Posted on 05/16/2008 4:20:10 PM PDT by old-and-old
snip- Yet many scientists — 40 percent according to a 1997 poll cited by Shermer — believe in God. This isn't big news to scientists, but might surprise people who rely on mainstream views of science. A handful of those folks — including Jerome Groopman, a professor of medicine at Harvard, and William D. Phillips, Nobel laureate in physics and a fellow of the Joint Quantum Institute of the University of Maryland and the National Institute of Standards and Technology — are also represented in the booklet, arguing that the natural world and the world of faith are relatively separate, yet personally reconcilable domains.
"I think that we are all comfortable with the idea there are plenty of things in our lives that we will deal with outside of the scientific paradigm," Phillips told about 70 members of the public who attended the discussion of these issues between himself, Shermer and AEI theologian Michael Novak. "And while I think faith is a particularly important part of our lives that we should deal with outside of the scientific paradigm, it is certainly not the only one."
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
worst case scenario: You can just believe that God is lie while in the lab :-)
The definition of “God” varies so much that it is easy for a scientist to believe in one of the variants. God could be just another name for the universe or the big bang, for instance.
If the question is asked, “Do you believe in a male god that looks like humans and has human emotions controlling the day to day activities of everything in the universe”, most would say no.
Is that your view of the Christian or Jewish Biblical God? Or is this just part of a "straw God" argument?
If asked, “do you believe science is the study of how God works,” I would say “Yes.”
My money is on him projecting this odd view on Christians.
Little facsimiles of men constructed from dried stalks of grain...
I would say it is a systematic study of one of His works. Where we try to eliminate what isn't true by testing proposals as best we can.
God Himself is transcendent and will not fit in a test tube.
I agree with you. I believe that there cannot be a contradiction between science and religion. The same God who wrote the 10 Commandments is the same God who created the DNA molecule.
In other words, to you, God is another word for the laws of nature.
One could also see it as God saying, “Let there be light,” which in reply caused the universe to go *BANG!*
However, I frankly believe that the discussions we have had on this subject here on FR are far more meaningful and to-the-point than this article..
~~~ PING ~~~
If God is everything, then He's that too.
You mean, 'Let there be cosmic microwave background', don't you?
God makes the sun rise - science tells us how He makes it rise (part of how, anyway).
I understand the ‘Cargo Cults’ still flourish in some parts...
http://www.ripoffreport.com/images/reports/30548-RIPOFFREPORT1.jpg
Genesis doesn’t specify the frequency, or its declination over time... heh.
And is also the same God who created evolution - why many cannot see the possibility of 'creation through evolution' is beyond me. What, is He not smart enough to have come up with such a complex and elegant process for getting something done?
You mean, the word of God is ambiguous and open to multiple interpretations?
You see. As long as “god” can be anything, anyone can say they believe.
As a physical scientist, I say, "Nicely put!"
Both of those are sets of instructions the Creator established to make His universe operate as He wills it to. There is zero conflict between my faith and my science -- just an ever-growing sense of awe and reverence with each new discovery!
How about “language is ambiguous and open to multiple interpretations.”
Read “God and the Astronomers” by Robert Jastrow. Covers this subject.
No. It is unreasonable to expect every possible detail be represented.
Abraham probably scratched his ear from time to time, but that’s not in there.
Several orders of magnitude below childish.
So, us humans, in the year 2008, are basing our entire idea of, and faith in, God, through a medium that is both ambiguous, and open to multiple interpretations, and passed to us through other, "faulty" humans? What serves as a "squelch control" for God's word?
Who believes that?.
Genesis 1:27
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.
This implies God is male and that "he" looks like us. People who believe in the God of Genesis must believe this too.
More than that, it's unreasonable to expect humans 2000 years ago to know about nuclear physics. Had they known, they'd have certainly included it in their scrolls.
You Soliton are a very shallow intellect as evidenced by your last couple of gems. Hopefully, you are at least embarassed.
Does the Bible state that God is male? That "he" created us in his own image? That he controls everything? That he gets angry and jealous and loves?
It seems that it’s primarily the intelligent design adherents around here that can’t reconcile religion and science.
Exodus 20:5
Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the
iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and
fourth generation of them that hate me;
I am a scientist with numerous corporate awards and inventions and I believe in God. He is the source from which my talent and knowledge flow.
Well, we know one thing. Somebody back then knew there was a beginning while well into the 20th Century all the smart guys like you held on to a static universe like their religion depended on it
Why? Jesus was nailed to a hunk of wood, not melted.
The inherent dilemma has ancient religious-philosophical roots that are still central to contemporary arguments.
The #1 problem is that God is a singularity. Absolutely unique, and critically, comparable to nothing. A singularity has several characteristics that are unique to it, which are shared with nothing else:
1) A singularity is effectively invisible, at least to our senses, minds, and instruments.
2) A singularity is omnipresent, as it is unaffected by time or space.
In Kabbalism, the Jewish mysticism underlying their religious teachings, this was addressed by saying that God seeks the answer to the question, “Is there anything that is not God?” To discover the answer to this question, God created a space within God where God did not exist. In this space He created the universe, whose purpose upon its completion was to act as a mirror. Once God had seen God, reflected by the universe, He would know if there is anything that is “not God”, so the mirror would lose its purpose and cease to exist.
3) A singularity has no name. This was the great statement made to Moses when he asked God’s name. The answer, “I Am”, or properly, “I Am that I Am”, heavily imprints all monotheistic religions. The purpose of a name is to distinguish things from other things.
4) A singularity creates a paradox. God defines the universe. Man does not define the universe. However, man has to pretend to define the universe, through the use of abstracts. This created all sorts of problems for philosophers, and eventually scientists, and was best described by Descartes, by declaring that man *does* define the universe, with his very precisely stolen idea “I think, therefore, I am”. Note the similarity to “I Am that I Am”.
5) This paradox means that to a great extent, post-Cartesian philosophy almost has to be atheistic, because if man doesn’t define the universe, then there is no reason for philosophy.
6) Science and other abstracts can get around this problem by being inclusive. That is, compare science to a game of chess. If a person performs a scientific experiment by the rules, that is what they have accomplished, nothing more. If a person plays a game of chess by the rules, they have played a game of chess, nothing more.
Of course science can be interpolated and extrapolated far beyond a scientific experiment, but technically, at least, it has left the realm of science. In this way, science does not challenge God for definition of the universe, even if a lot of people want it to.
Another way of putting it, is to take an apple, and apply the number 1 to it. You can do all sorts of things with the number 1, while saying they represent the apple. But in truth, you have neither created the apple, nor defined it. You have just applied a vague abstract to it.
And that is what people do. It doesn’t define the universe, but it allows us to function in the universe.
No, what it says is that God created men and women to reflect something about his image. Are men women? Are women men? No, of course not. God is something much bigger in undefineable.
Psalm 103:8 (also Exodus 34:6-7)
The LORD is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love.
Read Gerald Schroeder’s “Genesis and the Big Bang”.
When the definition of a word challenges your faith, you simply ignore the definition? That is very unscientific.
I’ll check it out. Thanks
The original articles do not specify gender as you insist on distorting them to mean.
Quite outside the realm of good science...
bump
Has the problem of a "cycling" universe been solved? I mean, has it been proven for certain, that there was no prior universe that compressed to singularity, and exploded again to create the Big Bang we're talking about? Are we certain there isn't going to be a Big Crunch following the Big Bang?
Oh, and one more thing. When the Big Bang banged, what was it expanding into? What's the nature of this containing environment? Does it have boundaries?
Obama is the Messiah
That is all we need to know
The Bible implies male gender when using the pronoun and posessive "He" and "His". He is also God "The Father".
My only point was that, unless you define “God”, saying that scientist believe in God is meaningless.
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