Death.

[Riptide]

Science

 

 

sci·ence

 

[ s ənss ]

 

 

1.study of physical world: the study of the physical and natural world and phenomena, especially by using systematic observation and experiment

2.branch of science: a particular area of study or knowledge of the physical world

3.systematic body of knowledge: a systematically organized body of knowledge about a particular subject

 

 

Unfortunately science does "not" have all your answers. You have law and you have "theory". You prove your theory in the lab, and btw how are we doing with "Universal gravity"? Cause and effect, whats the first cause? Oh, right you don't know? Very long list of we do not know in "science".

 

Often with the inability to comprehend even the most basic facts of spiritual life. We become totally unable to distinguish between the mystical experience, which by definition is limited to an individual's private, interior existence, and the social-political aspects of religion's public, communal activities.

 

The 'faith' in an all-powerful God is now replaced by 'faith' in quantum theory and general relativity. When scientists protest that our mathematical incantations can be checked in the laboratory "maybe", the response is that Creation cannot be measured in the laboratory, and hence these abstract theories like the superstring can never be tested.

 

Is there any scientific reason why humans cling so fiercely to their religion? I mean "law" "fact" not theory in sociology and psychological speculation?

 

Violence, war? One cannot speak of religious wars without indicating the pogroms directed against the Jews and those other genocidal acts and atrocities of World War II. or for that matter the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. So I ask if it isn't too indelicate, didn't science serve the interests of those who carried out WWII and every other religious war we can mention? As I recall, German and Japanese military leaders faced war-crimes trials, while Werner Von Braun moved his V-2 rocket R&D project and personnel to sunny Florida and the Japanese scientists who conducted those horrible medical experiments on prisoners of war and Chinese civilians were given immunity from prosecution in exchange for handing over all their valuable scientific data. Did not many of the men who provided the theory and engineering of nuclear weapons stand tall (and rightly so) in Stockholm to receive Nobel prizes?

 

We all know how thoroughly power can corrupt and that power in the hands of religious fanatics doesn't function any differently from power in political or scientific hands. But to suggest that religion is ever the enemy of man and that science is always man's friend is just plain dumb.

 

To conclude the God of Miracles has one powerful advantage over the God of Order[science]. The God of Miracles explains the mythology of our purpose in the universe; on this question, the God of Order is "SILENT".

 

A Buddhist perspective may help for diversity.........

 

A Zen master had become famous for the special tea he brewed, and another master, having heard about this wonderful tea, sauntered into his room one day carrying a cup of his own tea. "I've heard people rave about how delicious your tea is," he announced. "I'd like to try it for myself."

 

"Very well," said the Zen master, "You are welcome to it. But first you must empty your cup of tea before I can fill it with mine."

Nice post! I think too often people forget the science and evolution are just as based on faith as religion a lot of times.

[zigzag]

Sorry Golden, but you lost me after you defined science.

[charlie brown]

You know what..."believers" believe, non-believers don't. You won't change

anyone's mind, either way. So...??? :unsure:

 

We DO know, this forum "Died" for a time! Glad it's back up, and running, again!

 

 

CB

[quapman]

I wish this thread would die.

 

Have fun with this one,, I'm outa here.

[jaxson50]

Agnostic Apology by Robert William Service

I am a stout materialist;

With abstract terms I can't agree,

And so I've made a little list

Of words that don't make sense to me.

To fool my reason I refuse,

For honest thinking is my goal;

And that is why I rarely use

Vague words like Soul.

 

In terms of matter I am sure

This world of our can be defined;

And so with theories obscure

I will not mystify my mind;

And though I use it more or less,

Describing alcoholic scenes,

I do not know, I must confess,

What Spirit means.

 

When I survey this cosmic scene,

The term "Creator" seems absurd;

The Universe has always been,

Creation never has occurred.

But in my Lexicon of Doubt

It strikes me definitely odd,

One word I never dare to flout,

One syllable the mountains shout,

Three letters that the stars spell out:

GOD.

[badbluesplayer]

I may be wrong, but I think we have three types of perspectives involved:

 

1. Those people, "religious" or otherwise, who believe that somehow, something of an individual's being, identifiable as such, continues existence in some way.

 

2. Those who, again, religious or otherwise, believe the individual does lose identifiable being, but whose existence does somehow continue.

 

3. Those who believe the individual simply becomes nothing more than part of the ecosystem, lacking any self-recognition or ongoing existence.

 

I think it's difficult for those raised as "religious" folk - including dedicated "atheists" - to get past a specific vocabulary for description of their feelings and beliefs. That does have the potential for difficulty as great or greater than "politics."

 

Personally, I was trained otherwise. I was trained to hold my own beliefs that are open to question or updating on specifics, but also to be able to categorize different sorts of belief systems and how they function, as well as how their beliefs fit a pattern of logic - and also social practices and consequences.

 

To me it's fun. Then again, if you've been raised to enjoy such discussion, it can be difficult to recognize that it's very difficult for many others to do so without getting emotion involved in such discussion. And that is counterproductive for a batch of guitar pickers who should be always aware that it's the guitar pickin' that's the commonality, not theology.

 

As for death, I tend to agree that whether "religion" teaches one may be "saved" into a happy afterlife or not, it would have to be very difficult for a person who enjoys hurting other people to have any sort of a "happy" afterlife once it were realized that it's not nice to hurt others for the fun of it.

 

Then again, one finds this sort of discussion more appropriate for theology class than a general population question of "what do you think happens when people die."

 

As has been mentioned, none of us have been dead, truly dead, and so discussion regardless is functionally a matter of our beliefs. We'll see. We'll inevitably all know.

 

m

[badbluesplayer]

Surfpup, The label most of us Christians use is "faith", I have the knowledge and or faith that I am going to heaven. As you say, you can prove 2+2=4, but how would you prove the wind? you have knowledge and or faith it blows, even scientists acknowledge this. But how can this be when you can't see it? Will the sun come up in the morning? I have faith that it will. Like I said in an earlier post, I condemn no ones beliefs, knowledge and or faith, and will not apologize for mine. All my humble opinion and not meant to offend anyone. God Bless

TC

 

ps: I agree with Milod, we're just all guitar pickers...........but I have faith my Les Paul can kick your Les Paul's a$$

You "prove" the wind by measuring the pressure it exerts on a plate and verifying that the pressure you measure is consistent with what has already been proven about the known relationship between fluid density, velocity and drag!!

[badbluesplayer]

There is no faith in science. Just scrutiny. Lots of scrutiny. Science proves stuff according to OTHER peoples' rules, not according to the scientist's rules. It's all about being extrinsically consistent. You don't want faith. Good scientists are skeptical by nature.

 

Nothing's proven until it's consistently proven to the satisfaction of the observer.

 

For instance, you can speculate as to why quicksand occurs in nature, but you can't "prove" how it works to somebody else unless you both understand the underlying soil mechanics theory well enough so you both can make sense of it for yourselves and see that it's consistent with everything else that's you already know.

[Cougar]

Unfortunately science does "not" have all your answers.

 

Quite so, especially about things like human consciousness.

 

"It is rather ironic that the job of a scientist is to understand nature, and if the scientist completely succeeds, the reward is unemployment. But of the many things that concern me in the day-to-day existence of a scientist, waking up one morning and discovering that there are no problems to solve is rather low on the list." [Rocky Kolb,

Blind Watchers of the Sky

]

On the other hand, it seems easy and, for some, unsatisfying, if you can just make up "answers," like writing fiction, making sure there's no way to test whether your answer is correct or not (as in "When you die, you go to heaven"). That's the difference between religion and science. Science allows you to test its answers, to see whether actual observations in the real world we live in support or confirm the answer.

[pippy]

What's your view on death?

I had never bothered to think about it at all until three fairly major things happened within the space of just a few years; my daughter was born, my father died, my mother died.

 

In the brief time between the first and last of these events it became apparent that my daughter is, visually, the twin-sister of my mother, albeit separated by an 80-year age gap.

This was first shown to greatest effect in a snap of the pair of them, seated at a restaurant table and laughing their heads off, taken when they were 3 and 83 years old respectively. They were twins, nontheless.

Curiously, whist as a young child she had more of the 'air' of my mother about her, the older she gets the more closely she resembles my father in character.

At the same time whilst she is still unarguably like my mother her facial structure is refining itself more to resemble that of my wife as she was when young and who, then, closely resembled her grandmother.

In Chloe we have an extraordinary daily reminder of these people who were greatly loved by us and who, to a great extent, helped to shape our own personalities.

 

Concurrently, although it had been quite clear all of our lives, the similarities which existed between myself and my father, and my brother and my mother, took on a stronger resonance.

Although my brother and I share characteristics of both parents there is a definite split - 70%-30%, say - in favour of one ever the other in each case.

Furthermore my brother has two daughters, both now grown-up. The elder closely resembles my father whereas the younger is very like my mother.

 

This is what I now think of as being a person's 'Spirit'; that part which is deeply rooted in our own genetic makeup and which lives on, unmistakably, after we ourselves have 'gone the way of all flesh'.

 

So now I really DO believe that, and in a very powerful way, a person lives-on after death.

 

P.