what if it just was?

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My only basic point of view is to remain open minded until verifiable data appears. I thoroughly enjoy and approve of open speculation on all sorts of possible configurations of the universe and highly approve of using these speculations to seek verifiable data on reality but I am very cautious about attributing reality to possibilities until that data appears.

I think that's really saying that people shouldn't be invading science and if science finds new energy signatures and explanations of what used to be deemed supernatural that's perhaps one thing but it should be science tracing the structure rather than faith superseding science where science needs to have its rightful domain uninterrupted (pretty much anywhere that the scientific method is being diligently followed and in accordance with human rights, environmental safety, etc.).

Science is not something arcane and peculiar and difficult to understand like plumbing or what the hell makes a woman want to go to bed with you. It's simple everyday stuff like how to bake a cake. Two cups of flour, two teaspoons of baking powder, two eggs, a cup of sugar and a cup of milk and you have it. Works every time if you do it in the proper order. That's science. Everyday stuff. If you try to do it faster than the speed of light, you have a problem. Science tells you that too. Religion is altogether different. You have to deal with this crazy superbeing who gets pissed off at the nuttiest things that everybody does and nobody talks about. Like masturbation and sleeping with each other's marriage partners and eating pork chops and perhaps a glass of wine. Crazy stuff straight out of an insane asylum. But what the hell. Most people are pretty mixed up and have real problems. They pray for answers and mostly it doesn't work but that doesn't stop them.If something doesn't happen in science you find out why and work at it until it either does happen or you say "screw it" and have a beer. That's science. Nothing fancy about that.

Sand, you have nothing to disagree with on what I said here. I said that science is science. If it ever grabs on to new knowledge that used to be relegated to the supernatural its still science and the supernatural in that regard would stop being supernatural and simply be science (much like say electricity stopped being bolts from Zeus).

There is a lot to say. When one understands the fundamental basics if science one stops killing innocent animals to propitiate an angry god. It's a whole different world and the two cannot co-exist in a sensible mind. Unfortunately, as you have clearly demonstrated, sensible minds are not over common.

What I'm trying to tell you Sand - science cares about your personal biases about as much as I do. It goes and will go wherever the facts take it, nothing more nothing less.

No argument with that. I just find it ironic that I am characterized as biased because I am totally committed to that procedure.

Apparently your still missing it. I said that faith and science are separated, that even if science starts claiming the ground that faith used to hold it stops being faith and falls under scientific scrutiny. I guess I have no idea what you're attacking.

As has been noted frequently in this forum there is a basic faith in science that the universe and all its variabilities is subject o rational analysis and it forms a continuum of attitudinal procedures that yield useful results. I don't think I am attacking anything, merely laying out what might be termed a dimensional complex in an intellectual sphere which is totally alien to those mental spheres of faith which try to allocate perceived phenomena from an emotional point of view. It is not a matter of claiming territory, it is a matter of living in a totally different universe.

The only caveat I'm accepting, in addition to that, is that science can and will unearth/excavate/illucidate more dynamics about how the universe operates as time goes on and as more research is conducted, new means of sampling previously untreatable items (such as perhaps antimatter, dark matter, dark energy) will be reached, and as our technology for research continues, it is a distinct possibility that we may very well find many unexpected veins of energy, types of energy, types of communication, non-locality is already somewhat mind-blowing in its own right.

I'll give you a hypothetical example. If there is such a thing as a soul, or another aspect of energy that our bodies or minds happen house - science may very well advance far enough to discover that distinct energy, map it, quantify and qualify its existence. That sort of thing would be both touching on a current 'faith' issue if it should happen as well as also becoming ground for 'science'. My argument is that in the hypothetical that such energy is found, and qualified by science, the 'soul energy' or whatever some may call it would be science fact rather than faith. Such a situation wouldn't involve science making an abominable leap from its roots, science would be doing what science does, as science does it, and simply finding this sort of thing by what it does best - peeling apart and analyzing reality by its bare components and trying to make sure it understands them in, if not perfect isolation, in the closest thing to it available at any given time.

Last edited by techstepgenr8tion on 23 Feb 2010, 12:38 am, edited 1 time in total.

And, of course, if science discovers unicorns responsive to virgins, that will have to be examined from biological and psychological and neurological points of view. I entirely agree that newly revealed data will demand rational examination.

Glad to demonstrate what I already knew - that we had no disagreement to begin with.

OK. Just to indicate that the discovery of these theoretical unicorns gives no credence to dragons guarding treasures, witches flying on broomsticks, or Elvis Presley living under an assumed name and working on the theory of dark matter at the Princeton Academy of Advanced Studies.

That's your own internal dialog with yourself, I can't rubber stamp that for ya.

Perfectly reasonable :thu:

On this, we've found common ground. It seems we lean different directions on the subject based on our intuition, but neither side is verifiable.

Which is why I said if I had to choose. I have no major philosophical or theological dogs in this fight.

ruveyn