Bright flash of light as life begins.

[Skybird]

I agree on that certainties are hard to know in science, though on more profane issues you cannot deny them - Newtonian physics ruling billiards, for example. What Rockin Robbins and Sailor Steve express in doubts on general validity of maths, I would say about philosophy in general - it all is speculation only, to give us the comfortable illusion opf being able to understand and master the chaos this world confronts us with, and the unpredictability of events making us fear afraid of our future. We probably are in exitstential need of living by such self-made self-deceptions and illusions, else despair might overwhelm us. Saying that as an ex-psychologist. I might disagree with the content of religions (or mphilosophies), but I certainly absolutely can understand the attractiveness of them and why maybe they even serve a need in man craving for being reassured that he is not lost and at random mercy in this chaotic, non- controllable chaos of a world. "Wer ein Warum zum Leben hat, erträgt fast jedes Wie", wrote Viktor Frankl, survivor of the KZ and later founder of the logotherapy-school of psychotherapy (He who has a Why to live for, can bear almost every How).

Krauss admits that the natural laws we know, might be not founded on the universe's traits and characteristics, but may be random generations, and can be totally different in other universe - even in different corners of this our own universe we happen to exist in. If so, same might be true for maths. But as I said earlier, science is not so much about discovering absolutes, but allowing us pragmatically making sense of our conditions of existence, and to address the needs of our life by inventing new things helping us, from medicine to technology, agricultural approvments to space travel. Its without doubt the most potent intellectual tool mankind ever invented. Its claims always are preliminary, are theories. Theories get chnaged or replaced with ebtter once, if they fail to pass verification and retest. this is the essence of science, theory-building and testing them. Absolute truths are not science's business. Other schools, namely religions, claim to know them - without caring to ever give evidence, however. And to me, science always means that man creates the order and systematic hierarchy that he uses to sort his observations and results. "Die Wirklichkeit wird weniger von unsgefunden als vielmehr von unserfunden", said Paul Watzlawick: reality does not so much get discovered by us, but gets more like invented.

[Rockin Robbins]

I would go so far as to say that religion is as much a necessary nutrient for human life as oxygen and food. We have no choice of whether we will have religion in our lives. We only have a choice of what we will worship.

This leads directly to the worship of mathematics, or material wealth, or athletic achievement, power over other people, certain other people.....the list is endless. All those needs are irrational, and I agree that irrationality is a necessary component of life, and reality itself.

There is no reason that the speed of light should be exactly what it is, for instance. It doesn't seem rational that only one value (in a vacuum--light does change speeds in different mediums) is possible. It doesn't seem fair in an "everything is possible" universe that if you do jump off that 1000' cliff you will impact the ground on the bottom of that cliff and will die. Surely the universe should have more fairness than that. What about those who fall by accident? The universe is arbitrary and irrational.

Why should we be surprised if irrationality is a basic constituent of humanity?

[Aktungbby]

Originally Posted by Rockstar

Thanks to the brains and imagination of man his math and theory time is seen as something relative to ones frame of reference. .

Let's leave relative out of it BBY!

A happy man is too satisfied with the present to dwell too much on the future.

I am convinced that when my homo-sapient ride on a spinning 1000 mph mudball; circumnavigating a sun; in a spinning galaxy; in an expanding universe is blessedly over...all will B manifestly made clear on a 'need 2 know' basis...

[vienna]

Bright flash of light? Aw, that's just the little swimmer having an after-ciggie...



<O>

Originally Posted by Rockin Robbins

I would go so far as to say that religion is as much a necessary nutrient for human life as oxygen and food. We have no choice of whether we will have religion in our lives. We only have a choice of what we will worship.
...

Speak for yourself. I have no religion, and worship no imaginary beings, or anything else.. And I am very much alive without any of this.

[Aktungbby]

Originally Posted by vienna

Bright flash of light? Aw, that's just the little swimmer having an after-ciggie...



<O>

We are in god's image: = really a celestial 'brainfart'! @ AndyJ: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Man_factor

And I am very much alive without any of this.

I completely agree with your lack of a 'coping bicameral mechanism'

[Platapus]

Scientists don't have a problem claiming that "we just don't know... yet".

Religious leaders have more of a problem which may explain the fall back position of "the [deity of choice] works in mysterious ways, but we should just trust that it will work out."

If the answer is "god's will"; where is the motivation to further attempt to find an answer?

The essence of science is accepting not knowing but at the same time being motivated to find the solution... even it it takes thousands of years.

Science continues to make discoveries/generate explanations because we don't know and it bugs us that we don't know.

[Aktungbby]

Originally Posted by Platapus

If the answer is "god's will"; where is the motivation to further attempt to find an answer?

Well, 72 virgins seems a good motivation lately these days!

[vienna]

Science also has the distinction of being the only discipline when, even if it is apparent the answer is "known", every effort is made to disprove the "knowledge"; it is in this way science strives for the most extreme accuracy possible, something, again, not seen in other disciplines. The concept of contradiction is anathema to science and is attacked at every instance; something, again, not seen in other disciplines. It is the blind acceptance of "knowledge" based on a bed of contradictions that has caused so much of the miseries in world history -- I cannot recall there ever being a war fought over a difference in scientific views...


<O>

[Rockin Robbins]

Originally Posted by AndyJWest

Speak for yourself. I have no religion, and worship no imaginary beings, or anything else.. And I am very much alive without any of this.

Okay, so you have faith in yourself, worship yourself and have an irrational belief in your own self-sufficiency.

Even science is irrational. It believes it can understand everything and that there is nothing that science is not the best investigative tool. But science has an end, which is when it runs out of evidence.

We have no evidence for why the gravitational constant is what it is, or why Avagadro's number of molecules equals one gram (although we occasionally refine both constants). Science clusters around a group of indefinable constants, which stand alone with no explanation, no derivation, no history, no reason for being. And these constants are truly discovered. They are not made.

Cosmology has ceased to be a science and is nothing but a religion wearing scientific terminology and mathematics now. It is a faith in things for which there is no evidence, but only an unknown probability. Or perhaps these things are impossible and just an extension of our own irrational desire for fairness. Fairness is an irrational concept born of our insecurities, you know. That is why there must be other universes with perhaps different constants from our own.

Evolution is the same way. There is evolutionary science, relying on the evidence, and there is evolutionary religion, having faith that life is ever seeking upwards, not satisfied with non-sentient one-celled existence, wanting to become ever more complex, ever more capable until it becomes the god of evolutionary religion: man. Read Bully for Brontosaurus by Stephen Jay Gould, who was the leading world SCIENTIST of evolution. He talks at length about that, and how the religion of evolution has been a major stumbling block to the science of evolution. But science is based on evidence. Stephen Jay Gould knew the difference between science and not science. He wasn't bashful about calling out the irrational among his own enthusiasts.

No irrationality is part and parcel of human existence. It is like fire. It can cripple our ability to understand. It can make it possible to understand. It can make situations we cannot function into situations we can handle. It breeds Ted Bundy. It breeds Isaac Newton. It is mysterious. It, because it IS irrational, has no explanation. It cannot be analyzed properly. It is at the center of what it is to be human. At one end of the spectrum it is imagination. At the other it is insanity.

Originally Posted by Rockin Robbins

Okay, so you have faith in yourself, worship yourself and have an irrational belief in your own self-sufficiency.

Wrong again. You have an irrational belief in your mind-reading skills.

[Betonov]

Science has an end when evidence stops, religion has an end when evidence stops.
But science admits it is wrong, makes a U-turn and finds a new route.
Religion just stands at the end and yells that the brick wall in front is really an open avenue.

[Oberon]

One flash of light, but no smoking pistol.

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by Rockin Robbins

Even science is irrational. It believes it can understand everything and that there is nothing that science is not the best investigative tool. But science has an end, which is when it runs out of evidence.

Science believes nothing. It's just a tool.

We have no evidence for why the gravitational constant is what it is...

We also don't know why electricity works the way it does, but we use it and have done for a very long time now. The same is true of many fields.

Cosmology has ceased to be a science and is nothing but a religion wearing scientific terminology and mathematics now. It is a faith in things for which there is no evidence, but only an unknown probability.

Only for some people. Much of humanity seems to have a need to believe in something, and that does create problems, but that does not apply to all.

That is why there must be other universes with perhaps different constants from our own.

"Must be"? Why do you assume a "must be" for anything? If we don't know then we don't know. Assuming that there "must be" something is pure belief, nothing else. There may indeed be, and it's grand to think about it, but if there is no evidence then claiming there must be something is no better than claiming there "can't be". It's just speculation.

Evolution is the same way. There is evolutionary science, relying on the evidence, and there is evolutionary religion, having faith that life is ever seeking upwards, not satisfied with non-sentient one-celled existence, wanting to become ever more complex, ever more capable until it becomes the god of evolutionary religion

While this is true for many people, it is not true for all. Yes, there are people who believe in Evolution to the point of worship. I believe they are few and far between, at least among real scientists, and it is the religious believers who make such a big deal out of the concept, since if most people actually worship a scientific contest then that concept is reduced to the level of the religious belief, i.e. it is no longer science but faith. The fact is that no matter how many people believe or don't believe in anything, scientific or religious, it doesn't alter the truth, or untruth, of the thing itself. Scientists don't "believe" in evolution, they accept the evidence as it's been shown so far, and are aware that new evidence could alter their perceptions at any time. Believers, on the other hand, are convinced of their belief and no amount of evidence will ever change that.


As Lawrence M. Krauss put it "The lack of understanding of something is not evidence for God. It's evidence for a lack of understanding."

[Betonov]

Originally Posted by Oberon

One flash of light, but no smoking pistol.

You do realise what the smoking gun might be when we talk about conception