The world ‘scientific’ and ‘science’ have been misused too often, mainly to strengthen arguments or claims. However, quite often the ‘science’ presented is all but scientific. Sometimes it’s not easy to know if a claim is scientific or not.
A good guideline can be to think whether you can imagine new facts being discovered that have the potential to support or reject a claim. That is, science is potentially provable and refutable. Every proof is temporary while refutation is for ever. For example, a new discovery in the nuclear processes field may confirm or force us to throw away everything we know about the age of the universe. So although our understanding of the age of the universe may not be true, it is scientific: it is the best explanation we have come up with to fit the facts we know.
On the other hand, the fact that we have not been able to refute something does not make it scientific. So while there is no conceivable way to prove heaven and hell, our inability to prove it does not make it scientific (nor true).
This is the crux of most scientific-religious arguments. While religion tries to show any ‘not yet known’ in a scientific theory as a proof that the scientific theory is invalid, it presents irrefutable claims (often tautologies) as proofs.
And to think how many people have been killed, and are still being killed over our inability to accept that we just need to live with this gap, as it can never be bridged.
Yup, sore point indeed...it has always troubled me intensely that a piece of land can be claimed back after losing it two thousand years ago on the grounds that a god, who doesn't exist, gave it to a particular people...it took me years to rid myself of the brain washing I received as a child and then into my later life that the Bible had valid historical facts and people in it...when I discovered that in reality it's almost entirely a book of fiction as far as Jewish history is concerned except for later parts, and even then gross exaggerations are present, I realised the vast amount of damage it has done to our world...I was afraid way back in the past that the reclamation of Israel would trigger off eventually a whole gamut of peoples claiming back land lost centuries ago, and you only have to look around the world now to see that has been happening and it's only just begun to gather speed, and will continue to do so...today, so many people are fearful of opening their mouths to say anything that might be construed at anti-Semitism that injustice and outrage is allowed to continue with no country daring to say enough is bloody enough...recently 101 Palestinians have been killed in violent retribution for the deaths of less than a handful of Jewish people...the world condemns it, and what happens? Israel turns round and says it's not stopping, it's going to continue destroying Palestinian people, their homes, and their economy until they bow down before their conquerors and hand over the whole of Palestine to Israel because that is what their far right wing Orthodox Jewish people want...??? This says to us, that the entire world is helpless to prevent Israel continuing to do this...how did they acquire such power? By continually, almost on a daily basis, reminding the whole world that they let the German people murder six million of them and nobody lifted a finger to stop it...guilt cannot in the end be passed down the generations, and one day, they are going to discover all this publicity will have a terrible backlash on them...it's like watching a terrible play unfold when you can foresee the end and only a few amongst the audience can see it too, and it's too late to change it...China has committed atrocities and no doubt still is in our eyes, not that we don't also commit them, but then we're setting ourselves up as the conscience of the world so long as you close your eyes to our crimes against humanity, I know all the other countries that you mention have seriously bad human rights records but then all of them have been pawns at some point in the hands of our most powerful countries...Israel has not...it has too many powerful lobbyists around the world to let itself be used as a pawn...if anything, it uses those countries to keep it in existence...you're right, I'm mad that this has happened because I'm very, very afraid of what it might one day trigger off...now you must be a very happy bunny...LOL...
02/03/08 @ 10:05