Were any of the great scientists/inventors also religious?
- Thread starter Rearden Metal
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Quote from marketsurfer:
good thoughts, oddtrader. no need to be confused. religion is something that you are told, religious people are generally sheep. spiritual, on the other hand, comes from within the person. it is an inner knowing that can not be explained rationaly as the language is lacking in this regard.
best,
surfer
Thanks Surfer.
Quote from OddTrader:
Thought as follows:
We have not fully understood the evolution/ creation process ( including whether they are mutually inclusive or exclusive) completely Yet, and may never will.
Neither the price process (in trading) so far!
if you wait for "full" understanding you will wait for an eternity.
Quote from OddTrader:
A thought only:
Would it be possible that God (just like the concepts of mass, gravity, square root of -1, etc.) by its nature could be merely a concept/ construct/ spirit for those people who seek God?
I would think that a concept/ construct/spitir (God) with some decent charcteristics and features such as forgiveness, kindness, tolerance, acceptance, self-giving love, constructive-mind, positive-heart, etc. should be universally promoted to all human beings, disregarding the brands/labels.
Bible (whatever traditions) in its age possibly was the most and advanced scienticfic findings/writings by the most serious and earnest writers/ scientists/ inventors of the time who were fully immersed by the concept/ constrct/ spirit.
Based on the above definition of God, any wars or killings (now and in the past) due to any religious reasons or beliefs of any traditions/ Bibles/ labels should be extremely ungodly.
It's sad in our history that so many God created souls were killed by some religious bodies due to simply various religious reasons.
It's hard to believe that If those highly intelligent people like scientists and inventors would not try to contribute their minds and talents in resolving this vital issue which could possibly affect the whole human race now and in the future.
No one said you were irrational for NOT believing in God. What was said is that it is irrational to have such self-righteous certitude in your chosen opinion that there is no God merely because you currently lack evidence to the contrary. Same is true of the other camp too (I'm not trying to convince anyone of the existence of God, just saying that it's not irrational nor inconsistent to do so).Quote from LongShot:
i dont believe in existence of unicorns or the green martians or fornons (an imaginary particle i just made up
As noted earlier, those who were absolutely certain the Coelacanth had died 400 million years ago because they had never found a live one ultimately found that lack of evidence was not proof of non-existance.
We're not talking about the "Creationist" fringe.
Modern physics has no idea the source of the Big Bang or an explanation of how the initial hyperdimensional spacetime fabric came to exist. In addition, current theories offer an incomplete picture and contain numerous "givens" and fragile unproven presumptions.
So one has at least a couple of choices -
1. The multiverse was initially brought into existence by a transcendant intelligence (or in some as yet not understood way the multiverse IS that intelligence).
2. Believe that "it was always here" (whatever that means) and it was just a happy random vacuum fluctuation that hundreds of billions of years ago somehow one day kicked off the spontaneous production of enough matter/energy (out of this "always here" spatial fabric) to ultimately produce the Big Bang.
If there's a third alternate I can't think of it right now - but I'd certainly be interested in hearing it if anyone has one that's not just a variation of these two.
As to your "examples" -
1. Fornons - obviously the inclusion of this means you've completely missed the whole idea - a supposed particle you just dreamt up is irrelavent since the mere fact that you just pulled it out of your butt is evidence that it does not exist.
2. Green martians - hmm, I always thought they were blue. Oh well, maybe I'm confusing them with Andorians.
However, your purposeful trivialization here obfuscates the more specific issue. Is there life on Mars? Since we've sent probes there and have mapped the planet, we have some basic data that suggests there is likely currently no large-scale intelligent life unless it moved below ground a long time ago anyway. As to whether there had been intelligent life there perhaps a million years ago - there is no conclusive evidence either way.
3. Unicorns - horses with a horn growing out of their forehead have been documented, it's a rare abberation and most likely the source of the myth. As far as the existence (or one time existence) of the magical, mythical beasts - unprovable either way - hey, weren't the last of the unicorns taken to Avalon by Merlin before he closed the dimensional barrier?
Just to clarify - we did not start out talking about a "biblical" God, only "a" God.
As I mentioned earlier, even bible scholars don't attempt to claim the bible is a fully literal document. It was clearly selectively edited and contains allegory, adaptations of even older stories, parables clearly slanted toward the expected reader, text reflective of politicized dogma, etc.
We didn't start out talking about - and I've tried to make it abundantly clear that were NOT talking about - the anthropomorphic, "God in Man's image", simplified for presentation to people thousands of years ago, God.
Nobody's arguing that the bible should be taken as literal fact. We're not talking about the Creationist fringe of the zealotry spectrum that inanely ignores millions of years of historical record.
So your initial assertion is incorrect - there IS evidence that man was NOT simply created in his present form as Creationists continue to argue. Therefore, it is NOT a case of lack of evidence in that case and as such your example is inapplicable.
That was not what we were discussing - so let's not obfuscate the issue by now dredging up the obvious inconsistencies of bible text. We can start a separate thread to discuss that - and I'll be one of the first ones to argue the bible is clearly not a literal document.
But at this point in THIS discussion, falling back to using the term "biblical God" is a cop out.
http://www.atheists.org/flash.line/atheism1.htm
"A leading scientific journal concludes that increasingly, scientists have doubts about the existence of a deity or similar supernatural and religious claims. This finding questions the pop-culture view that science and religion are moving toward a consensus, and a shared view about the humanity and the universe. The study also touches on the changing character of the scientific enterprise in modern society..."
"A leading scientific journal concludes that increasingly, scientists have doubts about the existence of a deity or similar supernatural and religious claims. This finding questions the pop-culture view that science and religion are moving toward a consensus, and a shared view about the humanity and the universe. The study also touches on the changing character of the scientific enterprise in modern society..."