Re “God and Evolution Can Co-Exist, Scientist Insists”
http://www.the-scientist.com/community/posts/list/304.page#1124

- Is there/what is, in the quoted article, a definition of the article’s “god” ?

- Specifically, is the article’s “god” defined as a human artifact, or not ?

If “god” is defined/understood to be a human artifact – regardless of reasons, purposes, implications, consequences – the subject “god-science” is scientifically discussable.

If “god” is not defined/understood to be a human artifact, its concept is a human virtual reality artifact experienced only through sensory stimuli, and “god-science” is not scientifically discussable. Furthermore, in this case preoccupation with this subject within a scientific frameworks contributes to corrosion and corruption of science and scientism by manifesting or implying acceptance of virtual reality as reality.

“Evolutionary Biology Of Culture And Religion”
http://www.the-scientist.com/community/posts/list/20/122.page#492

Dov Henis

(A DH Comment From The 22nd Century)
http://blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-P81pQcU1dLBbHgtjQjxG_Q–?cq=1

Life’s Manifest
http://www.the-scientist.com/community/posts/list/112.page#578

Yes it is an attack on authoritarian forms of Christianity, both Catholic and Protestant. If you are non-authoritarian Christian or theist don’t complain about it, the books are not attacking you.

As a non-authoritarian Christian I agree with some of Pullman’s sentiments. Authoritarianism and thought control are pitfalls into which organized religion often stumbles. Martin Luther and the Reformers protested loudly against it. The recent debacles of neocon reconstructionism in US foreign policy, the emotionally damaging Shepherding movement, and other anti-intellectual / anti-science attitudes percolating through Evangelical subculture are examples of the church going astray from the mission of Christ outlined in Luke 4 and Matt 25.

In saying that, it must be observed that the major drivers of censorship and oppression tend to be secular governments gripped by totalitarian urges, and religion is usually a pawn in their power games. Yet Pullman still places his faith a secular über-State.

(a) the Christian approach to science, cosmology, beginning of life, evolution differ depending on which branch of Christianity and which denomination, and which end of the spectrum within each. For instance, among Catholics, it is permissible to accept the literal 7 days creation as it is permissible to accept the modern cosmology, with Genesis as mythical truth than literal truth, a different genre of truth. Within the progressive in Catholicism, there are steps forward with the papal encyclicals on evolution, and it appears that faith of the common, halts such progress, to keep faith. The current pontiff has from a theological perspective focused more on design than scientific chance. The article, addresses the tension and issues/ debate between the science-priests and the theologian-priests. Without going into the % of Catholics in US and globally, it is apparent that these are issues that will become more concrete in years and decades to come. The opportunity of the Catholic Church supporting full time priests in science without pastoral duties has given them a march over Christians clergy of other branches, like Evangelicals. An example is the ability of the Catholic Church to support 2 astronomical observatories where many scientists there are priests. Funding and time off pastoral duties, are advantages that other branches of Christianity, lack and thus this may affect the quality of their theological engagement with science. While ID is attractive, I take it on faith, on the several writings of Coyne sj that it is not science. I do not have the skill set to determine if ID is science/not.

(b) The chasm between the Christians and science, has to converge at some point in future, and I think, Coyne sj approach offers a suitable convergence that keeps each discipline intact and yet offers the enrichment of multi disciplinary approach to life and meaning of life.

(c ) The tension between the current Catholic Church’s Magisterium and the scientific views of Coyne sj, reflects the concern of keeping the faith of the flock while enriching their lifes with scientific education, and the article endeavours to instill faith and maintain scientific discipline.

(d) Anyone who wants to zero into the Christian approach to science and God, could benefit from reading the article.

I come from a non theistic religion (Buddhism) as opposed to a theistic religion (Christianity) but I have grasped some of the issues above that concern Christians here. Few are of Coyne sj’s caliber and I feel sorry that his writings are not more widely read and understood for the vision he offers this country as well as Christians at large, of the convergence of religion and science. His advanced age also indicates he has limited time left to offer this country and the Church his intellectual acumen and faith. Amen.

Thank you for participating in my information tunneling experiment. Normally I would not let you know what I was doing because others might read about it on your site and it could, therefore, affect future test results, but as you are the last element of the test and because you have shown the capability of a wider phase variance than is normal, I thought you might be able to understand and I hope not be offended. Information tunneling is an offshoot of path flow structuring. Whereas path flow structuring is used to generate paths for recurrent information to flow in so that a given set of input information automatically flows through the path to generate a specific output information set without having to be processed each time, information tunneling (or at least one aspect of it) is involved with the ability to depart from the direction of the path or tunnel of information to generate offshoots or even to completely depart from the existing flow direction when the input information indicates that the path will lead to a dead end or a none productive result. This could be either no result at all or too many results with no indication of which one (if any) is the true answer that generates the desired output data set.

Man’s mind uses structured paths to make permanent or semi-permanent connections between often used connected input and output data sets. That is why you can automatically come up with the answer of two if you are asked what one plus one is. When you first began to learn that association, however, it was not that easy until the path was established. The problem is that the deeper that you go into the tunnel by adding more and more complex input data structures and connect them to more and more complex output structures in more complex ways, you can easily lose track of the forest for the trees. You begin to ignore input data that does not fit the desired structure even if it is telling you that you are going the wrong way. You may even consider it a nuisance distraction and attempt to avoid or even eliminate the data that you don’t want because it does not fit into the pattern that you are looking for as you focus more and more narrowly down the path that you are proceeding down. This can be dangerous because you can spend long hours proceeding down a path that is not productive while completely ignoring or even attempting to cover up or destroy the data that is telling you which path will be productive. This is what John Merryman was intuitively describing as the box or shell that you live in that sometimes needs to be shed in order for you to grow larger (in his post above on Oct. 4th, 2008). This is also what I was referring to when I mentioned that you should not build your own little box or let someone else do it for you that separates you from and distorts your observation of the true box (the universe), in my answer to John.

This problem is not limited to individuals, but applies to whole societies that channel individuals into established paths by rewarding those that follow those paths and punishing those that go a different way. The problem is amplified by the fact that those that are more intelligent than normal (and might be more likely to determine that the path they are in is a bad one) tend to use their abilities to rise to the top of the path hierarchy and so gain the greatest reward from staying in the established path and expanding it. This makes it harder for them to leave it than it might be for others because they have to give up so much reward and may exchange it for punishment instead if they find that the current path is unproductive. There is also an ego problem in that it is hard for most to admit they have been wrong. This is one of the main causes of the problems scientists can experience if they come up with a new concept that is very far from the established accepted viewpoints of the path leaders especially if the new concept says that the path that people have been going down for years is wrong or will lead to a dead end. Of course, if the established path is a good one everything works great.

My current experiment is directed at determining the amount of dispersion or phase shift from the path center (path variance) that is encountered under different conditions and allowed by different subject types. I start with information that is generally aligned with the established path or at least does not greatly contain the key path disruptive data that has been established. In your case this was determined to be your disbelief in God and any data about quantum mechanics etc. that would be contrary to the level of understanding that you have attained about it. The next step is to gradually increase the information variance or phase angle to the established path until a response is received. This is usually the you are in error, but things could be different if you return back to the established path communication that I mentioned in my post on Oct. 5th, 2008 or in some extreme cases involving unstable subjects it could be immediate cut off with no response of the reason.

You answered earlier than expected, but that was traced to an information element that turned out to be a dispersion factor for you that had not been predicted. Your answer was, however, relatively mild and controlled, which showed a relatively high intelligence and a good internal control capability. Your later response (with warning message) was also mild and controlled and expressed the expected disruptive data subjects (after correction for the suppression of ideas in academia data). All in all you tolerated a great enough variation from your path centers that I thought that you might appreciate the experiment. I hope I am not wrong. I can’t at this time share all my results, but as a consolation prize I will share one result that I found to be very interesting. I had expected that those who had been rejected by the science hierarchy and then started their own sites to get their message out would be more open to others who had experienced the same type of rejection and allow them to express their ideas on their sites. This turned out to not be true. As a matter of fact, they tended to be more restricted and dogmatic than sites run by those closer to the path center. This will likely cause me to change my method of information transfer to such people. It appears that the hurt they experienced due to the rejection by the path leaders is channeled into anger aimed not only at those leaders or the accepted path in general, but also toward anyone that expresses a different idea than theirs. This means that to reach such a person one would have to start very close to their path center and move extremely slowly in the desired direction to get them on the correct path to avoid complete rejection from them. As a teacher I thought this might be useful to you. Of course, you may have already known that, but I thought I would supply it to you in case it might be of some help to you in the future for putting up with me and my work on your site.

Now I will try to answer the points in your message. (I always feel compelled to answer these even though I know that an answer is sometimes not really desired). I don’t suggest suppression of ideas within academia. Quite the contrary, I suggest that there be complete freedom of expression of ideas in academia as long as each person is respected and not attacked or denigrated by name calling etc. It is evident that this does not really occur, however, in the system as it is and you should now understand some of the reasons why.

I do not defend the intelligent design movement as it is now constructed because it has not yet performed the required work to make it worthy of such support. It will do so in the future, however (it may not be the same people that are involved in the movement now). This is because as man begins to consider going to other worlds, it will be necessary to be able to determine if an observed phenomena is caused by the base background structure of the universe (natural cause) or is the result of the action of living beings and if it is caused by living beings, it will be important to asses the relative intelligence of such beings. This will require an exhaustive study of all natural actions, an exhaustive study of all actions of known living beings, and the comparison of the two data bases to determine the actions that are limited to only one or the other. The application of this information to the ultimate question of the origin of the universe will only be a natural extension of the lesser applications. This will lead to the discovery of such things as that the universe is constructed in the form of an extremely complex hierarchical written language structure that starts out as an abstract language structure at the lower hierarchical levels and translates through the levels into a literal language structure at the top. This type of structure only occurs one other place in the universe and that is in living creatures. In both cases it appears to have been written in from outside because neither system is capable of producing further such structures in their natural processes. Living creatures can copy their structure, but cannot generate new different ones themselves. In this world there is one other exception, which is that in very recent times man has made rudimentary attempts to generate such structures such as the two dimensional light only entities in video games. This establishes this type of structure as a trait only of intelligent beings. Many other such things will be discovered. As an example, when man has been given a better understanding of the dimensional structure of the universe, it will become apparent to anyone who reads the scriptures (old and new testament) that this pattern was recorded in the scriptures over two thousand years ago. So at that time, I would defend the intelligent design branch of science, but then it won’t be necessary.

Quantum mechanics is a study of effects rather than the cause. The effects are generated by the universe’s dimensional and entity structures and their interactions. Advanced concepts in this area are currently not for dissemination. I could give some beginning level concepts and you could make out of them what you can, but I am afraid that if I did, it might be interpreted as my private pet theory and I wouldn’t want to offend you any further, so I won’t provide anything further information in this area unless you ask.

Again, I hope that I haven’t offended you or others in my endeavor to learn more about you. In an open medium such as the internet it is, of course, not possible to say much of anything of substance without possibly offending some because the path structures of the large number of people that may read the information are very likely to diverge to the point that all cannot be fully accommodated within their acceptance range.

A couple of other people have made comments to me on your site, but I will not make any further entries unless I hear from you that it is ok. I will just briefly say:

CarIN; Contrary to what some who respond on this site might believe, you do make some very good points, but there are some problems also.

Interested; I haven’t yet looked into the article that you mentioned so I can not comment on it at this time, but thank you for the information. It is always best to check out all possibilities that you can.

The article by George V. Coyne, S.J. – Destiny of Life and Religious Attitudes, 2005, in Life as We Know It, ed. J. Seckbach (Dordrecht: Springer Science 2005) [ 15 pages] cuts into the scientific & theological & philosophical debate/issues of God/chance/design. George Coyne sj has not given me the internet link and I have not been able on cursory search to find it. If you wish to get the article, please email him at
gcoyne@as.arizona.edu http://clavius.as.arizona.edu/vo/R1024/GCoyne2.html
or you can email me at wildgeese38@gmail.com

While not being a scientist nor a Christian, but with a philosophical bend, I find his article, a real gem. I consider his work to be at the cutting edge & frontier of Christian thinking in science [of astrophysics & cosmology ] that seems to get lesser than the proper attention among Christians, that it so richly deserves.
Amen. Love.

First we need to realize that nothing eternal can exist. This can be seen in various ways. Something eternal is something that has not started to exist. Just like some fictional “thing” like Donald Duck. Further, if we still believe in something eternal, either as an eternal physical reality or a god, we will left with something that not even in principle can be explained. This eternal “thing” has some properties like physical laws or goodness (or badness for an evil god) that it has never obtained.
We are forced to believe in something unexplainable. Only irrational people are willing to believe in something that cannot be explained, even in principle

And of course we cannot accept the circular logic of using something that exists to explain why something exists. There are other arguments as well..

If we reject irrationality we are forced to conclude that what exist must have been created from nothing.

Creation from nothing is on the other hand perfectly logical. “When” there is nothing there are no conservation laws, there are no hinders, there are no conditions to be fulfilled for creation from nothing to happen. We also note that there exits no need for causation of creation from nothing “when” nothing exists. Logic says that creation from nothing proceeds without causation. Proof:There cannot exist a need for causation since we assume there is nothing at all in the first place. Likewise, there cannot be conservation laws etc.

Logic also tells us that only logical, self-consistent “things” can be created from nothing. Anything that is in conflict with itself cannot be created. Thus we find that we live in a mathematical universe, with mathematical laws making sure that one empirical observation is not in conflict with an other one.

And we see that the Big Bang is indeed the creation of our universe from nothing.

You could of course argue about a god being created from nothing, and that “he” later on created the universe, but you will have trouble with Occams razor.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2008/06/15/commenting-on-cosmic-variance/