doubtingt

Your exchange about accurate, but it demonstrates the fact that religion is inherently anti-scientific, not that they are irrelevant to each other. The theist rejects all evidence, rejects any rational fair evaluation of the competing theories, and directly violates the central principle of parsimony. In other words, in order to accept theism (or to accept anything on faith)
one must directly violate the most fundamental aspects of reasoned thought and the scientific approach. Conversely, if one holds true to scientific principles, then theism is impossible.

Many X-tians have found it neccessary to try and justify God with science, b/c even they cannot aviod the fact that to believe in God on faith is
little more than a close-minded act of unreason and self-deception. Every day they (and everyone else) rely on an evidence approach and reject faith whenever they need to know an accurate answer rather than what feels good. It is theists who are not willing to face the inherent contradiction between faith and science that are the most self-deceptive and disingenuous.

Gary Harris

Hello Starboy,

Christianity wants the impramatur of science for the same reason almost any other product does: it adds prestige. The reason science has this prestige is because it works (whatever doesn't work quickly gets discarded). And that points to another conflict between science and religion/faith. Science is free to change, to adapt to new evidence, to revise or discard long-held theories. But religion is supposed to deal with eternal truths, which can not change.

However, the history of science and Christianity shows that science has changed Christianity more than Christianity has changed science. Only a handful of Christians still hold to geocentrism, even though it was a teaching of both the Catholic Church and the Protestant reformers. Some still hold to the view of global flood and a young earth, but I suspect these are a minority, albeit a very vocal one.

I suspect that many Christians see no problem accepting Big Bang cosmology and a 4.5 billion year earth. The more liberal denominations and the Catholic Church have made peace with evolution as well.

And even dear old Mrs. Jones of the local Pentecostal church, who believes the Bible word-for-word from cover to cover, will ask the elders of her church to pray for her arthritis on Sunday morning, earnestly believing that "the prayer of faith will save the sick." But don't be surprised to see her stopping at the Rite-Aid drug store after the service to pick up some ibuprofen.

Yes it is ironic. But don't expect that this means the end of Christianity any time soon.

Starboy

Hi Gary,

Using science to prove religion is like using a stick of dynamite to cure a headache. When you are done the headache is gone, but so is everything else. This self-destructive path they are on is fine with me, I just wish they would leave science out of it.

Starboy

crocodile deathroll

I have been burning a bit more midnight oil on this topic and feel this moire effect could be a highly satisfactory explanation for the origin of complex structures in the early universe. I may well be also a satisfactory explanation for why fundamental particles like electrons are all identical, they all already etched into the primordial moire pattern as the vibrating membranes interacted and collided, and just a simple vibration in membranes is all that would of been required. With further investigation into the moire effect I feel now that we may really close to knowing in the "Mind of God". And the sad truth here is He does not need one. In fact we do not even require a God. <img src="graemlins/boohoo.gif" border="0" alt="[Boo Hoo]" />

A further link to moire effects prove they a an integral part of the physical world <a href="http://www.physi.uni-heidelberg.de/groups/atph/publications/inertial.pdf" target="_blank"> THE MOIRE´ DEFLECTOMETER pdf </a>. So I am sure the whole idea now should be given very serious consideration.

To think this this eureka moment hit me in the humble print workshop. I wondered that is what happens when just two dimensions interact to create an interesting pattern. How would a three dimensional grid of dots interact? The dimension of time as they rotate?. Then throw in another 7 like what is described in M theory. I effects I feel would be most spectacular, one effect may well be the universe as we observe it.