anyone see dawkins on uk TV last night

[lunamoth]

-- I think the same applies to scientific descriptions, right through to the most sophisticated mathematics - which after all are only more rigorous types of language.

- So the issue is not the facts of electricity or gravity, say, but how they're conceived & described. I think this applies to even the most basic relations & functions. For example, the formula "the force of gravity varies in inverse relation to distance" depends on a certain conceptual order, and a certain understanding of gravity - which the last I've heard we still don't fully understand. A better understanding of gravity will likely dislocate - without disproving - current descriptors and bring in others.

Hi Deva, if I'm understanding you here (and there's always a good chance taht I'm not!), I think you have hit on an important point in the conversation between scientists and, for lack of a better term, religionists. To start the conversation, as in school to start one's education, the explanations are always simplified. And, when you get further into the conversation or into understanding, things become more complex, and often less clear. This complexity and even, at the edges of our knowledge, the lack of clarity is then taken as error. The ground is soft at the edges of our knowledge, and it can be a frightening place to be. Scientists, knowing the terrain much better, and knowing where to step in the bog to keep from sinking, try to assure everyone else that it's OK, all will be well, the ground will become firm and then we can advance even further. A grade school understanding will leave you in disbelief at the edges of scientific knowledge, where things often are turned upside down. It will seem irrational unless we trust the knowledge of the scientists, or learn about it for ourselves.

The same argument can be made from the religionist's POV. A grade school understanding of theology is going to be quite inadequate to an adult who has experienced the world and seen the limits, and depravities, of human nature or who has studied evolution and found it at odds with the story in Genesis. The theologists who spend time reasoning about God, and the mystics who spend time experiencing God, both assure us that we can trust God even when the ground seems to have fallen away. But if you don't trust them, or learn about it for yourself, it will seem irrational.

- - Put me down for the opening of all canons - it will collapse the false distinction between religion & science, and lead to better policing & cooler concepts.

I don't think it is a false distinction between religion and science, but it is a false dichotomy. Religion and science are not mutually exclusive. The problem with fundamentalists, whether science fundies or religious fundies, is in painting the picture as if they were.

blathering on...
lunamoth

 

[lunamoth]

Subjectively (I have recounted this before), my favourite moment was listening to a scientist explain that the atomic structure of the heavy elements of the periodic table can only be produced in the furnaces of the stellar nebulae, and those elements are found within the human organism - we are indeed, stardust. Wonderful!

[aside - read this, it's delighful: http://origins.colorado.edu/uvconf/white_final/node5.html
can't understand a bloomin' word]

We are stardust, and that is totally cool Scanned the article. Pretty graphs and pictures, and I didn't understand a word of it either.

lunamoth

 

[Ghaniel]

Evolution after all is still a theory, it has yet to be proven.

Thomas, evolution can be proved in many ways. Do a search and you'll find many goodies. And that comes from a Christian. Whether the proof is good enough I don't know.

 

[Thomas]

I found this 'definition' of as theory, which I must admit clarifies the position for me:

"Some scientific theories include the theory of evolution, the theory of relativity, and the quantum theory. All of these theories are well documented and proved beyond reasonable doubt. Yet scientists continue to tinker with the component hypotheses of each theory in an attempt to make them more elegant and concise, or to make them more all-encompassing. Theories can be tweaked, but they are seldom, if ever, entirely replaced."
http://wilstar.com/theories.htm

Thomas

 

[Ghaniel]

If you say so, Thomas. I'm just playing the devil's advocate. (Meaning, I hate evolution to bits! *cracks up*)