Religion
Related: About this forumEarth 2.0: Bad News for God
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeff-schweitzer/earth-20-bad-news-for-god_b_7861528.htmlJeff Schweitzer
Scientist and former White House Senior Policy Analyst; Ph.D. in marine biology/neurophysiology
Posted: 07/23/2015 9:27 pm EDT Updated: 07/23/2015 10:59 pm EDT
The discovery of Kepler-452b is not likely to see the public swoon with a collective rendition of Kumbaya. But this Earth 2.0 is a huge if under-appreciated discovery, not because Kepler-452b is unique but for just the opposite reason; there are likely thousands or millions or even billions of such earth-like planets in the universe. The discovery of just one such world is good evidence for many more: after all, we know of 100 billion galaxies each with as many as 300 billion stars (big variation per galaxy). Astronomers estimate that there are about 70 billion trillion stars. Math wizardry is not necessary to conclude we did not by chance find the only other possibly habitable planet among that huge population of stars.
With this discovery, we come ever closer to the idea that life is common in the universe. Perhaps you are not convinced. That is OK; let me speculate what would happen should we ever find evidence of life beyond earth even if you think such discovery unlikely. I would like here to preempt what will certainly be a re-write of history on the part of the world's major religions. I predict with great confidence that all will come out and say such a discovery is completely consistent with religious teachings. My goal here is to declare this as nonsense before it happens. I am not alone in this conclusion that religion will contort to accommodate a new reality of alien life.
Let us be clear that the Bible is unambiguous about creation: the earth is the center of the universe, only humans were made in the image of god, and all life was created in six days. All life in all the heavens. In six days. So when we discover that life exists or existed elsewhere in our solar system or on a planet orbiting another star in the Milky Way, or in a planetary system in another galaxy, we will see a huge effort to square that circle with amazing twists of logic and contorted justifications. But do not buy the inevitable historical edits: life on another planet is completely incompatible with religious tradition. Any other conclusion is nothing but ex-post facto rationalization to preserve the myth. Let us see why more specifically.
From Genesis 1:1, we get:
more at link
TexasProgresive
(12,159 posts)but science (knowledge) has never done anything but gave me more faith. No I can't explain it, that's just the way it is for me. It would not matter to me if we discovered inhabited planets all over. I would see that as the generosity and magnificence of God.
I know my thinking will not be received well and I will not attempt to defend it.
cbayer
(146,218 posts)OTOH, I had this author's take interesting and worth perusing.
There is no need for you to attempt to defend your thinking. That is what faith is all about and yours is perfectly fine and widely shared.
I appreciate your input here. TP.
safeinOhio
(32,727 posts)Is not the eternal Tao
cbayer
(146,218 posts)I hear you, even if you say it simply.
safeinOhio
(32,727 posts)Most of my life. Non theist scripture that is very simple, yet hard to understand
cbayer
(146,218 posts)I would probably benefit from another go round.
Life is hard. Silence is good.
safeinOhio
(32,727 posts)I always have a copy around.
Everything can be corrupted. Some of the Toaist rulers were not so nice.
cbayer
(146,218 posts)Act_of_Reparation
(9,116 posts)"I've got my mind made up and there's nothing you can do or say or show me that will convince me otherwise."
trotsky
(49,533 posts)Act_of_Reparation
(9,116 posts)There's nothing wrong whatsoever with bending the evidence to invariably arrive at your predetermined conclusion. AMIRITE???
pokerfan
(27,677 posts)The high point for me was towards the end when they were each asked "What, if anything, would ever change your mind?"
Ken Ham: "Nothing."
Bill Nye: "One piece of evidence."
cleanhippie
(19,705 posts)And I don't really think it's a badge of honor.
trotsky
(49,533 posts)'Science (knowledge) has never done anything but given me more faith. It would not matter to me if we discovered fossils all over. I would see that as the evil and deceitful nature of Satan. I will always be a creationist.'
AlbertCat
(17,505 posts)Science is not knowledge.
Science is a system of observation, experimentation and confirmation.
TexasProgresive
(12,159 posts)Science-ORIGIN Middle English (denoting knowledge): from Old French, from Latin scientia, from scire know.
AlbertCat
(17,505 posts)That's what's wrong with a liberal arts education!!!!!
(that was a joke y'know. My lousy governor Pat McCrory thinks a liberal arts education is a waste of time....even tho' he had a liberal arts education.)
BTW.... Latin is so cool!
TexasProgresive
(12,159 posts)but 2 things gave me a vocabulary that enabled a perfect score on that portion of the SAT. 1 was reading everything that had words and the other was studying Latin. There a huge amount of English words that derive from Latin.
No Vested Interest
(5,167 posts)I also studied Latin 4 yrs in high school, as well as French for 3 and more French in college, though I sure cannot speak French.
When it came time for daughter to choose high school, I ruled out my alma mater because at that time (late70's) Latin was in decline in high schools. Latin has since come back in favor in college prep courses, along with rise in other languages - Spanish, Chinese, etc.
TexasProgresive
(12,159 posts)I grew up with French speaking grandparents and I never felt comfortable speaking French. At one time I could read it well and understand spoken French but when it came out of my mouth all I heard was a horrible Texan accent.
TreasonousBastard
(43,049 posts)It's tough to imagine anyone believing one god runs the entire universe, but it's not too difficult to imagine a planet or solar system having its own spiritual plane. A galactic deity, of sorts, even.
cbayer
(146,218 posts)As someone who feels primarily agnostic, I find it hard to reach the kinds of conclusions this author does, but it's still interesting to ponder.
AtheistCrusader
(33,982 posts)Slip Slidin' away. ..
AlbertCat
(17,505 posts)Actually it is.
"Spiritual plane" being nonsense.
Warren Stupidity
(48,181 posts)your god(s) can't run the universe 'cause that is too tough to imagine, but it/she/they can run a galaxy of billions of stars with billions of planets because somehow that isn't too tough to imagine. I'm missing how the universe-godlets are categorically different than the galactic-godlets such that one is unimaginable while the other is imaginable.
I agree that the original biblical god ruling over its little planet from it's enveloping celestial sphere wasn't difficult to imagine at all, it is just a quaint and stupid cosmology from the perspective of 3,000 years later.
Where exactly is this spiritual 'plane'?
TygrBright
(20,771 posts)If you believe God is a "being" who is "out there" somewhere, and "does things" for reasons humans are supposed to understand, learn, and abide by, this is terrible news indeed.
On the other hand, if you don't believe any of those things about the Divine, it is amazing and wonderful news indeed.
interestedly,
Bright
cbayer
(146,218 posts)I heard this story yesterday (without the god part) and was really taken by it. I love the idea that we are not alone but can not even begin to speculate on what there might be.
Hope you are well, TB.
TygrBright
(20,771 posts)Leontius
(2,270 posts)cbayer
(146,218 posts)The options are too infinite.
Leontius
(2,270 posts)Not speculation, not hope, not desire nor dream of possibility. not faith in its existence but fact that there is extra-terrestrial life.
cleanhippie
(19,705 posts)Which is something your religion refuses to do; allow itself to be examined empirically, because unlike SETI, the probability of religion being true is infinitesimally small, while the probability of life outside Earth is infinitesimally large.
But you knew that already. And ignored it, again.
Leontius
(2,270 posts)cleanhippie
(19,705 posts)trotsky
(49,533 posts)Leontius
(2,270 posts)any accepted scientific standards that I am aware of.
trotsky
(49,533 posts)Humanist_Activist
(7,670 posts)that Earth does have life. Because of this fact, we cannot, with any certainty, say that there is no life anywhere else. It might be rare, it might be common, but we have just started developing the tools to be able to detect them. It seems a little early to claim there is no life out there. In addition, we know what conditions are necessary for life to develop on Earth, so can extrapolate from that to other parts of the universe. Liquid water, an energy source(geothermal/tidal and/or solar), and a good mix elements, particularly carbon, to allow for complex chemistry.
The thing is, we know, for a fact, that these needs are met in other places in the solar system, much less the rest of the galaxy. What we haven't seen yet is confirmation of life, a microbe seen in a microscope, or simple multicellular life. Hell, amino acids have been found in space, as have some the molecules responsible for forming DNA. Both free floating in interstellar clouds and locked within asteroids and comets.
Right now it's a hope, but it certainly isn't a faith, we simply can't say for certain one way or another, but there are reasons to be optimistic.
Leontius
(2,270 posts)cleanhippie
(19,705 posts)Leontius
(2,270 posts)cleanhippie
(19,705 posts)Humanist_Activist
(7,670 posts)Please bear in mind that I think the article in the OP is stupid.
Lordquinton
(7,886 posts)Next question?
AlbertCat
(17,505 posts)"God is a concept by which we measure our pain"
Actually "god" is a word that regularly gets a new definition when needed. Kinda like what this article is talking about.
AtheistCrusader
(33,982 posts)This actually appears in the novel series known as The Expanse. In book 1, Leviathan Wakes, the Mormons band together to build a giant earth ship for deep space travel to coloniZe a planet in a nearby solar system.
Angry Dragon
(36,693 posts)AtheistCrusader
(33,982 posts)TygrBright
(20,771 posts)Of course, if it's already inhabited, that would kick off the First Interstellar War...
Better re-think.
wryly,
Bright
AtheistCrusader
(33,982 posts)This is an excellent and disturbing point.
NeoGreen
(4,031 posts)...to which I would contribute $ to help make it happen.
Evildoer am I
AtheistCrusader
(33,982 posts)guillaumeb
(42,641 posts)He insists that the Bible be taken literally in every aspect, and then generalizes from that point.
The Genesis Book of the Bible is a creation story. The story is not concerned with describing every single aspect of creation, but the point is that there is/was a creator.
To say that mankind is created in the image of God refers to the intellectual and spiritual capability. All humans share a common genetic heritage, and similar intellectual capabilities, but we are not all equal in every aspect.
From the article:
"Nothing in that mentions alien worlds, which of course the ancients knew nothing about. Man was told to rule over the fish on the earth, not on other planets. But god would have known of these alien worlds, so it is curious he did not instruct the authors to include the language."
What need would there have been for the Creator to mention other planets? I found the rest of his words similarly dismissive of the message of the Bible.
One question for Schweitzer, and any here who subscribe to this viewpoint:
What caused the big bang and how was the matter formed that exploded?
Act_of_Reparation
(9,116 posts)This question has been answered. Repeatedly.
I guess it bears repeating. Here's the answer:
I don't know, and neither do you. The absence of a scientific explanation does not in any way lend validity to supernatural explanations or the existence of any god, let alone your particular deity.
guillaumeb
(42,641 posts)I would give him a failing grade for his essay based on his laughable argument.
As to your comment:
"The absence of a scientific explanation does not in any way lend validity to supernatural explanations or the existence of any god, let alone your particular deity."
I would reply:
My belief in a Creator is not a science-based belief. I have said that in this forum. But I accept that and it does not diminish my belief. People can believe that there is no Creator, no supernatural beings, no divine inspiration. But there will never be "proof" for either side.
Act_of_Reparation
(9,116 posts)He's talking about people who accept wholesale the Biblical account of creation, the fall, and salvation from Original Sin.
And this reply has been addressed as well.
No modern philosophical model of knowledge necessitates certainty. I don't have to be absolutely certain there is no deity -- or have proof that no deity was involved in the creation of the universe -- to reject claims to the contrary. My position is justifiable given the evidence and knowledge available to us.
Just because two propositions cannot be conclusively proven does not make them equally valid.
guillaumeb
(42,641 posts)So he IS guilty of a ridiculous straw man argument.
As to certainty, there is no certainty in life. We agree on that at least. I would hope also that we can agree that the universe was created. The "how" is our difference.
But unless or until science can explain everything about the universe and what existed prior to the creation of the universe, there is no "proof" of anything. It has been posited that at one point the universe did not exist, and then it did.
My creative force is an essentially unknowable entity, and yours is, perhaps, a chemical or physical reaction of some sort that caused something to form from something that existed prior to the creation of the universe.
Act_of_Reparation
(9,116 posts)You can determine by the content of his arguments, who, specifically, he is addressing. It's pretty clear he's not talking about Buddhists, or Hindus, or Scandinavian Pagans.
Saying the same thing more than once doesn't make it any more correct.
guillaumeb
(42,641 posts)But I will admit that only believers in the Bible are affected by Schweitzer's straw man argument. Does that make the argument any better, or does it make Schweitzer somehow better because he limits his argument to Bible based religions?
opiate69
(10,129 posts)As for the formation of matter,
guillaumeb
(42,641 posts)Expansion rather than explosion is what I should have written.
The second part essentially refers to how matter behaved, and continues to behave in some cases, immediately subsequent to the expansion.
My question, an obvious one admittedly, is where did the matter come?
No matter how the universe was created, it was created from something. How was that something created?
And THAT question cannot be answered. If you prefer to believe that there was no creative force or entity that is your right, but there will never be any proof for your belief.
Belief without proof is the essence of faith.
Warren Stupidity
(48,181 posts)That doesn't resolve your problem, it just inserts an additional step, "god" in the process. How did this god come into being? There is no evidence that the universe was created from "something", that is merely your assertion that "it must be so".
"belief without proof is the essence of faith" - indeed, but science doesn't "believe without proof", science is fine with ignorance. We don't know how the universe started, we do know that there is plenty of evidence for what the universe was like in the fractions of a second after it started, but we remain ignorant, for now, of its origin.
goldent
(1,582 posts)The way he goes into the Bible and looking to see what it says about modern scientific discoveries, and comes to silly conclusions.
guillaumeb
(42,641 posts)My feeling is that the author of the article, like Richard Dawkins and others, feels no need for a deity and cannot admit that one might exist.
But all who so believe are believing without proof.
drm604
(16,230 posts)They'll say that it's being misinterpreted, or that the instruments are faulty, or that the scientists are cooperating in a big lie in order to keep their research funding.
They deny the evidence of evolution. The deny the evidence for the age of Earth. They deny the evidence for human caused climate change. Why would this be any different?
If the evidence doesn't fit their dogma, then the evidence must be wrong!
Leontius
(2,270 posts)goldent
(1,582 posts)A lot of time they never really "got it" when working on their degree
struggle4progress
(118,356 posts)and that life has evolved elsewhere
I can't see why that should affect my religious views. Schweitzer wants to go on record declaring this response as nonsense, by referring (say) to the trial of Galileo. I find Schweitzer's understandings of culture, history and religion limited
The trial of Galileo, now four centuries ago, can perhaps best be understood as part of the Counter-Reformation -- that is, the official Catholic reaction to the Protestant Reformation which had begun a century earlier. By Galileo's era, nobody who wanted to do astronomical calculations doubted the computational usefulness of the Copernican scheme, compared to the Ptolemaic scheme, and even the Church's own astronomers were happy to utilize the Copernican view when they needed to work out astronomical questions, as (for example) in the case of the Gregorian calendrical reform. Galileo's real crime, for that time, was his challenge to Papal authority:his famous Dialogue put official Catholic views in the mouth of "Simplicio," which suggested to diverse folk that Galileo was calling them simpletons
Nowadays, of course, we say that the annual parallax of some stars can be observed; and from this we conclude that the heliocentric view has been established. But the critical observations were only made two centuries after Galileo, the technology being inadequate in his time; and therefore the parallax argument could not be thrown at those who wanted to use Biblical-literalist arguments against Galileo in order to consolidate Papal power. It is certainly true that church history is riddled with such power-struggles, waged in theological terms; but not all theological thinking is motivated by such crass struggles
Humanist_Activist
(7,670 posts)in the Universe.
What is up with writers on Huffpost? Are they just stupid or something?
lapfog_1
(29,227 posts)As many skeptics have pointed out, the Drake equation can give a very wide range of values, depending on the assumptions. One of the few points of agreement, at least among non-creationists, is that the presence of humanity means the probability of intelligence arising is greater than nil.[39] Beyond this, however, the values one may attribute to each factor in this equation tell more about a person's beliefs than about scientific facts.[40]
Using lowest values in the above estimates, and assuming the rare Earth hypothesis implies ne*fl = 10?11, one planet with complex life in the galaxy:
R* = 7/year,[21] fp = 0.4,[41] ne*fl = 10?11, fi = 10?9,[32] fc = 0.1, and L = 304 years[36]
result in
N = 7 × 0.4 × 10?11 × 10?9 × 0.1 × 304 = 8 x 10?20 (suggesting that we are probably alone in this galaxy, and likely the observable universe)
On the other hand, with larger values for each of the parameters above, N may be greater than 1. Using the highest values in that have been proposed for each of the parameters
R* = 7/year,[21] fp = 1,[22] ne = 0.2,[42][43] fl = 0.13,[44] fi = 1,[33] fc = 0.2[Drake, above], and L = 109 years[37]
result in
N = 7 × 1 × 0.2 × 0.13 × 1 × 0.2 × 109 = 36.4 million
So... in our galaxy... 1 to 36.4 Million planets with intelligent life.
OTOH, that Donald Trump is seriously considered a front runner to be Presidential Candidate of one of two major parties in the most "advanced" and powerful nation on this 3rd rock from a minor G-class star in the remote reaches of an arm of our galaxy... a planet which has a recently updated in the HHGTTG to be "mostly harmless"... maybe N = 0.