Some church requests for tithes.

[ben says]

I'm not sure what you're getting at. Yes, science is based on empiric results, i.e. the scientific method. Essentially the purest reason we know.

What else would science be based on? How can you compare, with a straight face, science and fairies/gods...?

Wait...do you also believe prayer can heal? Let's hope you don't get any serious ailments anytime soon!

[Clem1029]

Essentially the purest reason we know.

This is a stunning statement.

Pure science is really good at observing things. It is terrible at philosophy, particularly when coming from it's own observations.

Not to mention there are some questions that it is impossible for science to answer.

[Debbie Thompson]

Or believing in science.  Do you agree with that, ben says?

Would you concede that belief systems answer questions that science cannot even begin to answer?

No, I do not agree with your first statement. I'd actually say, anyone who agrees with that statement is certifiably insane. How can you lump together science with belief in things that can't be proven? It wouldn't be science if it couldn't be proven. Science is based on empiricism. Faith is based on...well...nothing.

I do not concede that belief systems can answer anything concrete. Just because science can't answer some things does not automatically mean faith can. It's not an either/or scenario.

Oh, what fun.  Here we go.

So, here's the way my science teacher explained the scientific method to me.  First, you state a hypothisis, a theory.  Then you set out to prove it.  If you can prove it, you have something.  If not, your just have an unproven idea you threw out there.  Kind of like Darwin's Theory of Evolution.  Still unproven, but taught as fact.

How, then, Ben, is belief in the Divine that different?  One doesn't refuse to believe the existence of God because He hasn't proven Himself to you yet.  You state your belief in his existence, and then set out to prove it by experiencing His working in your life.  It's part of the mystery of God.

Can I provide you proof of His existence befoe you will believe??  No. You have to experience it for yourself.  Once you do, you cease to doubt.

[Ocklawaha]

Perhaps the oddest thing I've noticed in my life is that people who claim no belief in anything they can't touch or see, are often the same people fascinated by science-fiction, and sci-fi movie's such as Star Trek, and other inquisitive tales of the unknown. Several have told me that they believe when we meet an alien civilization it will probably look like this or that, seen or read in science-fiction. All the more interesting because today's sci-fi is often tomorrows science. To anyone who does this, perhaps even believes that someday we might find something like the "Borg," to laugh at the concept of a spiritual realm or a God seems to condemn their arguments to incredulity.

Whats really amusing to me Stephen, is the number of people that claim a superior intelligence of knowing that there is no God, No spiritual realm, No supernatural, and lump God and Fairies together as myth. It is in fact a hollow claim, as it is impossible for any of them to know who, at this instant, is standing behind them. Nobody you say? Well how about beyond the next room? beyond the house? beyond the city, county, state or country? WHO IS BEHIND YOU and the bottom line, how do you know it is not GOD? These people for the most part realize deep down that there really is another realm, in fact the "Theory of Everything," in quantum physics teaches that there are 11 realms in the cosmos, most of which we cannot detect, but which open the possibility of "Parallel Time," "Spiritual Worlds," and mind boggling incredible things which as long as we are restricted to our human bodies, we'll probably never see. Einstein was working on the beginnings of this theory when he died, believing as he did in a pan-spiritual world. Most of the great philosophers believed in variations of the existence of other realms from time immortal. But for the modern atheists it's more a matter of pride, rebellion and cloaked ignorance.

These people do not have bodies, rather they believe that they are bodies, for to admit to owning a body would be to admit that something indwells it complete with personality and name. Do any of them own a cat or a dog or would we say they are cats or dogs, and is that pet a body or does it inhabit a body? Far from being a narrow, old time, restrictive view of the cosmos, the belief in the immortal cosmos, is infinitely liberating. Yeah, it might mean you surrender a bit of self, but the payback is eternal enlightenment, and who knows, you might even meet the Borg!

"Immortal," he said.

"Then does the soul not accept death?"

"No."

"So the soul is immortal."

"Immortal."

"Well," he said; "then shall we say
this is demonstrated; how does it seem?"

"And most sufficiently, Socrates."

"What then, Cebes?" he said.
"If it was necessary for the uneven to be indestructible,
what else than indestructible would the three be?"

"For how could it not?"

"Then if also it was necessary
for the heatless to be indestructible,
whenever any heat approached snow,
would the snow withdraw to be safe and unmelted?
for it could not have perished,
nor could it remaining have accepted the heat."

"You say the truth," he said.

"In the same way, I think, also
if the coldless were indestructible,
whenever anything cold approached fire,
it would never be extinguished nor perish,
but having gone away safe it would endure."

"By necessity," he said.

"Then also," he said,
"is it not necessary to say this about the immortal?
If the immortal is also indestructible,
it is impossible for the soul,
when death comes upon it, to perish;
for out of what was said before
it will not accept death nor will it be dead,
just as we said the three will not be even, nor will the odd,
nor fire cold, nor the heat in the fire.

"But what prevents, someone might say,
the odd from becoming even when approached by the even,
as we agreed,
but perishing the even becomes it instead of that?

"To the one saying this
we would have nothing to contend that it does not perish;
for the uneven is not indestructible;
since if this were conceded to us,
we could easily contend that when the even approaches
the odd and the three withdrawing are gone;
and we could contend this about fire and heat and the others.
Or could we not?"

"Certainly."

"So too now concerning the immortal,
if it is conceded to us also to be indestructible;
but if not, another argument would be needed."

"But it is not needed," he said, "on account of this;
for scarcely anything else would not accept ruin,
if the immortal which is eternal will accept ruin."

56
"But God, I think," said Socrates,
"and the form of life itself,
and if there is anything else immortal,
by all it would be agreed they will never perish."

"Of course by all people, by God," he said,
"and even more, I think, by gods."

"Since then the immortal is also incorruptible,
the soul, if it happens it is immortal,
also would be indestructible?"

"Very definitely."

"Then when death comes upon a person
the mortal part of one, it seems, dies,
and the immortal, safe and incorruptible,
going away is gone, withdrawing from death."

PHAEDO by Plato, 360 Years BCE or "Before Christ."

"Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of War, where every man is Enemy to every man; the same is consequent to the time, wherein men live without other security, than what their own strength, and their own invention shall furnish them with all. In such condition, there is no place for Industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain; and consequently no Culture of the Earth; no Navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by Sea; no commodious Building; no Instruments of moving, and removing such things as require much force; no Knowledge of the face of the Earth; no account of Time; no Arts; no Letters; no Society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; And the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short."
Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, 1651.

"Wars, factions, and fighting,' said Socrates as he looked forward from his last hour, 'have no other origin than this same body and its lusts. ... We must set the soul free from it; we must behold things as they are. And having thus got rid of the foolishness of the body, we shall be pure and hold converse with the pure, and shall in our own selves have complete knowledge of the Incorruptible which is, I take it, no other than the very truth."
"We can and must pray to the gods that our sojourn on earth will continue happy beyond the grave. This is my prayer, and may it come to pass."
Σωκράτης Socrates prior to his forced "suicide" death, 399 BC

All things are woven together and the common bond is sacred, and scarcely one thing is foreign to another, for they have been arranged together in their places and together make the same ordered Universe. For there is one Universe out of all, one God through all, one substance and one law, one common Reason of all intelligent creatures and one Truth. Frequently consider the connection of all things in the universe. We should not say ‘I am an Athenian’ or ‘I am a Roman’ but ‘I am a citizen of the Universe'.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 172â€"174

To Buddhism, however, death is not the end of life, it is merely the end of the body we inhabit in this life, but our spirit will still remain and seek out through the need of attachment, attachment to a new body and new life. Where they will be born is a result of the past and the accumulation of positive and negative action, and the resultant karma (cause and effect) is a result of ones past actions.
P.756. Wordsworth editions 1999.The Wordsworth Encyclopedia of World Religions

Light or darkness, sounds and smells leave bodies quite unaffected; what does affect bodies is not these but the bodies which are their vehicles, e.g. what splits the trunk of a tree is not the sound of the thunder but the air which accompanies thunder. Yes, but, it may be objected, bodies are affected by what is tangible and by flavours. If not, by what are things that are without soul affected, i.e. altered in quality?
Aristotle, On the Soul, Book II, Chapter 12

A samurai once asked Zen Master Hakuin where he would go after he died.
Hakuin answered, "How am I supposed to know?"
"How? You're a Zen master?" exclaimed the samurai.
"Yes, but not a dead one," Hakuin answered.
Ancient Zen Parable, Unknown Origin

But we're all fixin' to find out! Don't be caught dead without having read your program, otherwise all dressed up and no place to go.

OCKLAWAHA

[buckethead]

I have missed Ock.

[Garden guy]

You say that those that do not believe in a god is hollow....just a hollow as believe that some girl had a baby from a visit from "god"....um...she was probably having sex with someone who wasnt her husband and asctually convinced him that "god" did it....if not joseph had an obligation to kill her...of course she would say god did it. who wants to get their head taken off...God was created by man as a cooping skill...not reality.

[buckethead]

Thank God Science we've got that settled!

Thanks GG!

[Garden guy]

Thank God Science we've got that settled!

Thanks GG!

You're so welcome..i knew you were lost..lol

[buckethead]

Alright now!

Ock gives me Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle et al.

What was it you were saying to counter the scientific and philosophical brain trust of the ages?

I got lost again.

[Ocklawaha]

You say that those that do not believe in a god is hollow....just a hollow as believe that some girl had a baby from a visit from "god"....um...she was probably having sex with someone who wasnt her husband and asctually convinced him that "god" did it....if not joseph had an obligation to kill her...of course she would say god did it. who wants to get their head taken off...God was created by man as a cooping skill...not reality.

Interesting that you just elevated your thought above that of the Bible, Plato or modern Quantum Physics. Try and understand that if SCIENCE proves there are 11 realms in the cosmos, I seriously doubt that you alone have found the window to the virgin birth of Christ. But you "KNOW?" Such knowledge assumes that you were there, a physical impossibility... well...at least in this realm. Ah, but there can be no other realm because the supernatural world is all myth but I suspect the Borg is a distinct possibility.

Shine some science on the virgin birth and guess what? As Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman would say, PLAUSIBLE!
Parthenogenesis

In parthenogenesis ("virgin birth"), the females produce eggs, but these develop into young without ever being fertilized.
Parthenogenesis occurs in some fishes, several kinds of insects, and a few species of frogs and lizards. It does not normally occur in mammals because of their imprinted genes. However, using special manipulations to circumvent imprinting, laboratory mice have been produced by parthenogenesis. [Link]

In a few nonmammalian species it is the only method of reproduction, but more commonly animals turn to parthenogenesis only under certain circumstances. Examples:

   * Aphids use parthenogenesis in the spring when they find themselves with ample food. In this species, reproduction by parthenogenesis is more rapid than sexual reproduction, and the use of this mode of asexual reproduction permits the animals to quickly exploit the available resources.
   * Female Komodo dragons (the largest lizard) can produce offspring by parthenogenesis when no male is available for sexual reproduction. Their offspring are homozygous at every locus including having identical sex chromosomes. Thus the females produce all males because, unlike mammals, females are the heterogametic sex (ZW) while males are homogametic (ZZ).

...Occasionally worker honeybees develop ovaries and lay unfertilized eggs. Usually these are haploid, as you would expect, and develop into males. However, workers of the subspecies Apis mellifera capensis (the Cape honeybee) can lay unfertilized diploid eggs that develop into females (who continue the practice). The eggs are produced by meiosis, but then the polar body nucleus fuses with the egg nucleus restoring diploidy (2n). (The phenomenon is called automictic thelytoky.)

Why Choose Asexual Reproduction?

Perhaps the better question is: Why not?

After all, asexual reproduction would seem a more efficient way to reproduce. Sexual reproduction requires males but they themselves do not produce offspring.
Two general explanations for the overwhelming prevalence of sexually-reproducing species over asexual ones are:

   * Perhaps sexual reproduction has kept in style because it provides a mechanism to weed out (through the recombination process of meiosis) harmful mutations that arise in the population reducing its fitness. Asexual reproduction leads to these mutations becoming homozygous and thus fully exposed to the pressures of natural selection.
   * Perhaps it is the ability to adapt quickly to a changing environment that has caused sex to remain the method of choice for most living things.

...An asexual population tends to be genetically static. (Jesus had no offspring-OCK) Mutant alleles appear but remain forever associated with the particular alleles present in the rest of that genome. Even a beneficial mutation will be doomed to extinction if trapped along with genes that reduce the fitness of that population.

But with the genetic recombination provided by sex, new alleles can be shuffled into different combinations with all the other alleles available to the genome of that species. A beneficial mutation that first appears alongside harmful alleles can, with recombination, soon find itself in more fit genomes that will enable it to spread through a sexual population.
Evidence (from Paland and Lynch in the 17 February 2006 issue of Science):

Some strains of the water flea Daphnia pulex (a tiny crustacean) reproduce sexually, others asexually. The asexual strains accumulate deleterious mutations in their mitochondrial genes four times as fast as the sexual strains.
Evidence (from Goddard et al. in the 31 March 2005 issue of Nature):

Budding yeast missing two genes essential for meiosis adapt less rapidly to growth under harsh conditions than an otherwise identical strain that can undergo genetic recombination. Under good conditions, both strains grow equally well.
Evidence (from Rice and Chippindale in the 19 October 2001 issue of Science):

Using experimental Drosophila populations, they found that a beneficial mutation introduced into chromosomes that can recombine did â€" over time â€" increase in frequency more rapidly than the same mutation introduced into chromosomes that could not recombine.

So sex provides a mechanism for testing new combinations of alleles for their possible usefulness to the phenotype:

   * deleterious alleles weeded out by natural selection;
   * useful ones retained by natural selection.

Some organisms may still gain the benefits of genetic recombination while avoiding sex. Many mycorrhizal fungi use asexual reproduction only. However, at least two species have been shown to have multiple â€" similar â€" copies of the same gene; that is, are polyploid. Perhaps recombination between these (during mitosis?) enables these organisms to avoid the hazards of accumulating deleterious mutations. (See the paper by Pawlowska and Taylor in the 19 Feb 2004 issue of Nature.)

But there are many examples of populations that thrive without sex, at least while they live in a stable environment.
Rapid Adaptation to a Changing Environment

As we have seen (above), populations without sex are genetically static. They may be well-adapted to a given environment, but will be handicapped in evolving in response to changes in the environment. One of the most potent environmental forces acting on a species environment is its parasites.

The speed with which parasites like bacteria and viruses can change their virulence may provide the strongest need for their hosts to have the ability to make new gene combinations. So sex may be virtually universal because of the never-ending need to keep up with changes in parasites.

Evidence:
...genetic uniformity.
   * There is some evidence that genetically uniform populations are at increased risk of devastating epidemics and population crashes.
   * Flour beetles (Tribolium castaneum) parasitized by the microsporidium Nosema whitei increase the rate of recombination during meiosis.

The idea that a constantly-changing environment, especially with respect to parasites, drives evolution is often called the Red Queen hypothesis. It comes from Lewis Carroll's book Through the Looking Glass, where the Red Queen says "Now here, you see, it takes all the running you can do to keep in the same place".

Probably Both

The possibilities outlined above are not mutually exclusive and a recent study [see Morran, L. T., et al., in Nature, 462:350, 19 November 2009] suggests that both forces are at work in favoring sexual reproduction over its alternatives.

The organism for testing these theories was Caenorhabditis elegans. While C. elegans does not reproduce asexually, most worms are hermaphrodites and usually reproduce by self-fertilization with each individual fertilizing its own eggs. This quickly results in its genes becoming homozygous and thus fully-exposed to natural selection just as they are in asexually-reproducing species.

Hermaphrodites have two X chromosomes and self-fertilization ("selfing") usually produces more of the same; that is, hermaphrodites produce more hermaphrodites. However, an occasional nondisjunction generates an embryo with a single X chromosome and this develops into a male. These males can mate with hermaphrodites (their sperm is preferred over the hermaphrodites own) and, in fact, such "outcrossing" produces a larger number of offspring. It also produces 50% hermaphrodites and 50% males...
SOURCE:  http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyPages/A/AsexualReproduction.html#Asexual_Reproduction_in_Animals

TO CONTINUE OUR JOURNEY - CLICK BELOW
http://www.myspace.com/music/song-embed?songid=74100807&getSwf=true'%20width='400'%20height='77'/><p>Find%20more%20<a%20target='_blank'%20href='http://www.myspace.com/constancedemby'>Constance%20Demby</a>%20albums%20at%20<a%20target='_blank'%20href='http://www.myspace.com/music'>

" Darkness of Space"
lyrics from
The Emerald Tablets

Shadows around thee are falling,
Darkness fills all the space.
Shine forth Oh Light of the Man Soul,
Fill thou the darkness of space,
The darkness of space.

Shadows of darkness surround thee,
Life fills thee with it's flow.
But know, Oh Man, thou must arise,
And forth from thy body go.
Far to the planes that surround thee,
And yet are one with thee too.
One with thee too.

Look all around thee, look all around thee.
Oh Man , see thine own light reflected,
Even in the darkness around thee,
Thine own Light pours forth through the veil.
Pours through the veil.

Thy Light, Oh Man, is the Great Light.
Shining through the shadow of flesh.
Free must thou rise from the darkness,
Before thou art one with the Light.
One with the Light.

Physicists aren't just spinning out these tales of 11 dimensions for the amusement of science-fiction writers. Rather, unseen dimensions seem to offer the best hope for solving the kinds of problems that have frustrated theorists since Albert Einstein's day.

The incredible lightness of gravity

For decades, physicists have puzzled over the weakness of gravity in comparison with the other fundamental forces of nature.

"A tiny magnet can lift a paper clip, even though all the mass of the earth is pulling it in the opposite direction," Randall noted in her book on the search for extra dimensions, titled "Warped Passages."

Einstein tried to come up with an overarching theory that could apply equally well to gravity and the other forces, but just couldn't do it. In fact, the theories that govern gravity and quantum mechanics are totally separate, and totally incompatible in the four-dimensional world we know.

Over the past couple of decades, Einstein's successors have focused their quest for a "theory of everything" on string theory â€" the idea that the fundamental constituents of matter are tiny stringlike objects vibrating at different frequencies. String theorists could come up with equations to cover gravity as well as quantum effects, as long as they were given 10 or 11 dimensions to work with.

Straining to explain branes

The theories work even better if you can think of our four-dimensional space-time continuum as a type of membrane, or "brane," embedded in a "bulk" that takes in even more dimensions. Randall and Sundrum found that gravity's comparative weakness was perfectly understandable if particles called gravitons could leak off a brane into a five-dimensional bulk. In fact, they said, it could well be that gravitons are leaking across the bulk into our own brane (the "Weakbrane") from an extradimensional brane nearby (the "Gravitybrane").

Admittedly, this sounds like a made-up world straight from "Alice in Wonderland" â€" and indeed, Alice has been invoked more than once by theorists themselves. The only thing that could save extradimensional physics from the fiction shelf is the prospect of finding real-world evidence to support the braneworld concept.

Although there are no guarantees, Randall and Sundrum are holding out hope that ambitious experiments will soon produce precisely that kind of evidence. "Within the next five years, we might actually encounter these extra dimensions," Randall said during a talk last week in Seattle.
SOURCE:  http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13070896/ns/technology_and_science-science/

See you on the other side...

OCKLAWAHA

[Debbie Thompson]

Stephen, I didn't say I didn't believe in evolution.  I said Darwin's theory is unproven.  I, at least, don't believe we evolved from apes, or an ameoba.  I fully believe humans are evolving.  Except I believe we were created as humans.  Not amoeba or apes that turned into humans.  That's the difference.

Who said yesterday's science fiction is today's fact?  I was thinking about that, and this thread,  this morning.  My grandmother was born before cars were invented, and lived to see men walking on the moon.  I still find it amazing I'm carrying a cell phone in my purse.  Dick Tracy's wrist phone?  The stuff of science fiction?  If it isn't fact already, it's right around the corner.  I can today enter a bunch of budget numbers in Excel, make changes, and Excel will re-calculate in a tiny portion of a second what it used to take me, a columnar pad and a 10-key adding machine an entire week to recalculate in 1975.

Just because something hasn't happened yet, or been proven yet, doesn't mean it won't be.

Or, as the Bible puts it, every knee shall bow, every tongue confess, that Jesus Christ is Lord.  It's just a matter of time.   :-)

[Live_Oak]

Stephen, I didn't say I didn't believe in evolution.  I said Darwin's theory is unproven.  I, at least, don't believe we evolved from apes, or an ameoba.  I fully believe humans are evolving.  Except I believe we were created as humans.  Not amoeba or apes that turned into humans.  That's the difference.

Who said yesterday's science fiction is today's fact?  I was thinking about that, and this thread,  this morning.  My grandmother was born before cars were invented, and lived to see men walking on the moon.  I still find it amazing I'm carrying a cell phone in my purse.  Dick Tracy's wrist phone?  The stuff of science fiction?  If it isn't fact already, it's right around the corner.  I can today enter a bunch of budget numbers in Excel, make changes, and Excel will re-calculate in a tiny portion of a second what it used to take me, a columnar pad and a 10-key adding machine an entire week to recalculate in 1975.

Just because something hasn't happened yet, or been proven yet, doesn't mean it won't be.

Or, as the Bible puts it, every knee shall bow, every tongue confess, that Jesus Christ is Lord.  It's just a matter of time.   :-)

Not bowing and not confessing.  Sorry, but there goes everyone.

[Live_Oak]

All this discussion is good, I agree.  However it really goes nowhere because science can never prove that god does not exist and faith can never prove that god does exist.  I think people need to accept this fact and move on.

Some questions have no answers.

[Ocklawaha]

All this discussion is good, I agree.  However it really goes nowhere because science can never prove that god does not exist and faith can never prove that god does exist.  I think people need to accept this fact and move on.

Some questions have no answers.

...And you Live Oak, have found the sound of one hand clapping!

OCKLAWAHA

[Timkin]

For myself, I believe that we do have a higher power from which all was created. Nothing else seems sensible ...for me ,at least.