Good post. We live in interesting times regards the whole God debate, I find it fascinating. From an anthropological standpoint I find it interesting that the various native tribes that have.......basically been screwed over, and were often introduced to Christianity, didn't thrive. They have had an untold amount of time believing in a spiritual system that has evolved (if you like) within their culture and shaped by their environment. To be wrenched from this, and to be forced/coerced into living and believing in a different way just disenfranchised them. I find that quite sad.
Well, I meant the whole process from the big bang to the formation of life on earth. From what I can recall, the chronology in the seven days of creation fits in with the scientific view of the process of the formation of the universe and earth
All societies have creation myths...humans have a need to understand. They are also the only animals to worry and plan for the future**...the idea of passing into nothing on death is almost unbearable to us. We also live in close communities...that is easier if you have rules to live by. If you can subjugate women at the same time, hey, that will do as well. I am a scientist so I have a real interest in logical explanation of the Universe, but I also think that Jesus was a fantastic human being and you could do a lot worse than follow the teachings of such a compassionate person. However, I doubt we will ever comprehend the size and majesty of the Universe...almost the road to madness to try. ** Ok, I know squirrels hide nuts, but that is a habit that is evolutionary advantageous...I doubt they think it will be cold in December, I'd better hide some lunch.
Or the converse that it all stretches out for ever and ever never ending and if it did end somewhere what would be beyond it which brings us back to your dilemma. Is it possible for there to be nothing?
Yes Fran. Your first two sentences are pretty key I'd say, and many of the myths are not so different from each other even for societies thousands of miles apart. Somebody once said to me that it must be nice to be religious and have a reverence for the world. I think you can without, due to your last sentence (of main text)
Sorry to divert the topic, but I'm so angry with Royal Mail. Specifically The local post office. It provides the most pathetic excuse for a postal service ever with post either outgoing or incoming completely disappearing without a trace. When I first started uni, I applied for accommodation by post and my form never arrived, as a result I didn't have anywhere to live until after much stressing not long before the start of term, and the room I did get was in a horrible location. Furthermore, recently I was meant to receive some importance correspondence from Student Finance England however once again it didn't show up which has really annoyed me. It seems to be about 1 in 10 letters that get through. In one of my years, I was contacted by post by the Student Loan Company saying that they had over paid me and I had to repay some of my loan (which I did), but imagine had that letter not got through? I would have been taken to court Apparently privitisation has done nothing to improve the service. I am so tempted to go into the post office tomorrow and give the manager a complete bollocking. it has been going on for years. It is completely unacceptable and someone needs to be held to account. Someone also needs to start doing their job. Utterly disgraceful..
Religion etc.... Catch up on I player and listen to Friday Evening's Radio 4 The Brig Society. Last Friday covered religion in a rather irreverent and hugely amusing way.. many a true word....
That's the issue that a growing number of physicists are suspecting that the Big Bang either didn't actually happen or wasn't the beginning of the Universe. It has always been the flaw in the theory for me. The coalescence of gases doesn't cut it for me.
Whatever..! When science doesn't actually know the answer it can behave remarkably like religion. Not in the deity sense, but in the way that it likes to explain questions that it doesn't actually know the answer to.
Closest guess is probably the best we get...it may be beyond our comprehension (apart from one or two geniuses). One fact is that our universe is expanding from a single point...hence the Big Bang theory. Using powerful telescopes we can see back in time...another concept hard to grasp. The mathematics work almost up to the beginning...which may be a fault of the maths rather than the theory. We can assume there was nothing and then it blew up or that we suddenly exploded into being here from another dimension.
I disagree with this because it's linguistically nonsensical. "Science" doesn't exist as en entity. "It" doesn't do anything. If you mean "Scientists" then you may be getting closer to the truth. However, closer to the truth would be "Bad scientists". Probably even closer might be "Journalists quoting scientists". Good scientists say (repeatedly, loudly and proudly) "We don't know". Good scientists have hypotheses and are clear that they are hypotheses. Great scientists are those like the guys who found that neutrinos were travelling faster than light and published, specifically asking people to find out where they had messed up. Vin
The Holy Grail has been the Theory of Everything. Theories may be provable up to a point and under certain circumstances, so scientists often believe several theories at once because they don't answer everything. There is a joy and beauty to science which I understand, but regrettably don't have the mathematical knowledge to fully appreciate.
I defy you to read Genesis and fit it in, in any sensible or meaningful way, with a scientific explanation of the formation of Earth. Genesis is a creation myth passed on as an oral history by illiterate tribal people in the Middle East. That's why, for example, when it mentions all the animals of the Earth it misses out marsupials. Because it's not the work of man with the help of a supernatural being (who might have at least hinted to the writers that Australia and South America were out there) but the work of people trying to explain why things that they saw had to have come from somewhere. And even worse, a huge proportion of the humans on the Earth still believe that it has some meaning, even in an age when it can be shown to be total, complete and utter tripe. It's tragic that 350 years after the enlightment, people still stick to fairy stories to explain the world's origin, how it should be run, how people should live their lives and how many other people are worth killing in the name of your version of "the truth". Hateful. [/rant] Vin
