Yeah, right.
One important thing did happen this week: one of the most interesting searches in physics, launched 48 years ago, hit the jackpot. For fundamental physics as we conceive it today to stand the test, a certain kind of a force field (the Higgs field) had to exist; and if it existed, then a certain kind of particle (the Higgs boson) could be measured under very specific conditions. The only trouble was, when the prediction was made, it was almost unimaginable that humans could ever recreate those conditions. This week, two separate groups of physicists announced that the Higgs boson, or something very much like it, does exist. In fact, they met the highest standard humans have ever held up for knowledge: the odds of their being wrong are less than one in 3.5 million.
If you share any of the amazement of the great discoveries of science, this one will grab your attention. It's high-stakes either way: If the Higgs boson didn't appear, then particle physics couldn't explain why anything in the universe has mass -- a rather devastating shortcoming! On the other side, once we can detect signs of the Higgs field, we stand on the threshold of host of new discoveries about the fundamentals of physics.
And what did we learn this week about the relationship between science and religion? Ah, now there's an interesting question.
Strong religious and anti-religious language has swirled around the search for the Higgs boson. One group took to calling it "the God particle." After all, they said, the Higgs boson is the foundation on which the standard model of physics rests. Not only that; the Higgs field adds real mass to pure energy, so it's like the moment of creation. "Baloney!" replied the other group; we should just call it "the God-damn particle," since it's been so bloody difficult to detect over so many years.
In the huge hype that has broken out over the last few days, you can see the whole pattern of religion-science discussions in microcosm:
"Why does it have to be an attack on my God?" Colbert asks. "There's just no evidence for God," replies Krauss, "All I've said is that you don't need Him." Colbert, as always, gets the last word, however. Suppose that something always comes from nothing. "If there is no God, no 'thing' called God, if He is nothing," concludes Colbert, then by your own theory "can't something come from Him?"
When they announced the discovery of physics' most elusive particle this week, scientists didn't overreach. They just did damn good science. The fans and the foes of religion, by contrast, are overreaching on both sides. The quest for the Higgs boson, and its ultimate discovery, neither proves nor disproves God.
"The poor you will always have with you," Jesus is reputed to have said. He could have added, "and debates about science and religion as well." The quest for the Higgs came to a decisive end this week. The quest to understand science and God will not end as abruptly.
Follow Philip Clayton, Ph.D. on Twitter: www.twitter.com/pdclayton7
Victor Stenger: Higgs and Significance
Théo Le Bret: Beyond the Standard Model: The String Controversy
Karl Ecklund: Just the Beginning of Higgs Physics
Stephen R. Friberg: Science, Religion, and the Bahá'í Faith
This definition of New Thought / The New Thought Movement represents an excellenet summary from Wikipedia, and I agree wtih 98% of it. The other 2% – I believe that sickness can start in the mind and/or the body; not just the mind, and that “God” is a religous manufactured term and description of what is actually Infinite Intelligence....
“New Thought promotes the ideas that “Infinite Intelligence” or “God” is ubiquitous, spirit is the totality of real things, true human selfhood is divine, divine thought is a force for good, sickness originates in the mind, and “right thinking” has a healing effect.Although New Thought is neither monolithic nor doctrinaire, in general modern day adherents of New Thought believe that “God” or “Infinite Intelligence” is “supreme, universal, and everlasting”, that divinity dwells within each person, that all people are spiritual beings, that “the highest spiritual principle [is] loving one another unconditionally … and teaching and healing one another”, and that “our mental states are carried forward into manifestation and become our experience in daily living”.
The New Thought movement is a spiritually-focused or philosophical interpretation of New Thought beliefs. Started in the early 19th century, today the movement consists of authors, philosophers, and individuals who share a set of beliefs concerning metaphysics, positive thinking, the law of attraction, healing, life force, creative visualization, and personal power.
Are Miracles Really Possible? 3 Common Objections
OBJECTION 1: Miracles are impossible because they violate the laws of nature.
Our understanding of the laws of nature is based on what scientists have observed happening in the natural world around us. However, those laws are similar to the grammar rules for a language—there may be some exceptions to the rule.Our understanding of these “rules” may, in fact, be very limited. (Job 38:4)
A dedicated scientist may have spent a lifetime studying a certain law of nature. But all it takes is one "exception” for him to have to reevaluate his understanding of that law.
As the saying goes, “Just one black swan undoes the theory that all swans are white.”
PDF Download:
http://download.jw.org/files/media_magazines/wp_E_20120801.pdf
Online Magazine:
http://www.youblisher.com/p/350148-MIRACLES-do-they-really-happen/
And every common bush afire with God;
But only he who sees, takes off his shoes,
The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries,
And daub their natural faces unaware.
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING
Yes, in many definitions of God, God is "unproven" and likely to remain so. If God is in some form manifested as Natural Law, then that is a proven God.
Does God exist? That in part depends on what you mean by "God". Do we need faith to live our lives? Yes. Proof is not necessary for everything. Faith is indispensable.
-Anthony Mannucci
Faith > proof..why? Even if God revealed himself, you have to believe it; otherwise, He's just a good magician. God said if you let Jesus in when he knocks the door, he will come in. Otherwise, his miracles will not stop you from slamming the door on him.
God simply cannot be proven... What proves it for me won't necessarily prove it for you.
You can't see the wind but you can certainly see how the wind affects the trees. God = wind.
Here's a story. I had suffered from asthma for about 6 years. The pollen allergies here in Japan cause my airways to tighten; I don't have asthma when I'm in California.
Last November, it got so bad I had to use my inhaler 6 times a day, which quickly gone from 90 to 13 puffs left. This medicine had been the only thing assuring me I wouldn't die in my sleep but that assurance quickly faded away. I was scared; I have 3 young kids to raise. So one weekend, I knelt down to pray for a miracle.
On Monday, I had an unusual urge to make a bamboo flute. So I got some bamboo and started sawing away; my room was covered in bamboo powder. I inhaled so much of it my saliva turned yellow.
I was so preoccupied making flute after flute that I forgot about my asthma concerns.
Conclusion: life gets easier when you stop thinking of yourself as an inherently independent entity, with or without God!
Last year, a young lady visiting the observatory asked me if I believed in god. She had listened with interest to my description of how nucleosynthesis in stellar cores was the source of every atom heavier than hydrogen, and she asked good questions about the details that required me to reach for my notes.
"Do you believe in God?" she suddenly asked.
Okay: it is incumbent upon me to be polite with the paying customers. I'm there to talk about astronomy, not to trash anybody's religion. I'll argue about Pluto's status, but not God's.
"Probably not in the same way that you do," I said as I noticed her little gold cross on its chain.
She looked at me for a moment, smiling. She knew I was trying to finesse the issue, I could tell.
"Good answer," she said before thanking me and walking away.
That's my instructive parable. The argument ends when everybody decides to stop arguing.
But don't go so far as to reject faith as worthless. Our moral foundations are based on faith. We cannot prove the inherent worth of a human being, but my faith in that worth is unwavering and it forms the basis for my morality.
-Anthony Mannucci
Are Miracles Really Possible? 3 Common Objections
OBJECTION 1: Miracles are impossible because they violate the laws of nature.
Our understanding of the laws of nature is based on what scientists have observed happening in the natural world around us. However, those laws are similar to the grammar rules for a language—there may be some exceptions to the rule.Our understanding of these “rules” may, in fact, be very limited. (Job 38:4)
A dedicated scientist may have spent a lifetime studying a certain law of nature. But all it takes is one "exception” for him to have to reevaluate his understanding of that law.
As the saying goes, “Just one black swan undoes the theory that all swans are white.”
PDF Download:
http://download.jw.org/files/media_magazines/wp_E_20120801.pdf
Online Magazine:
http://www.youblisher.com/p/350148-MIRACLES-do-they-really-happen/
Is Induced Rectal Cancer Possible? 3 Common Objections
OBJECTION 1: Religiously induced cancers are impossible because they violate the laws of nature.
Our understanding of the laws of nature is based on what scientists have observed happening in the natural world around us. However, those laws are similar to the grammar rules for a language—there may be some exceptions to the rule. Our understanding of these “rules” may, in fact, be very limited.
A dedicated scientist may have spent a lifetime studying a certain law of nature. But all it takes is one "exception” for him to have to reevaluate his understanding of that law.
As the saying goes, “Just one black swan undoes the theory that all swans are white.”
darn those jehovahs witnesses! like it wasn't bad enough that they're always knocking at my door...
Religion deals with things unobservable and Science deals with things observable. The only way a conflict could happen is if one tried to answer something that is in the others domain.
"I find my appreciation of science is greatly enriched by religion," says Francis Collins, a molecular biologist. He continues: "When I discover something about the human genome, I experience a sense of awe at the mystery of life, and say to myself, 'Wow, only God knew before.' It is a profoundly beautiful and moving sensation, which helps me appreciate God and makes science even more rewarding for me."
What will help one to reconcile science and religion?
Are Science and the Bible Compatible?
http://www.watchtower.org/e/201102c/article_01.htm
Does Science Contradict the Genesis Account?
http://www.watchtower.org/e/200609a/article_01.htm
RECONCILING Science and Religion
http://www.watchtower.org/e/20020608/article_01.htm
Yes, that the rub. The question is not does God exist, but rather is God a mindless causal mechanism or some intelligent agent causally preceding physical reality. Remember that intelligent agents, from everything we know scientifically, seem to be immaterial representations that the brain creates to deal with mindless causal mechanisms.
-Anthony Mannucci
understand that I do not use a connotative of opinion, I use it literally.
Definition of OPINION
1: a view, judgment, or appraisal formed in the mind about a particular matter
2: belief stronger than impression and less strong than positive knowledge
There is more proof for Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy than there is for God.
So what are we if there is no God? The natural evolution of hydrogen that arrives at a point of such complexity it starts to ask where it came from.