The omniscience of god?

But if I told you I knew a pink unicorn was orbiting somewhere between Earth and Mars, and that it should be worshipped as a deity wouldn't you (reasonably) demand evidence of said creature? The burden of proof has to lie with the advocate of these statements not with those who are being preached upon. I'm afraid all Dr. Jastrow's science background (of which he admittedly had plenty) does not mean he was immune to making rash statements. No scientist should ever make a statement that effectively says we will never discover something...egg on the face (even if posthumously) is a very real possibility.For example in 1835 the celebrated French philosopher Auguste Comte said of the stars "We shall never be able to study, by any method, their chemical composition or their mineralogical structure".Yet even before he had written down those words Franunhofer was using his spectroscope to do exactly that...determine the chemical composition of the sun via spectroscopy. We now routinely can analyse the chemical composition of stars so far away as would blow Comte's mind!It's a rash scientist who nowadays dares to put hard limits on science knowledge and progress...and progress breeds progress. There have been more advances in scientific knowledge and technology in the past century than in the whole of human history added together before that...and still the speed is relentlessly increasing - we now use computers for their speed to push boundaries back faster and farther than ever before...never, say never!Anyway, falling back on a personal statement (which is all Jastrow's comment can be)is known as the fallacy of 'Argument from Authority'....so and so says it must be right....so it must be right. Since when? Evidence please!

Jaywill replies to me: ...And that IS the whole point of the comparison - to make our statements about FSM et al seem as ludicrous to you as your God appears to us rational folk. We really do find your God idea as realistic as the FSM is to you. Only that he spoke from unsupported fact - i.e. opinion. nothing wrong with that we all have opinions but ultimately without empirical evidence for a viewpoint (and on this he had none for there is none - you'd have to have a time machine that could extend into future's infinity to hold that opinion on future progress). But just because he was a scientist doesn't make him an all-knowing person...as I said the logical fallacy of 'Argument from Authority'. This is nonsense! Are you seriously unaware that NO science is ever ‘finished’? Science always finds the 'best fit' and continually reviews and amends as appropriate. That’s why Newton's laws which were taught for nearly 300 years were overturned by Einstein's equations. How was this possible if Newton was 'proved' and 'finished'? The answer is Newton's laws were never proved/finished - they offered a very good fit to the observable universe...so good that we could develop lifts, build rockets etc....but then Einstein improved the fit even further. Einstein is also not 'proved' and relativity is simply the next step in defining the universe in the best possible way - it is bound to be improved in time.So you see you just cannot say something as complex as laws of the universe (or the Theory of Evolution)is defined and now there is no more science....no thinking scientist would go down that route in the name of science. When individuals like Dr Jastrow says what he did then it is personal human perspective coming out (often due to religious influence) and cannot be taken as science reporting. No...For the reason that I.D has absolutely NO scientific merit at all. Science requires observations, theory, mechanisms, predications, and must be falsifiable. I.D has NO mechanisms, there is NO working theory, it makes NO predications nor can it of any kind. In short it is 'Goddidit' dressed up in a clown’s suit.No scientist worth his salt would give I.D the time of day - for it just isn't science (check up on Dr. Behe's annihilation at the Dover trial here
Dover becomes intelligent design’s Waterloo | Ars TechnicaIf you really knew how science worked you'd know that science encourages all competing theories, weak and otherwise, to be aired in the scientific public forum...but the theories have to have a base scientific value to get them off the starting block. I.D is not, as I said, a scientific theory with any workable parts to it - there is simply nothing there to do anything with... We don't need 'argument from authority' - our authority is EVIDENCE. You know - that which exists in the real world, that can be touched, seen, felt, measured, on which we can perform tests, experiments, theories, predications etc....at the end of the day reality trumps wanton imagination.To return to our OP, why would anyone want to have anything to do with an entity who invents an eternal hell? The hate level implicit in that entity is frightening beyond imagination!

Jaywill: Ok, let's review that quote: The last sentence is pure nonsense. It is NOT possible to PROVE something like the theory of the universe - as I said in my last message. Scientific theories are simply the 'best fit' models that are currently available on evidence and our ability to technologically manipulate and intellectually infer based on that evidence uncovered at that time.Whenever I hear anyone say something is 'proved' especially in relation to complex theorems (and they don't get any more complex than the theory of the universe - we still haven't got a unifying theory of gravity for instance) I wince. When it's a trained scientist who does it I wince even more....s(he) should know better!and as for that statement "And they have found that all this happened as a product of forces they cannot hope to discover"....well that is like the 18th century doctor who claimed man could never travel at greater than 30 miles an hour as the pressure of air on his rib cage would cause it to collapse!!Beware of statements of sentiment - they are apt to leave a legacy of embarrassment. As far as Jastrow's comment here is concerned - do you know we are now within T^-23 seconds away from the big bang event itself - eighty years ago we didn't even know that there was a big bang at all....it's only a matter of time (pun intended!).

You're right Jaywill I was on the wrong thread altogether there...such was my desire to get the thread back on topic...oops!