Comments on: What is science?

By: W T Frak

W T Frak — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 17:56:20 +0000

Greg: What is the carbon burden of a divinely burning bush, that burns without being consumed by the flame?

Because if we can get God to replicate that appearance wherever needed, it might provide a new carbon-free source of energy.

Unless of course the phenomenon was originally an oil burn-off in that oil-rich region, happening just the other side of an untouched bush, so it only looked as though the bush was burning.

That’s what had the Zoroastrians regarding flame as a divine symbol, the flames at oily sites. It must seem blasphemous to them that the divine substance is tapped for industry and everyday travel. Perhaps the resulting pollution is divine vengeance….

By: W T Frak

W T Frak — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 17:39:44 +0000

If people saw Bush burning, many of them would exclaim, “There is a God!”

So that would be one way he could advance the faith….

By: JanieBelle

JanieBelle — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 17:26:50 +0000

(Unless of course you burn your own bush. Then you’re on your own. I’d recommend a more modern depilatory method.)

By: JanieBelle

JanieBelle — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 17:24:08 +0000

Burning bushes is a human rights violation, isn’t it? I think the fucker should stand trial in The Hague.

By: Greg Laden

Greg Laden — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 17:16:29 +0000

You have to read that book by that guy in which god comes to people as a burning bush. But over time, god gets bored with this form of communication and humans find god increasingly irrelevant and the whole thing just peters out.

By: W T Frak

W T Frak — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 17:10:51 +0000

Uncle Noel: Early scientists, bothered by inconsistent cause-and-effect results, must have prayed devoutly that God just back away quietly and take His thumbs off the scales. God obliged, and retreated to emulate the Deist model of Himself. And ever since then, science has worked.

But if He ever decided otherwise, all that would change….

Oh dear, I think I’ve just anticipated the next ID argument.

By: Riman Butterbur

Riman Butterbur — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 17:05:43 +0000

If uncle noel’s rain prayer always produced rain without fail, his god must be very dumb or lacking in self-esteem. Why would such a powerful being be so slavish toward puny mortals?

I think such a consistent result would argue for a more naturalistic, mechanistic explanation for the phenomenon.

By: RBH

RBH — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 15:44:09 +0000

Uncle noel asked

Bonus Question: If praying for rain to a particular God made it rain without fail, would that discovery be scientific or religious?

It would simultaneously bee an engrossing and potentially very fruitful subject of scientific study and a death blow to (most) theology.

By: uncle noel

uncle noel — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 19:04:36 +0000

Really? In ’59 the magnetic banding of the ocean floor wasn’t known? That was the the first conclusive evidence, if I remember correctly. Anyway, Wegener was right, but the reason he was doubted was understandable: there was no theory or model to explain such a thing. Though it seems to me possible that someone could prove (to a reasonable standard) that there is no way the continents would fit together like puzzle pieces unless they actually had.
Val missed my point about prayer. I was saying, “what if it was verified as having a real effect in an apparently scientific way.” There would still be no reasonable theory or model to explain it other than a seemingly religious one. I present the question, not as a real possibility, but only to try to distinguish science from nonscience in a nonarbitrary way, which is difficult to do if you recognize that “truth” and “objectivity” are difficult to pin down. It comes down to getting a lot of others to agree with you and the meaning of your evidence. But religions have that!

By: Jim Thomerson

Jim Thomerson — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 17:01:52 +0000

In 1959, I had a half of a graduate level geology course devoted to explaining why continental drift was not a useful concept. I think the major problem was that there was no reasonable mechanism known to provide the movement. Also there was no evidence of the lighter continents sailing through the underlying denser rock like ships in the night. Plate tectonics provided a mechanism and moves the continents in a different way consistant with evidence.