[Sandwich]

Now, with that in mind, could it not be entirely possible that when society looks as if it's crumbling, it's that an no more: that it just looks like it, as a direct result of invasive, pervasive, and omnipresent media and networking of the modern world?  The more of the world you can see, the more of the world you won't agree with.  That doesn't make it bad, or impending social collapse, it makes it different.  If there's one thing that false claims of the fall of society have had shadowing them at every turn (when it wasn't actually true, see: European Dark Ages) is improved reach and speed of communication.

There definitely is something to be said for increased communication and awareness of global issues making it easier for the "ignorant" or not-completely-informed lay-person to see something on TV for a moment, make a rash judgement on how "good" or "bad" it is, and go out and protest or otherwise make his/her opinion known to the world at large.

I've felt for many years that modern warfare (the actuality, not the game) is "hampered", if you will, by being reported back to the civilian sitting in their comfy chair at home, watching the choice morsels that the media decides to reveal. It brings alongside too much second-guessing, too much criticizing, and too much judging by too many people who, in all fairness, haven't got a clue what they're talking about. Every time I hear of a politician making what appears to be a completely irrational move, part of me wonders what intel they're basing that decision on that they're unable to reveal to the public. I'm probably too idealistic, but I find it hard to imagine a public figure acting out of maliciousness when it could easily be explained by them knowing something I don't. I've always been that way - I try to understand both sides of a situation, figure out their motives.

Wow. I get that he asked and all that but still...

I find that there's this massive, massive disconnect between religious people - properly into it the way Sambo obviously is - and the rest of us. You really believe that, don't you? Like as a factual piece of information like the sky being blue or something. And yet, I read it and I just see it as utterly, utterly ridiculous.

I don't even really have a point here. It's just that reading your post really brings home the sheer scale of the gulf between your view of the world and my own. :-\

And yet there's not that much difference between us, once push comes to shove. I'm sure we both love our families, like our friends. We both want to succeed in life. Neither of us wants harm to be done to anyone, but I bet both of us would be willing to cause harm to someone trying to harm us or our loved ones.

The only difference is that I believe that what the Bible says is true, while you believe (I'm guessing) that what liberal science says is true.

Or were you referring to something else?

[Ghostavo]

Oh no Sambo, you don't get to post that and just walk away.

Norway. Sweden. Australia. Denmark. Belgium. New Zealand. All "post-Christian" nations with very high standards of living and highly desirable to live in. Evidence of "crumbling" please.

Sure, quality of life is often high in most civilized countries, but I'm not looking at quality of life... that's almost always a depiction of how "good" a situation can be in a country if everything at the personal/family level is hunky-dory. I'm looking at what I guess could be called "cultural health". Society. We idolize these Hollywood stars whose lives more often than not are frankly horrific role models. Suicide rates, kids going on murderous rampages at school, divorce becoming the typical end to "lifelong" marriage vows, adultery, drugs, etc - the usual suspects. These are the things I see that, frankly, make me glad to live in a vaguely sane society like Israel, where my wife is actually safe and has no need for fear if she decides to go jogging around the neighborhood at 9pm.

She needs to be careful if she passes through an ultra-orthodox neighborhood though...

[Mikes]

The only difference is that I believe that what the Bible says is true, while you believe (I'm guessing) that what liberal science says is true.

Or were you referring to something else?

Science is not something you "believe" in as the whole point of "science" is to test and retest to find the best model to describe the nature and laws of the universe we inhabit.

"Believers" tend to claim they know certain things  to be true because they "believe" in them - sometimes despite verifiable and repeatable tests showing something else entirely.

I.e.: Science is based on logic and reason - not  belief, and ...



"I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use and by some other means to give us knowledge which we can attain by them."

     - Galileo Galilei

[Phantom Hoover]

Jesus christ Sandwich, you're sounding like Conservapedia now.

[Scotty]

Watch it, Phantom_Hoover.  There's no reason to be slinging slander like that.

[Flipside]

I'm actually interested in the definition of 'Science' in this case, since Israel is one of the main R&D countries in the world, I'd like to know whether that is considered 'believing' in Science or 'using' it?

[Phantom Hoover]

That's where the 'liberal' part comes in, it lets you tack a frowned-upon worldview to something for that instant air of disapproval.

[Nuke]

religion really needs to get out of the buisness of describing the universe. the story of adam and eve was probibly though up by a caveman when his son asked the question "why are we here", although with a different deity(ies) and in a much simpler form. through word of mouth the story was passed down, embellished, added to, names of deity changed, in folktale fashion, until it was heard and written down by a literate holy man (even if moses sited sources, theve been long erased from the text). sodom and gomorrah, same thing, except this time when the story gets embellished, the story tellers add their own prejudices to the to the tale. id hate to think that religion's stance on homosexuality is based on the bigoted embellishments of ancient storytellers (who lived in a cave). then i look back and wonder how many of those books of the bible were actually meant to be the word of god and not just some ancient horrifying fanfic that got thrown into the mix. also john the baptist was clearly on drugs.

science doesn't fall into that kind of trap thanks to peer review and the need to site sources to avoid sounding like a quack. of course the current way of doing science isnt that old, so check back in a few thousand years to see if it gets worse.

[Scotty]

Again, PH, there is exactly zero need to make this a hostile conversation.  We're doing just fine right now, so keep it that way.  The veiled (and not so veiled) personal disagreement is alright as long as you keep it civil, and using language like that makes it much more difficult to stay that way.

[Lorric]

PH

Excuse me. What's PH?

[Sandwich]

The only difference is that I believe that what the Bible says is true, while you believe (I'm guessing) that what liberal science says is true.

Or were you referring to something else?

Science is not something you "believe" in as the whole point of "science" is to test and retest to find the best model to describe the nature and laws of the universe we inhabit.

"Believers" tend to claim they know certain things  to be true because they "believe" in them - sometimes despite verifiable and repeatable tests showing something else entirely.

I.e.: Science is based on logic and reason - not  belief.

tl;dr: I believe science by and large reveals to us "the truth" about the physical world around us, but I also realize that it's not "the whole truth", nor is it "nothing but the truth". EDIT: And read the article linked at the bottom of this post. It's truly fascinating.

Seems to me that science most definitely is a belief system. Does it not require a belief that the tools we've created to measure the world around us are sufficient for the task - bug-free and completely accurate (we know that to be false - look at the hype a year or so ago about the "discovery" of faster-than-light particles)? That there's nothing to this world besides the observable or measurable (whether directly or indirectly makes no difference)? It's a system jam-packed with theories - theories which, to date, have yet to be disproven, because the moment a theory is proven wrong, it's no longer counted as science.

Yes, there are basic laws (thermodynamics, etc), but can you be 100% certain that those will not also someday be proven wrong - or at least, not supremely accurate? Seems to me that its the height of hubris to presume that our scientific observations are totally, 100% accurate about the world around us. I mean, quantum mechanics has some pretty whack, "illogical" stuff going on, and we've barely scratched the surface.

Now, don't get the wrong impression. I don't believe the world is flat, or the center of the solar system, or any crazy nonsense like that.  Sure, some scientific theories I find less believable than others (evolving from one species to another, for example), but in all honesty, I do put a lot of "faith" in scientific observations about the universe. I suspect that most things that scientists conclude to be fact are pretty accurate and true. I just also keep in mind that there's no way we're anywhere near understanding everything there is to know, and that the universe can and does still have many, many surprises in store for us (Hubble Deep Field, anyone?).

"I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use and by some other means to give us knowledge which we can attain by them."

     - Galileo Galilei

I fully agree, even as far as it influences a Christian's walk of faith. For example, there's the typical example of a Christian who insists on hearing from God which pair of socks to put on in the morning. Most Christians will agree that that's ridiculous. However, what if we make that decision being faced something of more importance? Say, whom to marry? Most Christians would say that you have to "hear from God" (pardon the Christian lingo) before making a decision of that magnitude.

I disagree.

I see no basis for using God as a life crutch in the Bible. He created us thinking, reasoning human beings, with minds and wills of our own. Throughout the Bible, people went about their own business, doing what seemed wise at the time. The only times I see God "stepping in" and actively telling people to do this or that were times when the rational mind would never have arrived at that course of action. Noah building the ark... Moses striking the rock for water to come out... Gideon attacking the enemy encampment with a whole 300 men... Peter stepping out of the boat onto the water. The pattern I see is that when God wants something "crazy" (from our point of view, with our limited knowledge), He specifically tells us. Otherwise, we have our rational thinking minds, our consciences, and the life guidelines He gave us for living good lives, being nice, helping people in need, not murdering, etc.

I'm actually interested in the definition of 'Science' in this case, since Israel is one of the main R&D countries in the world, I'd like to know whether that is considered 'believing' in Science or 'using' it?

Interesting that you ask about Israel and its approach to science. I'm not sure. If a "belief" in science means a disbelief in God, I think that even the secular Israeli would not fit that description - most secular Israelis still observe the high holidays, despite not considering themselves "religious".

Anyway, I'll end with this article by Dr. Gerald Schroeder called "The Age of the Universe". It's a 20 minute read or so - and definitely well worth it. In this article, Dr. Schroeder explains how the 14 billion years that science says the universe has been around does not, in fact, conflict with the Biblical 6 days of creation, but that the two accounts agree with each other.

It is hard at times to reconcile what science says about certain aspects of reality around me with what the Bible teaches, so when someone goes as deep into the historical aspects of the Biblical text as Schroeder does and discovers that there's no contradiction... well, it's stuff like that that I love learning.

[Phantom Hoover]

PH

Excuse me. What's PH?

potted herring

[Sandwich]

Posh hippopotamus.

[Lorric]

Petty humour...

[Hades]

It's not their fault that they're joking at your expense because you're obtuse.

[Lorric]

It's not their fault that they're joking at your expense because you're obtuse.

Yes. It is. No. I'm not.

[Sandwich]

Yes. It is. No. I'm not.

Phreakin' heck, just drop it.

[karajorma]

Seems to me that science most definitely is a belief system. Does it not require a belief that the tools we've created to measure the world around us are sufficient for the task - bug-free and completely accurate (we know that to be false - look at the hype a year or so ago about the "discovery" of faster-than-light particles)? That there's nothing to this world besides the observable or measurable (whether directly or indirectly makes no difference)? It's a system jam-packed with theories - theories which, to date, have yet to be disproven, because the moment a theory is proven wrong, it's no longer counted as science.

This is where the very religious get things wrong. They make the assumption that scientists believe that science is the best tool to measure the world around us. This simply isn't true. Science is the best tool we've discovered so far. It may indeed turn out to be the best tool, but it may not. But what is true is that nothing else we've found comes even remotely close. You're not going to come up with thermodynamics from reading the bible. Nor from astral projection. Nor from meditation and waiting for inspiration from the cosmos.

If you feel that this is a belief, then you are perverting the meaning of the word belief. You don't put on a warm coat when you go outside in the winter because you believe in coats on cold days. You put on the warm coat cause you have observed that when you put it on you are warm, and when you forget it at home, you are cold. Science is a formal version of common sense in many ways. Observation, logic, testability, etc are all things we do in our own daily lives in much more ad hoc ways. So if you say science is a belief, you say that common sense is a belief and the whole meaning of the word belief becomes nonsensical.

[Flipside]

I think people are getting 'belief' and 'trust' confused. We trust the results of Science because they can be tested against other results and incongruity suggests error. Science does not have room for the cognitive dissidence that can exist in religion, where two or more conflicting things can be considered true at the same time, sometimes even by the same person. In science, if one book says one thing, and another, equally respected book says another, then someone will set out to find a testable way to see which one is correct.

Belief, to me, suggests an unknown element, that, for example, a generator produces electricity because that's what a generator does, which is kind of looking at things the wrong way round, a generator was designed to create an electric current from studying the behaviour of what eventually became its components.

That said, an awful lot of science, as used by the masses, is based on the trust that it will work, very few people actually understand the details of how or why, and, like religion, a lot of people feel that how and why does not matter as long as it works. That, from a distance, looks like 'belief', but I don't actually think there is a word that properly describes it. It's not ignorance because, for most people, it's not important to know that information.

[Sandwich]

This is where the very religious get things wrong. They make the assumption that scientists believe that science is the best tool to measure the world around us. This simply isn't true. Science is the best tool we've discovered so far. It may indeed turn out to be the best tool, but it may not. But what is true is that nothing else we've found comes even remotely close. You're not going to come up with thermodynamics from reading the bible. Nor from astral projection. Nor from meditation and waiting for inspiration from the cosmos.

We're basically saying the same thing here. Science is potentially fallible, but it's the best we've got so far, and there's always room for new facts and discoveries to shine a new light on previously-held "beliefs" about how this or that in reality works.

Take the age of the universe. 50 years ago, scientists believed the universe always was, that it was eternal and had no beginning. Since then, evidence pointing to the occurrence of the Big Bang was encountered, and thus the previously-held belief was disproven in the face of newly discovered information. Unlike politicians, scientists get brownie points for consistently reevaluating their conclusions based on new evidence.

...of course, the Bible has been saying that there was a beginning to the universe from the very first word (in Hebrew - first 3 words in English).

I'm not trying to claim that we can get magical quantum equations from the Bible or anything like that. All I'm saying is that just because science hasn't proved something is true yet doesn't mean it's untrue, and more importantly, just because something is believed to be true scientifically doesn't mean that conclusive evidence can't come up to disprove it.

I feel like I'm saying the same thing multiple times, so forgive me if that's the case - it's nearly 6am and I need to get to sleep - and that's a fact.