Not happy with Christmas, but feel something is lacking? Then give Festivus a go, and have a “Happy Festivus from the rest of us”
I’m not sure to what degree Festivus is celebrated in the world, beyond Seinfeld, it seems to be based on real events dating back to Feb ‘66.
Take part in;
Blogger's Block. Either not enough to write about, or too many links to write about, or something on my mind too big to write about.
It's the latter. And it seems that quite a few people are in the same space right now, but coming from different angles. Even Scott Adams has written about the very same things.
Gravity is equally freaky. It influences things at an infinite distance without having any contact that we can see or, again, insulate against. Physicists postulate that maybe a massless particle called a graviton is at work, but none have ever been detected. Others think gravity has something to do with the state of a string, in unproven string theory, which is another way of saying we have no idea.
And that's where I've been recently, God, Science, String Theory, Gravitons, Photons, Zohar, Kabbalah, Big Bang, Steady State, Entanglement, Spirituality.
It's that middle ground between Creationists and Rationalists that I'm looking at, the thing Daryl Cook refers to as Integral Thought, but neither of us wants to commit to something developed by people we don't know anything about! Especially someone who calls themselves The Mother!! It could be inhabited by weird freaky people, just like Creationists and Rationalists!!
So I'm holding back, doing a bit of reading and research before I shoot down a few people who need shooting down!! My starter is ordering Paul Feyerabend's autobiography Killing Time.
I love science and I respect religion, but they both need to be held accountable for the bad that people have done in the name of science and religion. My greatest fear is that "Science" becomes the New Religion, and no-one will notice the difference, and we'll have to have a Bill of Rights to protect kids from science!
All this stuff about God and Science and Creationists and Rationalists, has set me thinking for a while. Science does not have all the answers. In fact it looks a bit foolish in the eyes of some of these things from Wired, What We Don't Know.
My favourite is Entanglement, - How do entangled particles communicate?
In 1997, scientists separated a pair of entangled photons by shooting them through fiber-optic cables to two villages 6 miles apart. Tipping one into a particular quantum state forced the other into the opposite state less than five-trillionths of a second later, or nearly 7 million times faster than light could travel between the two. Of course, according to relativity, nothing travels faster than the speed of light - not even information between particles.
Even the best theories to explain how entanglement gets around this problem seem preposterous. One, for example, speculates that signals are shot back through time. Ultimately, the answer is bound to be unnerving.
Eh!! Two particles can communicate with each other at faster than the speed of light, over considerable distance!! The first thing I would question is the experiment. Is what was measured and observed accurate!! If it is then how the hell do we explain entanglement.
And where does God come into this. Well for me, I'd rather place this stuff which is way out, in the realms of spirituality for the time being, rather than science, which looks to be struggling like a cornered Creationist, on this one.
Cameron Reilly and Richard Dawkins are getting a bit hot under the collar about the Creationists.
Firstly, we’ve always been taught The Creation.
It’s filed under Religious Knowledge/Education.
We’ve been taught Science.
It’s in the Science lesson. We are capable of taking both arguments in.
The only problem would be if The Creationists enter in the science class.
Actually I say bring it on! If some Creationist wants to stand up in a science class and say the world is 5000 years old, and here’s the proof, err, “It says so in The Bible.” then that won’t last long.
Mind you, science taking on God would seem a bit crazy as well, which is what Dawkins seems to be doing. Questioning faith. There’s nothing wrong with a bit of faith, and bit of spirituality. Funnily enough, that’s where the best discoveries come from…the intuitive, and not the cold logic. If you just relied on logic you’d stay within the circle of what you know and wouldn’t allow anything outside to break the logic.
Science is very limiting. It’s dogmatic and stuck with what it knows.
God help anyone who steps outside the realms of what is known.
God help anyone who hypothesizes beyond the known.
They get ridiculed and their research grant is often withdrawn.
Science has just as much to answer for as religion.
Science holds things back as much as religion does.
Or more correctly, some people preaching “Science” like the new religion hold it back.
In fact dare I say, that science is more narrow minded than religion.
And as for Dawkins believing religion is the route of all evil. It’s human nature to gather in tribes and fight. Be it religion, country, football, and yes, scientific belief.
Let’s put it this way. I believe Dawkins is incapable of seeing a new scientific breakthrough outside of his own beliefs, because he wouldn’t allow anyone to have some wacky hypothesis, especially with his pet child. Darwinism!!
Of course Darwinism is right and unshakable. But wasn’t the Earth flat for a while.
Is Dawkins the sort of person at the time, believing in scientific proof that the Earth is flat, be able to deal with someone suggesting the Earth is round?
I don’t think so.
So Cameron…Bring It On!!