Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The point is that a Greek man first theorized the curvature of the earth, going against universal existing belief of a flat earth, and relying, in part, on faith because gravity had yet to be fully understood at the time. For all he knew, ships could be falling off the edge of a flat sea, but he trusted based only on a simple observation. I have been reading the other threads on NDE and clearly NDE'ers are similarly relying on their own observation and, also, in part, faith.

So if someday science can provide imperial evidence for NDEs then we will know they are a natural phenomenon and not proof of an afterlife in a supernatural realm, just as gravity was eventually proved.

I don't quite know that gravity has been "proved". People always knew that things fall down. Over the centuries, from Aristotle, Galileo, Newton, and Einstein, we got better and better mathematical information about how this phenomenon works. But I don't think any of this goes beyond how it works to why it is there or what its essence is. Maybe gravity is the will of God holding his Creation together and controlling its motions. I'm an atheist, but I see nothing intellectually inconsistent in a scientist believing in God and pursuing science because he or she wants to understand the rules by which the Creator ordered Creation.

For me, the universe IS, and it is possible to learn more about how it works, so that we can predict, and even affect, what will happen, and create tools and machines that use the laws of nature. WHY it is, that's a question that I don't think it is possible to know, and it's a matter of how each of us sees the world whether, like me, you leave it at "We just don't know that" or whether you feel there has to be a reason and you ascribe to a religion or some other belief structure that provides an answer.

That scientist would be a deist -- a creator god only -- not the god of the Bible who has a whole back story and set up a bunch of rules for people to follow thousands of years ago and hasn't been back since.

NP. I am a religious person and I agree with the PP who said, "] I see nothing intellectually inconsistent in a scientist believing in God and pursuing science because he or she wants to understand the rules by which the Creator ordered Creation"

That said, the "god of the Bible" that is being described above is not quite accurate.

Science is a bunch of rules for people to follow. For people and all of creation to follow. Like God, science also has a back story. Last, the God of the bible never left. Most all religious people believe that God is omnipotent, omniscience, and omnipresent.

No -- the laws of physics exist and affect our lives whether people know about them or not - we are finding out about them little by little through scientific experimentation and investigation. Religion has not been involved at all in this.

We don't actively "follow" the laws of nature - we are simply affected by them whether we know about them or not. Always have been, always will be. Science doesn't have a back story -- it has facts -- some of which we know -- some of which we are still uncovering. The Bible has been of no help with this. Odd that an all-knowing and loving God wouldn't give scientists a hand in things like preventing diseases, farming or building houses for his Creation to live in.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The point is that a Greek man first theorized the curvature of the earth, going against universal existing belief of a flat earth, and relying, in part, on faith because gravity had yet to be fully understood at the time. For all he knew, ships could be falling off the edge of a flat sea, but he trusted based only on a simple observation. I have been reading the other threads on NDE and clearly NDE'ers are similarly relying on their own observation and, also, in part, faith.

So if someday science can provide imperial evidence for NDEs then we will know they are a natural phenomenon and not proof of an afterlife in a supernatural realm, just as gravity was eventually proved.

I don't quite know that gravity has been "proved". People always knew that things fall down. Over the centuries, from Aristotle, Galileo, Newton, and Einstein, we got better and better mathematical information about how this phenomenon works. But I don't think any of this goes beyond how it works to why it is there or what its essence is. Maybe gravity is the will of God holding his Creation together and controlling its motions. I'm an atheist, but I see nothing intellectually inconsistent in a scientist believing in God and pursuing science because he or she wants to understand the rules by which the Creator ordered Creation.

For me, the universe IS, and it is possible to learn more about how it works, so that we can predict, and even affect, what will happen, and create tools and machines that use the laws of nature. WHY it is, that's a question that I don't think it is possible to know, and it's a matter of how each of us sees the world whether, like me, you leave it at "We just don't know that" or whether you feel there has to be a reason and you ascribe to a religion or some other belief structure that provides an answer.

That scientist would be a deist -- a creator god only -- not the god of the Bible who has a whole back story and set up a bunch of rules for people to follow thousands of years ago and hasn't been back since.

NP. I am a religious person and I agree with the PP who said, "] I see nothing intellectually inconsistent in a scientist believing in God and pursuing science because he or she wants to understand the rules by which the Creator ordered Creation"

That said, the "god of the Bible" that is being described above is not quite accurate.

Science is a bunch of rules for people to follow. For people and all of creation to follow. Like God, science also has a back story. Last, the God of the bible never left. Most all religious people believe that God is omnipotent, omniscience, and omnipresent.

Anonymous wrote:Possibly more religious people are not responding because they have nothing to say, or think the premise is not strong. Maybe they just like believing in heaven and are not interested in trying to overlay a scientific explanation on it.

After all, faith is faith and is not dependent on evidence.

I am a "believer" and responded earlier and explained how I think God and Science intersect, but I think my post was deleted. Not sure why.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The point is that a Greek man first theorized the curvature of the earth, going against universal existing belief of a flat earth, and relying, in part, on faith because gravity had yet to be fully understood at the time. For all he knew, ships could be falling off the edge of a flat sea, but he trusted based only on a simple observation. I have been reading the other threads on NDE and clearly NDE'ers are similarly relying on their own observation and, also, in part, faith.

So if someday science can provide imperial evidence for NDEs then we will know they are a natural phenomenon and not proof of an afterlife in a supernatural realm, just as gravity was eventually proved.

I don't quite know that gravity has been "proved". People always knew that things fall down. Over the centuries, from Aristotle, Galileo, Newton, and Einstein, we got better and better mathematical information about how this phenomenon works. But I don't think any of this goes beyond how it works to why it is there or what its essence is. Maybe gravity is the will of God holding his Creation together and controlling its motions. I'm an atheist, but I see nothing intellectually inconsistent in a scientist believing in God and pursuing science because he or she wants to understand the rules by which the Creator ordered Creation.

For me, the universe IS, and it is possible to learn more about how it works, so that we can predict, and even affect, what will happen, and create tools and machines that use the laws of nature. WHY it is, that's a question that I don't think it is possible to know, and it's a matter of how each of us sees the world whether, like me, you leave it at "We just don't know that" or whether you feel there has to be a reason and you ascribe to a religion or some other belief structure that provides an answer.

That scientist would be a deist -- a creator god only -- not the god of the Bible who has a whole back story and set up a bunch of rules for people to follow thousands of years ago and hasn't been back since.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The point is that a Greek man first theorized the curvature of the earth, going against universal existing belief of a flat earth, and relying, in part, on faith because gravity had yet to be fully understood at the time. For all he knew, ships could be falling off the edge of a flat sea, but he trusted based only on a simple observation. I have been reading the other threads on NDE and clearly NDE'ers are similarly relying on their own observation and, also, in part, faith.

So if someday science can provide imperial evidence for NDEs then we will know they are a natural phenomenon and not proof of an afterlife in a supernatural realm, just as gravity was eventually proved.

I don't quite know that gravity has been "proved". People always knew that things fall down. Over the centuries, from Aristotle, Galileo, Newton, and Einstein, we got better and better mathematical information about how this phenomenon works. But I don't think any of this goes beyond how it works to why it is there or what its essence is. Maybe gravity is the will of God holding his Creation together and controlling its motions. I'm an atheist, but I see nothing intellectually inconsistent in a scientist believing in God and pursuing science because he or she wants to understand the rules by which the Creator ordered Creation.

For me, the universe IS, and it is possible to learn more about how it works, so that we can predict, and even affect, what will happen, and create tools and machines that use the laws of nature. WHY it is, that's a question that I don't think it is possible to know, and it's a matter of how each of us sees the world whether, like me, you leave it at "We just don't know that" or whether you feel there has to be a reason and you ascribe to a religion or some other belief structure that provides an answer.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The point is that a Greek man first theorized the curvature of the earth, going against universal existing belief of a flat earth, and relying, in part, on faith because gravity had yet to be fully understood at the time. For all he knew, ships could be falling off the edge of a flat sea, but he trusted based only on a simple observation. I have been reading the other threads on NDE and clearly NDE'ers are similarly relying on their own observation and, also, in part, faith.

So if someday science can provide imperial evidence for NDEs then we will know they are a natural phenomenon and not proof of an afterlife in a supernatural realm, just as gravity was eventually proved.

imperial = empirical

Anonymous wrote:The point is that a Greek man first theorized the curvature of the earth, going against universal existing belief of a flat earth, and relying, in part, on faith because gravity had yet to be fully understood at the time. For all he knew, ships could be falling off the edge of a flat sea, but he trusted based only on a simple observation. I have been reading the other threads on NDE and clearly NDE'ers are similarly relying on their own observation and, also, in part, faith.

The conclusion that the Earth is not flat was based on observations and the assumption that there was a natural and consistent explanation for the observed behaviors. It turned out that there was, and no supernatural entity was required to explain what was going on.

The same has been true for numerous observed phenomena throughout history - weather, cosmology, biology (including evolution), etc. There have been questions over time where science has said, "We just don't know, yet," for example, we're still trying to figure out abiogenesis and the reasons for the Big Bang, but there has yet to be a single instance where science has determined that an observed phenomenon is so inconsistent with other established natural explanations that such phenomenon can only be explained via some supernatural activity. Some people say that since science hasn't explained abiogenesis it must have been a supernatural event, but that's faulty logic. It's conceivable that it happened through purely natural activity (and there's a fair amount of research in this area), it's even possible that an alien race was responsible, and, of course, we can't disprove the possibility that a supernatural entity reached down and caused life, but to leap to the conclusion that it must have been a supernatural entity is premature, at best.

Oh the other hand, if you want to believe that it was a supernatural entity, that's your prerogative and it's a hypothetically possible explanation. And if a supernatural entity chose to do something in a way that is indistinguishable from how it could have happened naturally, then there's no way for us to tell that the supernatural entity did it.

As discussed in the other threads the PP mentioned, individuals are reporting certain experiences classified as "near death experiences" or "NDEs" (the "out-of-body" floating in the corner of the hospital room looking down on your body kind of thing). Like abiogenesis and the causes of the Big Bang, science has not fully explained all aspects of those experiences, but to say that because science hasn't explained the observed phenomena that it must be true that people have a soul is inaccurate. Some researchers are looking into the experiences described by those people trying to find a natural explanation, but anything that relies on human description that can't be separately observed or detected is fundamentally unreliable from a scientific perspective and difficult to research. However, to leap to the conclusion that these reported experiences are proof that there is a separate spiritual essence to our consciousness that can exist outside of the body is logically unsound and, at best, premature.

Even from a theological perspective, assuming that NDEs are the result of our having souls, you can't conclude that means any specific religion is correct. Religions that believe in reincarnation believe that there is a spiritual essence that moves from life to life, while the Abrahamic traditions believe that the soul goes to an afterlife. So, you can only have faith that such a spiritual essence is associated with your particular belief structure.

Anonymous wrote:The point is that a Greek man first theorized the curvature of the earth, going against universal existing belief of a flat earth, and relying, in part, on faith because gravity had yet to be fully understood at the time. For all he knew, ships could be falling off the edge of a flat sea, but he trusted based only on a simple observation. I have been reading the other threads on NDE and clearly NDE'ers are similarly relying on their own observation and, also, in part, faith.

So if someday science can provide imperial evidence for NDEs then we will know they are a natural phenomenon and not proof of an afterlife in a supernatural realm, just as gravity was eventually proved.

The point is that a Greek man first theorized the curvature of the earth, going against universal existing belief of a flat earth, and relying, in part, on faith because gravity had yet to be fully understood at the time. For all he knew, ships could be falling off the edge of a flat sea, but he trusted based only on a simple observation. I have been reading the other threads on NDE and clearly NDE'ers are similarly relying on their own observation and, also, in part, faith.

Anonymous wrote:That isn't the point. The point is the catalyst for change came by way of simple observation.

what's the point of your point? That change can result from simple human observation seems pretty well known and obvious.

That isn't the point. The point is the catalyst for change came by way of simple observation.

Anonymous wrote:Right, and the world's opinion was changed because of the simple observation of shadows by one man. Observation.

It took quite a while to change the "world's" opinion, I think

Right, and the world's opinion was changed because of the simple observation of shadows by one man. Observation.

Anonymous wrote:Those "some" human are over 51% of the world's population and 9/10 of Americans that believe in an afterlife. And all acknowledge that there is a Creator far superior to them who they will have to answer to upon death for their actions in life. Doesn't sound egotistical at all to me. Such reverence towards God is actually humility, something atheists seem unable or unwilling to have. Now that is egotistical.

100% of the world's population used to believe the world was flat, too

Those "some" human are over 51% of the world's population and 9/10 of Americans that believe in an afterlife. And all acknowledge that there is a Creator far superior to them who they will have to answer to upon death for their actions in life. Doesn't sound egotistical at all to me. Such reverence towards God is actually humility, something atheists seem unable or unwilling to have. Now that is egotistical.