OllyK

I'm quite happy to accept he wasn't and that he's just a cobination of a number of ealier man-god myths. Christianity seems happy to absorb ideas, celebrations etc from other religions. Looks a bit L Ron Hubbard to me

OllyK

They are incompatible in each other's realm. Leave them separate and there's less of an issue. Religion for naval gazing, science for anything else.

PeteBrant

Seperate in what way?
I mean there have been any number of eminent scientists that were religious. But I suspect that's not what you mean.

OllyK

Sure, how many of those scientists looked at a real world problem, shrugged and said "god did it"?

They kept the 2 separate. Science for the real world stuff, religion for the imaginary.

PeteBrant

I think that comes with the territory to a certain extent. I.e. people like Einstien and Newton had the ability, by and large, to keep them seperate and not let one interfere with the other.

OllyK

I've put my name down for one of these

Bubba po

Are you sure? I think lots of research has been done, actually. Did you hear about the research into the efficacy of prayer in healing, for example?

Martin2005

Nope

The reason I posted earlier was to make the point that science and religion don't have to be mutually exclusive.

Look at it this way, if just ONE ghost story/sighting, religious vision, healing or haunting turned out to be true, then the laws of physics would have to be ripped up and started again

OllyK

They certainly would, but as there hasn't been ONE true case of those since the day man made them, I think the laws of physics are pretty safe.

Martin2005

I think you might be sightly overstating your abilities here.
There must of been tens millions of such unexplained incidents, are you in a position to explain the unexplained?

fast bloke

Can you give us one incident that has been proven?

Martin2005

No of course I can't, that's not my point though is it?

fast bloke

So what is your point?

OllyK

Really?

Even you admit all it would take would be one case, that the laws of Physics are still standing suggests that a case hasn't been found.

Martin2005

As I said, there have been countless unexplained supernatural, paranormal, religous happenings throughout human existence, it only takes ONE of those to be real......

Science tends to adopt a let's prove that this ISN'T true stance, when dealing with such issues, this is very different to the way it explores traditional scientific areas.

Martin2005

Not sure I understand the 'even you' comment

Geezer

I don't believe in ghosts or stuff, but i'm interested to know why one such proof would disprove the laws of physics?

Surely it would just mean we had discovered something which we don't fully understand? I mean, it's not as if we fully understand the Universe as it is and people like *** admit there are some irregularities in our models, so surely there are some things that we don't yet know happen, that are real but just beyond our understanding at present.

Does that make sense?

Geezer

Martin2005

Makes perfect sense

I think maybe replace the word 'dispove' to 'change' would be more appropriate

fast bloke

Good point - there have been countless unexplained supernatural, paranormal or religious events and there has never ever been even one that has been explained to come from a supernatural, paranormal or religious source. In fact all those that have been explained have been explained by science.

Take Aurora Borealis - When no-one knew what caused it, every race and religion claimed it as their own special symbol (battling dragons, new births, fires of the enemy etc etc). Once we worked out what was happening, most races and religions dropped the theory. The scientists couldn't prove it, but once they got Hubble to have a closer look they could record ion activity and match it up with the glow.

Martin2005

So I guess that leaves millions of unexplained incidents then.

fast bloke

Midlife......

iTrader: (2)

Don't relegions believe in "created antiquety" ......God created the past rather than it really having happened. Very convenient LOL

LOL

PS The Universe underwent an inflationary period which IIRC was faster than light, described by Guth I think but it's been a while since I did any physics..

scooby L

So back to my quote 6 pages ago...

fast bloke

Was that the inflationary period created by God or by Gordon Brown?

OllyK

Can you show me 1 scientific study in to one of those areas that starts of with a negative hypothesis?

OllyK

You've said twice now that if just one of these supernatural cases were true, we'd have to re-write the laws of physics. You seem to be acknowledging that the laws of physics haven't changed and so it goes to show there hasn't been 1 true case.

OllyK

It's unlikely a single case would have that impact, but if it were repeatable in suitably designed trials, vetted by other independant scientists, then it would almost certainly require a major rethink of our current understanding of many areas of science.

OllyK

I suspect most of them fall in to well known and explained categories. By all means throw out a few examples or have a look James Randi Educational Foundation where such matters are discussed in depth.

AndyC_772

iTrader: (2)

It would be proof by counter-example. If current threory were shown to be wrong, in this case by demonstrating a set of circumstances under which the theory breaks down, that illustrates a flaw in the theory and the need to come up with a new one which does fit all the observations.

Repeatability is the key here, and one which so-called 'supernatural' phenomena invariably fail to demonstrate. One single blurry photo doesn't necessarily prove anything (unless it could be shown that there was absolutely no way it could have been a stray reflection, or faulty film, or shutter malfunction...). But, if such photos could be taken in the same location repeatably, with multiple cameras and in the presence of scientific equipment, then that would be cause for proper investigation and potentially re-evaluation of scientific theory.

Failure to stand up to scrutiny is one of the things that divides the scientific from the unscientific. Some of you may have seen Richard Dawkins' programme a while back, The Enemies of Reason, in which he carries out a scientific experiment to find out whether people who claim to be able to detect hidden water by dowsing actually could. Predictably enough, none of them had any higher success rate than would be expected through random chance.

What was scary, though, was that not one of the participants accepted the evidence in front of them. After the experiment had taken place, and they had been confronted with the results, they began to make excuses and to pick holes in the methodology used, rather than accept that they had been shown to have no real 'gift' at all.

Martin2005

Well I agree, but it also shows that one hasn't as yet been proven true, not they never will be.

Science really doesn't try to explain such things because it rejects them to start with.

I'm not trying to argue against the laws of physics here, I was trying to make a philosophical point about science and religion not being mutually exclusive (obviously not well) .