revtec wrote:
----- Original Message ----- From: "Edmund Storms" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <vortex-l@eskimo.com>
Sent: Saturday, February 19, 2005 5:57 PM
Subject: Re: Evangelical environmentalists
revtec wrote:
I'm all for sound science including CF research. I have spent hundreds
of
hours and thousands of dollars trying to coax some over unity
performance
out of a series of PAGD experiments, but only succeeded in finding some interesting anomalies.
A little elaboration here:
I havn't fired up the PAGD apparatus since last April, because I was running out of reasonable circuit variations to try. Even though I have an Aerospace degree, I in no way consider myself a scientist. Mike Carrell observed my early efforts in 1996 and referred to me as a tinkerer in a later post. That may be an accurate assessment of my capability.
I remain strongly convinced that true religion and true science are
never in
conflict.
Well Jeff, I agree. However I would phrase this a little differently. I would say that a true understanding of science is never in conflict with a true understanding of the spirit reality. The word "Religion" should not be used in this context because it is only an imperfect effort by man to understand the spirit reality, much like physics is an imperfect effort by man to understand the physical world. Both fields of study are fractured into warring factions because they are based on an imperfect understanding.
I really don't like the word religion, but I use it because that is the word most people expect to see. Religions in general are man's attempts at reaching out to God. Christianity, however, is God reaching out to man.
I though prayer was the act of reaching out to God, while religion was the codified understanding of God's wishes and laws as believed by a particular group. I think that all religions believe that their particular interpretation of God is also God reaching out to them with a message. The problem comes when different messages are received because each religion believes they have received the only true message.
This raises an additional issue with respect to the literal interpretation of the Bible. Some people argue that the statements in the Bible are exactly true even though they were made by men writing in another language, who believed the earth was flat and was the center of the only universe, and who were talking to an entirely different culture.
I have read the Bible cover to cover several times but have not encountered in my recollection a verse implying that the earth was flat. I could have missed it. Do you have a reference?
I agree, the Bible does not comment on the shape of the earth. However, as best as we now can determine, a flat earth was the conventional belief at the time. If God wanted to give authenticity to what was written, he/she could have had the writers note that the earth was round and that the heavens were populated by many suns. However, these ideas, even if God were so inclined, would probably have been deleted by the authorities of that time.
There are cases in the Bible where the author accurately reports a statement which is untrue. As an example, the scriptures state in many places that there is life after death, but in the book of Ecclesiastes, Solomon says there is not. That is what he thought at the time he wrote it, and that thought is accurately reported. But, it is fairly clear to me that he was nuts at the time he wrote it. If you had 500 wives, how sane would you be?
Nevertheless, God is supposed to have given these men superhuman and universal knowledge, evidence for which is not obvious in the text.
I'm not sure what you are getting at here. Jeff
If the Bible is literal truth of the physical reality, then the writers at that time would have had to be given knowledge about how the world was created and what would happen in the future that no normal man could have at that time. Instead, the Bible contains conflicting statements, allegorical descriptions of creation, and predictions of the future that can be related to events only after the fact. Consequently, no evidence exists within the text that the knowledge base of the writers was beyond what was known or imagined at the time. As a result, the Bible as the literal word of God has to be taken on faith. The conflict with science occurs because science attempts to take nothing on faith. This is why science and religion can never agree.
Regards, Ed
What are scientists to make of statements given by religion based on such evidence? This is rather like assuming the works of Aristotle are literally true and should be the basis for science. How do Christian scientists deal with this problem?
