Evolution and the Pope

I think we all have to come to the realization that the question of why there is something rather than nothing will not be answered by science. Breath easy though we can find an answers in other ways than telescopes and scientific magazines. It just means we have to use our amazing gift of our higher senses, namely our reason and wisdom. Peace!

Quote: FrGamble

I think we all have to come to the realization that the question of why there is something rather than nothing will not be answered by science.

It's really tough to find 'something' when nothing
is there. They can't even prove Bigfoot doesn't
exist, it's hard to disprove an urban legend. Like
god.

Quote: FrGamble

I think we all have to come to the realization that the question of why there is something rather than nothing will not be answered by science. Breath easy though we can find an answers in other ways than telescopes and scientific magazines. It just means we have to use our amazing gift of our higher senses, namely our reason and wisdom. Peace!

Doesn't mean the answer we use with reason or wisdom is -correct-. It just means we think it's a good hypothesis. Since we can't test it, does it matter?

Only if you decide to believe that the creator (if that's your logical collusion) has decided to judge us at the end of our lives.

Evenbob, when there is nothing to see or observe you are correct that science can't prove anything. Please free your mind from the notion that scientific knowledge is all there is.

Cesspit, is right about the difficulties that come with finding answers using wisdom and reason, it's not so black and white as science. However there are ways I believe to test philosophical or theological hypothesi. Logic is one way and so is lived experience. Especially the latter is hard to express to others, which is why we usually end up getting in these frustrating debates.

Man builds a shelter out of rocks and wood
and says 'I made this', when what he really
did was construct it from material that was
already here. So he takes his faulty premise
and looks around and says 'who made all
this?' He see's himself as the creator of the
shelter, so there must be a creator for
everything he see's. Faulty logic at its best.

Quote: FrGamble

I think we all have to come to the realization that the question of why there is something rather than nothing will not be answered by science.

I would love to know just what in the content of what I've written here, or elsewhere, makes you reach that conclusion about me :)

The thing is that a few centuries ago you could have said the same about any number of things science since has figured out. I forget which philosopher in the early Renaissance said science could find out every last detail concerning the motion of heavenly bodies, but it would never figure out anything else. In particular he mentioned no one would ever know what such bodies are made of. The means to find out came soon thereafter, historically speaking.

I could draw up a long, long, long, long, list like that, but that would be pointless.

Lately I've been listening to a lot of history. It's quite clear to me the discoveries made in the Renaissance era shook the foundations of Christianity something fierce. Had Newton lived in Italy or, worse yet, Spain, he'd have has a most unpleasant time. The man claimed, and could prove, the Earth and the Heavens were exactly the same thing, subject to the same laws.

Granted the Church's reaction to both Newton and Galileo were not as bad as popular belief has it, they were not at all good, either. And granted the Church came around, eventually, but it always holds back its acceptance of new discoveries as much as it can.

That's what I think it's going on here. So long as there are things we don't know, the church, and you, can still assert God as an explanation. Or if not an explanation, then at least the ultimate cause.

You know, it reminds me a bit of Peter Keating's principles in The Fountainhead: A thing is not deep if one can see it's bottom; it's not high if one can reach it; it's not profound if one can understand it.

Quote: Nareed

I would love to know just what in the content of what I've written here, or elsewhere, makes you reach that conclusion about me :)

Because you're intelligent and thoughtful. Also I think you realize that science is limited to what we can observe, test, and measure with our senses or with instruments of some kind. If there is nothing to observe because we are talking about a time before the existence of all things then science can't do much with its tools today or whatever tools you foresee us having 10 billion years in the future.

Quote:

The thing is that a few centuries ago you could have said the same about any number of things science since has figured out. I forget which philosopher in the early Renaissance said science could find out every last detail concerning the motion of heavenly bodies, but it would never figure out anything else. In particular he mentioned no one would ever know what such bodies are made of. The means to find out came soon thereafter, historically speaking.

I could draw up a long, long, long, long, list like that, but that would be pointless.

Notice that your list is all made up again of things that we thought we couldn't observe and then over time discovered ways to observe or study these things. If you are asking questions that have nothing, literally no things to examine or study then we can be confident that science will not be able to answer that question. Questions like what is the non contingent cause that began the universe and all it contains or is democracy the best form of government or do the ends justify the means or what is the purpose of life all cannot be answered by science.

Quote:

That's what I think it's going on here. So long as there are things we don't know, the church, and you, can still assert God as an explanation. Or if not an explanation, then at least the ultimate cause.

You know, it reminds me a bit of Peter Keating's principles in The Fountainhead: A thing is not deep if one can see it's bottom; it's not high if one can reach it; it's not profound if one can understand it.

Again it is my contention that it is impossible for us to ever know some things with the scientific certainty that you and I and all people long for. I'm afraid you are just going to have to deal with that as part of the human condition. However, this does not mean we just wander around aimlessly groping in the darkness without answers to what really are the most important questions. That is why we have the gift of our minds to take what we can from science and then use our reason to form probabilities and possibilities that make the most sense and help us to better understand our world and our selves on a deeper level than science can reach.

I can't prove to you scientifically that God created the universe any more than Evenbob can prove the universe is eternal. I am only suggesting that based on what we know from science and what our reason and experience tells us about ourselves and the universe we live in that it makes much more sense to believe in a creator or an eternal, all-powerful, spiritual, non-contingent cause.

Quote: FrGamble

it makes much more sense to believe in a creator or an eternal, all-powerful, spiritual, non-contingent cause.

Only to people with a religious agenda to
pursue. To the rest of us it's nonsense.
Padre, you cast your net looking for the
confused and gullible, and you reel them
in. Your religion prospers, not like it once
did, but it's doing OK. All religious management
people are salesmen, always trying to close
the deal. Nothing wrong with that, it's very
entertaining. But realize you have a niche
audience, quit trying to go beyond your
boundries. Be satisfied with filling your heaven
with the clueless and the intellectually lazy.

Quote: FrGamble

Because you're intelligent and thoughtful.

That's very flattering, thank you, but more tan a bit misguided.

Quote:

Also I think you realize that science is limited to what we can observe, test, and measure with our senses or with instruments of some kind. If there is nothing to observe because we are talking about a time before the existence of all things then science can't do much with its tools today or whatever tools you foresee us having 10 billion years in the future.

I wouldn't hazard a guess as to what instruments will be available to science in 10 years, much less ten billion years.

Back in the 80s when Carl Sagan's "Cosmos" first ran, he explained the various means by which extra-solar planets could be detected. At the time, the count was exactly zero. The instruments of the time were not up to the task.Here we are barely thirty years later and we've found so many extra-solar planets we can hardly keep up.

If you can, you may want to check out Clarke's "Profiles of the Future." It's a very old book, but his philosophical treatment of scientific and engineering advancements is rather good.

Quote:

Notice that your list is all made up again of things that we thought we couldn't observe and then over time discovered ways to observe or study these things.

Exactly.

But we never know what we're going to find or how, not to a certainty. As Clarke points out in the book I mentioned above, some developments are entirely unexpected and surprising even in hindsight.

Quote:

I can't prove to you scientifically that God created the universe any more than Evenbob can prove the universe is eternal. I am only suggesting that based on what we know from science and what our reason and experience tells us about ourselves and the universe we live in that it makes much more sense to believe in a creator or an eternal, all-powerful, spiritual, non-contingent cause.

What I'm hearing is "We can't prove this point one way or the other, therefore it makes sense to believe in the answer we like. Then we just make clever arguments to make it stick."

Now, if all religion did was to say "God created everything," and then engaged in worship for that reason, I couldn't care less what you or anyone else believes. There are a number of kooky "theories" concerning origins which go from laughable to completely nonsensical, and they're all infuriating. But since their proponents don't much more than believe them, and it doesn't affect their lives or mine, and since I, or anyone with a high school science education, can knock them off in minutes should the need arise, who cares what they believe.

Hell, I like the aquatic ape theory of human evolution, though the evidence for it is so scant it might as well be just reasonable Velikovskianism.

The problem with the religious explanation of origins is that various churches try to 1) cram it down everyone else's brain, 2) use it to bolster all the rest of their religion and 3) then try to cram their religious beliefs down everyone else's throats.

And that's why it must be resisted at all costs.

Of course, if you could provide some evidence, things would be different.

Quote: Nareed

What I'm hearing is "We can't prove this point one way or the other, therefore it makes sense to believe in the answer we like. Then we just make clever arguments to make it stick."

Now, if all religion did was to say "God created everything," and then engaged in worship for that reason, I couldn't care less what you or anyone else believes. There are a number of kooky "theories" concerning origins which go from laughable to completely nonsensical, and they're all infuriating. But since their proponents don't much more than believe them, and it doesn't affect their lives or mine, and since I, or anyone with a high school science education, can knock them off in minutes should the need arise, who cares what they believe.

Hell, I like the aquatic ape theory of human evolution, though the evidence for it is so scant it might as well be just reasonable Velikovskianism.

The problem with the religious explanation of origins is that various churches try to 1) cram it down everyone else's brain, 2) use it to bolster all the rest of their religion and 3) then try to cram their religious beliefs down everyone else's throats.

And that's why it must be resisted at all costs.

Of course, if you could provide some evidence, things would be different.

What I am trying to say is that, "We can't scientifically prove this point one way or the other, therefore it makes sense to believe in the answer that is most reasonable and probable based on the scientific evidence and philosophical understandings we have."

Again the main pieces of evidence are:
- modern cosmology's discovery of the expanding universe pointing to an ultimate beginning
- the logically consistent argument that 1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause. 2. The universe has begun to exist. 3. The universe has a cause.
- the idea that something cannot come from nothing
- the impossibility of an infinite regress
- the definition of non-contingent being or force, who has existence in itself without being dependent on anything else.
- this force/entity to be the cause of the universe and all that exists must be eternal (without beginning), spiritual, and all-powerful.

None of this amounts to scientific proof of God's existence as the cause of the universe, but as we have mentioned many times before, the question of does the universe have a cause or creator is NOT going to be answered by science, it can't. In any of the other explanations for how the universe exists I see little to no evidence comparable with the above. I think that the cause of the universe being a cosmic sea turtle and the atheistic attempts to prove a multi-verse or eternal existence of matter that popped into being without a cause are equally laughable.

Please note that I am not trying to cram anything down your throat. Yes the idea bolsters my religion, but there are plenty of arguments you can use to punch holes in my religion besides you denying where reasonable minds and modern science point us to. You don't need to resist this point at all costs. You can acknowledge a cause of the universe and still hate my religion.

What I hear you saying is. "Science can't prove this point either way, therefore I am going to believe in the answer that makes me most comfortable and since I hate the idea of a personal God I will stick my fingers in my ears, stick out my tongue, and make clever arguments to make it stick."

oh, I almost forgot my most incontrovertible evidence that I am right and you are wrong is that Evenbob agrees with you.