Can you trust science?

Originally posted by RJHinds
God made and controls the universe and He is what holds it together.
He is the giver of life and He can take it away. He established the
laws that science has discovered and uses to learn about the universe.
God has the ability to bypass these laws if He so chooses. Man can
use science to discover only what God allows man to discover. So
I believe ma ...[text shortened]... 3 and would mock and say as you already did
that I was probably drunk or on drugs or something.

I am not going to mock you for having had a religious experience
that makes you believe in god.

However I can point you to evidence that suggests it is perfectly
possible for the brain to deceive itself (without drugs or drink).

I have links to a couple of videos that show my point, even if you
disbelieve everything this guy says he's an entertaining speaker so they're
worth watching.

YouTube

http://blip.tv/the-atheist-experience-tv-show/aron-ra-what-we-can-and-cannot-honestly-say-we-know-5016609


Now I am sure I will never be able to convince you that that experience
was not real, I am sure it was totally convincing to you.

But as it is possible to delude yourself, and as I can never tell if
you or anyone else who can claim a similar experience is lying or
wrong.
Having a personal experience does not count as irrefutable
evidence as I can posit a much more reasonable explanation for what
you felt/saw than the existence of an all powerful omnipresent deity.

Now you may believe that god made the universe ect, but you can't
objectively know it as you don't have the proof, personal experience
doesn't count. That is why you have to have faith, if you could objectively
know god was real then there would be no need for faith.


To be part of science god would have to conform to certain rules so
his actions, powers and properties could be assessed and analysed using
the scientific method.
The god you are claiming to exist apparently does not obey any rules and can't
be tested for.
Thus it CAN'T be part of science.

Whether it exists or not, whether you believe it exists or not it is incompatible
with science.

Now you can believe that god works miracles in this world, and does things that
can't be explained without god, breaking the laws of physics and so on.
But you can't stick that belief into science.
Science and your religion are not compatible, at all, in any way shape or form.

What you are trying to do is redefine science to be what you want it to be.
However science isn't yours to redefine.
You are free to believe, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that science
can't explain everything because there is a god making things unexplainable.
But you can't say that science needs to include your god because then it wouldn't
BE science.

We are likely never to agree on the existence of your god, or the value of science.
But can we at least agree that the two ideas/world views are incompatible?
Can we at least agree that science has, and can never have, anything to do with
the god you believe in?

Originally posted by RJHinds
You have free will to think whatever you wish and so do I.

You can indeed think whatever you wish, but you can't claim whatever you wish to be
objectively true.

The point is you are claiming what you say to be the truth, without showing evidence
and ignoring the evidence others try to present when they try to back up their
statements.

This is hypocritical.

Originally posted by googlefudge
I am not going to mock you for having had a religious experience
that makes you believe in god.

However I can point you to evidence that suggests it is perfectly
possible for the brain to deceive itself (without drugs or drink).

I have links to a couple of videos that show my point, even if you
disbelieve everything this guy says he's an enterta ...[text shortened]... that science has, and can never have, anything to do with
the god you believe in?

So I suppose only you, are someone who agrees with you, has the right
to define science. Very well, you have free will to believe as you please.
And I know that there are mental conditons that can cause delusions in
persons. Perhaps I have experience one of these and perhaps not. But
that knowledge does not make any difference for I believe my own
experience, real or not. I suppose you will have to receive your own
personal experience for God to be real to you. Yes, I don't objectively
know God made the universe and I don't think anyone is saying they
saw God do it or was there when it happened, not even the scientist.
It is all based on what seems more reasonable to the individual. With
my personal experience it seems much more reasonable for me to
believe God did it than it just happened over long periods of time. The
complexity in every single thing that exists in the universe seems to
cry out for a designer and maker of enormous power and intellect and
random chance seems the least likely method that this all could have
taken place. It would take an enormous number of random changes to
occur in the right order one after the other over those billions of years
to get what we have today. I am of the impression that the dice must
have been loaded. So who loaded the dice?

Originally posted by googlefudge
why do you believe that?

because the bible says so?
In that case what makes the bible more believable than say the Koran, or
Dasa's vadas (or whatever he quotes from) or the books of Ron Hubbard?
Also which bible, every translation and many Christian sects have differences.
heck even the 10 commandments are not consistent in every bible.

Is ...[text shortened]... is a necessary part of science...
It seems to be doing perfectly well without it.

The correct spelling of the Hindu scriptures is Vedas and not vadas.There are the 4 Vedas which are quite ancient and there are several Upanishads,which are smaller books containing the essence of Hindu spiritualism.However,the book by which all Hindu believers swear is the Bhagavat Geeta. It is a small book but very much the last word on Hindu spiritualism.Along with Dasa,let us not mock the Hindu scriptures also.
These scriptures do not proselytize nor they describe any Sin that the human race has committed nor are they describing a God sitting in judgement of humans.Hinduism is an open and voluntary Belief System.But my question to you is slightly different.
Why the rules( which Science has discovered or deciphered ) which govern all the happenings in this universe are the way they are?Please do not dismiss by answering that these are brute facts.

Originally posted by rvsakhadeo
The correct spelling of the Hindu scriptures is Vedas and not vadas.There are the 4 Vedas which are quite ancient and there are several Upanishads,which are smaller books containing the essence of Hindu spiritualism.However,the book by which all Hindu believers swear is the Bhagavat Geeta. It is a small book but very much the last word on Hindu spirituali ...[text shortened]... his universe are the way they are?Please do not dismiss by answering that these are brute facts.

It doesn't matter how it is spelled. None of it amounts to a hill of beans.
It is all nonsense anyway. Man has only one savior, who is Jesus the Christ.

Originally posted by RJHinds
It doesn't matter how it is spelled. None of it amounts to a hill of beans.
It is all nonsense anyway. Man has only one savior, who is Jesus the Christ.

And the people who never heard of him? They are going to hell?
All the aborigines in Australia, the plains indians, the ancient aztecs, all those people are bound for hell because they never heard the word?

Originally posted by sonhouse
And the people who never heard of him? They are going to hell?
All the aborigines in Australia, the plains indians, the ancient aztecs, all those people are bound for hell because they never heard the word?

I bet if people like you had been doing what Jesus said, they would
have heard by now.

Originally posted by RJHinds
This is a good advertisement for science over religion.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRLR9jhP_DM&NR=1&feature=fvwp

I trust science; it is scientists that I have issues with.
Kelly

Originally posted by KellyJay
I trust science; it is scientists that I have issues with.
Kelly

You do not trust science. You reject any scientific findings that do not fit with your religion. That is not trusting science.

Originally posted by twhitehead
You do not trust science. You reject any scientific findings that do not fit with your religion. That is not trusting science.

You also do not trust the science that goes against your world view.

Originally posted by RJHinds
You also do not trust the science that goes against your world view.

Example please...................

Originally posted by Proper Knob
Example please...................

CREATION SCIENCE

RNA Discoveries Refute Key Evolutionary Argument

by Brian Thomas, M.S.

Pseudogenes, or "false genes," were initially thought to be mutated and useless genetic "junk" since they don't code for proteins. When they were first discovered, evolutionists claimed they were leftovers of Darwinian evolution. But ongoing studies clearly show that the evolutionary interpretation was premature and even misleading.

With much more powerful tools for genetic investigation now available, researchers are discovering so many biological uses for pseudogenes that perhaps the majority of them are not false genes at all. One recent review even asked, "[Are they] pseudo-functional or key regulators in health and disease?"

Biologists first assumed that pseudogenes are not translated into proteins because they lack some of the codes that signal such translation. And since pseudogenes were not translated into proteins, they supposedly had no function. Thus, they have "long been labeled as 'junk' DNA, failed copies of genes that arise during the evolution of genomes."

In a study published in the technical journal RNA, Oxford Brookes University biologists reviewed some of the newly discovered functions for pseudogenes. They wrote, "In some cases, what appears to be a nontranslated pseudogene can, in fact, code for truncated proteins." Also, "evidence that some pseudogenes can exert regulatory effects on their protein coding cousins is mounting."

They reviewed studies where mutations in pseudogenes contributed to type 2 diabetes and certain cancers. If pseudogenes are not important, then why would their disruption cause disease? The researchers concluded that "the prevalent attitude that they are nonfunctional relics is slowly changing."

The study authors also wrote, "Pseudogenes are sometimes considered to represent 'neutral sequence,' in which mutations that accumulate are neither selected for or against. However, this premise relies on the assumption that pseudogenes are functionally inert." This means that pseudogenes can only be construed as evidence for evolution if they represent "neutral sequence" instead of functional sequence.

But the researchers found that "far from being silent relics, many pseudogenes are transcribed into RNA, some exhibiting a tissue-specific pattern of activation." Because they serve to fine-tune gene regulation, they are not available for evolution to "develop" into new genetic material, and therefore they can no longer be considered evidence for evolution.

As more functions for this DNA are discovered, the idea that they are leftovers from some evolutionary past diminishes. The evidence indicates that the vast majority of pseudogenes exists because the cell needs them, not because they evolved. The observation that they perform important cellular functions fits well with the creative engineering genius of the God of the Bible.

Originally posted by RJHinds
So I suppose only you, are someone who agrees with you, has the right
to define science. Very well, you have free will to believe as you please.
And I know that there are mental conditons that can cause delusions in
persons. Perhaps I have experience one of these and perhaps not. But
that knowledge does not make any difference for I believe my own
ex ...[text shortened]... today. I am of the impression that the dice must
have been loaded. So who loaded the dice?

I don't define science, Science has a definition that is incompatible with what you were
trying to use it for and I was simply pointing this out.

And no, no personal experience will convince me of the existence of god as I would
have no way of telling if I hadn't deluded myself.
This is not to say that it would be impossible to prove gods existence to me, but
no vision, or feeling, 'personal' experience is going to cut the mustard.
One suggestion by another atheist asked the same question was along the lines
of the planes about to hit the twin towers slowly coming to a complete stop meters
away from the towers, and then gently floating down to land on a nearby empty flat
piece of ground.
For me even that would not be definitive, I would have to rule out other more likely
possibilities like friendly, super advanced alien intervention for example.
The point being that god is the ultimately least likely explanation for anything as
he is so unbelievably powerful. Thus any evidence for his existence would have to
be beyond the ability of anything less powerful.

That said, even if you did manage to convince me that your god did exist, I still wouldn't
worship it or follow anything other than a secular moral code I had some say in.
If your god does exist then it is as far as I am concerned evil, and not worthy of my
devotion.

And while you may have the impression that in your words 'the dice must have been loaded'
is wrong. Science has shown time and time again that what we couldn't then explain, now
we can.
There are certainly things science (and a great many more I) doesn't know, but that number
of things used to be an awful lot bigger. The number of things we used to not be able to explain
and now can, all or most of which used to be attributed to god and now aren't, should be a hint
that betting against science to come up with a viable testable explanation for something is not
a good bet.
And postulating the existence of a supernatural being to explain everything, doesn't.
God doesn't explain anything, it just moves the question, to 'and how do you explain god?'
You just move the mystery to something you inherently can't explain and then give up.

This is why science built the technology of the modern world and not religion.

If you believe that we were designed, then answer this.

Why are the light detecting parts of our eyes (and those of all other mammals) behind the blood
vessels that supply them with oxygen?
Birds and octopuses don't have this problem, which is why they have MUCH better eyesight.
Did god decide to intentionally give us poor eyesight?

Why did god decide to connect our waste disposal system and our reproductive systems so
as to massively increase the chances of sexually transmittable diseases?

Why did god design female reproductive systems to not only make giving birth incredibly painful
and life threatening but also make women have regular periods if they are not pregnant?
Which has been shown to be detrimental to health, so that women suffer both from being pregnant
and from not being pregnant.

Why did god design us to have a child mortality rate of 50% without the intervention of modern
medicine?

If we were designed by a perfect being with unimaginable intellect, How is it we have an immune system
that is not capable of defeating every disease that comes our way?

I am sure a biologist or MD could come up with many, many more of these.


You have failed to understand the blind watchmaker argument. This is why you can't make sense of how
the world came to be without god.

Basically it is your lack of understanding (not lack of intellect mind) that explains why you have to resort
to the divine. This is why a society gets less religious the more and better educated it becomes.
This is why churches in your country are forever trying to put religion into education and drive
science and reasoning out.

Originally posted by googlefudge
I don't define science, Science has a definition that is incompatible with what you were
trying to use it for and I was simply pointing this out.

And no, no personal experience will convince me of the existence of god as I would
have no way of telling if I hadn't deluded myself.
This is not to say that it would be impossible to prove gods existence ...[text shortened]... ver trying to put religion into education and drive
science and reasoning out.

I am not one to question why God did this or that. Since God created it,
He has the right to do it any way He pleases. I do not find fault in those
who attempt to find out how he did it, however, for that can benefit us all.

Originally posted by RJHinds
CREATION SCIENCE

RNA Discoveries Refute Key Evolutionary Argument

by Brian Thomas, M.S.

Pseudogenes, or "false genes," were initially thought to be mutated and useless genetic "junk" since they don't code for proteins. When they were first discovered, evolutionists claimed they were leftovers of Darwinian evolution. But ongoing studies clearly show ...[text shortened]... ts well with the creative engineering genius of the God of the Bible.

Explain to me how this article backs up your assertions.