Invoking The Voyagers Against Id Options

[mike]

If it weren't for all these 'evil wretches' you wouldn't know what to do with yourself.

[ljk4-1]

Vatican cardinal said Thursday the faithful should listen to what secular modern science has to offer, warning that religion risks turning into "fundamentalism" if it ignores scientific reason.

http://blog.sciam.com/index.php?title=the_...1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1

[mike]

Yeah, they say that now, now that virtually everyone sees what benefits science has to offer. Back in the olden days they didn't want Galileo using telescopes, and the Earth wasn't really round, and everything rotated around the Earth, and oh yeah, if some of our priests happen to be a little naughty, we'll just cover it up rather than ever do ANYTHING about it...

God sure is a wacky fella!

[ljk4-1]

Yeah, they say that now, now that virtually everyone sees what benefits science has to offer.  Back in the olden days they didn't want Galileo using telescopes, and the Earth wasn't really round, and everything rotated around the Earth, and oh yeah, if some of our priests happen to be a little naughty, we'll just cover it up rather than ever do ANYTHING about it...

God sure is a wacky fella!

Despite the perception fostered during the last few centuries as science became a split culture from art and religion, the Roman Catholic Church was the big promoter of science and knowledge for Europe during the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Like any politicial institution, they just didn't like having their power and authority threatened.

Galileo was not a modest man. He was right about many things in astronomy (except that he thought the Moon had no effect on the tides, but hey, Newton wouldn't be born until the year he died in 1642), and he wanted to make sure everyone else knew it, too. The Catholic Church would likely have "adjusted" their worldview to include the Copernican one given time, but Galileo forced the issue, essentially backing the Church into a corner.

Not a smart political move, but then again, how many scientists to this day are politically savy? Galileo also used words from the Pope in one of his Dialogues that made him look foolish. Bad move Number 2. This was a Pope who had the birds in the Vatican courtyard killed because their singing and chirping annoyed him. Plus he was no dummy, either. Thus the big fallout and the Science vs. Religion issues to this day.

Yes, I know there are many more complex details to the whole story, but this is the essence of it. It is not as clear-cut as some groups would like it to seem.

[ljk4-1]

For details on the Trial of Galileo, see here:

http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/f...eo/galileo.html


Hmmm, is it a sign that Copernicus' skull was found quite recently?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copernicus#Grave

[Guest_Richard Trigaux_*]

Yes, I know there are many more complex details to the whole story, but this is the essence of it.  It is not as clear-cut as some groups would like it to seem.

True.

But it is for his science that Galileo was condemned. From where the problem.


I think that, from the Catholic power, condemning science (or at least ignoring it for centuries) was a very bad move, much more serious than the awkwarness of Galileo. They bear the responsibility of what happened after: loss of spirituality (the science speech looking much more "realistic" with its hard evidence, than the spiritual speech) loss of ethics ("if there is nothing after death, why to bother about respecting others")

Spirituality and science do not speak of the same thing, but they speak in the same world, for the same human beings. So they MUST dialogue, and this dialogue MUST start by recognizing each other, and at very first in not interfering. (By interference I understand creationists who pretend to do science with Intelligent Design, or scientist who pretend to do spirituality or ethics by predicting that there is nothing after death).

[mike]

I don't feel I've researched enough about exactly how afraid of science the catholic church has been throughout history, so I won't comment on that.. but look at just how well they've been doing lately.

Regardless of that, I think that science and spirtuality can eventually merge together quite nicely. There is no reason to think that one couldn't produce so much evidence of what happens once you're clinically dead (no oxygen in the brain for some time) that only an insane person wouldn't believe there is life after death. Whether that life after death involves good ole' heaven and hell and some 'God' sitting on a throne and judging you I highly doubt, but hey, I could be wrong. There are so many religions, though, I wonder how exactly the Great One in the Sky expected me to know which one to follow, exactly.. I guess he's just a BIG JOKER. YOU GOT ME, BIG GUY!

[Guest_Richard Trigaux_*]

Vatican cardinal said Thursday the faithful should listen to what secular modern science has to offer, warning that religion risks turning into "fundamentalism" if it ignores scientific reason.

http://blog.sciam.com/index.php?title=the_...1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1

Good.


To be noted that the Catholic Church are not the only religious persons in the world, there are other religions, and buddhist masters went to this point for tens of years now.

The problem of the relation science-religion is complex, but I think we can have some grasp on it with some simple examples. Since about the Merovingian epoch (where the stake made Catholicism the "norm" in Europe) nearby everybody is persuaded that the world was created in seven days, 6000 years ago. Science disproved this point of view, with the geological times, primitive nebula, big bang, etc. Did religion lost any value from this? Alas many persons began to think that, if religion was false in geology, it was also false in ethics, metaphysics etc. From where the rise of libertine ideas (with their Sade extreme) which led to our modern notion of "freedom" in many minds (at the extreme associated with anti-ethics). And person who still grasp to ideas of the creation in six days are really cut from something, if not fundamentalist. From here the move of the Vatican, good move but four centuries late.

But would not be science doing the same kind of mistake today? Science claims not to study the spiritual-ethics domain, but it however made quite a bunch of implicit or explicit statements in these domains, as what, for instance, there is no survival after death, or that our only purpose is to perpetuate our genes whatever injustices and lack of happiness, or that we can do things such as uterus lending, chemical war, etc. Some scientists even denegate the existence of consciousness itself, just considering bodies and behaviours.

With my opinion, scientists should be more modest, and publish their results in physics and biology without telling us what to do with, as if they were our ethics masters or gurus. We cannot prove the value of any ethics idea with physics, we prove it in society. And if there are things such as a survival after death, it obviously cannot be demonstrated with the tools of physics, but it may have some other testable effect of our lifes, at a more philosophical level.

Science risks turning into "fundamentalism" if it ignores consciousness.

[Guest_Richard Trigaux_*]

Regardless of that, I think that science and spirtuality can eventually merge together quite nicely.  There is no reason to think that one couldn't produce so much evidence of what happens once you're clinically dead (no oxygen in the brain for some time) that only an insane person wouldn't believe there is life after death.  Whether that life after death involves good ole' heaven and hell and some 'God' sitting on a throne and judging you I highly doubt, but hey, I could be wrong.  There are so many religions, though, I wonder how exactly the Great One in the Sky expected me to know which one to follow, exactly..  I guess he's just a BIG JOKER.  YOU GOT ME, BIG GUY!

I agree with all this.

It is said that persons being temporarily brain dead were reporting consciousness experiences aferwards. I could tell the story of a woman who had her brain cooled at 16°C for a delicate surgery, and who reported experiences during this time. The problem is that this matter is not considered seriously, there are no institutionnal checking, so I am not completelly sure that this story is real. However you could check one of the best links I know: Horizon foundation, which is not hoaglandite but from scientists.

The stories of judgment and God sitting on a throne is obviously invented, but it may hide some symbolic hint of what awaits us beyond. For instance, in a non-physical world where the consciousness is the "particule" and consciousness relations are the "physical interactions", it would be very difficult, see impossible to lie or hide our thinking. So we would be judged by everybody and ourselves first...

To say that God is a joker would have led you to the stake some centuries ago! But I think it is true, in a way. And today science settled the issue: the works at the Princeton University proved that jokers perform better than mystics in telekinesis! Since I know this, I joke very much... (did the smiley moved??)

[mike]

There actually have been some studies on near-death experiences. NDE experiences share remarkably similar basic traits (meeting dead loved ones [some NDE experiencers meet loved ones they didn't realize were dead until after they come back], meeting some sort of guide spirit, being presented with some sort of 'rift' over which they must cross [an actual chasm, a stream, you get the idea], and being pulled back to the 'original' world, invariably to their dismay), and while I suppose you could argue that this is all some sort of 'brain defense mechanism', I fail to see how the tiny bit of oxygen left in your brain right before you're clinically dead could inspire so many things to happen.

Then, too, I think that a lot of people want to believe that there is nothing, so that they don't have to feel guilty about being inconsiderate to other people. But they'll figure it out one way or another.

I think that as medical technology advances and more and more people have these experiences it will be impossible to dismiss them as 'meaningless'. There is no drug that can reproduce the entire near death experience, unless of course it causes you to die, and oxygen deprivation certainly doesn't cause people to experience all these things (unless it makes them die).

Ultimately, though, it doesn't matter if anyone believes in life after death or not, and in fact it seems rather obvious to me that some things can only be experienced if you don't believe in life after death. See ya on the other side.

The day anybody demonstrates telekinesis in ANY form whatsoever (even making something twitch one billionth of one billionth of a micron), it will be quite a breakthrough indeed. I don't think that day has happened just yet.

[dvandorn]

There are so many religions, though, I wonder how exactly the Great One in the Sky expected me to know which one to follow, exactly..  I guess he's just a BIG JOKER.  YOU GOT ME, BIG GUY!

My opinion of religion, on the level of this discussion, is that whatever or however you express your spirituality, I think you do so most *usefully* when you take, as a basic truth, that your deity is a practical joker.

I think David Brin has it exactly right in his Uplift War series of novels. He populates the Universe with a myriad of intelligent species, and one which we get to know well are the Tymbrimi. They are the Universe's practical jokers. Their jokes can be downright nasty, and/or destructive. The idea behind their jokes is expressed, approximately, as "sometimes you need to have a chunk taken out of your ass to get you to where you can see what you need to see, and do what you need to do." The Tymbrimi's practical jokes, large and small, were usually designed to help their fellow beings -- but that didn't mean people didn't get hurt in the process.

So, my basic take on the deity I can see, feel and sense around me is this:

God is a Tymbrimi.

-the other Doug

[mike]

If there is indeed a singular God, I'd rather he (she, it, whatever) wasn't a practical joker. Why not just tell me what I need to know instead of pointing up how weak I am compared to it? It seems cruel.

If there is a God(s), he/she/they/blah/blah obviously don't want us to be entirely sure they exist. While this is annoying, I get the distinct impression that if we were to know for certain we'd be completely unmotivated to do the things we do now. And while the things we do now (must do to survive, mostly) tend to be annoying, I figure there has to be some purpose to it all, even if it's simply to gather raw information. Any other viewpoint invariably depresses me (including that God is a big practical joker), and I don't like being depressed.

Also, I personally hate being the butt of jokes. The thing that makes it a joke is that people laugh at you. Funny for them, not funny for me, and frankly they can kiss my 'rump' if that's how they want to 'teach me a lesson'. Now, if you enjoy being the butt of jokes, then go crazy. Many entertainers have built an entire career on making fun of themselves...

[ljk4-1]

Pat Robertson insinuates ill-will on PA town that rejected ID

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9995578/

The Dark Ages on a comeback tour....

[helvick]

The Dark Ages on a comeback tour....

Ho hum. I really like the way Pat's God takes such a personal interest in School Board elections. With all the work that has to be done meting out retribution, wrath and righteous vengeance on the mega-sinners of the world it's nice to see that the Ultimate being will still have time to schedule in a natural disaster for those ungrateful wretches.

If God's lurking (and why not), may I politely suggest that his vengeance take the form of a sudden volcanic eruption centred on the School Board offices. That way we'd all get the message. If he made it a methane spewing cryovolcano it'd be even better. Can you imagine the droves that would be converted overnight? That would be a Sign!

[Guest_Richard Trigaux_*]

Pat Robertson insinuates ill-will on PA town that rejected ID
 
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9995578/

The Dark Ages on a comeback tour....

WASHINGTON - Conservative Christian televangelist Pat Robertson told citizens of a Pennsylvania town that they had rejected God by voting their school board out of office for supporting “intelligent design”

...has a long record of similar apocalyptic warnings and provocative statements.
...
Last summer, he hit the headlines by calling for the assassination of...

If anybody wants to defend religion or spirituality the very first thing to do is to condemn all this.