Isn't science about finding God?

The first scientist that comes to my mind is Newton. He was curious about how things work, and pursued them logically and systematically until making some interesting breakthroughs. But he was searching for God.

"I had an eye on such principles as might work with considering Men for the belief of a Deity"

web.rollins.edu...

And Francis Bacon stated;

"It is true, that a little philosophy inclineth man’s mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion; for while the mind of man looketh upon second causes scattered, it may sometimes rest in them, and go no further; but when it beholdeth the chain of them confederate, and linked together, it must needs fly to Providence and Deity."

Source

And Galilei;

Galileo is often remembered for his conflict with the Roman Catholic Church. His controversial work on the solar system was published in 1633.
...
Galileo expressly said that the Bible cannot err, and saw his system as an alternate interpretation of the biblical texts.

Source

And one of my favorites.

"I want to know how God created this world, I am not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element. I want to know His thoughts, the rest are details."

by Albert Einstein.

But today, science is all about manipulating God's creations.

Genetic Engineering and Modification

GM microbes have begun to be ubiquitous invaders of the North America ecosystem. This massive invasion took place with little or no public awareness and input, and with very little monitoring of the impact of the invasion. The environmental risk assessments of the commercial microbes were rudimentary and frequently erroneous. We may have a bio-weapons equivalent of a time bomb on our hands.

online.sfsu.edu...

Geoengineering

WASHINGTON - Tinkering with Earth's climate to chill runaway global warming — a radical idea once dismissed out of hand — is being discussed by the White House as a potential emergency option, the president's new science adviser said Wednesday.

www.msnbc.msn.com...
No wonder the President couldn't swear correctly on the Bible.

I could go on and on. My point is, why and when did science go from trying to understand, to trying to outwit God?

Why are we allowing it?












[edit on 27-8-2009 by Udontknowme]

Science is about finding the truth regardless of what that truth is. The personal motivations of scientists may differ but the former remains constant.

As for what science is doing or being used for; it has always been a mixture of discovery, definition and application. You single out genetic engineering as an example of a new focus on manipulation rather than understanding. This isn’t really correct, either from a technical or historical point of view. For example Germ Theory was developed in the 19th century (understanding) and led to application in the control and curing of disease (manipulation). Genetic engineering only follows this paradigm, i.e. we had the discovery of DNA followed by the understanding of various gene functions followed by its manipulation. However even in this manipulation we are increasing our understanding through practical means.

Why are we allowing it? Because if we didn’t we would still be living in the dark ages.

agreed with the last reply - science is about truth and finding out how everythign works.

now, physics on the other hand used to be about the same, but these days (esspecialy with theoretical / particle physics) seems to revolve around the physicists quest to find "GoD" (only they believe god is a particle!)

I think you are projecting your view of god into these scientists views. Just because Einstein said he wants to know God's thoughts, doesn't mean he actually believed and prayed to God. He could have just used that for theatrics. I use God to describe things all of the time yet I am agnostic. I don't believe in god so to speak, but since a lot of people understand what I am saying when I use this imagery, I do it.

Originally posted by Mike_A
For example Germ Theory was developed in the 19th century (understanding) and led to application in the control and curing of disease (manipulation).

Who is to say disease wasn't originally invented by man?

Why isn't the cause of the disease focused on, which usually
stems from a manipulation of natural resources?

reply to post by Udontknowme

Who is to say disease wasn't originally invented by man?

Why isn't the cause of the disease focused on, which usually
stems from a manipulation of natural resources?

Because disease existed long before humans had any understanding of what caused it and because we find evolutionary evidence that shows disease causing organisms existed long before humans existed.

And can you prove that disease is caused by the human manipulation of natural resources. However be aware that bad sewage management is not the cause of disease in the biological sense, it is merely the cause for the rapid reproduction and spread of disease causing life forms.

Originally posted by Mike_A
reply to post by Udontknowme

 

Who is to say disease wasn't originally invented by man?

Why isn't the cause of the disease focused on, which usually
stems from a manipulation of natural resources?

Because disease existed long before humans had any understanding of what caused it and because we find evolutionary evidence that shows disease causing organisms existed long before humans existed.

And can you prove that disease is caused by the human manipulation of natural resources. However be aware that bad sewage management is not the cause of disease in the biological sense, it is merely the cause for the rapid reproduction and spread of disease causing life forms.

Show me the "evolutionary evidence".

There is a balance in everything. Throw that balance off, and the organism dies.

The bad sewage is a great example, of a solution to a problem, without trying to genetically modify poop.

It didn't take science to fix the plumbing problem. It took experimentation, probably driven by a disdain of the odor.

reply to post by Udontknowme


Well we find bacteria in the fossil record that can be determined to be older than humans. So we know that bacteria existed. We can also see in fossils of larger animals the effects of disease causing bacteria that are consistent with what we see today.

Here’s a source for that…

www.ucmp.berkeley.edu...

There is also genetic comparison of existing organisms but I don’t have a detailed source for that.

There is a balance in everything. Throw that balance off, and the organism dies.

What does that mean?

The bad sewage is a great example, of a solution to a problem, without trying to genetically modify poop.

It didn't take science to fix the plumbing problem. It took experimentation, probably driven by a disdain of the odor.

It’s still manipulation due to scientific understanding. There is no difference between manipulating genes to produce more disease resistant organisms and manipulating chemicals to produce more durable materials.

Science is about control.
Even non sense science can be profitable.

Tesla, in a March 5, 1904 article, states the tower would have sufficient
energy delivery to be "twice that of the combined falls of Niagara" and
only 1% would be able to "girdle the globe."

Wow a 2nd Niagara Falls.
Even more powerful.

Hope GE and JP Morgan didn't read this science article.

Science is about finding the truth. If the truth is god, then yes; however, Science isn't "trying" to find god or the lack thereof.

just my 2-cents

Sorry if I sound just a little jaded...But it seems to me that $cience is about funding,grants,$ponsorship etc. Seems like there is a lot of sketchy $cience on the global warming band wagon , oh yeah what about the H1N1 R&D lets make a drug that the entire world has to buy,I could go on and on but I think you can see where I could have a little trouble beliving in the noble $cientist in search of GOD. Do you think NASA et al are building a church up there or is it going to end up being some kind of commercial enterprise?

Don't mean to sound nasty I'm just sayin
Peace

At one time, religion was science.

Eventually, in my opinion due to the fact that religion is very good at perverting truth, science separated and adopted the Scientific Method we (supposedly) use today.

Eventually, science prospered to the extent that it in itself became a religion itself.

Ironic, isn't it?



But for some, like myself, science is indeed still about finding the truth, whatever that truth might be. I am a Christian, but that does not mean I abhor science; far from it. I, like Einstein, want to understand how this magnificent Universe works. I want to understand the ways of its Creator. I have no fear of science destroying my faith, because I know God is true; true science must ultimately prove out to be consistent with God. There is only one truth.

Yeah, someone is going to exclaim that I just said any scientific thought which doesn't agree with the dogma of a church has to be ignored. I said nothing of the sort. I said if God is true, true science must be consistent with His existence. If you still didn't get it, go meditate on it for a little while.

I'll be examining the Universe.

TheRedneck

Having enough knowledge about something to be able to manipulate it shows the highest form of understanding. Its much easier to set the rules than it is being governed by thier contextual limitations but we are learning and the day is approaching when these limitations no longer apply.

Science is about trying to understand the physical world that we live in.

Spirituality is about trying to understand yourself and things not of this physical world.

There are many mysterious things that still lay way beyond the understanding of today's science, and probably always will.

reply to post by Udontknowme


S & F. Of course scientists are trying to find God - what they are trying to find out is how things work. They are like a little kid taking a clock apart to see how it works, and then not being able to put it back together - maybe we are not meant to discover how things work, but just accept that they do?

If people don't like the word 'God', think instead about the original inventor of the universe.

This universe had to start somewhere - and scientists are trying to find that somewhere, as well as how it all works.

They are just squeamish about using the word 'God'.

reply to post by spellbound


Thanks for that non-anti God answer.

Never ceases to amaze me how many people, especially scientists, don't like God. Didn't they read the story or what happens when you anger God?

Tell me you haven't read the bible, and I will tell you it's on the list of "Great Books".

en.wikipedia.org...

The Old Testament is His Story. History.

reply to post by Udontknowme


Your response was very nice - thank you.

I gave you a star, cheers.

I too have given this question a great deal of thought, who, and what, is God?? I have to wonder sometimes, the God of the Bible utterly destroyed two great cities once because a few gay men had sex with each other, so why then does this God, provided the same God is still in power, allow the crap that goes on in the world today? I was raised as a Christian, and groomed to be a minister until I began to read and study the Bible and saw for myself all of the inconsistencies in there. The preacher could not answer my questions, and after talking with him for awhile, I discovered that he had never even read his own Bible, and I would bet that most preachers don't. Oh,they hold it up like it is made of the finest gold, but to delve into it and read between the lines? No way.

Science is so that mankind can know the answer to things in the world. Things that can be measured are what a scientist looks at, if it cannot be measured, they quickly turn away and say it doesn't exist. Case in point: Michelson and Morley Experiment. This experiment was to prove, or disprove, that a thing called the Ether exists, the glue that holds the universe together. A small quote...

A deathblow to search for this medium was given by Michelson and Morley experiment, which assumed that if the ether wind exists, light rays moving in the direction of earth’s movement and opposite to it should produce different measurement. Their experiment proved that light is independent of the motion of the earth and concluded that there exists no Ether. Einstein took this up, worked up his theories and sealed the fate of the Ether. Einstein concluded that speed of light is the maximum speed attainable.

The advent of quantum mechanics and its development has brought forth several experimental facts, [Bell’s Theorem] which tell us there exists an instantaneous communication. In effect, this conclusion, takes us back to mechanical vision of gravitational force that is instantaneous. However, no body knows what is gravitation? How instantaneous communication takes place.

www.geocities.com...
The experiment was a failure, but some disagree....

Statistics "Prove" Ether Exists! Michelson-Morley and the Speed of Light

Carver's (1993) reanalysis of data from the famed 1887 Michelson-Morley experiment demonstrates that the hypothesis, "the speed of light depends on the direction of travel through the ether", cannot be rejected even at a .001 level of statistical significance. Thus ether is confirmed and Einstein's Theory of Relativity invalidated. Relativity's consequences, such as the Atomic Bomb, are seen to be misunderstandings at best, hoaxes at worst.

The moral of Carver's story is that significance testing is never decisive.

More informative than statistical testing, however, is plotting the data points as Michelson & Morley (1887) did. Their Figure is reproduced here. The upper curve is for the noon observations and the lower for the evening ones. The dotted curves represent one-eighth of the amplitudes away from the X-axis predicted by the "ether" theory. The solid lines represent the empirical results. The solid lines (the effect size) do exhibit some waviness and are indeed statistically "significantly" different from the straight lines predicted by non-ether theory. But do they provide support for the ether theory? The slight empirical waviness indicates that less than 1% of the variance of the speed of light is associated with direction, a substantive rejection of the ether theory. Relativity can be reinstated!

www.rasch.org...

So, mankind will never prove God exists, or does not exist using third dimensional physics and science!

My take on God, and BTW, I abhor that title, for it has a lot of really bad connotations attached to it, is this; I think that which we know as the Grand Creator is in fact a Force of Energy containing a vast intelligence. Creation is accomplished by thought alone. I also think that we of the human race are all Gods and Goddesses in our own right, we are in training to be as the force is, so that we can go out and create our own universe.(s)

I know in my heart that not one "Book" religion has it all right, or has the keys to heaven, or knows the right path to get there. Constantly posting Bible quotes will not get anyone into Heaven, nor will it impress anyone who has actually read the entire Bible. No Nation is a Christian or a Muslim Nation, there is no State sanctioned religion, and our Constitution give us the right to practice our chosen religion as we choose to. Freedom of Religion means all religions, not just the Christian one.
Love and Light to All

reply to post by autowrench


I think that the answer is to enjoy your life.

No-one will ever know anything - I think you just have to enjoy life and forget about anything else.

I think you have to be kind, forgiving, and loving. And that is it.

I have "discovered" a wealth of information - and I mean a WEALTH - by watching Nassim Haramein's "Crossing The Event Horizon."

Filled with science AND referencing his findings to many enigmas throughout history makes for a "comfortable" conclusion of just about any topic - including "God."