I’m not sure if that’s a serious response…
It’s no harder to believe that science “will ever really be able to explain what caused the big bang” than it is to accept the plausibility of a Big Bang itself.
If you’re a string theorist, Brian Greene’s “Elegant Universe” proposes a collision of higher-dimensional branes releasing huge amounts of energy which lower-dimensional beings bound to the brane (like ourselves) observe as a “big bang”.
Or how about a gravitationally closed universe, which cycles infinitely between bangs & crunches? No need for an infinite creator any more, since the universe itself would have existed infinitely.
Or, Victor Stenger, in “God: The Failed Hypothesis”, mentions research indicating that a universe devoid of matter could in many circumstances generate matter through quantum fluctuations.
i think your incredulity stems from a misunderstanding of what it means for science to “explain things”.
Even given the substantial evidence supporting evolution, an entity possessing the properties imputed to the hypothetical deity could in fact have created the universe in 7 days 6000 years ago but in such a state that we meager humans would look at radionuclide dating results and erroneously conclude the world must be billions of years old.
God is quite literally the ultimate deus ex machina, and as such, you can never make headway with a True Believer by citing scientific evidence.
For good books on the evidence supporting evolution, try Richard Dawkin’s “The Greatest Show on Earth” or Jerry Coyne’s “Why Evolution is True”.
If you oppose evolution, you’d probably prefer Michael Behe’s “Darwin’s Black Box”, which is interesting if only for it’s description of the complexity of biological systems.
Really, what’s the point in quoting a month-old post?
Because it was an interesting comment.
For me (and I admit I may be totally alone in this) creationism is NOT excluding evolution, but including creationism in the possible perceived evolution time frame.
For me, evolution seems to change slightly every decade. There are jumps here and there regarding the scientific evidence, and I admit those jumps are small… but in and of themselves they ARE jumps. Science just keeps changing its mind or adding onto what was once believed. What kids are taught nowadays is NOT what was taught when I was in school. That in and of itself tells me that science changes every day. Not to say that science is bad or that it is all false. NO absolutely not!!! (bold, italics, underline.) Science is what moves us forward to understand the beauty of what our lives make up. There is a lot in science that I wholeheartedly agree with and relish and enjoy. It is a back bone of the human learning.
The thing is… for me… creationism seems to simply fill in some missing stories . NOT exact PIECES (science) but the story (MEANING) behind it all. Genesis was retold by a man that was old. VERY old if I remember correctly. The interpretations were grand and wide spanning, but they captured the meaning of why I believe. The teachings are metaphoric in places but it does not take away from the story at all. I know it (The bible) doesn’t add to science in a significant block. I have no doubt that it was not written to men of science. Science was not the intention of the Bible. The Bible was a chronological diary of sorts for those of faith. Faith is for those that know from within without proof without.
I think note might have mentioned before (I may be wrong) that science is not science if an ounce of faith is put in the pot. It must be kept separate, otherwise be called faith. There is no gray area. Black or white. For a woman of faith, I allow that and freely accept that science in its inner most being must exclude all paths of ‘faith’.
Here is the beauty I see and I truely hope you all can understand what I am trying to say…
Where science has yet to discover the how… (black and white) faith has already gifted to you. (just because we have not discovered the how does not mean it cannot happen. It happened anyway! The science may/will come later… but faith will let you enjoy it NOW!)
I dont know how the wind blows… but I know it blows. I have faith in that. Bring me a meteorologist to explain most of it, and I will be grateful to know there is a basis to how it happens and from whence it comes. But in the end, I still relish the wind and I still glorify how it can cleanse my heart when I am weary and allow myself to take a moment to simply let it be, let it blow, and let it wrap itself around my body for a few minutes in the day. A meteorologist will explain the wind comes from the south or north, and that a storm is what caused this or that. That is fine. But while I ask “where did the first wind generate from” I will also say “It doesn’t matter… I still wish to allow myself to enjoy it.”
I do not need to know the details of how, when, where, or what in order to enjoy it. I only know I will take a moment to enjoy it when it comes.
That’s how I feel, Catz, but remember this:
Science has never claimed to know everything. If everything WAS known, then there’d be no need for science. Science attempts to give the reason for what is around us, how we got here, shit like that.
Einstein (who was not a religious man in the traditional sense) famously said: “If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.”
He, like you, relishes the wind but also seeks to find out why it blows. I have no problem with this. In fact, I’d like to tell you a little personal experience I had a while ago.
I stood on an overlook near a waterfall here in Mt Rainier National Park in Washington State. The spray from the waterfall was cool and refreshing. The crashing sound of the waterfall enveloped me. Standing there, with my arms partially outstretched, I felt my worries melt away, a strong inner peace breaking out from deep inside.
It was the most memorable experience from my trip to that park. Some might call it a “religious” experience, but I cannot. I know it’s just water droplets suspended in air due to the violence of the water falling over the rocks, allowing my body heat to transfer easily into the water, cooling me, and how my body reacts to said stimulus, but it felt wonderful. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
I think the biggest problem with faith (the “meaning behind it all” as you put it) is that it relies on rather subjective reasoning. To use my experience at the waterfall, the “meaning behind” how I felt would be based upon my preconceived biases and the “meaning” would be different for each and every person that has that experience. The “meaning”, therefore, in my mind, is not explanatory for anything objective.
“Faith”, as you described it there, Catz, becomes entirely subjective. Not a bad thing at all, but subjectiveness should never be used in the place of objective things (such as the formation of laws and such).
Do you agree?
Thus faith and science will never be whole together like two pieces of a cake. =)
The cake is a lie
Also I heard women are evolving to be shorter and fatter while humanity is evolving brown fat, which burns 8 to 9 times faster then white fat
WE ARE SO FAT OUR BODIES ARE EVOLVING TO FIGHT IT
Really?
Part of the problem comes is when one tries to validate the other - Faith requires no evidence, while science requires no faith.
THATS what I meant.
[COLOR=‘LemonChiffon’]Nature via Nuture by Matt Ridley.
https://www.amazon.com/Nature-Via-Nurture-Genes-Experience/dp/0060006781
all of the christians should give this book a whirl, before denouncing evolution. It’s an easy, digestible read. Interesting and informative stuff, and all of it quite true.
Also [COLOR=‘LemonChiffon’]Guns Germs and Steel is important for understanding the evolution of civilizations.
[COLOR=‘DimGray’]read, read, READ, as I always say.
See, if you can come out with posts like that, I don’t see why you spend so little time here!
So? It was four months old.
Scientific understanding does change over time, but this is a strength of science, not a weakness.
Science revises itself when new observations disprove existing theories. Science has an objective criterion for the soundness of a belief - the belief explains past observations and predicts the outcomes of experiments. If a replicable experiment yields observations which disagree with a theory, the theory is invalidated, at least in some realm of observation.
Since science is self-correcting, we get to discard less-accurate for more-accurate models of reality. So, bodily humors, luminiferous ether, and phlogiston are out, and germ theory, electromagnetic fields, and statistical thermodynamics are in.
Religion by definition lacks this self-righting aspect. If what’s written in the Scriptures is what All-Knowing God said, then by-gum it’s right, no matter how crazy-sounding, and no-one can change it.
Catz, you’re arguing for the “non-overlapping magisteria” notion of Stephen Jay Gould and Francis Collins, which is fine except when religious conservatives control my local school’s curriculum.
So, which is it, one month or four?
Time stamp on post i quoted: 06-01-10 23:06. Turns out it was barely 5 days old.
Science wins again.
But not your understanding of timestamps.
The post you quoted was January 6, 2010, not June 1st. dd-mm-yyyy
lern2alternatedateformats
Yup, i’m a dumbass.
Apologies Soup.
Also, try not double posting on this forum. If yours is the last post and no one has yet replied, click that handy-dandy “Edit” button at the bottom of your post. Otherwise, good reply to Catz up there. 
Oh no I know, it was just bugging me that I couldn’t remember what it was referring to. I finally remembered something about a teapot, so Wikipedia and Google did the rest.