The Black Vault

The logic of critical thinkers, people who are free thinkers, rely on science, for what makes proof to them, is not absolute, and this is a good illustration why. Enjoy the video, my favorite part being from California, is the short scene with the Hearst publication truck, at the heyday of William Randolph Hearst building the famed Heart Castle. That has nothing to do with the point I'm showing, it just caught my attention as the Castle is in our favorite getaway area, up our coast.

Point of this is placing your spiritual decisions on Faith,or Gods existance, from scientific discoveries and milestones, is alway subject to change tommorrow, it is not forever, and new discoveries change things daily. There is no trick ending to this, just the idea of how science had evolved and changed frm the 30's to now, and how they are likly to change dramatically in the future. Science in 1933, it was the future of this new steam airplane, but look what we fly in today. Using science as a primary yardstick for our soul, and spiritual beliefs, may change faster than you think, and tommorrow may make your belief today, obsolete not to mention wrong.

Anyway, point or no point if you take it, this is a cool video.

http://www.flixxy.com/besler-steam-airplane.htm

Religion changes too, usually based on scientific advancement.

The self-correcting nature of science is its greatest asset, not a flaw as you suggest.

Also, we are not atheists because of science so much as we are atheists because there is no evidence for God.

I never suggested science was flawed, I suggested it is not the proper sourse or tool to use as a decison of the soul. The story of Jesus has not changed in 2000 years, what about science?

greeney2 wrote:I never suggested science was flawed, I suggested it is not the proper sourse or tool to use as a decison of the soul. The story of Jesus has not changed in 2000 years, what about science?

Moby Dick hasn't changed either, so what? It's still not based on reality.

Science improved its accuracy based on additional evidence. We can only get more evidence about the world and therefore we can only make more accurate theories about it.

Again, the beliefs of religious people have changed throughout history based on scientific advancement, just look at geocentrism.

What do you think is a better tool? Faith? If faith worked, believers would agree on who and what God is, and what he wants. It amounts to nothing more than guessing based on a feeling or the words in a primitive book - it is useless as a tool of determining truth. Science may not be perfect but there is nothing else.

And your expertise about the Bible, your vast knowledge of theology, degrees, and University credentials make you an expert that all of the Bible is untrue? Or is that what you thinK? Where was that proof anyways?

Science prooves tangable things that can be touched, measured, physically tested or quantified. Intangable things like Faith, Love, Hate, emotions, things that are not physical in nature, mental telepathy, ESP, thinking, etc. can not be proven by science. Did you use a scientific test to decide you were in Love with your wife, or your child? How did you figure it out without science, so why would you make a decision about your eternal soul based on science? Point of the video was that if you put all your trust in science of 1933, what happened to the steam airplane? Was science that advanced with the steam airplane to conclude God doesn't exist? Or when Columbus thought the earth was not flat? Apply that same logic to a decision of your soul, where it would be when the science changed or failed. We have amazing science today, and it still can not proove God is non-exsistant any more than in the Days of Columbus, or the steam airplane.

humphreys wrote:What do you think is a better tool? Faith?

Faith is not a tool; it's not something someone picks up and uses to make things easier. This is the fallacy that most Atheists believe; that faith is some kind of "cheat code" the believers use to gain entry into heaven. Faith is a state of heart and mind. Not a tool.

If faith worked, believers would agree on who and what God is, and what he wants. It amounts to nothing more than guessing based on a feeling or the words in a primitive book - it is useless as a tool of determining truth.

Faith does work. But you are making the mistake of painting faith with a broad brush, as if faith in anything is exactly the same. Faith in Christ is not the same as faith in Allah, nor is it the same as faith in Buddha, St. Mary, or faith in your spouse.

Science may not be perfect but there is nothing else.

Actually, science is perfect. It's the scientists, some of whom have preconceived interpretations, others who make human mistakes; they are the problem. They are what makes science appear imperfect. Science itself is perfect--as long as it is used to determine the truths it is meant to determine. Math isn't imperfect because it can't tell you how to construct a grammatically correct sentence; it's not designed to do that.

Also, to say there "is nothing else" but science is wrong--enter faith. Hey, watch the newest Star Trek movie (which is fantastic by the way, I love the new actors, all of them)... there's a great scene where Kirk comes up with a crazy plan to get everyone out of a crisis and Spock says, "This is an illogical plan, the odds of success are 4.xxx percent," and Kirk silences him and says, "It will work. Trust me." Something like that. Anyway, it was a faith moment. Of course it's a movie but there are countless moments like this in the bible and in our daily lives that defy science, logic, probability, etc. Too many and too consistently to be written off as coincidence.

And I also submit that the Word of God is perfect. You may perceive (rightly or wrongly depending on the circumstance) that believers change their beliefs depending on what science discovers and determines. Faithful believers do not ever waiver on their beliefs that are based in Scripture. It's the non-Scripture-based beliefs that keep changing. All these so-called "prophets" of the past that make predictions that are not based solely in Scripture? They are the ones that reveal themselves as frauds and liars. Don't let them represent to you what a faithful believer is.

And finally, where do you get off saying the bible is "primitive?" That's a misuse of the word. Words like "antiquity" apply but the word primitive is almost exclusively used by people, anthropologists, and geologists, to describe the days back when cavemen were roaming around. The bible was written by people just as smart, and in some ways even more sophisticated, as modern day people.

The atheists are great believers in Science. Big deal so are believers, nobody denys the great achievments of science, especially me working in the manned space flight industry 30 years. Humphreys claims when you ask him to proove God does not exist, he cries foul and claims you can not proove a negative. Science can and does proove negatives all the time. Math prooves negatives all the time. They deal with negative numbers and values everyday, and Math has fundemental rules for positive and negative numbers. Science is not perfect, becasue new things are discovered. It is perfect in a sence that certain rules are agreed to as a concencous, like how many decimals we round off to, if they go on infinately like 1/3rd or the rounding of Pi. Science deals with the physical world, not the philosophical or spirtural rhelms.

greeney2 wrote:The atheists are great believers in Science. Big deal so are believers, nobody denys the great achievments of science, especially me working in the maned space flight industry 30 years. Humphreys claims when you ask him to proove God does not exist, he cries foul and claims you can not proove a negative. Science can and does proove negatives all the time. Math prooves negatives all the time. They deal with negative numbers and values everyday, and Math has fundemental rules for positive and negative numbers. Science is not perfect, becasue new things are discovered. It is perfect in a sence that certain rules are agreed to as a concencous, like how many decimals we round off to, if they go on infinately like 1/3rd or the rounding of Pi. Science deals with the physical world, not the philosophical or spirtural rhelms.

Yes indeed sir. But seriously. Science itself is absolutely perfect. That is not to mean science can perfectly predict anything we ask it. No. I'm talking about science in its truest form. It's a method. And it can't be improved upon. If we discover something that science did not predict or something that "defies" science, it will always be because the scientists themselves weren't aware of, or didn't account for, certain criteria. Even faith itself and spiritual things, can be defined and predictions made, once the realities that aren't apparent today, become visible.

The bible, all things in it, all of God's Word, can be utterly and completely true and scientifically sound, if--and this is obviously a big if--the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit truly exist as described within the pages of the book.

A lot to respond to here.

Greeney:

* The argument about proving a negative is that you cannot prove something does not exist somewhere in the Universe.

- Prove there are no unicorns. You can't
- Prove there are no leprechauns. You can't.
- Prove Zeus is not real. You can't.
- Prove there are no magical fairies in your garden. You can't.
- Prove there is no God. You can't.

This is what we mean when we say that.

* You say things like ESP could not be proved by science, of course they could. Many scientists are trying to do just that. If I can read minds, we can test that, it's very simple.

How did you figure it out without science, so why would you make a decision about your eternal soul based on science?

You have not proved a soul exists, so in all probabillity your question is not even valid. Love is a feeling, it is not an objective thing that exists outside of us. So when we say we feel love, that is indisputable. Very different from making a claim about the existence of something in objective reality. Saying you can feel that God exists is not the same as God actually existing. I can be in love with a fictional character from a book, for example.

Now, as I keep telling you, science has not claimed "there is no God", it is not the job of science to make such a claim. It can claim that the Universe could exist without a God, though, and therefore, without good evidence for God's existence, atheism or agnosticism is the most logical position to take. You are misapplying science here, or misunderstanding it. Like I said before, the main reason we don't believe is due to lack of evidence in God's existence, not due to a disproof of any kind.

We have amazing science today, and it still can not proove God is non-exsistant any more than in the Days of Columbus, or the steam airplane.

No proving negatives, right? We can't prove 10 headed monkeys with x-ray eyes don't exist either, but that doesn't mean it makes sense to believe in them.

Frrosted:

I'm not sure I can agree that the scientific method is perfect, I think it's feasible it could be improved, but I'm not sure how. I do agree that when science gets things wrong, the scientists use of the method is at fault, rather than the method itself, though.

* Faith is not a tool, agreed. But it is not me making that fallacy, but people like greeney and others when they imply it should be used as a method of determining truth in place of science.

* Faith works as long as we have faith in the right thing? How do we know what the right thing is? I see Muslims having faith in Allah who are just as sure they are right, and just as sure it's working, as the Christians with faith in their God. Even if it works, you need a tool to determine what to have faith in. Each religion is sure it's the true religion, and that their God is the true God. In this respect, I think we can say that faith can seem to be working when in reality it's based on a delusion.

* I consider the Bible primitive because it was an early attempt to explain and describe the world, written by people who, while they may have been smart, were scientifically unknowledgable to a great degree. They were stabbing in the dark, so to speak.

And they were so sophisticated they had to use methods like public stoning for mundane offenses!

Really?

Now, as I keep telling you, science has not claimed "there is no God", it is not the job of science to make such a claim.

Thank you. This was the purpose of this entire post, since so many atheists hinge thier beliefs on science and demand a scientific test as proof of Gods existance.