From: crb7q@kelvin.seas.Virginia.EDU (Cameron Randale Bass)
Subject: Re: Religion & Physics Don't Mix
Organization: University of Virginia
Date: Mon, 16 Nov 1992 22:58:22 GMT

In article <1e92uiINNdbo@chnews.intel.com> bhoughto@sedona.intel.com (Blair P. Houghton) writes:
>In article <1992Nov16.072757.29064@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU> crb7q@kelvin.seas.Virginia.EDU (Cameron Randale Bass) writes:
>>     To make this much stronger, 'All-powerful' and 'all-knowing' 
>>     is a concept outside of science.   One cannot determine such a
>>     concept within science.
>
>They're also concepts inside of paranoia and psychosis.
>Given the opportunity to make a Bayesian decision for a
>wager on whether God or psychosis is the causative agent
>behind religion, I'll bet the farm on the psychosis.

     Assuming you are not a psychiatrist, your bet is not worth much in 
     this context.  Nor is your bet important for science.  God is not
     a scientific concept.

     However, far from the farm, I'd also be willing to make a $500 bet that
     the majority of the first ten psychiatrists I asked would *not* consider 
     belief in God a psychosis when presented with this decision.

     How confident are you in your diagnosis, Doctor?

>>     Religion has to accept nothing.  Do you honestly think that the 
>>     Jains base their belief in reincarnation on *logic*?
>
>Certainly not, since it's a scientific impossibility.
>Atoms and energy do not fly from one dead body to another
>live body, except through well-explained methods of natural
>recycling.
>
>Unless you're willing to start arguing about the
>existence of "soul" (other than that which Motown
>so graciously gave to us, of course).

     Such notions are not of science.  Feel free to go elsewhere to
     argue such notions.  We know full well where you stand on religion.
     My point is, and always has been, that such 'feelings' are a
     part of personal 'psychoses' and are not science.  They are not
     beholden to logic, and such concepts are not falsifiable under
     science, so science can have nothing to say about them, good or
     bad, true or false.

>>>their religion - creationists and others. But don't blame religion for
>>>this; it's bad science AND bad theology. It is true that religion is
>>
>>     It is perfectly consistent theology.  It is *not* science.
>
>It's ridiculously bad theology that's been blown completely
>out of the water by all sorts of scientific discoveries.
>Evolution since the time of Darwin has been the sine qua
>non of antireligious scientific pursuits.

      In the context of science, theology has *no* value insofar as it
      doesn't claim it is science.  Not 'good', not 'bad'.  None, zero
      zip, null.  

      Your arguments, or lack thereof, are exactly the same ones used
      by certain sects to claim that science is the province of religion.
      Imagine standing defending yourself against the cutlass of faith in 
      a universe created ex nihilo by a omniscient, omnipotent God with 
      only the blade of Occam's razor dulled by misruse.  Good luck.
      Simplicity truly *is* in the eye of the beholder.

                                 dale bass

-- 
C. R. Bass                                          crb7q@virginia.edu        
Department of Mechanical, 
     Aerospace and Nuclear Engineering
University of Virginia                              (804) 924-7926
Newsgroups: sci.physics