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August 16, 2010 7:00am by David Farrar

Wonderful poll graph

Of all the topics, this poll graph would be for same sex marriage – hilarious 🙂

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Comments (73)

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Pete George

It looks like Favour and Oppose have come together in unison.

This is for a presumably far more conservative USA, where about the same % that oppose same sex marriage still believe in creation.
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August 16, 2010 7:15am
tom hunter

….. and in Obama!

Strange days.
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August 16, 2010 7:21am
Guy Fawkes

If it looks like a cock, moves like a cock………….
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August 16, 2010 7:50am
expat

I was going to make a double-entendre type comment but any more now just looks a bit too happy.
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August 16, 2010 7:58am
dad4justice

“about the same % that oppose same sex marriage still believe in creation.”

Another snide comment from the useless parasitic communist blogger wanking on under the name of pete george. Who is this deranged creep? Have another weetbix you pathetic gripper.

[DPF: 20 demerits]
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August 16, 2010 7:59am
andrei

Well Dad,
Pete George is one of those idiots that think gender is a “social construct” and that there is no real difference between men and women despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

So overwhelming is the evidence that even two year olds can pick it, they have to be taught otherwise starting in kindergarten.
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August 16, 2010 8:03am
JC

I liked one of the comments at the URL:

“Farily (sic) sensitive at the endpoint.”

JC
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August 16, 2010 8:10am
Guy Fawkes

Wonder if that tabulation will be useful in helping researchers discharge their duties.
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August 16, 2010 8:14am
Viking2

D$J. you need help.
Go drown a cattle beast.
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August 16, 2010 8:17am
Pete George

d4j, there is a likely correlation between those believing in creation and those against same sex marriages.

andrei, you are making things up. I don’t think gender is a “social construct”, nor do I think there is no real difference between men and women, that’s a pathetic assertion.

Why don’t you try talking to the topic instead of making stupid comments that make you look like a dick (I won’t go as far as the other gender on that).
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August 16, 2010 8:19am
Jibbering Gibbon

Andrei @ 8:03am, please explain?

I was under the impression that gender was a social construct – the roles expected/accepted of either men or women and that sex was the natural roles assigned to male/female. You won’t get a male mensturating (sex assigned role) but you may find that a society thinks a man wearing make-up is acceptable (gender related role) or that women wearing trousers or smoking is ok (again, gender related role).

Some of NZ’s expected gender roles for males are robust physical appearance, occasional eagerness to be drunk, casual dress, straight-up style of talk, interest in contact sports esp. rugby, no real understanding of emotional issues. In the case of metro-sexuals, it is just appearance variances that are more or less acceptable depending on local culture. Emotional roles stays the same. For women it might be fragile femininity, excessive emotional reactions, submission to male force. Could even be the opposite (as long as it’s traditional/US fashion magazine style feminine) e.g. a power dressing, corporate type. Any deviation from these roles moves the subject towards either being “a bit gay” (men) or “butch” (women). Aren’t these socially arranged – and completely ludricrous – gender roles?
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August 16, 2010 8:20am
dad4justice

“likely correlation”

In other words it’s another pete george blog lie.

Viking2 – go mooo a stew.
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August 16, 2010 8:32am
Guy Fawkes

I just want to say that I really like plotting, and Graphs.
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August 16, 2010 8:34am
Pete George

d4j, it’s a fact that religious people believe in creation, it’s a part of their beliefs. Also a fact is that a part of the beliefs of many religious people is their disapproval of homosexuality, therefore they will likely be against same sex marriage.

It doesn’t take much common sense to see the correlation. Have you got any? You don’t need to answer that, all you seem to want to do is pick fights with bullshit and bluster.
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August 16, 2010 8:38am
dad4justice

Oh petey please I don’t “fight” no more. I can debate but the thought of a wasted day debating with you makes me think I rather go muck out the hog pen. Get my drift. Goodbye.
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August 16, 2010 9:08am
Kris K

I always thought there were only three gender types:
• Male
• Female
• and those confused by all the progressive/homosexual lobby BS.
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August 16, 2010 9:53am
pedrogarcia

Kris K – male and female denote sex, not gender. I learned this in primary school. Just go away unless you know some things.
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August 16, 2010 10:06am
queenstfarmer

That chart gives “taking a poll” a different meaning 🙂
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August 16, 2010 10:07am
andrei

male and female denote sex, not gender. I learned this in primary school. Just go away unless you know some things.

See Pete George – the lunatics have taken over the asylum and are teaching our children utter crap in order to advance their satanic agendas.

Funny thing about people who are destined for hell, they want to drag as many as possible with along them.
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August 16, 2010 10:17am
Don the Kiwi

Go back to primary school pedro.

Male and female “are” genders.
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August 16, 2010 10:30am
pedrogarcia

Are you people for real? Sex = male and female Gender = masculine / feminine
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August 16, 2010 10:42am
Pete George

Classic, andrei accusing me of having a satanic agenda, suggesting I’m “destined for hell”, who recently posted “If you weren’t a scientific illiterate”.
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August 16, 2010 10:43am
Kris K

pedrogarcia 10:06 am,

… so Pedro obviously falls into my “3rd Gender” classification.
Just another by-product of the progressive/socialist Edjukashon System with zero ability to distinguish between truth and propaganda. Thanks for proving my point.
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August 16, 2010 10:53am
andrei

I didn’t say you were destined for hell Pete George or even suggest it.

Rather I was referring to Matthew 18:6 in the context of what might be being taught in schools

6 But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.

Science and religious belief are not mutually exclusive.
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August 16, 2010 10:58am
MikeNZ

Design boys design, didn’t they teach you anything at primary school 🙂

Gender = male or female (unless the progressives say otherwise then it can be whatever construct them deem, which is what they do). (Transgender is a social/pscho construct).

It doesn’t change design though does it.
Unless you apply a butcher (sorry surgeon) to the perceived issue.
But then we move to the DNA as the Olympics do.

What the chart does show us and increase in people being taught improperly or they have poor thinking skills.

Unless you bring morals into it, which comes from worldview, values and ethos and then the additional answer can be a increased loosening of morals within a society.

This can be read as either a coalescing of values or a fragmenting of society from the norm.
therein lies the hell as andrei so succinctly put it.
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August 16, 2010 10:59am
Kris K

pedrogarcia 10:42 am,

Are you people for real? Sex = male and female Gender = masculine / feminine

Pedro, my boy – If someone asks you what gender you are, do you answer, “Male” or “Masculine”? I think most people would respond with the former.

Mind you, you’d probably respond with something like, “Metro-masculine”. 😳
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August 16, 2010 11:00am
pedrogarcia

I guess you were home schooled? I’ve never heard of a ‘single-gender school’, or ‘same-gender marriage’. This is because sex and gender are not the same. But why argue the point with someone who probably learned all he knows about this ‘down on the farm’?
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August 16, 2010 11:03am
MikeNZ

Andrei

I’ve never been able to get my head around that one, what can be worse than being thrown into the deepest part of the sea attached to a ton weight?

Based on my reading of Pete, I would say in the traditional Christian sense that he is going to hell.

So is much of our society as the graph shows, for if they are so offline with the (Judeo/Christian) Creator in this, the very basis He set up the Human race.
It makes sense that they would probably be antagonistic towards Him per se and therefore not likely to want to spend eternity with Him.

What does the design say lads?
mikenz
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August 16, 2010 11:05am
MikeNZ

where has my name gone?
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August 16, 2010 11:07am
Kris K

pedrogarcia 11:03 am,

I guess you were home schooled? I’ve never heard of a ‘single-gender school’, or ‘same-gender marriage’.

… another sad indictment of these products of progressive/socialist conditioning is that they don’t even recognise when they’ve lost the argument – they just keep on hammering away in the hope that if they say something often enough people will eventually accept it as fact.

Lucky many of us have an advocate who leads us into all truth, and has given us an extremely accurate and inbuilt BS meter. And I’m sensing some serious BS …
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August 16, 2010 11:23am
RRM

Almost didn’t bother reading this post, from the title I assumed it would be a graph confirming what we all wanted to believe about the further demise of Labour in the current polls. I of so very little faith.
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August 16, 2010 11:34am
questlove

Good to see evidence that outdated beliefs aren’t surviving.
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August 16, 2010 11:51am
labrator

I love how a post tagged only with “humour” turns in to a quasi-religious “we know better than you, you’re all going to hell” slanging match. What a bunch of kill joys, no wonder any time I mention KiwiBlog people think I’m crazy for reading it.
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August 16, 2010 12:06pm
Chthoniid

@andrei

Science and religious belief are not mutually exclusive.

Is this the humour part of the thread?
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August 16, 2010 12:10pm
RRM

^^^ I know a couple of believers, he has a Ph.D in Zoology and she has an Ms.C in Botany.
I’ve never really asked them how they reconciled their belief in the creation with their studies, maybe I should.
Like most of the better christians they welcome everyone into their house, not feeling any need to preach hellfire gospel to unbelievers like me.

Unfortunately many believers on these threads are not out of the same mould…
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August 16, 2010 12:17pm
F E Smith

“I guess you were home schooled?”

What is wrong with home schooling? I have known some very fine home schooled kids.
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August 16, 2010 12:24pm
Chthoniid

@RRM

I imagine something along the lines of Gould’s non-overlapping magisteria likely operates.
Nonetheless, the trend is for science to be increasingly dominated by people of non-theistic beliefs. E.g. the 1998 Nature survey showed that theistic belief had dropped to around 7% of top scientists from about the 25-30% earlier in the century. It’s even lower amongst top biologists.

There is certainly something about science that makes religious belief very difficult to operate alongside.
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August 16, 2010 12:25pm
andrei

Nature survey showed that theistic belief had dropped to around 7% of top scientists from about the 25-30% earlier in the century

What defines a top scientist Chthoniid? Being celebrated in the here and now does not equate to being a top scientist as far as posterity goes.

Two names who were unquestionably top scientists would be Gregor Mendel an Augustinian Monk
and
James Clerk Maxwell an evangelical and one of the greatest scientific minds of all time.
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August 16, 2010 12:36pm
eszett

And both are very dead, andrei.
Is this the best you can do? No contemporary ones that accommodate the scientific advances made in 100+ years since they died?
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August 16, 2010 12:45pm
Chthoniid

Published scientific records suffice @andrei You can consult the Nature paper for the results.

In terms of Mendel, please. The guy fudged his results to get the outcomes he reported. And his model was wrong- it took the work of Fisher to synthesize it into modern genetics in the 1930s using statistical techniques.

You’re also not making a substantive point. You’re not going to refute a trend or the fact that most of the scientific community operates outside a religious framework with a few anecdotes. Maxwell is a rather old exception, that is all.
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August 16, 2010 12:46pm
eszett

Funny thing about people who are destined for hell, they want to drag as many as possible with along them.

and

Science and religious belief are not mutually exclusive.

Yeah, right!
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August 16, 2010 12:48pm
Fot

Dad4Justice – 1 week until 25 October 2007 and 2 weeks until 22/12/07 and one month until 12/2/08 and two months until 9 September 2008 and four months until 9 September 2009

And 20 more demerits earns us all an eight month holiday 🙂
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August 16, 2010 12:59pm
Kris K

RRM 12:17 pm,

^^^ I know a couple of believers, he has a Ph.D in Zoology and she has an Ms.C in Botany.
I’ve never really asked them how they reconciled their belief in the creation with their studies, maybe I should.
Like most of the better christians they welcome everyone into their house, not feeling any need to preach hellfire gospel to unbelievers like me.

Unfortunately many believers on these threads are not out of the same mould…

Doesn’t mean we don’t love you, RRM – genuine love shares the truth …
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August 16, 2010 1:18pm
andrei

Published scientific records suffice

You know as well as I do the vast majority of Published scientific records are dross.

At the end of the day some people just churn papers of little to no significance out – over 70% of published papers are shown to be wrong within 5 years of publication and some which are wrong are never shown to be because nobody even has read them apart from the authors and referees (maybe not even them).

The wonderful, seminal papers that mark out their authors as a top scientist are rare beasts indeed.
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August 16, 2010 1:19pm
Chthoniid

@andrei

You know as well as I do the vast majority of Published scientific records are dross.

Actually I don’t. Evidence for this claim please.

At the end of the day some people just churn papers of little to no significance out – over 70% of published papers are shown to be wrong within 5 years of publication

Evidence of this 70% please.

Look andrei, it’s obvious this is a cheap rhetorical flourish on your part. Science is increasingly undertaken by people of non-theistic views and this has been going on for decades. Actual theists are in the distinct minority.

If you think that a man lived in a fish for 3 days, or there is a hell, or that demons cause disease, chances are you’re not going to be a top scientist. Such beliefs are inimical to the skepticism and evidentiary-based testing of science.
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August 16, 2010 1:34pm
MikeNZ

There is certainly something about science that makes religious belief very difficult to operate alongside.
Yeah maybe in modern American academia as it seems the aggressive secular and toxic environment towards people of faith grows unabated.

Does this refer to only those in academia or all science incl medical & engineering?
What is the definition.

Not sure that’s true in posterity though
http://www.adherents.com/people/100_scientists.html
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August 16, 2010 1:44pm
Chthoniid

part of the abstract of the 1998 Nature paper
Sir — The question of religious belief among US scientists has been debated since early in the century. Our latest survey finds that, among the top natural scientists, disbelief is greater than ever — almost total.

Research on this topic began with the eminent US psychologist James H. Leuba and his landmark survey of 1914. He found that 58% of 1,000 randomly selected US scientists expressed disbelief or doubt in the existence of God, and that this figure rose to near 70% among the 400 “greater” scientists within his sample [1]. Leuba repeated his survey in somewhat different form 20 years later, and found that these percentages had increased to 67 and 85, respectively [2].

In 1996, we repeated Leuba’s 1914 survey and reported our results in Nature [3]. We found little change from 1914 for American scientists generally, with 60.7% expressing disbelief or doubt. This year, we closely imitated the second phase of Leuba’s 1914 survey to gauge belief among “greater” scientists, and find the rate of belief lower than ever — a mere 7% of respondents.

etc
—

Scientific knowledge and understanding is increasingly, something inimical to religious beliefs
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August 16, 2010 1:53pm
MikeNZ

It all goes to show we will all spend eternity with our gods.
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August 16, 2010 1:56pm
Fletch

As far as believers being scientists, scientist Francis Collins, who lead the team that mapped the human genome says –

Actually, I find no conflict [in being both a scientist and a believer], and neither apparently do the 40 percent of working scientists who claim to be believers.

You may be interested to know that according to author Rodney Stark, most of the top scientists in history were Christian –

Sociologist of religion Rodney Stark identified the 52 figures who made the most significant contributions to the scientific revolution, then researched biographical sources to discover their religious views. He found that among the top contributors to science, surprisingly only two were skeptics (Paracelsus and Edmund Halley).

Stark then subdivided his subjects once again into those who were “conventional” in their religious views (that is, their writings exhibit the conventional religious views of the time), and those who were “devout” (their writings express a strong personal investment). The resulting numbers show that more than 60 percent of those who jumpstarted the scientific revolution were religiously “devout.”[8] Clearly, holding a Christian worldview posed no barrier to doing excellent scientific work, and even seems to have provided a positive inspiration.

If you want a person-by-person view, Dave Armstrong has done a review of scientists through history in a series of posts.
THIS one links to “67 Catholic, Protestant and Otherwise Religious Prominent Scientists: 1500-1700 (From Copernicus to Steno, Boyle, and Ray)”

Below is the whole list of posts he is working on (the links which you can find in my previous link).

I. Christianity’s Central Role in the Conception and Development of Modern Science: Hundreds of Historical Facts Documented (Intro. & Table of Contents)

II. Fertile Soil and Roots of Modern Science: 33 Prominent Christians Prior to 1000 A. D. With Empiricist, Proto-Scientific Views

III. 59 Catholic Medieval and/or Scholastic Proto-Scientists From 1000 to 1500 A. D.

IV. 67 Catholic, Protestant and Otherwise Religious Prominent Scientists: 1500-1700 (From Copernicus to Steno, Boyle, and Ray)

V. ### Catholic, Protestant and Otherwise Religious Prominent Scientists: 1700-1800 (From Newton to Linnaeus, Boscovich, and Lavoisier)

VI. ### Catholic, Protestant and Otherwise Religious Prominent Scientists: 1800-1900 (From Faraday to Maxwell, Kelvin, and Mendel)

VII. ### Catholic, Protestant and Otherwise Religious Prominent Scientists: 1900-1950 (From Einstein to Planck, Eddington, and Lemaître)

VIII. Surveys of Current Religious Beliefs of Scientists / Christian Influence on Science: Master List of Scores of Bibliographical and Internet Resources
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August 16, 2010 2:17pm
Fletch

A snippet from Dave Armstrong from the VIII section of current beliefs of scientists –

Surveys of Current Religious Beliefs of Scientists

A survey of scientists who are members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press in May and June 2009, . . . [found that] just over half of scientists (51%) believe in some form of deity or higher power; specifically, 33% of scientists say they believe in God, while 18% believe in a universal spirit or higher power [21% Protestant, including 4% evangelical, 10% Catholic]. . . . Edward Larson, a historian of science then teaching at the University of Georgia, . . . [in a] 1996 poll came up with similar results, finding that 40% of scientists believed in a personal God, while 45% said they did not. Other surveys of scientists have yielded roughly similar results. 17% said they were atheists; 11% agnostics, and 20%, of no particular affiliation. The AAAS is the world’s largest general scientific society. The survey was conducted among a sample of 2,533 members. [source: The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life]

The first study of physician religious beliefs has found that 76 percent of doctors believe in God and 59 percent believe in some sort of afterlife. The survey, performed by researchers at the University and published in the July issue of the Journal of General Internal Medicine, found that 90 percent of doctors in the United States attend religious services at least occasionally, compared to 81 percent of all adults. Fifty-five percent of doctors say their religious beliefs influence how they practice medicine. These results were not anticipated. Religious belief tends to decrease as education and income levels increase, yet doctors are highly educated and, on average, well compensated. [source: Easton]
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August 16, 2010 2:22pm
Chthoniid

Yes, Francis Collins remains a committed Xtian. Does not change the trend. Most US biologists are not Xtian or have theistic beliefs

The historical antecedents of science don’t show that Xtianity is good for science, merely that the predominant culture in Europe in that those periods was based on it. You can’t operate easily outside your culture.

Besides which, in times when blasphemy and heresy could be punished severely by the Xtians, you can’t expect free-thinkers to be musing their doubts about the absurdities of religion so openly.

The 20th C- and especially the postwar period- has been one of unprecedented scientific progress. And the basis of that are people operating outside a religious framework.
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August 16, 2010 2:37pm
Fletch

Chthoniid, I thought I had covered that already –

Stark then subdivided his subjects once again into those who were “conventional” in their religious views (that is, their writings exhibit the conventional religious views of the time), and those who were “devout” (their writings express a strong personal investment). The resulting numbers show that more than 60 percent of those who jumpstarted the scientific revolution were religiously “devout.”

It is also a fact that highly religious people, like the Jesuits and priests, were great discoverers in the field of science.
In fact, it would not be presumptuous to say that if it weren’t for these people, there would be no science as we know it today.

It is all very well to point out that important scientists, like Louis Pasteur, have been Catholic. More revealing is how many priests have distinguished themselves in the sciences. It turns out, for instance, that the first person to measure the rate of acceleration of a freely falling body was Fr. Giambattista Riccioli. The man who has been called the father of Egyptology was Fr. Athanasius Kircher (also called “master of a hundred arts” for the breadth of his knowledge). Fr. Roger Boscovich, who has been described as “the greatest genius that Yugoslavia ever produced,” has often been called the father of modern atomic theory.

In the sciences it was the Jesuits in particular who distinguished themselves; some 35 craters on the moon, in fact, are named after Jesuit scientists and mathematicians.

By the eighteenth century, the Jesuits

had contributed to the development of pendulum clocks, pantographs, barometers, reflecting telescopes and microscopes, to scientific fields as various as magnetism, optics and electricity. They observed, in some cases before anyone else, the colored bands on Jupiter’s surface, the Andromeda nebula and Saturn’s rings. They theorized about the circulation of the blood (independently of Harvey), the theoretical possibility of flight, the way the moon effected the tides, and the wave-like nature of light. Star maps of the southern hemisphere, symbolic logic, flood-control measures on the Po and Adige rivers, introducing plus and minus signs into Italian mathematics – all were typical Jesuit achievements, and scientists as influential as Fermat, Huygens, Leibniz and Newton were not alone in counting Jesuits among their most prized correspondents [Jonathan Wright, The Jesuits, 2004, p. 189].
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August 16, 2010 2:54pm
Chthoniid

@Fletch

It’s based on the fallacious point of view that an historical correlation- within the predominant culture of the time- shows that there was causality. This causality can be doubted given that so much contemporary science is done outside a religious framework. We have given up our faith in droves and the science has accelerated.

The simple fact is that it has been those in religious authority who have consistently opposed the scientific advancements in astronomy, geology and biology. They have done so, not on the basis of scientific reasoning but with conflict with scriptures.

Today there is no better example of the type of pseudoscience, the corruption of scientific method, the dissembling of untruths, than creationists. That is the legacy of religion asserting that it does have a role in science, that it is a source of knowledge.

The champions of religion mixing with science today aren’t the Collins. They’re the Hovinds and their ilk. People who are wiling to deny the existence of transitional fossils, willing to corrupt the geological evidence to assert the world is but 6-10,000 years old. That is the actual residue of religious beliefs interacting with science- intellectual and moral bankruptcy and the denial of scientific discovery.

That is why science and religion are inimical.
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August 16, 2010 4:04pm
andrei

FFS Chthoniid;
What about the corruption of science by politics – that has done far more harm to science than religion ever has.

We have a bunch of third rate, at best, scientists blathering on about global warming.

God alone knows how many of these non entities are employed by governments in environmental science, dietary science and medical science.

Hell this thread in part involves the pseudo science of sociology.
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August 16, 2010 4:12pm
Chthoniid

That’s not germane to the point under discussion here.

I note you have still failed to substantiate your points about most published scientific research being dross or that 70% of it is invalidated inside 5 years.

There is a straightforward claim made by some theists here (whom as far as I can tell, are not members of the scientific community), that religious beliefs and science are in some sense, complementary or not in conflict. My view is that this is complete bullshit. A perfect counter-example is the reactionary Creationist movement.

I listen to religious claims about the world, the meaning of life etc and practically piss myself in laughter. You’re supposed to be intelligent, educated people- yet somehow some bronze-age shepherds made up all this shit about how the world worked, and you think they had a mainline to some higher-power. And you know it’s all true because the voices in your heads confirm it.

Science begins with skepticism. Religion begins with indoctrination and blind faith. They’re not complementary.
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August 16, 2010 4:58pm
andrei

Citation: Ioannidis JPA (2005) Why most published research findings are false. PLoS Med 2(8): e124.

Why Most Published Research Findings Are False

A more picturesque statement of this is Sturgeon’s law but it does not have the intellectual rigor of this paper
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August 16, 2010 5:04pm
RightNow

I wonder what shape will it continue on to be? Perhaps it will make little tadpole shapes next?
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August 16, 2010 5:07pm
Chthoniid

rofl! oh, Andrei, that’s referring to just statistical testing and emphasises medical research, and the problem of false-positives. It’s not generalisable to all scientific papers and certainly not to scientific methodologies that are independent of statistical testing.

That would be a gross misrepresentation on your part then.
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August 16, 2010 5:12pm
Don the Kiwi

Chthoniid.

You should not brand all “religionists” as creationists.
I would suggest that the vast majority of christians do not believe in a 6 – 10,000 yr. old earth. Most accept the evidence of fossils etc, and recognise that the earth is billions of years old.

It was a Catholic priest, George le Maitre who is the father of the Big Bang theory.
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August 16, 2010 5:12pm
Chthoniid

@Don the Kiwi

You’re right & I accept that.

Nonetheless, if people are going to invoke some Christian scientists as exemplars of how science and religion can be reconciled, I am going to have to mention modern creationists.

And the reality is that the significant percentage of Xtians and Muslims who reject evolution, do so on the basis of religious assertions about the science. I don’t think it is easy to escape this issue that there is for many religionists, no easy way to combine faith with science.
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August 16, 2010 5:22pm
andrei

That would be a gross misrepresentation on your part then.

Not at all Chthoniid, that result generalizes to Sturgeon’s law – 95% of everything is crud.

Everybody brings to their studies their own prejudices and biases.

Hell the gay ornithologist sees nesting behavior by two unpaired male penguins and sees gayness.

Whenever you do an experiment you have an idea how you want it to come out – it is easy to make it seem as though it supports whatever you desire.

Happens all the time – Science isn’t truth with a capital T – it is just a succession of intellectual models which remain valid just as long as they stay useful and then are either modified or scrapped entirely when they no longer work.

Is an electron a wave or a particle Chthoniid?
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August 16, 2010 5:29pm
Pete George

You can’t escape the fact that as more and more science becomes known and accepted it gets harder to support a belief in creation. The smarter Christians reconcile their faith by pushing the God influence to prior to when anything becomes scientifically provable. Science keeps pushing this threshold further out.

Like everything else religion will continue to evolve, except for a few who cling to the word cast into stone – and not believing in erosion.
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August 16, 2010 5:40pm
andrei

You can’t escape the fact that as more and more science becomes known and accepted it gets harder to support a belief in creation.

Not at all Pete George, the currently accepted view of the Big Bang has of necessity a moment of creation before which there was nothing, nothing at all.

It all sounds suspiciously like And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
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August 16, 2010 5:49pm
Lucia Maria

Cuthbert (Chthoniid),

I’m going to have to call you Cuthbert, as I can’t type out your random collection of letters every single time I address you. It’s painful. So, I hope you don’t mind too much. Feel free to give me another name, but until I get one, I’ll use Cuthbert.

It’s based on the fallacious point of view that an historical correlation- within the predominant culture of the time- shows that there was causality.

Christianity is the only framework that science could possibly develop within. This is because Christianity teaches that the universe is knowable and predictable, created by a loving God. Pagans didn’t have such a view.

The simple fact is that it has been those in religious authority who have consistently opposed the scientific advancements in astronomy, geology and biology. They have done so, not on the basis of scientific reasoning but with conflict with scriptures.

You must give examples. Outside of the one we all get beaten with repeatedly, ie Galileo. Who only got into trouble with the Church of the time because he refused to teach his theories as only that. He wanted to teach them as fact, when they could not yet be proved. Beyond him, how many others do you have. I bet there are far less that were opposed than there are who made the most amazing scientific discoveries and were supported by the Church.
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August 16, 2010 5:53pm
Pete George

That’s what I was meaning Andrei, science has no answer so that point in time is open to any claim.
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August 16, 2010 5:57pm
Chthoniid

Actually Big Bang Theory does not imply a moment before the expansion of the Universe. The time-space dimension emerges out of it. It is not possible to talk of a time before the trigger, as time is a consequence of the expansion of the singularity. There are a number of natural explanations that would cause such an event to occur within a singularity, with a quantum fluctuation looking pretty good. The evidence for a deistic trigger still stacks up as zero. Just more theist bullshit trying to make a first-mover cosmological argument.

In terms of the Church, FFS- most of medieval and early Renaissance science was lifted straight out of the pagan Aristotle. There’s no unique feature of Xtianity. Only Xtianity saw the inquisition as part of the scientific process.

If you want a catalogue of Chruch opposition to science, then you only have to go back a few years from Galileo to look at the execution of Bruno for heresy (charges including his cosmological views). Christian opposition to Lyell’s “Principles of Geology” and Darwins “Origin of the Species” is also well known. Likewise the Church’s suppression of de Chardin’s work on human evolution.

That you have such a distrust of science @andrei makes my point perfectly. Religion and science is at a fundamental level, irreconcilable.
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August 16, 2010 6:15pm
andrei

I was careless to use the word “before” in the context of the big bang Chthoniid – I admit the error of my ways because I understand fully there was no “before” – it was sloppyness on my part.

I don’t distrust science either. I just keep it in its place as science and not a religion which is what it becomes in the way you express it.

Many years ago I was given a wonderful paper to read – it won a prize back in 1904. It was an elegant mathematical description of the Luminiferous aether. A tour de force in its time.

By the end of 1905 it was …….?
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August 16, 2010 6:30pm
eszett

Christianity is the only framework that science could possibly develop within. This is because Christianity teaches that the universe is knowable and predictable, created by a loving God. Pagans didn’t have such a view.

There were huge scientific advances before christianity ever came onto the scene. Just look at the Geeks and Egyptians. The catholic church prevented any scientific advances that would threaten church dogma or power. The dark ages are a direct result of church dogma.

Scientific advances were made despite christianity. To claim science as something “christian” is dishonest and insulting to all those scientists who suffered from such oppression.

Nor is christianity alone, any religion will resist any science that is in contradiction to it’s teaching.

The only way to reconcile religion and science is to abondon or adjust the religious teachings where they contradict science, but that’s not really reconcilliation.

In that sense science is driving religion and not the other way around.

As Don pointed out, most Christians accept the age of the earth and evolution as a fact and try and wrap their religious beliefs around that, rather than deny the facts.
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August 16, 2010 6:32pm
Chthoniid

Nope, I don’t use science as a religion @andrei It’s simply a discovery process, self-correcting, of finding out how the world works. I prefer it because it works. Oh, & other species do exhibit homosexual behaviours, it’s not a pre-requisite to be a gay biologist to see this.

I’m contesting the assertion that I would be a better scientist (or at least, could reconcile science & religion) if I believed a man lived in a fish for 3 days or was able to walk on water.
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August 16, 2010 6:43pm
Jibbering Gibbon

Just look at the Geeks and Egyptians…

I looked at a geek once. I swear my brain expanded before I could shift my gaze. Maybe it wasn’t my brain. She was a very sexy geek.
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August 16, 2010 6:44pm
Lucia Maria

Jibbering Gibbon,

I don’t know why, but your last comment seriously cracked me up. Totally lightened the mood.
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August 16, 2010 6:58pm
chiz

chthoniid:Actually Big Bang Theory does not imply a moment before the expansion of the Universe. The time-space dimension emerges out of it. It is not possible to talk of a time before the trigger, as time is a consequence of the expansion of the singularity.

On a minor note of pedantry it is in fact possible to talk of time before the big bang. Some people do in fact posit that time itself began at the big bang and that it is therefore meaningless to talk of anything before it but this position isn’t universal and there are scenarios – such as the ekpyrotic theory, or suggestions that the universe began as a quantum fluctuation – that require time and some sort of space to be present beforehand.
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August 16, 2010 7:45pm
MikeNZ

I’m contesting the assertion that I would be a better scientist (or at least, could reconcile science & religion) if I believed a man lived in a fish for 3 days or was able to walk on water.

This might be very true.
However if you did walk on water I think you might change your view 🙂
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August 17, 2010 9:20am

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