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Yea. Science "does" Nature. You know ... in like a ... carnival sense.

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dkv, ever the instigator, defining science is indeed opening a can of worms... wink


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For me to consider God as factual I would have to run "God-facts" through the scientific method. Simply, if there are no God-facts which I can accumulate then there is no debate to be had.
If I am strolling down a dusty road and in my purview a burning bush speaks to me: a) I've had a psychotic snap, or any other inumerable explainations....
Further, to clarify, perhaps God is not meant to be taken as fact..but to only exist through faith.


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Folks, if you don't believe in a God of miracles there is no chance you will believe the God of the Bible, who you may find to be the author of science and not the author of religion.

Make a study of Job and Isaiah using the original texts and then come back and say that God is not the author of science. If you have not or do not intend to make this study then don't reply to this post. It would be both futile and unscientific.

Rod

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Oneplanet:

Please note that this is scienceagogo.com. It is not fantasyagogo. It is not needmymediationagogo. It is not psychoticsanonymousagogo.

How can one study Job and Isiah. There is nothing to study. The text has no author. The text has been mistranslated numerous times. The text contains no references to supporting works. The text is unverifiable by any lucid definition.

What you are actually doing is inviting people to become brain-washed: I decline your invitation. I like being sentient.

You, on the other hand, are welcome to your hallucinogen so long as you don't give your drug to impressionable children.


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We tend to overlook the basics between religion and science. Proof that either thought process is superior or factual can not be found.

I was born to a catholic family and went 8 years to catholic grammer sdhool. I have not followed the religion since leaving home many years ago.
The error is that science tells us to beleive that MATTER always was and always will be. Religion tells us GOD always was and always will be. They originate with the same hypothetical and I, if forced to make a choice on faith will go for the belief based on faith as opposed to a lesser hypothetical offering no better proof.

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jjw004 wrote:
"We tend to overlook the basics between religion and science. Proof that either thought process is superior or factual can not be found."

Absolute nonsense. Here's a simple test.

Take one Jew, one Christian (of any denomination), one Sunni Moslem, one Shiite moslem, one Buddhist, and one animist and put them into a room.

Test 1: Ask them to watch water freeze. See if they can agree on a single set of facts to describe what happened.

Test 2: Ask them to read each other's religious scriptures and to agree on a single set of facts to describe the origin of the universe.

Case closed.

You understanding of science ... "tells us to beleive that MATTER always was and always will be" demonstrates a complete lack of understanding of science since, at least, the 1800s.


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Hmmm your general concept of religion and god, seem to be out of sync with my concepts, so saying that I believe in a god would be talking past you as we don't share the same understandings of the words.

I hold with A. Clark: advanced science is like magic, and if we went back in time far enough, we would be like gods to those people. In fact saving someone who was suffering from dehydration, and a nasty spear wound to the abdomen would be difficult, but not impossible with today's technology. I don't think a race capable of space travel would find it hard at all.

Next postulate that there are other beings somewhere in the universe. Not unreasonable. Next postulate that they have had communication with our earth in times past. That may be a stretch. And I would suppose that would be where you might begin to look for proof of a God.

Ah but you say, that an extra terrestrial is not the same as the Creator of the Universe. Well, the old Hebrew texts don't say the same thing as our modern bibles. Religion has kind of gone it's own way.

A non-orthodox translation does not find mention of creating out of nothing, it finds something more akin to organizing existing matter. And Eloheim is a strange Hebrew word. First it is plural, not singular. It could mean "the Gods", but a more orthodox translation would be "the supreme God". Hmmm sounds like a highly superior extra terrestrial race to me.

Ok well I have offended all the major religions of earth, but I think there is wisdom in the teachings of the Man of Peace. I think I have see things in humans and in prayer that look like magic to me. And I assume that this God does follow the laws of science, and when it seems like magic, I assume that I just have a bit more science to learn, or maybe our understanding is simply missing something. "Blessed are they who do hunger and thirst after righteousness (truth) for they shall be called scientists, er filled."

What I find awe inspiring is the beauty and simplicity of the Universe (picture of the horse head cluster as my desktop), and the effect of love on my motivation in life. God is not to be proven, God is to be discovered.

Enjoy life


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Sparky wrote:
"Next postulate that there are other beings somewhere in the universe."

A postulate?

Please understand that I have no doubt that there are other sentient beings in the universe: It is a very big place.

But from a purely scientific perspective I can give you a huge amount of evidence that would support the proposition that sentient life exists nowhere else. You can not provide a single shred of evidence to the contrary.

So to be intellectually honest, today, there is no more evidence for little green men than there is for large purple (invisible) rhinos. The difference is that intelligent people thing there is value in searching for the green men. No one with an IQ over room temperature seriously expects to send up a probe and find proof that there is a factual basis for the Epic of Gilgamesh.


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DA wrote:
But from a purely scientific perspective I can give you a huge amount of evidence that would support the proposition that sentient life exists nowhere else.

Hmmm, every month I read articals on how new systems are discovered that say our system is not as unique as we once thought it was. To think that we are the only beings in the milky way is being a little conceited. To say that we are the only ones in the universe would be a bet that you could get very long odds on from any statistician.


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Please try re-reading what I wrote.

I personally agree with you. But suspecting something is very different from having a shred of evidence to support that belief system.

What separates scientists from theology victims is the ability to acknowledge when there is a lack of evidence.

That there are billions of galaxies, billions of stars, with billions of planets ... even billions of planets with oceans and life-forms ... does not provide a shred of evidence that more than one contains sentient life.

Of course I think there is. But I am intellectually honest enough to separate my belief system from what is actually known. Try it.


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Well I am looking at it from a statistical point of view. If something appears probable, that is generally good enough to start looking for proof or at least try an experiment or two, or maybe spend some time thinking about the problem to see if any light can be shed on the subject.

This thing you guys do of tossing out any idea or different point of view because there is not solid proof seems to be a hangover from your fear of theological argument, which I am not advocating. (Re: your reference to a belief system).

That is not how research works. You have to open your mind to other explanations of phenomena, try to come up with ways of testing those viewpoints, and then perform the tests. This may be the work of years or even of generations before we know for sure.

The problem of extra terrestrial life is a real consideration. NASA has done extensive thought work on what to look for and how to prevent contamination within our own solar system. We are pretty sure that if life is found in our solar system, it will be most primitive. Looking outside of our system opens up more possibilities. Right now most of the work I have seen is in identifying stars with planetary systems, discussing how common these may be, and trying to calculate the probabilities of a planet similar to the earth being formed. It may be shear chance, or there may be mechanisms that tend to make metal bearing planets form close enough to the star to be useable in a liquid water temperature range. After all, our four inner planets are all metal bearing, and the other planets (excluding that over grown asteroid Pluto) are gas giants with metal bearing moons. We had four shots at the right distance, one hit (earth), one was very close (mars). And one may eventually be terra-formed (Venus) enough to be of some use if just for energy production and mining in two hundred to three hundred years.

I personally think that such musings are worthwhile brainwork although not much is provable in your sense. Experiments are being done on carbon forms and organic molecules that could form in space under ultraviolet and other radiation when the carbon is frozen in ice. The results are "curious" as Spock would say.

To flat out say there is no proof of life in other star systems and then to dismiss the idea shows a strange belief system that doesn't resemble what I have known of scientific enquiry.


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Sparky wrote:
"Well I am looking at it from a statistical point of view"

Let me answer by quoting Samuel Clemens

"There are three kinds of liars. Liars, damned liars, and statisticians."

Nothing has changed. Statistically there is a probability. In terms of a single shred of evidence: There is none.

You further wrote:
"To flat out say there is no proof of life in other star systems and then to dismiss the idea shows a strange belief system that doesn't resemble what I have known of scientific enquiry."

Which is it? You are hard of reading? hard of comprehending? or hard of thinking?

Not once in anything I have written have I dismissed the idea. In fact I went to great pains to indicate that I did not. You really need to examine the question I just wrote to you, above, and try to determine where the problem lies.


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DA your insults are funny ways of accepting ideas. Mark Twain was a man who made a living from being funny. You one line dismissal of statistics isn't funny for a guy who slugged though many a college statistics course and then chaired a research committee on the application of statistics in his industry. Maybe you just have a funny way of talking to people and encouraging further communication with insults. Instead of adding to the subject, you just try to pick it apart.

Back up a bit and try to suggest ideas and irregularities that either promote or demote the ideas of life and eventually intelligent life existing elsewhere. You keep drumming on the fact that there is not one shred of evidence. Well a few years ago, there wasn?t one shred of evidence that there were planets around other stars. Someone decided to look in an ingenious way and we are finding gas giant type planets with out much trouble these days. So not having evidence for a probability is only important after one has thoroughly checked for that evidence.

I suggested the occurrence of 4 non-gas giants as the inner planets (metal bearing planets, may just be the results of the gas being blown away by the solar wind). is a hopeful sign that there is a mechanism that would promote life-supporting planets being close enough to a star to be in the liquid water range. Who knows, maybe every normal star forms a narrow variant of our system of planets? That would drastically increase the chance for life friendly planets.

I know, most star systems are binaries. But Jupiter is less than 10% mass away from being a star. Jupiter?s gravity doesn?t cause us serious problems, and if it were a luminous star, I don?t think that would cause significant problems either as it wouldn?t be very bright. It is almost a brown dwarf now with its infrared radiation.

The research on chemical compounds easily formed in space is also moving in the direction of lowering the threshold for life on other planets. Of course the proof you seek would be when that Vulcan star ship drops by to pay us a visit. But I don?t think we have to wait. We can and will figure this out in our lifetimes as a statistical probability and then take on the next logical challenge.


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"But from a purely scientific perspective I can give you a huge amount of evidence that would support the proposition that sentient life exists nowhere else."

That would be interesting. Most people are a lot better at talking about science and logic than they are about practicing it.

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To DA Morgan,

I fail to understand your response.

Quote:
How can one study Job and Isaiah? There is nothing to study.
It would appear you are simply against making a study because of the origin of these texts. The Hebrew scholarly evidence of Job and Isaiah is overwhelming not to mention the historic and geological evidence?

Quote:
The text has no author.
Would you like to take this statement to a ?Royal Commission? and see if your argument stacks up against the scrutiny of the Jewish Hebrew language, non-Jewish scholars, and historic scholars to boot?

Quote:
The text has been mistranslated numerous times.
Mistranslated you say. Then you do agree there is original texts somewhere, which of course must have an author.

However, the only reason to mistranslate scripture is to change time spans known as dispensations. Bearing this in mind there is absolutely no need to mistranslate the Old Testament. Modern mistranslations by religious groups are only concerned about prophecy relating to the deity of Christ not the historic writings of the Bible.

You can begin to see my point that a reply to my post would be futile without a study of these books.

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Sparky: I spent years of my life doing calculus before personal computers and calculators. I have more than a passing familiarity with statistical analysis. That does't change the fact that there is only a single point, out of a infinite number of possible points on the graph supporting the proposition that life exists anywhere else in the universe. That is only one point more than on my graph in which I prove that god is an invisible purple rhinoceros.

I appreciate you pointing out all of the "hopeful" signs. Being deaf dumb and blind I'd never noticed them before. Still that proves nothing about any place else in the entire universe.

oneplanet:
How can you study something that does not exist? You claim to have a copy of Job and Isaiah? Where?
In your bible? I don't think so. The original was not written in English. Oh you have the Latin Volgate. So sorry it wasn't written in Latin either. Perhaps the Greek or Hebrew? Still a total fraud as it is also not the original.

But just for fun take that English, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew copies and get scholars to agree on a single translation of them all? Can't be done. You can not even get a rabbi and a priest to agree on the translation of ten simple declarative sentences we call the Ten Commandments. So you have nothing to study. Most certainly not the original text with its original meaning.

So tell me oneplanet ... what is the value in studying the mistranslation of a text? What conclusions can you draw from it?


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DA Morgan:
You did not read one word of my post. What has English or the Latin to do with the Hebrew Scriptures? I do not believe you know a single Hebrew scholar, not one. You write from a scant knowledge of ecumenical religious claptrap.

The Ten Commandments, which you will find are 613 commandments, have never been a subject of mistranslation. The priests you refer to are religious people only interested in man's word about God. The rabbi generation you speak about removed chapter 53 of Isaiah. Why do you think that was?

The original texts are in existence! And no my source and learning does not come from the KJV version. The Hebrew texts I speak about are protected by an ingenious mathematical formula, which can be scientifically tested by anyone and has been by many scientists. Other famous literally pieces including the Apocrypha do not pass the number protection. Why do think that is?

But whatever I say as a lead up to some very conclusive evidence of science in the Bible you will continue to reply with uneducated rejections and an obvious limited knowledge on the subject.

Maybe I should start up a post with a more precise statement!

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"Make a study of Job and Isaiah using the original texts and then come back and say that God is not the author of science. If you have not or do not intend to make this study then don't reply to this post. It would be both futile and unscientific."
That last sentence is perhaps the most stupid statement I've read so far in this forum.

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It is intended to invoke response, which it has achieved.

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