Science, Meet Your Maker!

Originally posted by Rasobasi420
No one is trying to push evolution on you any more than they're trying to push proper grammar or mathematics. Evolution does not require faith, only observable proof. If you don't want to believe that 2+2=4 that's your prerogative, but don't come crying to science when you keep getting incorrect change because you didn't have 'faith' in mathematics.

Ras, I understand where you are coming from. I truly, truly do. However, I'm exhausted explaining myself and my stance on evolution again and again and why I disagree with its assumptions, evidence, the leaps of faith it makes, its contradictions, hijacking and distortion of evidence, etc. I was taught evolution in middle school (even though I went to private school), high school, and college so I know what evidence you feel supports the theory. I'm simply going to say I do not agree after an intense evaluation that I am too tired to explain yet again on ATS.

And no, I do not believe the wholesale theory of evolution is anywhere near as solid as math or grammar. Not remotely. 2+2=4 is an absolute. The definition of a verb is absolute. Making the associations of evidence is not an absolute, rather an interpretation and connection in many aspects. That's the way I see it.

[edit on 5/8/2008 by AshleyD]

reply to post by AshleyD


Ashley,

Evolution does happen, although interpretations on how and why it happens vary. We know that it happens through simple observation.

And still, the only thing that faith provides is seeing God in the cracks. Once those cracks are filled in God isn't in the picture any more.

reply to post by Rasobasi420


Sure, I agree aspects of it happen. After all, the best lies always contain a bit of truth.

Originally posted by Conspiriology

Originally posted by SlyCM
Firstly, science is essentially driven by the human desire to understand. It has nothing to do with God unless one chooses to force him upon it.

I can't begin to tell you the contradiction in terms you're making in this brief statment. The first part makes a good slogan but that's all it is. Science like the quote I gave from Dawkins, and the arguments that have been going on in this regard, Science only wants to guard and protect its monopoly and has nothing to do with understanding a damn thing. It tries harder to NOT understand, NOT investigate, NOT teach, but preach and indoctrinate and has pretty much become a religion of sorts.

Science in our Schools.

is pathetic

- Con

Heh - So essentially your saying ' religion IS ignorance? Relgion is there to preach and indoctrinate' NOT to try and understand anything? Essentially your words, not mine (re-read above statement)

Well, for once we agree on something!

But to try and say science doesn't try to understand anything is ludicrous! Science is all about trying to undrstand how things work. Period. That is what science IS

Ahh... I see the old thumper guard are out in force as usual...

J.


[edit on 8-5-2008 by Conspiriology]

reply to post by AshleyD


And yet, creation theory has next to no truth in it, yet people will immediately jump to the conclusion that 'God did it'.

And the aspects of evolution that are tested and confirmed far outweigh anything that is still in question.

reply to post by jimbo999


If science is about having prestige and making money, how truthful is it?
Can you honestly believe the scientific realm is all about honesty and good-will?
How about the pharmacuetical companies?

reply to post by Clearskies


Because the scientific community is so strict about what is passed off as fact, peer review is absolutely necessary and forms it's own series of checks and balances. Science in and of itself has no conscience. It can't. Facts are facts and when they are proven they are proven.

Big Pharma is an entity that uses facts and science for it's own financial gain. To blame science for the evils it commits is akin to blaming a gun for a shooting death.

Science doesn't kill people, people kill people.

reply to post by Thousand


Thanks for your well thought out and thorough post.

Originally posted by Thousand
So if I understand you correctly, you're saying that science is a faith-based belief system because we take for granted the fact that the universe seems to be resting upon several core systems that are readily predictable and measurable? That's an interesting angle.

Without faith in the rational intelligibility of the universe science cannot be accomplished. It’s not just my opinion but it is a fact according to many great scientists including Einstein.

Originally posted by Thousand
Firstly, the presumption is made that science "started" by dealing with the base functionality of the universe and has made its discoveries outwards from that point, assuming that those core systems are immutable and absolute as it goes. I would argue instead that science started at a much more general, day-to-day level and progressed inwards, eventually discovering that the universe runs on a basic set of human-understandable and mathematically definable systems which are not yet fully understood, but generally accepted to work seeing as we haven't found any cases where they produce different outcomes.

No not really. You take too much for granted; the presumption is deeper. To deal with the base functionally of the universe you have to first assume that your brain, which by materialist philosophy is nothing more than a combination of neurons slapped together by random mutations and the laws of physics and chemistry is capable of determining truth. You then must assume that the universe is even decipherable. There’s no rational reason for either by atheistic Darwinian materialism.

Originally posted by Thousand
The question of whether or not the knowledge of the sun rising every day is faith based is, I think, the result of a misunderstanding. We did not approach the question scientifically from the start. Indeed, the concept of the sun rising and setting once was a faith-based issue, but no longer. While I can't tell you what the sunrise looked like in 15000 BCE, I can explain to you the systems that hold our planet in place around the sun, and the optical illusion caused by our rotation both in place and in orbit around it making it appear as though the sun is rotating around us. We know about these things because intense research has been conducted, and the data gathered has shown us that in 100% of recorded instances, the sun has risen in the morning. We've taken the sun's behavior and obtained a very consistent set of rules from it, rules which hold true in 100% of our observations. Because of this, I can say with honest confidence that the sun will rise tomorrow because that is the way it physically behaves. Is it faith that tells me that this is true, and that the sun will not spin a loop tomorrow morning? No, it is my experience, my observations that tell me that it won't. Saying that I think the sun will rise tomorrow only because I take for granted the fact that it will not rotate backwards doesn't take faith. Holding the belief that the sun may just rotate backwards, even though it has never been observed to have done so...that's faith.

Miriam is doing an excellent job with this point but I would like to add a few thoughts. There are two schools of thought here. The great religions of the world have always held that there are two levels of reality. The human version is purely experiential; reality as it is experienced by us. Then there is the God's-eye view of reality, which is reality itself. Being the fallible kind of creatures that humans are, we see things in a limited and distorted way. As the apostle Paul told us,

For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.(1 cor 13:12)

You say you “know” the sun will come up tomorrow. I contend you are making a huge assumption based on your irrational overconfidence in your own abilities. ” Experience does not equal reality. You assume that human reason and our senses give us access to external reality and that the limiting factor to human knowledge is the limit of reality itself. The same is true of all naturalist materialists like Dawkins and crew. They are suffering from the delusion of what philosopher Immanuel Kant calls the “enlightenment fallacy”.

Kant begins with a simple premise: all human knowledge is based on experience. We gain access to reality through our five senses. This sensory input is then processed through our brains and central nervous systems. How do we know that our human perception of reality corresponds to reality itself? The reality we comprehend is not reality in itself. It is just our take on reality. We have no basis to assume that our limited perceptions of reality ever resemble reality itself.

I’m very tired I will address the rest of your post later…

Well one more quick thing, you said:

And the other point of note, is that I see this thread is an attempt to discredit science because it is faith based.

Try to think of it not so much an attempt to discredit science but an effort to elevate faith. I am a science enthusiast or I wouldn't have done the research to write this piece. I am simply discrediting the idea that science has made faith unnecessary. Science is cool.

reply to post by jdl79


Thanks for the post and your support!

The bible admittedly states that the story of our creation was told to Moses by God so assumably future generations would know where they came from. But he was talking to a primative man in Moses, so if I was God in trying to explain to him what I had done, knowing he had no knowledge of science or any of the advancements we now take for granted. I would have had to dumb it down to his level.

I agree. Genesis isn't meant to be a science treatise on how God did it. I am not a young earth creationist myself. Evolution explains some things rather well, like adaptation with in a species or kind of animal. It fails at explaining origins and invokes a "miracle"; which makes the arrogance of Darwinists toward creation rather silly and unfounded.

The thing I find very interesting is that in Genesis God doesn't create man out of thin air but from the dust. Which agrees with scientific materialism in a profound way, as we we are made out of the organic material of the earth and all life is carbon based.

reply to post by SlyCM

Firstly, science is essentially driven by the human desire to understand. It has nothing to do with God unless one chooses to force him upon it.

I disagree and so did the inventor of the Scientific method: Roger bacon, a monk no less. Science is driven by the human desire to understand how God does things.

Secondly, who says we can understand the universe?

Atheists and "Brights" claim to by their own sheer reasoning abilities.

The difference between science and religion is the ability to dispassionately accept new evidence, and the passionate unwillingness to do so.

You are wrong. Some scientists are still fighting the Big Bang in spite of all the evidence because it gives so much credence to creation. All the fuss over ID is another example of sciences unwillingness to accept a rival idea to its established religious dogma.

Science is not a religion, atheism and evolution are not faith based. "God of the gaps" arguments and BigWhammy's attempts to lower opponents down to his/her level, fortunately, do not have an effect on real evidence, which science is based on.

Science is entirely faith based on the rational intelligibility of the universe and the ability of the human mind to comprehend. Naturalism and materialism offer no explanation for this fact. Theism does.

I am not proposing a "God of the Gaps" at all. I am postulating a God to explain why science can explain. I am not really denying that science can explain things reasonably well; I postulate that God is the reason why it can.

[edit on 5/8/2008 by Bigwhammy]

Originally posted by Bigwhammy
I disagree and so did the inventor of the Scientific method: Roger bacon, a monk no less. Science is driven by the human desire to understand how God does things.

No, it is not. It is driven by the human desire to understand, period. Again, science only includes "god" if one chooses to force him upon it.

Atheists and "Brights" claim to by their own sheer reasoning abilities.

As an atheist no I do not. Nor does any other reputable scientist/atheist. Conversely, creationists seem to imply they know everything about the universe: God did it.

You are wrong. Some scientists are still fighting the Big Bang in spite of all the evidence because it gives so much credence to creation. All the fuss over ID is another example of sciences unwillingness to accept a rival idea to its established religious dogma.

The big bang isn't a good example because there really isn't a huge amount of evidence to support it. It is generally accepted because it is the best explanation we now have. Perhaps when the LHC goes online we will gain more understanding, and this hypothesis will be refuted or supported.

Furthermore, creationism literally controlled "scientific" views for several thousand years, until we gained a better explanation. Evolution is by no means "religious dogma" because science isn't a religion.

Science is entirely faith based on the rational intelligibility of the universe and the ability of the human mind to comprehend. Naturalism and materialism offer no explanation for this fact. Theism does.

Theism provides an explanation for everything. It is entirely faith based.

Science, on the other hand, figures things out "on the way". If I had a good reason to doubt the theory of evolution by natural selection, or even to believe in a god, then I would. Similarly, I can speculate on how the universe may have been before the big bang, but to hold faith in it is unscientific, and therefore not practiced. That's how responsible science goes, and it's the same trait that theism lacks. Which is why it is unscientific and fundamentalist.

I am not proposing a "God of the Gaps" at all. I am postulating a God to explain why science can explain. I am not really denying that science can explain things reasonably well; I postulate that God is the reason why it can.

By that logic we should be able to understand everything. Things previously incomprehensible, for example, electricity, can now be rationally explained, therefore "God" has lost his place in that explanation. Similarly, there are plenty of things we still do not understand; however, it is reasonable to suggest that we eventually will. Therefore, things were not "built to understand"; they were "built anyways". The fact that we can apply science to understand them does not offer any evidence or proof that "God" wants us to understand them and therefore is real.

I applaud your research and effort, but your argument is weak.

reply to post by Thousand


I promised to finish replying to this...

I'm going to have to go ahead and say that this little quote is more than a bit sensationalist. The image presented of the Greeks being a people chained to eclectic religious belief which completely overrode all other aspects of their lives, whereas Christianity is the font from which all modern science sprang is more than a bit hard to swallow. Greeks such as Epicurus had already begun laying the foundation for atomic theory in the third century BCE, and Heron of Alexandria constructed the world's first steam engine nearly 2000 years before the industrial revolution in Europe. These were terrifically intelligent people, capable of incredible feats of engineering for their time. Contrast that to the height of Christianity's power during the Dark and Middle ages, when scientific discovery was at an all time low and even the mention of the Earth orbiting the Sun was heretical, and you'll see that the above quote is almost humorously inaccurate. I will give Christianity some things, such as Gregor Mendel (sorry, he was Catholic, which doesn't count), but for the most part it has only given us a backward march towards fundamentalism, driven by the power hungry and fueled by the uneducated (in the case of the Dark Ages, anyway. They weren't called dark because light bulbs were not yet invented)

The father of the ‘scientific method’ was Sir Francis Bacon (1561–1626) he believed in creationism and he was a Christian. Sir Isaac Newton is responsible for the laws of classical physics was a devout Christian and wrote tirelessly on the Bible. To have science at all one must have faith that nature is decipherable with the human mind. The only reason to presume that it is in fact decipherable, is a common creator.

Think about this... why didn't science and the scientific method occur in the far east. China and Japan invented great things but they never achieved anything like "science". It is because science is born from faith in God. If there is no God that created the universe and man, theres is no reason to believe mans intellect can decipher the laws of nature.

The fathers of science believed in God
• Nicholas Copernicus (1473-1543) astronomer, mathematics
• Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1627) establishing the scientific method of inquiry
• Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) mathematician and astronomer.
• Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) astronomer.,physics
• Rene Descartes (1596-1650) father of modern philosophy, mathematician, scientist
• Isaac Newton (1642-1727) mathematics,physics,chemistry
• Robert Boyle (1791-1867) chemistry
• Michael Faraday (1791-1867) physics
• Gregor Mendel (1822-1884) genetics

From Dinesh D'Souza Whats So Great About Christianity p.66

Kepler, however, was certain, based on his deep Christian faith, that God had employed an even more beautiful pattern, and he labored hard to decipher it. When he discovered what it was—his three laws of planetary motion—he experienced something of a spiritual epiphany. Kepler announced that his laws showed that God had used a far simpler and more elegant scheme than the one previously delineated in the Ptolemaic system of cycles and epicycles. In a prayer concluding The Harmony of the World, Kepler implored God "graciously to cause that these demonstrations may lead to thy glory and to the salvation of souls."

Kepler's laws posit uncanny relationships. For instance, Kepler's third law states that the square of the time of a planet's revolution is proportional to the cube of its mean distance from the sun. How could anyone have figured that out? Kepler did in large part because he was convinced that there had to be a beautiful mathematical relationship there hidden and 66
waiting for him. Part of his Christian vocation was to find it and promulgate it to the greater glory of God. Kepler's success leads to the surprising recognition that religious motivation can sometimes result in breakthrough discoveries that change the course of scientific history.

Gregor Mendel (sorry, he was Catholic, which doesn't count)

Ok fine if you want to claim that. So now the crusades, inquisition and Adolf Hitler were also of non Christian origin as well. Virtually all the mass murders of the world now lie at the feet of non Christians... Thanks for acknowledging that.

[edit on 5/10/2008 by Bigwhammy]

Why do science and religion have to conflict. Science and religion use different tools to answer different questions.

A carpenter uses different tools to accomplish different goals than a house painter. Just because I like carpenters who use wood, hammers, and nails to build structures it does not mean I cannot appreciate painters who use paint and brushes to paint structures. Both carpenters and painters are needed to complete the construction of a house.

Similarly, religion and science use different tools to answer different questions about our lives and the universe. While scientists and religious figures may occasionally disagree, (just like carpenters and painters may occasionally have a disagreement at a construction site) it does not mean that they cannot work side by side in creating a more complete picture of our universe and lives.

reply to post by hotpinkurinalmint

Why do science and religion have to conflict. Science and religion use different tools to answer different questions.

Truly they do not have to conflict. After all science is rooted deeply in religious faith. It is only the out of control egos of some prominent atheist scientists that cause the conflicts. They claim science has dispensed with God. Ii is more true to say science has come close to proving his existence. (look for an upcoming post demonstrating this)

reply to post by Bigwhammy


Science is only rooted in faith in that religious faith has always been a part of society, as has the desire to explain nature. There are no direct roots. Faith in God is certainly no prerequisite for scientific discovery or observation.

That should be made perfectly clear before that gets out of hand.

[edit on 10-5-2008 by Rasobasi420]

reply to post by SlyCM

But science can only be created by those who are thoroughly imbued with the aspiration toward truth and understanding. This source of feeling, however, springs from the sphere of religion. To this there also belongs the faith in the possibility that the regulations valid for the world of existence are rational, that is, comprehensible to reason. I cannot conceive of a genuine scientist without that profound faith. The situation may be expressed by an image: science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind. (Albert Einstein, 1941)

www.spaceandmotion.com...

No, it is not. It is driven by the human desire to understand, period. Again, science only includes "god" if one chooses to force him upon it.

Sorry history tells a different tale than your Atheist fable.

How did Christian belief provide a cultural matrix (womb) for the growth of science?

In Christ and Science (p. 23), Jaki gives four reasons for modern science's unique birth in Christian Western Europe:

1. "Once more the Christian belief in the Creator allowed a break-through in thinking about nature. Only a truly transcendental Creator could be thought of as being powerful enough to create a nature with autonomous laws without his power over nature being thereby diminished. Once the basic among those laws were formulated science could develop on its own terms."
2. "The Christian idea of creation made still another crucially important contribution to the future of science. It consisted in putting all material beings on the same level as being mere creatures. Unlike in the pagan Greek cosmos, there could be no divine bodies in the Christian cosmos. All bodies, heavenly and terrestrial, were now on the same footing, on the same level. this made it eventually possible to assume that the motion of the moon and the fall of a body on earth could be governed by the same law of gravitation. The assumption would have been a sacrilege in the eyes of anyone in the Greek pantheistic tradition, or in any similar tradition in any of the ancient cultures."
3. "Finally, man figured in the Christian dogma of creation as a being specially created in the image of God. This image consisted both in man's rationality as somehow sharing in God's own rationality and in man's condition as an ethical being with eternal responsibility for his actions. Man's reflection on his own rationality had therefore to give him confidence that his created mind could fathom the rationality of the created realm."
4. "At the same time, the very createdness could caution man to guard agains the ever-present temptation to dictate to nature what it ought to be. The eventual rise of the experimental method owes much to that Christian matrix."

The Origin of Science: Columbia University

Biologist Joshua Lederberg recently told Science magazine, "What is incontrovertible is that a religious impulse guides our motive in sustaining scientific inquiry."

As an atheist no I do not. Nor does any other reputable scientist/atheist. Conversely, creationists seem to imply they know everything about the universe: God did it.

But claiming that God is behind it says nothing about "how" he did it. Which is what science is all about. Most atheist scientists are materialists and naturalists and they do make the claim that given enough time science can solve all mysteries. By claiming the nonexistence of God the atheist is guilty of this enlightenment fallacy.

The big bang isn't a good example because there really isn't a huge amount of evidence to support it. It is generally accepted because it is the best explanation we now have. Perhaps when the LHC goes online we will gain more understanding, and this hypothesis will be refuted or supported.

The Big Bang is as sure as anything in science. There's more evidence for it than macro evolution. In fact we have made predictions and proved them based on it. The residule heat radiation signatures being a prime example.
This actually for all intensive purposes proves a supernatural God. Most scientists are just hemming and hawing living in denial of the evidence. I will make a separate post on this as it is too important to have nestled in our debate.

Furthermore, creationism literally controlled "scientific" views for several thousand years, until we gained a better explanation. Evolution is by no means "religious dogma" because science isn't a religion.

Atheistic scientists once denied creation and asserted the universe was eternal and now creation has been vindicated as a scientific fact. If they had listened way back 200 years ago they could have saved a lot of wasted time on errant cosmolgy based on an eternal universe.

Because of the vested intellectual interest (pride) scientists hold very self serving and erroneous views to hold on to their established dogma. Albert Einsteins theory of general relativity demands creation. The equations demand a beginning to the universe. This so bothered him with its implications that made by his own admission "the biggest blunder of my career" by postulating the cosmological constant.

Mainly because of anti-theism scientists are guilty of dogmatically clinging to the status quo despite evidence to the contrary.

Several years ago eminent science writer John Maddox published an article in Nature titled "Down with the Big Bang." This is strange language for a scientist to use. Clearly the Big Bang happened, but Maddox gives the impression that he wishes it hadn't. He is not alone. In chapter eleven, I quoted astronomer Arthur Eddington's description of the Big Bang as "repugnant." Eddington confessed his desire to find "a genuine loophole" in order to "allow evolution an infinite time to get started." So one reason for resisting the Big Bang is to make room for the theory of evolution.

D'Souza p.100

Theism provides an explanation for everything. It is entirely faith based.

Actually theism says very little about "how" God did things. That is the realm of science. In truth there is much more evidence to support theism than atheism. It takes far more faith to be an atheist. More akin to the blindness postulated by scripture and Albert Einstein than faith.

By that logic we should be able to understand everything. Things previously incomprehensible, for example, electricity, can now be rationally explained, therefore "God" has lost his place in that explanation.

That is absurd. How has God lost his place in the understanding of electricity. The things are not here by cosmic accident. For example by the anthropic principal we know that if the constants were tuned to the very precise values they are our universe would not exist. Why is there a strong nuclear force that if was shifted by a minuscule amount would result in no life on our planet? Your argument does more to prove my point than yours I'm afraid.

I'll let Oxford Scientist and Mathematician Dr John Lennox explain:

Similarly, there are plenty of things we still do not understand; however, it is reasonable to suggest that we eventually will.

Oh didn't you just say this:

"Secondly, who says we can understand the universe? " As an atheist no I do not. Nor does any other reputable scientist/atheist.

If we can't understand the universe at all how do you purpose it is reasonable to suggest we eventually will?

Therefore, things were not "built to understand"; they were "built anyways". The fact that we can apply science to understand them does not offer any evidence or proof that "God" wants us to understand them and therefore is real.

And how do you presume to know how and why things were built?

I thought you just said we don't understand? You contradict yourself.

I applaud your research and effort,

Thank you, for a polite and spirited debate.

but your argument is weak.

You only say that because it threatens your faith.

BW,

All you've shown with your last post is that some scientists are religious. And, historically, more scientists were religious than we observe now. In the practice of experimentation 'god' never plays a part as a variable. Different motives (God vs personal curiosity) will provide the same results if the experiment is the same.

Originally posted by Bigwhammy

The father of the ‘scientific method’ was Sir Francis Bacon (1561–1626) he believed in creationism and he was a Christian. Sir Isaac Newton is responsible for the laws of classical physics was a devout Christian and wrote tirelessly on the Bible. To have science at all one must have faith that nature is decipherable with the human mind. The only reason to presume that it is in fact decipherable, is a common creator.

Think about this... why didn't science and the scientific method occur in the far east. China and Japan invented great things but they never achieved anything like "science". It is because science is born from faith in God. If there is no God that created the universe and man, theres is no reason to believe mans intellect can decipher the laws of nature.

The fathers of science believed in God
• Nicholas Copernicus (1473-1543) astronomer, mathematics
• Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1627) establishing the scientific method of inquiry
• Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) mathematician and astronomer.
• Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) astronomer.,physics
• Rene Descartes (1596-1650) father of modern philosophy, mathematician, scientist
• Isaac Newton (1642-1727) mathematics,physics,chemistry
• Robert Boyle (1791-1867) chemistry
• Michael Faraday (1791-1867) physics
• Gregor Mendel (1822-1884) genetics

From Dinesh D'Souza Whats So Great About Christianity p.66

I hope you don't see this as an attack (it isn't meant to be) but I wanted to address some chronological/ Miscellaneous problems I see with some of the above, though its largely a matter of debate really but many have noticed that

Roger Bacon was largely inspired by the writings of an earlier Christian theologian (and at one point the Bishop of Lincoln) Roger Grosseteste. Roger G between 1220 to 1235 wrote a bunch of Scientific treatise:

* De sphera. An introductory text on astronomy.

# De luce. On the "metaphysics of light." (which is the most original work of cosmogony in the Latin West)

# De accessu et recessu maris. On tides and tidal movements. (although some scholars dispute his authorship)

# De lineis, angulis et figuris. Mathematical reasoning in the natural sciences.

# De iride. On the rainbow.

You can read more on Roger Grossetest here:

en.wikipedia.org...

Quite a bit of what Roger G wrote about with regards to the foundations of Scientific Method were based on things Aristotle had written Almost a 1000 years earlier. There were some others who wrote/ added to and built on those same things Aristotle had written and who also partly inspired Bacon and maybe even Grossetest and the others around that such as Ibn al-Haytham.

Some links that you might find interesting, that is when your not tired :-)

en.wikipedia.org...

Also the Chinese and other East hemisphere societies did help further science along in the early days. Granted quite a few of their inventions/ findings were rediscoveries/ remakes of things made in Ancient Greece.
But there were clever people who did further Science and Technology of the time pretty well like Zhang Heng, Ma Jun and

en.wikipedia.org...
en.wikipedia.org...

This next link contains a collection of things from Ancient India and China to Hellenic and Egyptian contributions to ancient beginings which is a pretty good read

en.wikipedia.org...


[edit on 10-5-2008 by Marshall Ormus]

[edit on 10-5-2008 by Marshall Ormus]

Originally posted by Rasobasi420
reply to post by Bigwhammy

 

Science is only rooted in faith in that religious faith has always been a part of society, as has the desire to explain nature. There are no direct roots. Faith in God is certainly no prerequisite for scientific discovery or observation.

That should be made perfectly clear before that gets out of hand.

No the roots are quite direct - see my reply to SlyCM. But you are right that faith in God is not necessary to do science. However faith in the rational intelligibility of the universe is. Naturalism and materialism offer no explanation for this, that is the dilemma of the atheist. Again I defer to Albert,

But science can only be created by those who are thoroughly imbued with the aspiration toward truth and understanding. This source of feeling, however, springs from the sphere of religion. To this there also belongs the faith in the possibility that the regulations valid for the world of existence are rational, that is, comprehensible to reason. I cannot conceive of a genuine scientist without that profound faith. The situation may be expressed by an image: science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind. (Albert Einstein, 1941)

www.spaceandmotion.com...

Einstein was a brilliant man when it came to mathematics and physics, but human nature was something that he just didn't get. His point of view states that the need to understand the nature of the world around us stems from a 'religious sphere'. That's not the case for everyone. And, since scientific discovery isn't limited to one religion or god, the same advancement is made outside of any religious sphere.

Hell, the Mayans developed extremely advanced mathematic theorems while believing that draining the blood from hundreds of sacrificed people would bring them prosperity. The source of the inspiration doesn't matter once the discovery is made.