But left wingers do! An enormous threat. Environmentalism, feminism and all manner of ism have done enormous damage to good science. But you won’t hear from Sean about any of those things because he happens to agree with them. When are we going to have a discussion of how feminism and marxism have distorted social science research. Or how environmentalist beliefs have brought idiotic notions like Teleological notions back into science (Gaia hypothesis). Group selectionism anyone. Are those crickets I hear.

I must disagree. There is a soul, there is a God. Science deals very much with nature and physical reality. God is above the natural world. A totally separate reality. Let us not forget Egypt when God destroyed Egypt by altering all the natural laws. Just as you can not find the soul in the body through surgery you can not discover a spiritual God through science. God will show Himself when the time is right and all mankind will believe.

I can out argue any of you atheists but I don’t have time or inclination to prove to you how non sensical your arguments are.

Although one thing is completely predictable: no strident atheist posting here, including the author of this blog, will be given pause by this simple, fundamental and inescapable paradox. (Which, incidentally, is not resolved by quantum mechanics — which has uncertainty but fixed probabilities — nor chaos theory, which is ultimately deterministic.)

And another thing. I’ll tell you what’s even worse than extremism. Internet extremism.

“Hitchens is a pretentious moron and so is Tobin.”–R O’Brien

Your mere assertions are noted and discarded; they are no more intrinsically valuable coming from you than if they had come from a plumber or a pizza delivery guy. You might as well be a Mormon missionary bearing your testimony of Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon.

Buckminster Fuller announced in 1939 that all 92 elements of nature were now discovered and we are entering a steep period of technological change. Nobody paid much attention to that announcement either. However, quantum physics has shown, without a doubt, that the universe id NOT like a clock – it is, like Poppers points out, like a cloud; that is to say, it is non-localized and unquantifiable. In fact, the quantum description seems to match the description given by mystics and seers from all ancient cultures.

So this is a time that we should be celebrating subjectivity and the human side of nature; its everywhere. Intelligence and consciousness did not just show up when man’s brain stem developed; it was there all the time waiting for us to recognize it. And by the way, astrology works (http://www.emeraldmine.com/jyotish2.htm).

The best cure religions has found for diseases is to bleed the patient.

Do I really need to mention Science’s contribution in this regard?

This should be enough to give you an idea about how “real” each is.

Sean, why do people have religious experiences? These experiences are no doubt based in neurology (even ‘out of body experiences’ have a body to be out of) but this in no way alters the profound effect that the experiences usually have on those who undergo them. Yet you missionary atheists have steered away from engaging with this mystical aspect of religion. There are more ways of apprehending the world than merely the subjectivity of the Western individual.

Although some scientists might think philosophy is a lot of blabla, there are interesting statements done, rejected, revised, etc, about the status of ‘laws of nature’ and what they actually do describe. The relation between religion and science has already been extensively discussed from pioneers as Diderot and especialy since the rise of positivism in the 19th century. I think some key remarks were made in 1920s by the ‘Wiener Kreis’ (=’Vienna Circle’) and the logical empirists. They mainly argumented that to do a meaningfull statement, it has be to be verification possible. This is of course only the case for statements describing matter, not statements about immaterial souls etc, therefore metaphysics can only produce useless statements. The logic and mathematics is left outside here, because they were considered different statements, so-called a priori, analytical statements, but that becomes to technical for now.
There has been loads of counter-arguments against this verification and the idea that statements only descibe, and not give a morel judgement or such. Still I think their ideas are in the heart of this discussion concerning religion and science. Science is best described by science, metaphysics can be verified and is just a believe. How believe and empirical verification are connected is complicated philophical question, but in common sense the difference is quite clear. But one is quite clear. SCIENCE CANNOT DISPROVE THE EXISTANCE OF INMATERIAL SHAPES, like gods, angles or whatever.
Now religion is not only metaphysics, but also largely ethics, rules of society. But in different areas with the same religion (e.g. Islam) the ethics are quite different (compare Shariah in Nigeria, with Pakistan, with Somalia, with Saoudi-Arabia or with Indonesia.)
So to me it seems the ethics is more due to the society than to the religion.
Still a lot of people do believe, and I cannot prove they are wrong. I can only argument that their ethics are not mine.
I know agnosticm or ignosticm is not the most popular side one can choose out loud in the media, but bloody hell, it is the most rationable one, better than hide behind thick walls of burroughs of religion and atheism.
SCIENCE IS NOT HELPED A BIT, when it is used for or against religion, only honest and open discussions should count. So the standard model should stay were it belongs, under the category of science, and yes, it would fantastic if it could be popularised the a big audience, but not against religion, that would make nobody happier.

I’ve met him as well at some lectures in London. They are an interesting and professional group. If they get some powerful veridical data from the hidden target studies, consciousness/mind studies will fairly open up. Would also make meaning central in the sense that something doesn’t get lost, rather countering Steven Weinberg’s and others comments on the meaninglessness of life. I believe they simply do not know about this kind of data. Super-intelligent but ignorant in the sense they simply do not read any of the relevant medical literature. Anyway, wait and see.

Best to wait until the results of this study comes out (and read a little of my above comments – thrashed out a bit with Dave!). It is a very extensive medical experiment.

The AWARE study

http://www.mindbodysymposium.com/Human-Consciousness-Project/the-AWARE-study.html

Preliminary results out in 2011 I believe (and later a peer-reviewed publication) but these studies are the latest of a long line by Drs. Peter Fenwick, Bruce Greyson, Penny Sartori, Jeffrey Long…

There is also a well known quantum physicist on board Prof. Henry Stapp, who is trying to model all this, and working closely with the team. Very, very interesting.

Interesting comment John @ 143!