Can God be Found By Science?

I have had spiritual experiences. However, I do not attribute such experiences to supernatural causes. I attribute them to material causes related to the brain, the emotions, and the circumstances. It happens frequently when I am hiking in the mountains. The sheer spectacular beauty of the surroundings (perhaps aided by the hormones related to exercise) causes me to experience an altered state of emotion which I happily call spiritual, since if I believed in a god, I would feel that at such moments I had a connection to that god. I experience awe and wonder at the beauty and power of the landscape. Many outdoors enthusiasts will understand what I'm talking about. And you need not believe in anything outside the material world to experience this, and to feel the same things a believer would call "spiritual." We merely attribute the experiences differently.

I get the same sort of thing, perhaps to a lesser degree, when scuba diving on a coral reef or snorkeling and freediving with dolphins. (Purely a personal preference thing: the mountains of southeastern B.C. are my favorite place in the world, which is why I chose to live close to them.)

Spiritual experiences may strengthen the faith of the believer, but they can equally well strengthen the non-belief of the non-believer: The believer says "This could not happen unless there was a god," while the nonbeliever says "Isn't nature wonderful!" and leaves any reference to a god out of it.

 

God must be the Strong Attractor, the stuff that binds atoms together.
Like magnets - how do they work?

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMFPe-DwULM&feature=player_embedded]Feynman 'Fun to Imagine' 4: Magnets (and 'Why?' questions...) - YouTube[/ame]

 

If anyone uses Firefox or Google Chrome as a browser, the translate add-on opens up additional resources. Specifically, it's interesting to pull up a Wikipedia article, click another language on the left column, then translate it back to English.

On Wikipedia bios at the end, they have a lot of links to peg a person in various categories such as living persons, died in 2011 (or whatever year), nationality, etc. The English Wikipedia version lists belief of a person far more frequently than other languages, except maybe Spanish....their religion/sect, athiest/agnostic, convert from this to that.... It's interesting to read the bios as often the event that changed their belief if covered, as in the case of Martin Luther or Charles Darwin.

It's also worth noting the English Wikipedia is bigger/older than other languages.

 

There really is no "they" in physics that have agreement on where "gaps" exist or not. What usually determines the priorities for experiments is where the biggest payoff is expected. Certainly no big payoff was expected in velocity measurements. I fully concur that the prime justification/funding for the experiment was neutrino change detection. But the high precision work on velocity was partially justified by inconsistencies in other experiments and a good experimenter never passes up an opportunity to explore any new area of higher precision measurements. If the velocity of neutrinos was determined to be 99.6483645% the speed of light (I made that number up), then that is a very, very big discovery. But not one to make the popular press.

 

I read this whole thread and it reminded me how much my University REQUIRED Theology and Philosophy classes makes me want to drop out - the only thing that changed my mind is that I am getting it for free............

 

God is "life", and understanding it, scientifically, is to become God.
When we understand vaccines, we accept them. When we understand stem cells, and how the placenta of our future children should be safely stored, we have gone through an evolution, of the mind. There's no going back.

Dollo's law of irreversibility (also known as Dollo's law and Dollo's principle) is a [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypothesis"]hypothesis[/ame] proposed in 1893[1] by [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/France"]French[/ame]-born [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belgium"]Belgian[/ame] [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleontology"]paleontologist[/ame] [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Dollo"]Louis Dollo[/ame] which states that [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution"]evolution[/ame] is not reversible. This hypothesis was first stated by Dollo in this way: "An [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organism"]organism[/ame] is unable to return, even partially, to a previous stage already realized in the ranks of its [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancestor"]ancestors[/ame].
​

Dollo's law of irreversibility - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Me:
Religious fanatics are trying to prevent evolution, prevent science. Life evolves into every single nook & cranny on Planet Earth. Man now has the ability, and through evolution, must expand beyond Religious Dogma and Earth's boundary to other planets.

THUS, [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Vernadsky"]Vladimir Vernadsky - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/ame]

In Vernadsky's theory of the Earth's development, the [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noosphere"]noosphere[/ame] is the third stage in the earth's development, after the [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geosphere"]geosphere[/ame] (inanimate matter) and the [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosphere"]biosphere[/ame] (biological life). Just as the emergence of life fundamentally transformed the geosphere, the emergence of human [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognition"]cognition[/ame] fundamentally transformed the biosphere. In this theory, the principles of both life and cognition are essential features of the Earth's [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution"]evolution[/ame], and must have been implicit in the earth all along.

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The Hyperion Series of author Dan Simmons is a great sci-fi story read, on how/where "humans" and their AI children will be in 500+ years from now.

 

We can't disprove God. I'm sure I read somewhere that 90% of the Universe is made up of 'dark matter', which we don't really understand or even know what it is. Who's to say the invisible 'dark matter' isn't God?

OK, I'm a thicky but we pretend we know everything as a species when really we know jack.

 

God is an abstract. Science can prove, or disprove, a theory.

So then you consider, God created the heavens and the Earth. So God created the universe? If that's the theory, where can we find facts that the universe was created by an intelligent entity? Where are the VIN numbers and barcodes?

So then you consider, God created life. Ah, did all this matter in the universe suddenly manifested the DNA double helix, from RNA, by pure chance? Evolution is not theory, it's fact. However, how did it start?
Intelligent Design has room here, the origins of live.

When life takes hold of a planet, you find life everywhere. I wouldn't be surprised if life was found living 50km below the surface of land.

Human thoughts, emotions, sins, are a product of evolution, that was started by something or some-One. To find that, is to find whatever/whoever God is.

We don't have to look out into space. If there's proof, it's in our backyard, hidden within a living cell.

A single cell of our body is a more complex engineering feat than the Saturn V moon landing.

I think many viruses must have some sort of hive mentality communicating at the quantum level. Would explain a few things...

 

It's actually better than that: 70% of the universe is dark energy. Dark matter (IIRC) is only about 25%, and "normal" matter and energy make up about 5%. However, to assert that the dark energy, or the dark matter, is "god," is basically the "god of the gaps" fallacy: "If science does not yet know what it is, it must be god."

Science is making great strides in discovering the origins of life. (See The Origins of Life, from The Teaching Company, teach12.com). Creationists might be soon deprived of their ability to say "Science cannot explain the origin of life, so god must have done it."

The best theory so far, that I am aware of, is that life probably began as a replicating thin layer, a single molecule thick, on a clay substrate, in warm, shallow, nutrient-rich water. Cell walls, in this view, came later.

It is likely that when we finally understand how life began, we will not be able to draw a clear distinction between life, and its immediate non-living predecessor. Life probably arose by a series of transformations through a grey area that defies a simple definition of "life." Even in the case of viruses, it's not clear whether to classify them as living or not, since they can only reproduce as parasites within a living cell.

 

Parasitic life steals DNA "code" to replicate, since they don't have it themselves. They still have DNA, which contains a huge amount of information.

The sheer variety of possibilities of types of life using DNA / RNA is mind-boggling, so easy for Creationists to say God designed the banana for us.

Just like the distances between stars within a galaxy is huge, and when you look up in the sky at night, 99% of the stars are galaxies containing billions of stars. Mind boggling, so easy to say God designed the heavens.

Most likely the invention of time travel (into the past only, of course) will help explain things.

Would be cool to place a high-powered microscope with a lens a mile wide, at the exact point in space that light travelled away from Earth some 2000 years ago, to be able to peer into our past visually.

Friggin far away though.

 

Some viruses have DNA. Some only have RNA. None can live outside a host cell. Whether to call them "alive" is a question of semantics. The fact is that "alive" is a category that we have invented, and that works well at the level of "common" human experience, but when asked for a rigorous definition, it turns out to be very elusive.

Time travel into the future is possible. In fact, it is unavoidable. We are traveling into the future all the time, whether we like it or not. (Personally, I don't like it. It makes me keep getting older.) Time travel into the past is fantasy. The point of a microscope is to see very small things. A microscope with a lens a mile wide would be useless. Looking (with a telescope) at the point where the Earth was 2,000 years ago would serve no purpose, because the Earth moves slower than light, so the light emitted from the Earth 2,000 years ago is presently on a spherical surface 2,000 light years away from us. We can never see into our own past because we can never catch up with the light which was emitted from us in the past.

 

When Science and Religion Mix Just Fine - Culture - GOOD

 

Viruses, whether RNA or DNA based, are more diverse then the genomes of plants or animals. Most of the biological sciences of the past 20+ years has been understanding how dynamic cellular systems are: proteomics and genetics showing themselves to be very related. Basic definitions of "life" will always be in a gray area..and will be even more so when we have AI systems that are cognisant. As of now, we do recognize different levels of cognisance. The animals that are most anthropomorphized are the ones we can relate to and the most "life like". I don't believe that "life" is only definable by humans...and I think the main shakedown of "what is life" is when we have an "I Robot" scenario...rather then some scientists agreeing about a certain cell being a lifeform.

 

You may have answered your own question, since virus are not cells. Virus are just scraps of genetic material that get picked up by living cells, like a tire picking up a nail. They can't reproduce on their own. They have no metabolism. They are genetic detritus that happen to fit perfectly into the reproductive system of some organism.

They are part of life as a whole, as they issue from living creatures, but in my book a virus is not a living organism.

Tom

 

Nothing that doesn't exist can be found by science or any other method of discovery.

 

In my book, a virus IS living, versus something inert.

Case in point :
- A virus that makes a human sick, a very tiny amount.
- A tiny amount of arsenic will make you sick

The difference being, a virus, outside the "host" survives for a certain time and will "die" becoming inert material that is totally harmless.

Also, a virus mutates and adapts.

Thus I bring you this unrelated to my post, but relevant otherwise. Battle of the Elements !

 

Dark matter exists, because it can be inferred!

 

Now that's probably true.. all the time.

Removing the double negative gets us:
Any/some thing that does exist can be found by science.

Not necessarily true all the time. A time referent is needed.

Any/some thing that does exist can be found by science, at such time
as the technology to do so exists.

Now that's probably true as well.. all the time.

I wonder if this is a matter of logical or philosophical inquiry...

 

Maybe I should have been more specific with my last sentance: at that point I was not just thinking about viruses....bacteria or protozoa that are classfied as singular cellular organisms. They may technically be "life"...but humans put more importance towards organisms that exhibit levels of consciousness then a textbook list of metabolism and reproduction.

 

Many non-living compounds make people sick, but break down over time and become harmless. Arsenic, being an element, isn't one of them. All that shows is the durability of the harmful substance. Since all virus are bits of genetic material, they degrade the same as all DNA and RNA. Your finger nails were generated by a living organism, and they break down over time, but that doesn't make them a living creature.

A virus mutates because it is genetic material produced by a living organism. The virus doesn't do it. The virus doesn't do anything; it just gets sucked into a cell and pulled into the replication mechanism.

Let's look at a cookbook example: The recipes in the cookbook are the genetic code, and the cook is the cell processing the genetic code. One of the recipes gets altered to include a line that says "Copy this recipe and insert it in all of your friends' cookbooks." Being a mindless but obedient cook, we copy the recipe 20 times and insert it in the cookbooks of our 20 friends. Each friend, encountering the new recipe, does the same. The recipe spreads like, well, a virus.

Some cooks are better writers than others. Some make copying mistakes. These mistakes are propagated when the recipe is copied by subsequent cooks. These copying errors are genetic mutations. If the mutations help the copying effort they will be retained. If they hurt, they will be minimized.

Is the recipe a clever living thing? No, it's just a piece of paper. However, this piece of paper is coded to cause living things to replicate it.

Tom