Simple reason science and religion are incompatible...

originally posted by: Krazysh0t
a reply to: StalkerSolent

Did you miss this part of that post?

Mostly.

You don't prove a negative, so all I deal in is probability. If I find something with a very low probability then I disregard it as unlikely. If you ever catch me saying that something is impossible though its because I'm being slightly hyperbolic. As an agnostic I don't think anything is impossible. I just think that certain things are exceedingly unlikely because they go against known science. Sometimes that unlikeliness results in it basically becoming impossible, so I just use that word instead. Many times I will still put the word "likely" or "probably" in front of it though.

See, here's the way I see it. There's a lot of observers telling us they have experienced something beyond the normal human experience. There's a lot of scientific observers telling us they haven't experienced anything beyond the normal human experience that they could measure, but hey, who knows? In other words, science can't really speak to the likelihood of the "gods." It seems to me, then, that the observations all fly on the side of the "gods." I don't think it's even "exceedingly unlikely" that there is truth to the tales. Besides, if humans suck so much at observation, what makes us think science works?

originally posted by: DazDaKing
However, it damages the probability but not the possibility, and it would have the damage the possibility for it to 'contradict' it. Does this now make sense to you? I can't put it any more clearer than that.

That is my point though. That's what I care about. I cannot disprove things, so if the probability is damaged I take notice. I don't like dealing in absolutes.

Erm...thanks for the disrespect once again by not reading my entire post yet jumping headfirst into a reply.

I DID read your whole post, including the part you just requoted. The reason I asked that, and I wasn't trying to be snippy, was because your mentioning of the polished road made it seem like that was too much work to do, when the article in question says that the Ancient Egyptians could accomplish it with a bit of water rather easily. So it didn't look like you had considered the water possibility at all.

Answered in a previous reply - figured this was a obstacle for our discussion. I made an initial assumption of what the OP meant by religion. If we want to now question that assumption, the debate as it is becomes completely changed.

I'm confused here, are you trying to suggest that these other ancient peoples didn't have a religion? Or are you trying to suggest that their religions aren't valid enough? Why does including the other peoples change the debate? Because the accounts of those people don't align with the accounts in your three books? Wouldn't that be discarding evidence?

I like that you've basically admitted that the only way science comes close to contradicting (at least we're back on that) is through dates, which is the weakest form of contradicting it since we are depending on the LATEST found skeletons and carbon dating to precisely match texts written with different methods of measuring time altogether.

You HAVE to expect leyweigh here.

29,000 years is QUITE a bit of leeway... But I will give you that time is relative and considering the scales that evolution works on, 29,000 years isn't that long. Though keep in mind, the earlier the date, the easier it should be for us to find fossils since less of the fossils will have been destroyed due to decomp or various environmental factors. So it is more likely that the earlier dates of existence are correct than the later dates of existence.

I also like that you seem to accept that the date of the 'last' Neanderthal is the only conflicting evidence to the claims I made.

I repeat again, it is the date you are questioning that the text provides but not the actual substance of the message.

Well I have issue with the whole "prior civilization to humanity" thing, but there is no way I can disprove it since there is no evidence that it even existed outside of your narrative and apparently these ancient texts.

It's important to say that the date I gave for the texts extinction of the other humanoids is NOT explicitly mentioned in the texts, but rather my derivation due to the date given to the extinction of the once proposed humanoid homo florensis - my mistake.

Regarding the 40,000 year date - you're missing the point though really. The story says that there was a humanoid race/races prior to the flood, and they weren't there after. We know scientifically that 3 different humanoids existed alongside us - the Neanderthals, the Denisovans and the Cro-Magnon.

I agree that it doesn't line up perfectly in the sense that one might expect remains closer to the flood, which would truly make the story perfectly align with the facts, but the point is that the possibility isn't hurt, the substance hasn't changed and most importantly;

WE HAVE NOT DISCOVERED ALL ANCIENT HUMANOID SKELETONS YET!

Again I point out that fossils closer to today's date would be easier to find than fossils from older dates. So if you are trying to bump the extinction date of a species up, it should be MUCH easier than trying to move the date it first appeared on the planet back.

Therefore nothing has been truly falsified. We are getting onto the loose theme of contradictions at least though - finally. I'd say you contradicted the incorrect date I gave rather than the core story however.

Peace.

What about remains of this previous civilization from this supposed group of hominids? What about ancient cities that predate the Egyptian pyramids, but we know humans lived in them? We know of a sunken city off the coast of India that may date back to the last Ice Age. There is the Yonaguni Monument off the coast of Japan that nay date back to the same time period.

Now I guess you could feasibly claim that these places are examples of these previous humanoids' building achievements, but do you believe that? These sites still use the ancient brick stacking methods used throughout the ancient world. And while such things may be an engineering nightmare, they aren't exactly high tech.

a reply to: StalkerSolent

I'd be loath to describe which argument the "observations" favor over others. Many times observations are flawed due to confirmation biases or by people misremembering things. This is why I only care about objective evidence.

If it exists and can interact with the physical world in SOME way so that humans can detect it and have an "observation" of it, then it reasons that science could develop technology to look at it and quantify it.

a reply to: StalkerSolent

In other words, science can't really speak to the likelihood of the "gods." It seems to me, then, that the observations all fly on the side of the "gods."

thats an incredible leap to make. science cant speak to the likelihood of gods but observations still find it a favorable conclusion? observations are the bread and butter of science. observation is a key component in the scientific method. if science cant speak to the likelihood its because theres no evidence or observations that speak to the likelihood.

Marian apparition = hologram
Walls of Jericho = scalar technology
Ark of covenant = radio (Kent Steadman built one)
merkabah= interdimensional vehicle
miracle=quantum mechanics

I dont think science and religion are incompatible

I'm still trying to figure out why science and religion is incompatable. I'm reading ALOT of fluff. Maybe evolution theories are not compatable with religious teachings, but not science. Go to the basics. Stop talking philosophically and trying to confuse everything with this theory and that theory. That's where you go to far and dumb yourself from remembering the fundematals of science.
Science is this:"Science (from Latin scientia, meaning "knowledge"[2]) is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe."
How does this conflict with religion? That needs to be explained.

Also no one has ever proven this wrong...

#1 scientific fundamental point: Living matter cannot form from non-living matter. Period. That puts a seal on all of it. No theory can come out of that except that something greater than our comprehension that is living, exists and created us. I mean why do living things procreate? Because something alive needs to create life. Elementary knowledge. Period.
Thread should be closed. It's geting boring. But hey a nihilistic generation is necessary to push the one-world governent agendas and eradicate religion from the public sphere.

originally posted by: Krazysh0t
a reply to: StalkerSolent

I'd be loath to describe which argument the "observations" favor over others. Many times observations are flawed due to confirmation biases or by people misremembering things. This is why I only care about objective evidence.

Purely objective evidence is scarce and just as manipulatable as subjective, evidence, though. I mean, if I'm the King of Egypt and I want to be remembered as the savior of humanity instead of, ya know, a jerk, I can turn out a tablet that says I'm the savior of humanity. Poof! In three thousand years, no one will remember that I was a jerk because all the objective evidence pointed away from it.

I'm not saying objective evidence is worthless, mind you, just that it often suffers from the foibles that subjective evidence does.

If it exists and can interact with the physical world in SOME way so that humans can detect it and have an "observation" of it, then it reasons that science could develop technology to look at it and quantify it.

Why?
What if they don't want to be seen, at least not right now? How could we build technology that could overcome the tremendous ability of being able to operate outside of our space-time paradigm?

a reply to: TheCretinHop

Living matter cannot form from non-living matter. Period. That puts a seal on all of it. No theory can come out of that except that something greater than our comprehension that is living, exists and created us. Period.
Thread should be closed. It's geting boring.

with that kind of attitude, we would still be banging rocks around in dark caves and blaming lightning on a dude with a magic hammer. the vikings used to smear ash on their foreheads too, and ask for odins blessing. sound familiar?

a reply to: TheCretinHop

It appears you are looking at it from the wrong angle and trying to make science align with religion when the opposite is what is supposed to happen.

#1 scientific fundamental point: Living matter cannot form from non-living matter. Period. That puts a seal on all of it. No theory can come out of that except that something greater than our comprehension that is living, exists and created us. Period.
Thread should be closed. It's geting boring.

This isn't a scientific concept. Period.

a reply to: TzarChasm

Hmm that's why I'm doing that right now. OR we would be taking care of the earth like we should, we'd be studying and enjoying all creation, we'd be progressing in our knowledge rather than inventing theories that have no proof besides mere speculation.

originally posted by: StalkerSolent
Purely objective evidence is scarce and just as manipulatable as subjective, evidence, though. I mean, if I'm the King of Egypt and I want to be remembered as the savior of humanity instead of, ya know, a jerk, I can turn out a tablet that says I'm the savior of humanity. Poof! In three thousand years, no one will remember that I was a jerk because all the objective evidence pointed away from it.

That isn't objective evidence though. That is still subjective evidence. Anything that originates from the mind of a human is subjective evidence. Objective evidence is evidence obtained through observation.

I'm not saying objective evidence is worthless, mind you, just that it often suffers from the foibles that subjective evidence does.

Not really.

Why?
What if they don't want to be seen, at least not right now? How could we build technology that could overcome the tremendous ability of being able to operate outside of our space-time paradigm?

Because if it can interact with a human's sense then we should be able to build a machine that it would be able to interact with as well since we have machines that can all duplicate humans senses and record information from them.

a reply to: Krazysh0t

I really don't care about religion at all. I just don't see how science and religion even relate? Why is this even a thread topic?

originally posted by: TheCretinHop
a reply to: TzarChasm

Hmm that's why I'm doing that right now. OR we would be taking care of the earth like we should, we'd be studying and enjoying all creation, we'd be progressing in our knowledge rather than inventing theories that have no proof besides mere speculation.

how do we progress in our knowledge if we dont explore? thats what these theories are. thats why we test them. we dont know but we are trying to find out. this stuff wont just fall into our laps you know.

i keep suggesting that we test various deities in comparison to common household items. no one has taken me up on it yet. heh.

a reply to: Krazysh0t

How is it not? prove otherwise please. Maybe I can be enlightened.

originally posted by: TheCretinHop
a reply to: Krazysh0t

I really don't care about religion at all. I just don't see how science and religion even relate? Why is this even a thread topic?

Because the gap between religion and science is a real sticking point to why some people won't believe in one or the other.

originally posted by: TheCretinHop
a reply to: Krazysh0t

How is it not? prove otherwise please. Maybe I can be enlightened.

Because it isn't. There is no scientific theory that says that organic material can't come from non-organic material. In fact, that's what the entire Abiogensis hypothesis is about. Non-organic material reacting chemically and producing very basic organic material.

a reply to: TzarChasm
Hey bud, I never said don't explore, I just said we would be 'studying' but instead were 'banging rocks' and stuck on a mere theory that has never been transparently and honestly proven. It's there for a 'comfort.' People who lean that way want to believe that they hold all control in their hands, because they want to do what they want to do. And not have to consider that we really don't have the right to choose, because we are all mere creation ourselves.

a reply to: Krazysh0t

The reason I asked that, and I wasn't trying to be snippy, was because your mentioning of the polished road made it seem like that was too much work to do, when the article in question says that the Ancient Egyptians could accomplish it with a bit of water rather easily. So it didn't look like you had considered the water possibility at all.

You're right in the sense that I hadn't considered it, but it is not a magic solution that makes everything easy. I had already considered in my previous calculations the assumption that you can start with the 70tonne block 10m away from the building site - and you will reach difficulties of the same magnitude anyway.

Furthermore, the article says they used a sled for this - how the hell do you lift the 70tonne block onto the wooden sled in the first place? The wooden sled would have to be RIDICULOUSLY WELL DESIGNED and built, and of a huge scale (we can assume humans did this), but that also makes the lift even more difficult - and we still have our date palm rope problem.

They say the technique improved the friction compared to dry sand by a half. The coefficition of static friction for Cement - Sand (close approximation for granite - no experimental data exists) is 0.6. Their technique would reduce that to 0.3.

F= (70,000 * 9.81) * 0.3 = 206,000 N approximately.
We now need 700 men to move the 70tonne block.

I would not call this a magic solution by any means. These guys are physicists, and with all due respect, they are not considering the entirity of the engineering project that it is.

I'm confused here, are you trying to suggest that these other ancient peoples didn't have a religion? Or are you trying to suggest that their religions aren't valid enough? Why does including the other peoples change the debate? Because the accounts of those people don't align with the accounts in your three books? Wouldn't that be discarding evidence?

No, of course not. It may be rude of me to directly start my point from the start based on the Abrahamic religions only, but look at it this way:

1 - On ATS, 99% of the time, ANY topic with the word 'religion' in it's name is concerned about the Abrahamic ones. I guess I let my subconscious expectations of this place get the better of me, eh?

2- The core of the Abrahamic religions, i.e the Sumerian beliefs are factually the oldest written sacred stories. We could arguably assume that in this sense they may have been the oldest oral stories too - but that cannot be deduced with confidence. These same guys are the ones who caused the cradle of civilization, and the very foundation of who we are today.

3- The core story is so powerful, that is have survived AT LEAST 6,000 years and continues to dominate people's lives to this very day. No other story has impacted history as much, or in that sense held as much significance to humanity.

The reason I centred my argument around this religion is that it IS IMPORTANT - regardless of whether you like it or not and whether you believe it or not cannot affect that statement.

Those stories may contain truths that we will never be able to otherwise deduce. I'll get back to this in a sec.

29,000 years is QUITE a bit of leeway... But I will give you that time is relative and considering the scales that evolution works on, 29,000 years isn't that long. Though keep in mind, the earlier the date, the easier it should be for us to find fossils since less of the fossils will have been destroyed due to decomp or various environmental factors. So it is more likely that the earlier dates of existence are correct than the later dates of existence.

The point remains though.

I could just say that the story refers to the humanoids and our past civilization being destroyed by the ice age of the 40,000-50,000 BC period (which is scientifically verified) and the whole story can still occur without it's core substance being damaged. Or, we can just assume as before that we have not found all the remains or in the correct regions yet.

You can even assume this happened twice - which is in fact reflected in certain Babylonian versions of the myth, were there were previous catastrophes of earthquakes and floods which destroyed previous civilizations.

In the Epic of Gilgamesh, the post-flood demi-god was told that long, long, long before the flood (it is suggesting an extreme time) Gods as such roamed the Earth. It does not say 'the flood destroyed them' - however in certain later variations i.e the Bible or the Book of Enoch - the flood is described as also destroying our off-spring with these humanoids.

The earlier the date argument is still weak though.

It's just down to chance ultimately and we've not had a great chance to really explore the Earth's buried secrets yet. The truth is that we found many COMPLETELY ANCIENT dinosaur skeletons (some practically complete) before we have even found partial remains of our own certain ancestral species.

What about remains of this previous civilization from this supposed group of hominids? What about ancient cities that predate the Egyptian pyramids, but we know humans lived in them? We know of a sunken city off the coast of India that may date back to the last Ice Age. There is the Yonaguni Monument off the coast of Japan that nay date back to the same time period.

Now I guess you could feasibly claim that these places are examples of these previous humanoids' building achievements, but do you believe that? These sites still use the ancient brick stacking methods used throughout the ancient world. And while such things may be an engineering nightmare, they aren't exactly high tech.

This is kind of going off on a tangent. The story tells us that at one point we co-existed and interbred with what we described as the Sons of 'Gods', and in the time of the writing of the story, only the humans remain.

It describes these people as knowing more than us, but not in a supernatural way. Let me relate back to a previous example I made;

Imagine someone from the Early Greek period meeting an untouched Amazonian tribe member for the first time. The Early Greek could teach him practical knowledge which would then go on to be absolutely VITAL to the cultural beliefs and stories of that specific tribe, despite the fact that the Early Greek may have left practically no physical evidence of his existence there at all.

But imagine a case even earlier than that, where perhaps we were at the level of what we imagine cavemen to be, and these 'sons of Gods' were at the level we know the ancient Sumerians to be (and we are currently 'Gods' in relation to them).

The story never refers to the Gods as building their own cities, but instructing the people on how to use bricks/mortar etc. There's references to them using the Earth or toiling it but never explicitily how or why. The 'Sons of Gods' in these stories are not held in particularly high regard either - they are seen as significantly inferior to what are described as the 'Gods'.

There isn't a call for extremely sophisticated technology, at least not by those described as walking the Earth with us in the story - and yes, the examples you mention can actually be cases of that - since these are great MEGALITHIC structures, with very intelligent stone placement in some cases - and this is actually an illogical starting point of construction for humans.

The story refers to the 'Gods' as almost exclusively being in Heaven except the few rare times they are described to interact with the people.

What are we expecting to find, exactly?

a reply to: Krazysh0t

"Scientists speculate that life may have arisen as a result of random chemical processes happening to produce self-replicating molecules. One of the popular current hypotheses involves chemical reactivity around hydrothermal vents.[1][2] This hypothesis has yet to be empirically proven although the current evidence is generally supportive of it. Give those crazy scientists a half billion or so years to play,[3] though, and they might do just as well as nature once did!"

1) This is not scientific fact. It's mere hypothesis. Speculation at the most.
2) All this does is copout at the end saying 'we need time so let's keep treat this speculation as fact until we can actually prove it, which we never will." That was really sad. I wanted something good and concrete.
3) Basic organic life from non-living matter? Dude, DNA is so complicated in itself. The human body formed from DNA is complicated with how it's systems work in harmony with each other. Where is this proven test? Please tell me it's not this from your link..."In the 1950s, several experiments by Stanley Miller and Harold Urey verified that the natural formation of amino acids, components of DNA, and other organic compounds out of inorganic materials was possible under the atmospheric conditions of Primordial Earth."
Again speculation referring to a 'Primordial Earth' and an atmosphere he can't even prove existed to test his hypothesis. Please link me solid experiments.

originally posted by: TheCretinHop
a reply to: TzarChasm
Hey bud, I never said don't explore, I just said we would be 'studying' but instead were 'banging rocks' and stuck on a mere theory that has never been transparently and honestly proven. It's there for a 'comfort.' People who lean that way want to believe that they hold all control in their hands, because they want to do what they want to do. And not have to consider that we really don't have the right to choose, because we are all mere creation ourselves.

"Its there for comfort" sounds like another theory - sorry, hypothesis - that has never been transparently and honestly proven. ah, theres the word. creation.

funny, that.