The problem then becomes that the evidence for the existence of a god is constantly shrinking, since science expands its knowledge all the time. Therefore the argument that "science cannot explain this so it's evidence of a god" is not a good argument I think.

What is the scientific viewpoint on love? Can love be observed, measured, and quantified?

Yes to all.

do you agree that it is possible that the one person is right and the 999 are wrong?

Sure it is possible, but that 1 has to present evidence that he is right and the others are wrong then.

[ik911]

Originally Posted by C Elegans

I have no idea what "spontaneous generation" is, so I am not going to say "yes" to that since it would be like saying yes to the question "is 39fhf2op#eewl possible?". The only time I have heard the term before was from an American Jehova's witness guy here at SYM, and that guy claimed "spontaneous generation" was the same as abiogenesis, which cannot be true since abiogenesis is a precise scientific term in biology and "spontaneous generation" is not a term that exists in neither biology or life sciences. (...)

From the internet: The belief that lower forms of life might spontaneously arise from non-living material. It stemmed from everyday (but incomplete) observations such as that insects and worms appeared from rotting meat, frogs from mud, and mice from rotting wheat. Spontaneous generation was proposed by Aristotle, espoused by theologians in the Middle Ages, including Thomas Aquinas, and upheld by the likes of William Harvey and Isaac Newton. Only when the hypothesis was properly put to the test by experiments, such as those of Redi (1668) Spallanzani (1765), de La Tour (1837), Schwann and, most decisively, by Pasteur (1862), was it seen to be in error. Any lingering doubts were removed by the work of Tyndall. However, the notion that life can develop from non-life, albeit over many millions of years, has been revived in the modern concept of the origin of life from prebiotic chemicals.

Originally Posted by CE

(...)This appears to be a strawman - nobody has been discussion whether "something" came from "nothing", if anyone should ask that question it should be the religious people, since it provokes the question "where did god come from"?(...)

I don't think it's a strawman, because if one believes God made man and earth and everything and you say god didn't, than nothing made man, earth and everything. Hence the question that was at the same time feedback to your comment. I think you've answered it already though.

[Xandax]

Originally Posted by Arrylium

<snip>
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Uhhh - this so makes me want to go off topic, but I'll refrain myself, because this comes up in (almost) every religion thread on this board.
Move along, nothing important to say here. (I'll just say that imo - religions tend to trust that you have faith in "something" from "nothing" to begin with)
-----Well you've been around here far longer than I have so if you think the same arguments are getting tiring that's probably fair enough. I would describe my view more as being that humans cannot explain a universe with either (a) no beginning, or (b) a beggining that came from nothing, because we are mortal created beings, but God is outside of time. I don't think it violates logic and I don't think it allows the possibility of a spontaneous Big Bang or of an infinite regress because they both involve science, and what is impossible with science is not impossible with God. If you don't want to discuss it there's certainly nothing I can do to make you!
<snip>

Withouth going to far into it, but you belive that a God exists outside our "time", and find that logical (due to your faith). If that is possible, it is logically just as possible that some singularity/state of matter existed prior to the Big Bang, possible the existance of another ealier collapsed universe.

Also - "something from nothing" applies just as well to (a) God. Where did he come from, who made him? Did he spring from nonthing into something? If not, then something must have been around prior to God.
The usual reply to this is that "God" has *always* been there, which only has one (illogical imo) foundation - and that is your faith.
Besides - nobody has in any recent history said that the Big Bang happened out of "nothing", not that I've read over the years anyway.

If you truely belive an entity of some form/matter can exist in the manner you descripe God (outside out "time" and outside our universe), then you should have no difficulties in beliving that "something" could have existed prior to the Big Bang.... you simply just rely on your religion to give you the answer, and you have faith in it being correct.

But this is somewhat off topic (sorry ), but if you are interested in this discussion then you can search SYM for similar topics as this, or create a new thread

[C Elegans]

Originally Posted by ik911

From the internet: The belief that lower forms of life might spontaneously arise from non-living material.

Thanks IK, I also found this:
http://biology.clc.uc.edu/courses/bio114/spontgen.htm
which explains well that "spontaneous generation" is not the same as abiogenesis and it is not a concept that is valid in current life sciences.

I don't think it's a strawman, because if one believes God made man and earth and everything and you say god didn't, than nothing made man, earth and everything.

If you are correct in your assumption that Arrylium made the assumption that I said if god did not make man and earth, nothing made man and earth, that is precisely a strawman. If you are correct, Arrylium made an erranous assumption that I said something I did not say, and he questions this which I did not say.

A strawman is when you argue against a stance that the opponent has not taken.

Originally Posted by Arrylium

I guess that is what she means but I don't want to discuss it without knowing that is what she means because I don't want to assume things about her or argue against a viewpoint no-one holds.

Btw, I would like to applaude Arrylium for refusing to make assumptions even if Joku was correct in his interpretation of what I meant. Assumptions can often lead to unnecessary confusion.

Come to think of it I won't be arguing because I agree with that to some extent but it really gets me wondering where 'large possibility' is defined, whether it can possibly be objective, and whether it is possible or logical to have a situation in which something is a belief and then with one more experiment, a tiny increase in the probability, it becomes a scientifically accepted theorem.

It can be objective in the sense independent of the individual observer. Nothing can be objective in the sense that we can perceive things "as they really are" outside of everything human. Consider electromagnetic radiation of frequency 3 x 10^12 - 4.3 x 10^14. A bumble bee has receptors to perceive this as colour, something visual. We humans have receptors to percieve this as warmth, something somatosensensory. What I mean by objective, as opposed to subjective, is that 1.) There is a phenomenon (the radiation) that exists and can be measured and quantified by instruments in a reliable way, ie from extensive controlled testing we know we can detect these waves and not a green cheese. 2) The quantifiable characteristics of the phenomenon do not change depending of whether the bumble bee or I is present. 3) The quantifiable characteristics does not change depending on which human being is present, and what this human being think or feel.

Now, if we go to god - some people think a god exist, some people don't, but it is not objectively demonstrable that a god exists.

When do we think a hypothesis has been demonstrated, and that groups of observations, hypothesis testing and converging data are enought to form a "fact"? When are we convinced that the earth is round, and that gravity exists? Well, how much data you personally need to think something is "true" for all practical purposes is your choice, but in science an observation must be made repeatedly and consistently over a long time, it must have support from other evidence, it cannot ever have been falsified, it must not be a better or more plausible alternative explanation around, it must fit other data, blahblahblah. The "tiny increases in probability" must add up over a long time before something is accepted as "a fact". For instance, gravity, evolution and the roundness of earth are accepted "facts" whereas the theory of relativity is not (although evidence for the latter is slowly stacking).

[Cuchulain82]

It seems like people are trying to hold science (and therefore CE) accountable for answers to questions that it is not capable of answering. This is what I was trying to get at with my earlier posts and what I think CE meant when she talked about confusing science and religion.

Science answers "how" questions exceptionally well. For example, CE just showed us that science can explain how the first single celled organisms emerged from a primordial soup of proteins, amino acids, etc. However, if you try to hold science to the task of answering "why" this happened, you will be let down, because science can't. Did life form because God put all the pieces in place? Or perhaps was it just random chance? Science can't answer that- if you want answers to those questions, read philosphy books or go to Church (or just post here at GB ). Science is about asking questions and answering them, and testing over and over again.

Re: Faith

There is alot of talk about faith here, but people aren't talking about the same "faith". In logic this is an informal fallacy of Equivocation. I don't think that anyone meant to change the meaning, but the faith the CM speaks of when he listens to a professor is different form the faith that Arrylium has as a Christian.

Re: 999 vs. 1

I can agree with Magrus in saying that usually 999 people are going to be more right than 1. However, like CE says, significant evidence posessed by the 1 person can change the 999. Please consider the following example- Einstein's General and Specific theories of relativity. At the time the were published, he was the only person to have ever considered them (especially the General theory). They were completely different form anything in physics that had ever been published. Einstein changed physics forever, all by himself. Ironically, this is also a good example of rationalism vs. empiricism, because Einstein did essentially no experimentation in creating these theories- it was essentially as if he plucked them out of the air.

Re: Interpretation

Many scientists and scientific philosophers have studied the idea of interpretation vs. collection of data. The question is whether or not a person can ever collect objective data. Sometimes people realize that, the more hypothesis a person answers, the more that seem to need answering. Is this the "interpretation" you were speaking of, Magrus? Not how you test the hypothesis, but rather how you choose which hypthesis to test?

I also want to reiterate the relevance of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance as well as a popular philosophy book- The Structure of Scientific Revolution by Thomas Khun. You can read ZMM free on the web here

What does everyone think about the how vs. why problem?

[ik911]

Originally Posted by C Elegans

If you are correct in your assumption that Arrylium made the assumption that I said if god did not make man and earth, nothing made man and earth, that is precisely a strawman. If you are correct, Arrylium made an erranous assumption that I said something I did not say, and he questions this which I did not say.

A strawman is when you argue against a stance that the opponent has not taken.

It is easy to mistake feedback for a strawman. You said science proved there is no need for a god to create life. That means the question 'Who or what created life?' becomes unanswered, and since the Bible says that all began with nothing, the logical conclusion is that 'nothing' suddenly (so without any God's or power's will or force) became 'something' (through the stages you mentioned, which have been executed in labs all over the world).
I agree, you did not explicitly say exactly that, but what I'm trying to illustrate is that what he said is not illogical and can't just be dismissed as a strawman.
Scientifically, 'nothing' that becomes 'something' is impossible. It's only possible for something to turn into something else: water in ice, elements into iron and energy , etc. (and the other way around)

Anyway, I believe the answer has already been provided (also by you), let's not stray too much.

[C Elegans]

Originally Posted by ik911

It is easy to mistake feedback for a strawman.

It is difficult to distinguish between misunderstandings and a strawman. That's why I wrote "This sounds like a strawman" and not "This is a strawman".

You said science proved there is no need for a god to create life. That means the question 'Who or what created life?' becomes unanswered, and since the Bible says that all began with nothing

Scientific questions cannot be answered by what is in the bible. Science have demonstrated there is no need for a god for life to develop from non life.

I agree, you did not explicitly say exactly that, but what I'm trying to illustrate is that what he said is not illogical and can't be dismissed as a strawman.

Exactly, I did not explicitely say that and I also did not dismiss Arryliums statement, I wrote "This appears to be a strawman" and leave it to him to explain what he meant, and when he has explained we can decide whether it was a strawman or just a simple misunderstanding. As I wrote above regarding assumptions, it is not one partys job to guess what the other party in a discussion means - that way one quickly ends up in fruitless dicussion. Maybe Arrylium meant exactly what you described and maybe not - unless you are his/her best friend or a magical thought-reader I will wait for clarification from Arrylium.

And now onto the longer and more difficult part:

First, nice and clarifying post, Cuchulain.

Originally Posted by Cuchulain82

However, if you try to hold science to the task of answering "why" this happened, you will be let down, because science can't. Did life form because God put all the pieces in place? Or perhaps was it just random chance? Science can't answer that- if you want answers to those questions, read philosphy books or go to Church (or just post here at GB ).

Exactly. Science also cannot deal with moral issues such as "it is right that the world is so unfair", or with aestic values such as "is this painting more beautiful that the other one".

This also taps the question of cultural differences which was the reason I asked where Arrylium was from, because it is my experience (plus it has been demonstrated in sociological studies) that American christian people more often see a conflict between religion and science, than European christians. In Europe, a vast majority of those who believe in a god have for instance never even heard of "Young earth creationism" and "Intelligent design", and they view the Big band, abiogeneis and evolution simply as mechanisms for how god made things happen, ie like tools.

However, like CE says, significant evidence posessed by the 1 person can change the 999. Please consider the following example- Einstein's General and Specific theories of relativity. At the time the were published, he was the only person to have ever considered them (especially the General theory). They were completely different form anything in physics that had ever been published. Einstein changed physics forever, all by himself. Ironically, this is also a good example of rationalism vs. empiricism, because Einstein did essentially no experimentation in creating these theories- it was essentially as if he plucked them out of the air.

The same can also be said for Pruisner and the prions - when he presented the hypothesis almost nobody thought he made sense, but over the years he collected evidence and later he was awared the Nobel price in medicine for his revolutionary findings. (Prions are proteins that can transfer disease, such as Scrapie, Kuru or the "mad cow disease", ie Creutzfeld-Jacob Disease).

Over the years I have had several discussions with people here at SYM who think science is "close minded" and do not take putative revolutionary insights into account. These insights may be all from religious beliefs, magical experiences or just about any idea that the person has. When their ideas are discarded as "beliefs" without scientific merit, I have sometimes heard people refer to Einstein with a "nobody believed Einstein either in the beginning!" However, the difference between Einstein and the home-made rationalist who posts at SYM, is that over the years, Einstein published his hypothesis, other scientists made empirical observations and tested the hypothesis in labs, and successively, one man's thoughts was confirmed to be a valid theory.

Anyone can submit his/her thoughts to scientific testing in the same manner as Einstein did. Just go ahead, write it down and send it to a scientific journal like Einstein did. It's free, as opposed to books which usually are expensive to print if you do it yourself. The reason I write this, is because I think the cases of Einstein and Pruiser (and many more) demostrates that rationalism without empirism is not science, it is poetry. Poetry is needed in order for science to progress, otherwise we would just continue to investigate things we already know fairly well. But that poetry must be shaped into testable hypothesis, otherwise it cannot be included in science. That's why all major religions cannot be defined as science - they don't contain testable hypothesis, they don't make predictions and they are not falsifiable.

I also want to reiterate the relevance of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance as well as a popular philosophy book- The Structure of Scientific Revolution by Thomas Khun.

I haven't read the Zen and motorcycle book since I was a teenager, the book was "cult" in my social circles at the time. Regarding Kuhn, I think the Structure of Scientific Revolution should be mandatory reading before even posting in threads like this one