Will you oppose to scientific conclusions if they'll lead to theology?

This is a hypothetical and general question, it doesn't apply directly to each of the examples below.
the examples is just for the purpose of illustration.Here is a few examples:1. if the Directed mutations hypothesis will found out to be true?
2. if some Irreducable Complexity systems won't be able to be reduced?
3. If science will find out that the universe had a begining?
4. If science will find out that 'Near Death Experience' is not coming from the brain?This message has been edited by caligola2, 02-06-2005 05:59 AM

Thread moved here from the Proposed New Topics forum.

Although I believe that there is one God, I don't see how any of the four might lead to theology. Problem is, science isn't designed to find God.ps: is that Neji in your avatar?

There are two problems with the questions you pose.1)They involve science not being able to figure something out and then drawing a conclusion from that.Science does not draw conclusions from a lack of evidence, only from positive evidence.2)There is no reason to conclude Godidit or any supernatural cause to any question science currently cannot answer.Since we are human and imperfect, and science is a human endeavor, it is quite possible that nobody will ever think of a solution for some problem. It may also be that the evidence we need to understand something, such as the origins of the universe, are just lost to time, or humans simply will never have the capacity or intelligence to comprehend it fully.Just because we do not understand something, and may never understand it, does not mean that any supernatural means must be invoked.It simply means that we do not understand.

You say that science isn't designed to find god, I disagree. Science is designed to discover the objective truth about our universe. If god exists science could discover her. I personally like the example of how god might leave his signiature somewhere in the digits of PI. Such a discovery would convince me of a 'creator' - if the signiature were to be an unambiguous confirmation of some property known to us already (like the periodic table)

Unfortunately this isn't true, because science cannot refute solipcism. The best science can hope to accomplish is to develop accurate models about what we observe. That has nothing to do with any "objective truth" that may or may not exist. What if she did not want to be discovered? If that signature is of finite length, then it's already there. Just like all other numeric sequences of finite length - they all exist in pi. Or any other irrational number's decimal expansion. I guarantee you that the periodic table of elements is represented in the digits of pi. An infinite number of times.This message has been edited by crashfrog, 02-13-2005 11:16 AM

Pardon me while I add Solipsism to the ever-expanding list of those things that are formally irrefutable but nonetheless worthy of ridicule. It is a sterile concept. I only said science could discover god. Granted she might be able to cover her tracks. I think I covered that: For it to be recognised as an intentional signiature it would have to be unambiguous. A coherent representation of familiar information could be made to stand out 'by a mile' by using a probabalistic approach.

Yes, and though i never watched Naruto, i liked this avater the first time i saw him.. Your image is from a site which does not permit references to their images from other sites. --AdminThis message has been edited by Admin, 02-13-2005 16:29 AM edited to remove the image. -- CaligolaThis message has been edited by caligola2, 02-14-2005 02:12 AM

There are many things we CAN do but let's refrain from using them. HTML or dBCode in subject lines is one of those things. Thanks folk.

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Oh? That's how you respond to arguments? With ridicule? Very mature. Not in the least. It's a fundamental constraint on what we can know. The simple fact that you don't like it doesn't make it go away. It's unambiguously there. An infinite number of times. If you want, it's preceeded by the message "hi, I'm god and this is my signature, the periodic table of elements" represented via Unicode. Or ASCII.In every known human language.Hell, if you want, the Bible is in there too. In every language. And the Koran. In every language. And every book in the Library of Congress. And every book that will ever be in the Library of Congress.In every language. Unfortunately, no, it can't. There's no way to make a finite sequence of digits more probable in an irrational number's decimal expansion; every finite sequence already has a probability of 1/1. If you could somehow raise the probability (perhaps by lowering the probability of all other sequences) then the number would no longer be irrational.And we know that pi is irrational. Not by inference but by proof.

Is it really? I need Mark24 to have a peek at this.If PI is infinite and non repeating does that mean is HAS to have all possible strings of numbers in it?

Certainly it contains all finite strings of numbers. I'm not sure about infinite strings ... does it contain itself? Oy!

As far as I understand it, yes. If it were otherwise then you could express it as the ratio of two integers, and it wouldn't be irrational.

crashfrog - If we redefine the universe as being all that you, the only extant being, can have access to then how would this make any difference to what can be known? This is why I call solipsism sterile. Its position at the most extreme end of subjectivity does not place it in a good position to be taken seriously either.

I don't understand, and anyway that doesn't appear to speak to my point. My point was that since science is a human activity - I don't see aybody else doing it - and there's a fundamental limit to what humans can know, and that limit puts "ultimate truth about the universe" off-limits, then how can science hope to accomplish anything but the development of accurate models that explain what we observe?The model is not the reality; the map is not the territory. The universe is real, has a reality, by definition; that reality doesn't necessarily bear any connection to our models whatsoever, even if our models were perfectly accurate in predicting observations.Solipcism cannot be refuted; it's a fundamental limitation on what we can know, and science must proceed restricted by that limit. The real ultimate truth of the universe is not accessable to us.