[porkmarras]

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

carrie brownstein is the only force in this world that would cause me to have a sex-change operation so that i could be a lesbian. if that's not a higher power i dont know what it may be.

My penis might be the answer.Cause and effect.Big bang was created by another big bang and so forth.

[Glice]

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

yippeeee!!!!

let me start by calling you a limey pig-scrotum licker & proceed--

the first thing i'd question is the implied attribution that the scientific discoveries of paradigm shifters are somehow validated or invalidated by their religious beliefs. while the seemingly poetic thinking that seems to be at the core of scietific theories could certainly have a religious influence (read donna haraway on narrative and metaphor in scientific models), it has nothing to do with their workings or verifiability. any scientific model that requires some sort of god working behind the scenes is just plain unscientific. while newton could speculate all he wanted on the role of god as a cosmic watchmaker, making repairs and such, all that it took to verify his theories was observation and mathematics-- no telescopes were ever pointed at god.

the other problem i see with your argument is that you are forgetting that, expensive laboratory as it may be, the scientific method requires that experiments are repeatable and the results repeatable. which you can't do with a vision of the holy mother of god. so while belief in science requires a certain amount of confidence (a confidence that can be betrayed, like with the piltdown man or the manipulation of innumerable experimental results), there are checks built into the sytem, to allow continuous testing, and revision, unlike with faith. and so science, when properly understood, cannot be dogma. perhaps in a number of decades children will be able to experiment with subatomic particles in the solace of ther kitchens (and verify if our current laboratories are ran by a gang of scammers), much like today's chemistry sets (i almost blew my eyes out once with some exploding blue compound, but that's another story).

scientificism may be a form of religious thought, but science isn't.

gum-diseased spent masturbator.... now write something coherent

There are pigs with AIDS that wouldn't want to fuck you.

All fair points. Of course, it's slightly ridiculous to say that Newton's (etc) religion had any bearing on matters - everyone was religious back in the day.

I've read Haroway. She can fuck off with her cyborg bollocks.

The point isn't so much that we can impute any correlation between a person's worth as a scientist and their religious leanings - the point is more that a sceintist, as Einstein was wont to say, realises that there are certain concepts and ideas which are within the ken of mortal, corporeal understanding and control and certain concepts which are beyond our understanding. The 'truth conditions' of a scientific assertion are simple (although potentially quite sophisticated, in the case of atoms, quarks etc); the 'truth conditions' of a religious belief require that the proofs are non-ostensible in corporeal terms. Insofar as I assert this, I assert religion to be metaphysical, conceptual and ultimately a means of philosophical organisation. Under none of the above may the 'proof' be provided by anything more than a failing of language. One problem with a certain Wittgensteinian approach is that religion's assertions rely upon a leap of faith at the point where language trangresses itself. This is impossible to reconcile with a scientific understanding of 'proof', but that is not to say that the 'proof' is lacking in substance or 'truth'. We must be wary of a miscegenation 'twain the two distinct conceptual categories.

Another point is that, while science may seek to undermine religion, religion, except in its most vulgar and contradictory form (lay creationism, for instance) rarely seeks to undermine science. Creationism is probably a good point - I appeal here to structuralist ideas, mostly - what creationism provides is not an absolute and total conditions for Genesis (as in beginnings) but provides and allegorical understanding of the formation of society. I don't know any Christians who believe Creationism and Big Bang theory to be mutually exclusive. Perhaps I've lived a sheltered life, perhaps I'm lucky to not be in the deep south of America. Creationism provides an allegorical understanding of pre-society; Big Bang provides a physical understanding of the universe as expanded by astronomy. An understanding of our spiritual nature belongs to a religious understanding. And understanding of the conditions of our physical world belongs to a scientific understanding.

Further, science is often attempting to undermine itself. On the one hand we have the likes of Popper for whom no theory is ever proved, it remains in stasis around the point of its proof conditions until destroyed privy to the whim of the fates. From another point of view we have the recent explosion of non-Western scientific method in oriental homeopathic remedies (cf Paul Feyerabend). The problem here is that the conditions for proving a scientific experiment within Western culture, although incredibly useful, cannot accept, or accomodate for, the ostensibly use-value of homeopathy. I think a lot of homeopathy is probably bunkum, but that's not to say all of it is. The point here is that in the West, we reject the useful science (homeopathy) not because it is not useful, but because it is incommensurable with our research techniques and means of proof.

Science doesn't have the answers any more than religion or anything else - all fields of intellectual exploration are united in their failing to provide answers forever. Ergo, with have the neg-Platonism of localised truths common to contemporary thinking, itself a direct result of our (thankfully) expanded intellectual world, where I may have conversations about the plectrum thicknesses of various band with anyone in the world.

And you, sire, have STD's coming out of your ears.

[atari 2600]

I don't know why I bother, but
let's expore something, shall we?

The proliferation of atheist literature occured during the times of Newton & Descartes when science figured that it really could reduce the world into parts in a machine that could all be monitored & controlled at will. It actuality what they hit upon was interdependence, but they failed to see it as such; in arrogant fashion, the Cartesian belief stated the exact opposite really. Although the formulas worked well enough to launch an industrial revolution, they broke down on the ultimate level & did not function in space inside a vacuum. Pascal was one of the very few physicist dissenters back then. Religion, as a result of all this explosion in science, took a big hit. The zeitgeist of the age can be summed up with the announcement that "God is Dead" by Nietzsche.
As a by-product of relativity in the early 20th century, science brought about the atomic age, the computer age, & the space age. With Einstein, with quantum physics, & all the applications therefrom being an influence on all of the sciences, we also now understand the the planet is composed of living systems. These systems are all interdependent on one another to form the, if you will, Gaia, and the one system: the ecosystem.
Similarily, by the Law of Conservation of Matter & Energy which reminds us that all the energy in the universe equals exactly zero & that matter can be neither created nor destroyed, but only changes from one form to another, we can then conceive of the universe itself being a huge oneness that we see as composed of by innumerable parts that obey the laws of the whole. The speed of particles through space is even intertwined with the constant of the speed of Light itself. The mass of particles & their distance from lesser particles determine orbits of revolution. This organization exists on the macroscopic & microscopic & all levels. It may astound one to learn that all atoms are mostly composed of empty space. What to us seems so solid because it's "solid" is actually bound by energy. (all those light speed orbits all at once)
This is one of the things that illustrates how quantum physics, while refining everything that Descartes & Newton did to perfection, also raises a lot of new questions as our understanding increases, & that as it turns out, God is not dead after all.
Gravitation & the speed of light, for instance, are constants that order the universe. I will also assert that Eternity is a constant & hehee, if there's time in Eternity, it's measured by the Big Bangs & the Big Crunches.