Sunith wrote: >Hi Santosh, >Aristo is probably refering to the popular books "A brief history of time" and "Mind of God". While these in no way can be considered professional scientific publications, both the authors have tried to use concepts from theoretical physics to disprove the theory of a Creator(God). I think this is a promotional gimmick that these authors have used to increase the sales of these already interesting books.
>Santosh writes: >>Aristo, >>What works of Hawking and Davies? >>In their professional scientific work no mention, reference or allusion of any kind is made to god. Do you count whimsical speculations, metaphorical usage of religious terms of popular appeal, and private religious beliefs expressed by scientists in popular science books and TV shows, as science? Aristo responds: Hi Santosh & Sunith, Technically, yes, you are right that God is not referenced in Scientific publications, and will probably not be so for a long time to come, and that the references in Hawking's & Davies' Popular Science books were probably promotional gimmicks. Yet, these are philosophical implications/interpretations of Scientific theories like M-theory & Brane theory which, although are yet to be validated in the laboratory, oppose creationism, which is the basic tenet of many Religions & God. Santosh wrote: >I think you would recognize that the threats to separation of science from religion comes from ignorant, unscrupulous ideologues and chauvinists who infuse religious myths such as "vedic" astrology and creationism in science education. It also comes from incompetent, hypocritical governments who impose invented, parochial, religious notions such as opposition to human embryonic stem cell research on secular society, while rationalizing the mass killing of adults and children in bogus wars. >As for mainstream secular science, it has quite happily remained a enterprise concerned only with discovering natural explanations for all the unexplained manifestations of our universe. This noble quest has often involved debunking of miraculous explanations and demystification of murky concepts such as life, mind and soul. Aristo responds: This is exactly what I am trying to say when I say that Religion and Science don't go together. Otherwise you have governments opposing scientific research based on religious grounds, feeble attempts to combine Science and Religion by the likes of Intelligent Design, etc. etc. Science debunks certain Religious beliefs of the past and present, and some Religions try to evolve at such instances. For example, Christianity believed that the age of the universe was 5000 odd years old. But after the Big Bang Theory, the Pope John Paul accepted that the age of the universe was 13-15 billion yrs old and now the Vatican/Roman Catholic belief has evolved according to Science. The theory of Evolution is also under consideration. While these theories defy the Bible in the literal sense, it is likely that it will be re-interpreted metaphorically. As a side note, there are some who believe that Science is a test of your faith, while at the opposite end, you have proponents of the notion that Science & Religion are in perfect harmony. At least this what I see when I browse through TV Channels like EWTN, miraclenet, etc. etc. Cheers, Aristo. _______________________________________________ Goanet mailing list [email protected] http://lists.goanet.org/listinfo.cgi/goanet-goanet.org
