Can religion stand up to the progress of science?

[Soul Doctor]

---

And religion is the science of the mediocre.

[bcasabee]

And to add to this......I believe God wants us to understand everything so that we can appreciate everything he had created.......so he wants us to be something else higher than human...maybe something like the angels after we die....its just my belief.....sorry...I can't site a Bible verse for proof..........

Science can explain everything, its always been there even before we existed......

But I believe that everything will be revealed in due time and everyone will be able to understand....

I also believe that in human form, we wouldn't be able to learn everything that will be revealed....thus in order for us to understand and learn......we need to be something else higher than human.

[hornales]

As Einstein put it, in this materialistic age of ours, the Physicists are the only true religious people because they just dont sit in the pew and believe, they work to verify the universe.
That means as a rational being, dont just grab anything religious, confirm it with the scriptures and the book of nature. God reveals His character in two books, the book of scriptures and the book of nature.
The Bible is more advance than our scientists.
The Bible says the world is round. pila pa ka years na discover na sa mga scientist? pero gauna na ang Bible.
the wind has weight. wen did we discover that the air has gravitational mass?

Science cannot explain everything.
let me give you an idea.
gravitational law only describes the motion of object under a gravitational field force but it does not explain why a thing with mass can attract other things with mass. It cant explain that in case you dont know.
There is what we call conservaiton of energy that states that when an energy is expended/interacts, it is transformed into other form of energy but the total energy is conserved. but the law of electromagnetism cannot explain why a magnet does not exhaust itself in pulling metals toward itself it seems it has infinite supply of energy in attracting metals. you get what i mean?
so correct yur idea that science can explain everything coz we only know a peeble in the sand of the universe.

[bcasabee]

its just my belief...........your belief is just as good as mine......

the problem is not science, its us, cause we cannot grasped everything........

the problem is not the science behind the magnet....its the people looking at the magnet cause they can't understand it......but someday, we will understand.

[hornales]

The Coming Revolutions in Fundamental Physics.Prof David Jonathan Gross

I was invited to attend this lecture and i took notes so i want to share it here.

“In science, everyone stands on level ground”. That is the opening thought of the 2004 Nobel Prize Awardee in Physics during the “Bridges – Dialogues towards a culture of peace” hosted through the international peace foundation held in University of San Carlos-Talamban on January 11, 2008.
Speaking to a jam-packed audience of physics teachers, students, engineers, Prof Gross spoke about three topics during his lecture; Physics, Cosmology and Biology.
He first spoke about scientific research and experiments as the absolute authority in scientific issues, by observation and experiment of the workings of nature, we define true science. Political and religious figures are not the authority of science like what happened in the past. (reminds me of geocentric theory)
What follows is a brief History in physics from the time of Galileo who discovered the regularities of motion. And one needs a language extension to mathematics to be able to model the basic motion and symmetries that govern all physical phenomena because it is the native language that nature speaks to us. Isaac Newton discovered the Universal Law of Gravitation, James Maxwell came up with Electromagnetic Theory. Neils Bohr contributes the idea that an electron could in fact drop from a higher-energy orbit to a lower one, emitting a photon (light quantum) of discrete energy (that explains light emitting diodes). Bohr, Planck, Dirac, Einstein and others are known for Atomic theory and Quantum Mechanics. By investigating the atomic structure, one can explain the behavior and properties of elements that make up matter. Einstein formulated the General Theory of Relativity where space and time is dynamical and proposed to be a new theory of gravitation in place of Newtonian gravitation. Many physics equations have had developed through decades and scientists are making efforts to unify all laws into one simple but not simpler law.
As Einstein has said, not unjustly, that “in this materialistic age of ours the serious scientific workers are the only profoundly religious people.” Scientist may not only sit in the pew and believe how we get here, they verify the workings of nature and perform experiments. Cosmology hopes to answer the questions such as; where did we come from? How the universe began? Scientists are making experiments and observations to understand ourselves and around us by studying our tiniest part - the atom and extends to the vast part of our universe. Dr Gross studies deep into the atom even to the quarks and was awarded the nobel prize for physics for discovering regarding the strong force – the nuclear force that binds together quarks (the smallest bulding blocks of matter) and holds together the nucleus of the atom. The prizewinning work of Prof David Gross arose from physics experiments with particle accelerators conducted in the early 1970s to study quarks and the force that acts on them. Particle accelerator is a facility that produces miniature big bangs in the hope of understanding the Big bang theory – the most popular theory of how our universe began, where particles are smashed head on (collision) and produces effects that can lead us to ideas of what really happened “in the beginning…” So we have Particle accelerators or colliders to study big bang in the laboratory and we have Hubble telescope to study the outside world – the vast universe.
Throughout the lecture, Dr Gross brought up issues that should concern everyone, issues that should enter into every conciousness of man. From the questions of how the universe began to how the universe will end (or will not end?), He mentioned Darwin’s theory of evolution where based on the Darwin’s tree of life, most species are extinct and we’re the last few million years old specie. By vast interconnection of neurons in our brain our memory and emotions arrived (we don’t know how it arrived). Human specie (or kind) began to go and multiply, Prof Gross showed an intersting grpah of how the world is growing in terms of world population. Plotting the World populaiton versus the time from 1 AD to 2001, the curve is rising faster (more rapid) than exponential. That means, more people will consume food, energy, fossil fuel. Fossil fuel will run out, energy consumption will rise. Education is the hope to stabilize the world popultaion or else it presents a terrible threat to the health of our planet. Global warming is very real, it has been predicted that world temperature will rise by 3-8 degrees Celcius within the century, seemingly not a lot. But for just one degree increase in temperature for the next 10-20 years - 20-30% of species will become extinct, most coral reefs will be dead, world will experience drought, heat waves and increase in mortality. Two Celcius degree increase will have major effect on our ecosystem, millions of people will be affected by floods. Polar ice caps will melt and submerged 30% of man’s land for a three degree increasde in temperature, health and food will be a heavy burden. At four degree increase, more than 30% of species will be extinct, and bleaching of corals severe and the sea level will increase to 13-15 feet. And scientists are predicting not just 3-4 Celcius degree increase but 3-8 degree celsius.
Therefore more science is needed to solve all thses problems that confronts every man today. Nanotechnology and solar technology is a promising help. We need a new system, economic and political system that is not dependent on unlimited consumption and growth or else our natural resources will be depleted. We need a better system than now is. More science is needed in all countries, what we do in one country affects the whole world. Science is the most international activity which is not closed because nature has no boundaries. Collaboration and competition is encouraged. We need more scientist to do research and innovations everywhere, efforts that will leave a living legacy to our upcoming generations - them.
Prof Gross encourage lifelong questioning of things (like Socrates method) because it is the questions that drive science. The most important product of knowledge is (intelligent) ignorance. Smart questions arrive in the boundaries of ignorance. As it has been said, “judge a man not by his answers but by his questions”, Prof Gross left some questions for the audience to judge.
1. How did the universe begin? (what happened a fraction of second after the BIG BANG!!)
2. What is dark matter? Dark energy that pulls on something?
3. How to unify the forces of nature? Is string theory the answer. Different forces - just different vibration of the same string?
4. How did consciousness arise from collection of neurons?
Our questions are limited by the amount of our knowledge, we don’t know enough to ask more questions. So the more we know the more our ignorance and questions (so why expand knowledge?). But the rate of our knowledge expansion is far greater than the questions that will come up. Think about a sphere, the volume represents our knowledge and the surface area is our questions, the boundary of knowledge and ignorance.
For deterministic models in science, we can predict the future with great accuracy, i.e., planets in motion. Kinematic equations can predict its path and position to a great accuracy in the future time. Prof Gross likewise gave his predictions about the future of our world in centuries.
1. 50-100 years from now all his four questions will be answered. (more questions to ask then)
2. Our scientific friends, i.e., the psychology, sociology, and other social/political/economic sciences (infant sciences) will become real sciences. They will then have models for real sciences which will study human behavior based on the experiments on the brain and consciousness.
3. The world will have one government (100-1000 years) where it has sustainable economic and social arrangements.
4. People will have increased lifespan. Ten times than the present. Because of medical advances to stop aging process and cure for diseases.
5. Speciation: creation of new specie. We are beginning to learn how to modify genome. We can speed up evolution or mutation.
6. Spread of life into other galaxies.
7. We will then have more problems to solve, political and social issues maybe more difficult than technological/scientific questions.
We don’t know if these predictions will come true because of stochastic models or just plain impossible. But as what Dr Gross said, ask questions and learn to find answers, more questions to ask but definitely our knowledge will expand that inevitably scientific research will lead to greater control over nature and more new tools will unpredictably be discovered. Relying on the research efforts of other countries or people will not work.
Question and answer time followed after the lecture. All in all, It was an insightful 3-hour adventure from quarks to the outside world with the 2004 Nobel Prize winer in Physics - Dr David Jonathan Gross.

[brownprose]

@hornales

Very insightful lecture indeed. :mrgreen:

[rodsky]

Why even ask that question? Religion serves spiritual needs while science serves intellectual needs--why is there always a need to bring these two together to "fight it out"? Sometimes people just loooove to see "blood and gore" in discussions like this. *shakes head*

-RODION

[brownprose]

Why even ask that question? Religion serves spiritual needs while science serves intellectual needs--why is there always a need to bring these two together to "fight it out"? Sometimes people just loooove to see "blood and gore" in discussions like this. *shakes head*

-RODION

It's just that some people here think that religion has all the answers to what science don't. *head spins*

[rodsky]

It's just that some people here think that religion has all the answers to what science don't. *head spins*

And that's basically just because people fear the unknown and they fear anything they can't understand. To the point that their definitions of truth are very biased--meaning, if someone's explanation of the truth is one that is COMFORTABLE to them, then THAT must be the truth.

Delusion.

-RODION

[Tin_Tin]

At least I can stand on my own.... hehehe jokingly said that.

Anyway, basically religion is a foundation of faith and trust and Science is a thing of the future. Partly agreed on religion now is relying on technological discoveries - what else are we using to reach people outside if science hadn't invented the wheel. Don't mind me I'm just riding science all the way with God's grace.

how can you say that science is a thing of the future....? science has always been here....