Revealing study about scientific research not getting its required double-checking

Re: Revealing study about scientific research not getting its required double-checkin

Well, it started as global warming, so it was religion from the beginning

 

Re: Revealing study about scientific research not getting its required double-checkin

Yeah, I think it's time to put this one to bed, nothing good is going to come of it.

As always, religion inflames passions and starts wars. This thread is in a sense a microcosm of what's going on in the world.

Nobody learns, nobody wins, the end.

 

Re: Revealing study about scientific research not getting its required double-checkin

x2.....I think Edouard was merely stating the obvious on a few points. Any mature male could look at the world and perhaps ponder a second coming,but that doesn't mean Edouard or I want to put down our tools and wait for it. It simply means that we as a species have outspent our inheritance. We cannot buy or manage to put ourselves back on track.
Peace and security come from the inside out. As a sales pitch security is a far better seller than a reliable product. Megadeth has a song titled...."Peace sells but who is buying?"?....Some of these topics are timeless in nature......If the Garden of Eden would have stayed perfect, then we would have never heard of it. We just need to pay attention to what is going on and see who is in it for the people and who is in it for themself......I also would like to comment on the "NO HISTORICAL RECORD" remark. I am not even sure how I would say anything without sounding like an educated moron,but Really?

 

Re: Revealing study about scientific research not getting its required double-checkin

Right !!

 

A single reality. (Re: Research not getting its required double-checking)

Dear Mikel, Marc, schlepcar,James, and V-8 Buick ponderers of "philosophy of knowledge,"

It is well worth remembering what was the first posting in this thread:

http://www.v8buick.com/showthread.p...arch-not-getting-its-required-double-checking

It was about how "scientific truth" turned out to be anything but known because of sloppy methodology. The message is far deeper than most of us are prepared to accept. A good deal of what we accept as truth - isn't.

There has been a lot of griping over issues of religion on this thread, but ultimately like climate change, there is a profound sense of denial associated with it.

Those who would insist religious phenomena is nothing more than a delusion have a serious problem. Humans have been religious beings for far longer than they have been scientific beings. That being the case, the human species came into existence and persisted for tens of thousands of years under that delusion. Under those confused circumstances, why didn't the human race go extinct long before science was invented?

Those who believe that religious phenomena exist invariably refuse to grapple with the reality of its contentious and contradictory nature. There is no doubt, unspeakable evil has been carried out in the same of religious zeal and that sadly continues to this day. Nevertheless, religious traditions are capable of encouraging human beings to extraordinary good. For all the bad mouthing of Christianity and all the evil performed in its name, western civilization is a legacy of the cooperation it fostered. No other civilization has become so complex and advanced. Those achievements would not have been possible under the moral codes practiced say in the Roman Empire.

There is a single unified reality. Spiritual phenomena is real and anyone who denies this being unscientific. Human beings have been spiritual for much longer than they have been scientific - the historical record is clear on that. That spiritual can lead to evil, sadly this too is beyond doubt. Nonetheless, that appears to be an essential part of the human condition. The Nazi and Stain regimes make it clear that secular societies can be just as evil.

Rene Descartes launched the scientific revolution in his Meditations on First Philosophy. In that treatise, Descartes starts to doubt everything he "knows." The task that is really before us is to follow in Descartes footsteps and try to separate out what is known from what is myth or tradition or pure falsehood.

We are a society cozy in our achievements. How much of it is founded on rotten foundations? Perhaps it would be better to find out before those foundations collapse beneath us.

Edouard

 

Re: Revealing study about scientific research not getting its required double-checkin

"We are a society cozy in our achievements. How much of it is founded on rotten foundations? Perhaps it would be better to find out before those foundations collapse beneath us."

You are soooo right in both secular and spiritual realms.



So why can individuals talk even argue about life, politics, sports, work, hobbies, cars, guns, religion etc., etc., etc., but still be able to maintain a level of communication yet talk Jesus or the Bible and it becomes way to uncomfortable for some. Hmmmmm.....
I'll stop there.

Mikey

 

Re: Revealing study about scientific research not getting its required double-checkin

The biggest reason is if it's a hobby, then it's personal, and most people don't care what someone else thinks.

If it's religion, then it goes deeper, it's a fundamental tenet and becomes much more personal, because it's generally the foundation of one's being and character. Offend that, and people die; - simple. And that goes for any religion, Jesus and the Bible notwithstanding. Because right now we're terrified to offend anyone who prays to Alah, and we are changing our society to accommodate their wants at our expense. And I've said way too much...

 

Progress though fog (Re: Research not getting its required double-checking)

Dear Mikey, Marc, and V-8 Buick armchair philosophers,

I'm a very unpopular guy around here because I'm trying to thread a needle between two very strong traditions: secularism and established religions. I am rejecting both positions and therefore leaving everybody unhappy. However, if there is some grains of truth on each side and falsehoods on each side - what alternative is there?

My claim that spirituality is genuine phenomena doesn't endorse any particular religious theology. Quite the opposite, it is basically undermines all established theologies. My claim is that spiritual phenomena is a singular force. The fractured and contradictory nature of religions clearly demonstrate that they are not a simple manifestation of this force. There is something paradoxical and enigmatic to spirituality, but that doesn't allow us to conclude it simply doesn't exist.

There is a very simple example that compels us to reconsider spirituality as a motivator for human progress: the creation of religious monuments. From Gbekli Tepe, to Stonehenge, to the Pryamids, to the Parathon, to the Byzantine churches and finally the medieval cathedrals, human constructions for the purpose of religious devotion has advanced our civilization. It is clear that the religious doctrines changed. Still you do not need to worship Athena to admire the Parathon. Humans have make progress even if their religious motivations for these works appears to have been mistaken. More importantly, all these structure predate any modern understanding of engineering or architecture. All of these structures were constructed in a way "blind." Some mistakes were made. For example we have the examples of failed pyramids before the Egyptians mastered their stone technology. Nonetheless, humans have made remarkable progress while completely lacking the scientific sense of why what they were doing actually worked. To me this is quite a puzzle that is in need of explanation.

Yet, perhaps you are missing the most important point to be said about this. I'm trying to understand the phenomena of Christianity from rational and scientific point of view. Given the notion that spirituality is a real-world phenomena that can cause humans to create things like Stonehenge and the Parathon, then the phenomena of Christianity is truly remarkable. As captured in the historical record, the execution of a single religious leader and a very small band of followers leads to the largest religious movement that has ever existed in terms of number of followers. Science does occasional attempt to grapple with this puzzle, but mostly it is an attempt to describe it as propaganda. That simply isn't a satisfactory explanation. So what is the explanation? I believe there genuine metaphysical reasons for why Jesus turns out to affect human beings as Christian attests. However, those metaphysical reasons aren't as Christian doctrine proposes. Once more spiritual forces are moving people into action - without humans having a clear awareness of what is going on. I believe or science and technology is no more clearly understood than our religious traditions. For as far back as we have records, humans have been advancing in a fog. We still are.

Edouard

 

Re: Progress though fog (Re: Research not getting its required double-checking)

I would love to sit down for a few hours and discuss this. To address what I *think* you're asking would take a lot more than 50 written pages, so in my mind it would be better to discuss. But I have a lot of thoughts on this topic...

And in my mind, both perspectives require "faith", and IMO overlap a lot further than most people would publicly state (i.e. science and Christianity are mutually exclusive).

Let me know if you ever have travel plans to New England!

-Bob C.

 

Re: Revealing study about scientific research not getting its required double-checkin

Bill Maher is a popular guy.....I listen to him if I want to hear people laugh. If I want to laugh I listen to Dennis Miller. In other words......popularity is more common than unpopularity. I wouldn't aspire to be either if I were you. Dan

 

Re: Revealing study about scientific research not getting its required double-checkin

Edouard, it's like you're poking people with a stick; - which is fine, but be prepared for backlash. As for Christianity being a dominant world force, remember the Greeks were popular throughout the known world at their time for close to 2000 or so years before their theology went by the wayside, so this is nothing new. What's disturbing, is that Christianity is running out of gas. There are only new converts in the 3rd world, the 1st and 2nd world want nothing to do with it anymore. And then there's the off-shoot of 6th Century Maronite Christianity called Islam. That is expanding and growing rapidly. It is catching fire while Christianity is dying out. Why? Basically because people are essentially sheep; - they need a "parent" or a benevolent higher power to guide and direct them to do things, and they need someone to blame when it all goes to pieces. Religion offers all of the above. And as far as Christianity is going, it's funny how the Orthodox and the "fire and brimstone" cults are the only ones prospering, mainline Christianity is not, and our societies for better of worse are becoming secularized. The biggest thing about this is, that a secular society that holds individual spirituality dear is one that is inherently divided and open to conquest because there's no unifying set of beliefs. That's what happened to the Romans and the Greeks before them, they went "multi-cultural" for their time and lost the whole works in the squabbling that ensued. The dominant and stronger tribes (Vandals, Goths. etc. ) were allowed to have their way because there essentially was no one left to oppose them. I'll leave you all to decide whether or not we're all there yet, the only thing I know is that "movements" and "societies" are not lasting as long as they used to, it seems that 3 generations is about it before the whole thing undergoes a radical change. This took hundreds of years to happen before technology.

Now hopefully I won't get my head bit off for all of the above. I'm not here to offend anyone.

As for the initial comment about scientific research not being double checked or vetted: I read today that one prominent scientific journal is now insinuating that well over half of the research into foods and cancer may well be completely bogus and false. It appears to come down to who financed the study and their ulterior motives.

So what are we supposed to believe?

 

Re: Revealing study about scientific research not getting its required double-checkin

I will take a stab if this conversation is headed for unpopularity.....I have always thought Christianity was a glue that bound the founding fathers together and a lot of our laws were based on Canon law and Puritan ideals. Having said that I think the brotherhood of Americans that we call neighbors think largely the same. This does not mean mostly the same or even close to unanimously the same. Historically the numbers were a lot larger and divisions were more distinctly drawn. I have to look at the original post and ask my own question to the original question. If science is making its own rules in a rather biased exaggeration of proofs......What is to stop us from simply changing history with the DELETE button? We live in a society of iPads,PC's,etc.....Is our future truth going to be whatever we Google? Books are rapidly becoming a part of the past and some of our oldest most common books are non-existent to people who see them in every motel. If any student of history were to ask what is next........united we stand divided we fall.....comes to mind. I just do not see religion,abortion,or any opinion on anything to be a problem in this country. We all have our views and some subjects run into other subjects. The original question is rather rhetorical,but still valid as to what type of science do we want to believe? There are a lot of credible people out there who do not agree with a lot of published material.

 

Puzzles with comon source. (Re: Research not getting its required double-checking)

Dear Bob, Dan, Marc, and V-8 Buick "armchair philosophers,"

Well perhaps, but Socrates sought to get people understand things by asking questions - not imposing answers upon them. I'm using the same strategy. Perhaps you should engage the questions a bit more deeply before you jump to conclusions.

Well, is it disturbing or yet another phenomena in need of explanation? I see it as the later and I'm making headway on coming up with a metaphysical explanation. Christianity itself offers a clue. These are end times according to scripture. The interesting question is - why - is there such a thing as "end times?" Paradoxically, the Christian view is that there is no end. According to scripture once more, Jesus is supposed to return and his reign is supposed to be eternal. So there is something extremely odd, not only the narrow religious view, but in the larger social embrace of doom. The hype over Y2K and 2012 cannot be easily underestimated. If all this is nonsense, why are people so fascinated by it? If Christianity is as dominate as many imagine, why isn't the imminent return of Jesus a source of hope and happiness? Christianity isn't as it seems.

Well that's a start to understanding the phenomena, but you aren't even starting to grasp the scope of problem. Before the crucifixion, essentially the whole world was polytheistic and it appears it was that way at least for 10,000 years - perhaps longer. Even Judaism isn't monotheistic in the manner we understand it today. You won't find a single claim in the old testament that only one god exists. On the contrary, the old testament prophets are clear. Yahweh is the god of the Jews. There is no claim that other gods do not exist nor is there any attempt made to convert other ancient religions to the single god. After the crucifixion, it appears that the "other gods" start to get wiped off the face of the earth. However, it does take time and doesn't occur everywhere. In India, the Hindu faith continues to be strong. Shortly before Jesus appears, the Buddha creates a radically different religion in India. Buddhism has no deities at all and it is focused on a puzzling quest to terminate a hopeless process of reincarnation - what sort of phenomena generates such a gloomy world view? As you point, out Islam emerges about 700 years after Jesus. It has always been an expansive religion, but it too has run into unexpected boundaries. It has never taken strong roots in either Europe or the Americas - why?

Are all these observations unrelated? I don't believe so. There are common metaphysical currents at work that drive these seemingly unrelated religious traditions. A good analogy is plate tectonics. The movement of the surface of the earth seems unrelated. However, the movement is all driven by convection forces in the mantle. The displacement and fracturing of religious traditions is nonetheless driven by forces that lead to a kind of progress. Yet these forces do not appear to be the work of an intentional deity. Instead, progress looks more like what the ancient Greeks called: Telos (what could be translated as: "directedness")

My thinking has been driven by two key concepts. That "directedness" can be a kind of nature - not requiring a conscious mind in order to occur. The other is that humans have grossly underestimated the force of evil in the universe. We face a deceiving demon that is as old as the universe itself and able act across the universe. Facing deception on that magnitude, it is hardly a surprise that humans are so confused especially about religious matters. However, hope has never been truly lost. One aspect of our confusions is that we expected to be - told - about hope. Our hopefulness actually is founded in that unconscious "directedness" that is the reason humans exist at all. That "directedness" isn't about knowledge, but about results. Looking back across time, that "directedness" has been sabotaged over and over again - from mass extinction events to the crucifixion. Still there is a kind of collective pursuit of that Telos that is relentless. Looking back at how bad things have been from the start of planet Earth to now, does it seem really plausible that this progression was nothing more than "lucky tosses of the dice?"

That's a quick sketch of how there could be a middle ground between our scientific awareness and our religious experiences. It is a very rough and incomplete representation, but it is enough to see that perhaps humanity isn't condemned to a kind of hopelessness where we must choose from scientific understanding and spiritual hopefulness. To me that's something worth pursuing.

Edouard

 

Re: Revealing study about scientific research not getting its required double-checkin

Okay, Edouard,...okay...I'll grant you that I'm not the best when it comes to critical thinking; - and I may miss the boat occasionally. I do not have the benefit of a formal education, I'm a high school graduate who has studied history entirely on my own while working a blue-collar job. As such, I may not be as eloquent or as deep as this topic may have required.

I'm not sure about this being the "end times". Every generation since the 9 or 10th century when the Book of Revelations was added thinks it is in the end times. The fascination with the calendar and dates has lead to many mini "extinctions" as various nut-jobs and their disciples ended their earthly existence prematurely. This has been going on as long as there has been Christianity. The fact is, the original codexes for what became the New Testament never had the the book of Revelations in it; - this was an afterthought, it was a play about the downfall of Rome that the then Pope loved and decided to include because it drew a lot of lines and put an endpoint to things. The problem with any religion is that it's initial period is always a sales job; and Christianity is no different. Having read some of Josephus, what he spells out is quite different than what we've been told. He's a contemporary with an axe to grind, sure, but at least he put his thoughts on paper and wasn't passing and refining stories by word of mouth. Then there's the whole selection process of who got included in the New Testament and who didn't. I can't remember all the names of who was involved anymore, I read that all over 30 years ago, all I got from that was the process was inherently flawed, as most human endeavors tend to be, and only the stuff that fit a certain agenda got included, the rest was declared heretic and destroyed.

I don't know exactly what you've said, I'm really going to have to think about it for a while and try and interpret it. I don't think I'm that much of an idiot, so I should be able to grasp it, but there are pieces missing. My point as to why Islam is surging and Christianity is not is that people in general like to be told what to believe and how to live their lives; - it's only been in Europe and North America where this was less of an issue. Most European and American thinking underwent a huge change in the 16th through 18th centuries that Islam has not. We've shed our fundamentalism because it didn't serve us all well; - technology and science had served us very well by increasing our lifespans, and lifestyles and through understanding the world around us we were less reliant on that omnipotent God and more reliant on ourselves. That's why Islam didn't do well in Europe. But you already know all of this, so as I said, I'm not sure I catch your drift.

There is an evil that is as old as life itself; - kind of like the matter-antimatter thing, Newtonian physics, whatever you want to use as an analogy. Have we underestimated it? Yeah, I'd say so. Every time there's a war, it rears it's ugly head and gives us a glimpse of how bad things can get. And that's just scratching the surface. The problem is, where does this evil manifest itself with regards to religion? With so many "choices" and belief systems, who is right who is wrong, and what if everybody is wrong and that's not what happens at all and we've all been had? My animal instincts already start tingling when I'm told to believe in something that is inherently man-made or interpreted by some human. We are not perfect, not even close, yet every scripture says we were created in the image of our Creator and are perfection in itself. So here again; - huh? How can that be?

So basically, in my own feeble little mind, I've chosen to sit it out and wait, see what happens. Cause and effect has shown me that once something is dead, it's not coming back, it's dead. I have to reject the "scriptures" because they are all very human interpretations of events that might or might not have happened, and are subject to the biases of the time when they were written. To me, they are a guidepost to more study and once one takes out the sensationalism in them, one is left with very human misinterpretations of things that someone thought was important and exaggerated. I have no explanation for sentience or a "soul"; and the more I learn about computers and nano-technology the more I wonder if we aren't some alien's bad joke or failed science experiment. Because there's that added dynamic too, the universe, or universes, of which we understand incredibly little except for the fact that there's a lot of rock floating around out there in the dark. The kind of stuff I'm reading about that is mind-blowing and I am beginning to realize that I don't have the intellect to comprehend what's all out there. The more I learn the less I know, and what I do know is very pedestrian and temporal and doesn't mean a thing to anyone or anything else.

I'd better stop; now I've dug myself a real hole, and probably gotten myself into deep trouble with all the fundamentalists here.

 

Re: Revealing study about scientific research not getting its required double-checkin

Settled science.

http://thehill.com/policy/energy-en...nt-give-gop-internal-docs-on-climate-research

 

Food for thought (Was: Research not getting its required double-checking)

Dear Marc, Mikel, and V-8 Buick "armchair philosophers,"

Hey no worries. This is little more than a hobby of mine. I'm not being nearly as rigorous as I would prefer. It isn't a full-time job for me either. These are the ideas that come to me when I have idle time and can't do much of anything else.

Yes you are correct, but my point is slightly different. It has two thrusts:

1.) People are supposedly far better educated and aware of our world than in the past. So doomsday talk seems indeed beneath the sophistication of the west. So why do people in the west remain fascinated with it?

2.) Christianity has a "split personality." Judgement day is described as an "end time." But judgement day is moment according to scripture when Jesus returns. If you are a good Christian, you really should be looking forward to Jesus's return and if you have been truly good, you have nothing to fear about judgement day. That's where Christianity isn't as it seems. The premise is that following authentic Christian practice is "good enough" to guarantee that you'll pass Jesus's judgement. Yet, you'll be very hard pressed to find someone who is absolutely confident and truly is looking forward to seeing Jesus on earth. Most Christians have doubts and if they are honest with you, they'll admit it. Why?

I think the reasons why Islam is advancing and Christianity is on the wane is more complex. Islam isn't advancing everywhere. It is advancing in poor places where hope is in very short supply. It has aspects that appeal to oppressed people because Islam was created in the areas east of Byzantine Empire. At around the time Islam came into existence, the Byzantine Empire was aggressively trying to expand into those regions. Islam is a very natural anti-Christian reaction to what was happening in the region at the time. Given how the West so dominates the rest of the world, that message still play very well to people who feel oppressed.

The answer to fading of Christianity has everything to do with my points above. Our more sophisticated world-view makes traditional Christian doctrine harder to swallow - I can't swallow it myself. At the same time, lingering doubts remains. I believe those doubts are ultimately metaphysical in nature. Jesus is not what Christian doctrine makes him out to be. In some respects, Christian doctrine literally sells him short, but in other ways, Jesus is imagined to have powers that cannot really exist. Jesus cannot flip a lever and cause cancer to disappear or make the Israel Palestine conflict vanish. Something that science tells us is how everything is interconnected. So to fix everything means literally having to change everything - almost at once. What science should make us realize is that the second coming cannot simply be Jesus shows up and everything is happily ever after. The universe of the second coming will operate under a radically different kind of "Physics." As such, Jesus's return is going to cause our scientific understanding of our world to go haywire. Everything in the universe from the structure of matter to the nature of human gender will be transformed. Jesus's return will be a kind of "big bang" in its own right.

Okay, this is an important point. In a way you get my suggestion, but perhaps it needs emphasizing. Did evil exist before human beings existed? Did evil exist before life? I've concluded that evil is primal, it existed before the earth. It does arise from a situation without evil. Oddly, like many things, the metaphysics suggests that the story of Satan as a fallen angel is hinting the truth. There was a tension between trying to be everything at once and the universe coming disassociated into distinct things. From trying to be "everything at once" came an obsession with power. This is the root source of evil.

Okay on this point we agree. However, I've tried to make sense of this image of creator business and came up with an answer that also seems like an in-between. Philosophers have a odd idea of God as "self-caused." It doesn't make much sense, but it leads to an intriguing idea: are we observing an unfolding process of creation that is still ongoing? There is another cute (if dubious) phrase: "God isn't finished with me now." Suppose the process of creation is precisely the unfolding of life and eventually humans we see upon the earth. Perhaps there wasn't an intelligent path for this, but a kind of blind "pulling oneself up by one's bootstraps" process. The destination nonetheless might not be simply the summation of the parts of the path. So Jesus in the second-coming will have some "monkey traits." He'll have two arms, two legs, two eyes, etc., etc.. But that doesn't imply that he'll be biologically like us. Just as when engineers recreated Egyptian structures for the Las Vegas resort, the new structures look like the old, but they are completely different in construction and function on the inside.

Well, yes and no. I agree with you that a simple interpretation that the dead can be reanimated cannot be correct. However, I'm well aware that in physics there is kinetic and potential energy. Buddhism exists to avoid the possibility of endless reincarnation. With almost 1 billion followers, I don't think such spiritual conviction can be dismissed. What does it mean? I'll be the first to admit I'm not sure, but I won't dismiss the possibility that death isn't an end. It certainly seems possible that after death is actually worse than death. If Buddhists feel there is something to be afraid of, we should listen. If there is a negative, perhaps there is some sort of positive potential as well. That's as far as I'm willing to go on this question.

I think you are being too "modernist" for your own good. It is a very serious mistake to decide based on your own experiences that what someone else has experienced could not have happened. The other theme in this thread is the extent to which science isn't as reliable as we have been led to believe. So when narratives like the Christian Gospels inspire people for thousands of years, one should except that there is "something" to them. Perhaps we have not thought about them as we should and what seems utterly impossible might have a basis in the very science that seems so much at odds with religion. One day I was pondering how the resurrection could have occurred when I remembered something from my physics studies. The events of the resurrection reminded me the bubble trail left behind when a subatomic particle decays in a bubble-chamber. Suddenly I had an odd idea: could Jesus be the real "god particle?" Could the explanation for Jesus appearing to be alive in what is described as a "dead" body be some sort of transformation from simple biology to some sort of amazingly high quantum energy state?

It's just a wild idea, but there is some quantum mechanical basis to it and there is a metaphysical framework that could make it fit. So events that seems so wild that they couldn't have happened, perhaps modern humans are more narrow-minded than they realize. Try to take all religious traditions that have existed for a significant length of time as having some message for us. We should never go around deciding someone either somewhere else in the world or somewhere else in time was just stupid.

Yes indeed. If you have done good quality scientific work, you should be anxious to show it proudly. What would these researchers have anything to hide?

Edouard

 

Re: Revealing study about scientific research not getting its required double-checkin

Okay; I think I see where you are going with this; - interesting. It's a mind-stretcher, for sure, and has about as much or as little validity as any other theory would. And yes, it's nothing that can be retested outside of a lab, or in one for that matter.

One thing Einstein has sort of taught us is that we know nothing of this universe and physics, and that math, light, time, and distance are funny things. What seems to be impossible can be proven through mathematical principles. I don't imagine that's applicable here, but then again, how would I know? It would be interesting to see if it was.

The wild card here is which is the stronger attraction, + or -. Would this be the good and evil, yin and yang that you refer to?

 

Star wars plot (Re: Research not getting its required double-checking)

Dear Marc and V-8 Buick "stretched minds," . . .

Yes you are starting to get my "wavelength." Something we all need to remember in the modern world is that your criteria for what is true is very new and arguably untested. Science has a number of embarrassing skeletons in its closet. Perhaps the two most important is that we cannot explain how gravity works within Quantum Mechanics and we cannot explain why Newtonian Mechanics is a consequence of Quantum Mechanics. Most of the engineering and technology we use is based on Newtonian Mechanics, but we cannot explain why it works. So perhaps we should be more cautious in demanding that all reasoning meet scientific standards. Science itself cannot meet that claim.

Actually this is slightly off in an important respect. Evil is clearly stronger as I see it, but evil has a critical Achilles heal: it exists as a parasite and is depending on the Telos that leads to good. That explains why extinction events start off at the worst and every succeeding one is less severe. The agent of evil is dependent on its "host." As it undermines the universe, it destroys its means to exist as well.

Christianity sees Jesus as a manifestation of an omnipotent, infallible, and benevolent God. What science has revealed about our world just doesn't measure up to what such a God could have been expected to create especially if our intellect is in the image of that omnipotent, infallible, and benevolent God. If instead, evil is the dominant force, but one that is nonetheless vulnerable because it nonetheless is depend on the progress made by the Telos leading to good, the Jesus becomes something very different. Jesus is a kind of rebel against an evil empire. The crucifixion becomes a defining movement in our relationship with this evil agent and the resurrection becomes a mechanism by which human kind can literally transcend that evil agent and create a realm where evil cannot exist.

What I'm starting to realize is that there is a metaphysical view that meshes surprising well with religious traditions ancient and modern. Religious revelation hasn't been always describing things that already existed (in this case heaven and hell.) However, in the nature of the metaphysical forces was a means to separate those who could truly Love from those "infected" by the agent of evil. The second coming turns out to be the moment when Jesus makes Love manifest in a way that is extremely human and in another way transforming the universe. That bond of Love will create a kind of new crystal that others will bond to like a crystals in chemistry. That crystal will by its very nature repel the evil agent, thereby cutting it off from its previous parasitical existence. The new crystalline structure will be what has been foretold as heaven. The parasite without its host will be in hell.

Edouard

 

Re: Revealing study about scientific research not getting its required double-checkin

I pray to God everyday for global warming because winter here in New England sucks. I hope you global warming theorists are right but I think you are all wet like the polar bears swimming from iceberg to berg. They can swim you know. So can I so bring on the melt please.

 

Re: Revealing study about scientific research not getting its required double-checkin

Wow...I'm finally at a loss for words...

Edouard, I'm going to have to think about that; - but from a purely empirical point what you've said makes some sense. It's an interesting concept, and one that might actually be plausible; - but then again, I clearly know less about physics than you do. All I know for sure is that when all the evidence is explained, what's left can sometimes be very surprising, ie, the end result.
That is an interesting take about Evil; - and that does make sense, it feeds off of a host; - on the other hand, ignorance is bliss; maybe we should have all stayed stupid...this might be another case of careful what you wish for or know...

Although this does sort of work with my "humanity is dreck" philosophy...I guess I might have been a bit short-sighted.

Wow...:shock: