Gove shows the door to creationism as science

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

You're right Pab - but scotty likes any chance to take a pop at atheists and science generally

I don't recall Scotty bashing science. Science is not anti-religion. It only conflicts with extreme fundamentalism.

[vinteuil]

Do you know Paul Feyerabend's Against Method, teamsaint? If you don't I think you'd enjoy it.

... if you like Feyerabend, you might also like Bayle*

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/bayle

* very much my top personal hero...

[MrGongGong]

Some good bits. Some patronising bits. The devil is in the reduction of funding each year.

I think its a pile of uncosted crap myself
completely marginalises music as an academic subject and ignores whole areas (improvisation, composition !) in favour of a performance driven agenda........

and as you say the funding ?

aaaaaaaaaargh

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I think its a pile of uncosted crap myself
completely marginalises music as an academic subject and ignores whole areas (improvisation, composition !) in favour of a performance driven agenda........

and as you say the funding ?

aaaaaaaaaargh

I suppose I must concede that you are right. Working in a music service, it has come as something of a relief in that oblivion has been deferred at least for the time being. But there are some good points too.

[Dave2002]

Odd how while I've not looked at this thread for a day or two it has moved from Gove and education to the origins of the universe, conundrums such as how can "stuff" be created out of nothing, whether there is/was a creator etc. I still find the "stuff" out of nothing business incredibly odd, and troubling, and it really worries me, but it seems there's not a lot I can do about that. Not only do we have "stuff", but we also have apparently some fundamental rules governing it all, and in addition notions of time and space. It is seemingly not implausible that once we have the basic ideas that everything else will/can/may develop, but how did time, space, the matter in it and the rules all come into being?

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Uh?

[Bryn]

Odd how while I've not looked at this thread for a day or two it has moved from Gove and education to the origins of the universe, conundrums such as how can "stuff" be created out of nothing, whether there is/was a creator etc. I still find the "stuff" out of nothing business incredibly odd, and troubling, and it really worries me, but it seems there's not a lot I can do about that. Not only do we have "stuff", but we also have apparently some fundamental rules governing it all, and in addition notions of time and space. It is seemingly not implausible that once we have the basic ideas that everything else will/can/may develop, but how did time, space, the matter in it and the rules all come into being?

It has long seemed to me that all were emergent properties, rather than pre-determined. It certainly seems more plausible to me than gods, or a god, popping into existence without causation being the source of it all.

[MrGongGong]

Bernard Manning
Andre Rieu

"Intelligent" design ?


the case is closed

NEXT

[amateur51]

It has long seemed to me that all were emergent properties, rather than pre-determined. I certainly seems more plausible to me than gods, or a god, popping into existence without causation being the source of it all.

I think that BBC Horizon programme has one scientist explaining that they understand what happened down to 0.00000000001 second after the Big Bang - hope I've got those noughts right - it's that fraction that eludes them. DNA was 'created' very early on & thus Life was made possible

[Dave2002]

I think that BBC Horizon programme has one scientist explaining that they understand what happened down to 0.00000000001 second after the Big Bang - hope I've got those noughts right - it's that fraction that eludes them. DNA was 'created' very early on & thus Life was made possible

Yes, but there are still issues even if we accept that. One concern is "what happened before the Big Bang", to which one answer is that there was no such concept as time before. Some scientists are claiming that evolution of intelligent life is even more puzzling and complex than the creation of the universe. Then there are the rules? How? Why?

We could start playing around with multiverse theories, in which case we could consider other universes with other rules.

Even if that were the case, how could we ever find the existence of any universe other than our own?

Then there would be the question about what "space" all of the possible universes could be contained within.

Maybe we are really just "living" as states in some incredible computer. We could in that case worry about the nature of a computer which could contain such states. For the individual we are back to cogito ergo sum territory.

You guys may not "really" exist at all, though I tend to follow Dr Johnson in that.

[Flosshilde]

The same problems crop up even if you believe in God - if God created the universe (& all the other possible universes) where & how did God exist before the universe was created? What was there before God created the universe? Believeing in God as the creator doesn't answer any of the questions that arise if you don't believe in God as the/a creator - not even if you are a creationist & believe that God created everything exactly as we see it now.

[Serial_Apologist]

To me any religious or philosophical system that needs to consider questions of origination, especially ultimate origination, is, well, overburdened. Hinduism and Taoism have their mythologies, whose scholarly interpreters recognise them as such, as allusion. We'll know when we get there; and I guess conscience too is an emergent property, unbestowed to the psychopathic mind, disbestowed to the brutalised, but inborn to flower in congruence with its environment. I've never really believed our acts and thoughts predetermine what will happen to us in the, or a, next life, only in this. I do have a sneaky kind of feeling that we experience the parallel worlds of which some scientists now tentatively speak in our dreams, in which I re-meet people I haven't met or thought about in decades in dream scenarious which my unimaginative waking mind could never concoct, or I'd write amazing stories, as I'm sure we all would. It's just a wishful theory, though...

[amateur51]

I guess that I'm disappointed by Dave2002's response which appears to suggest that if we can't anticipate what the journey's end will be then the journey is not worth making.

Good scientific progress occurs in incremental steps - the theories may be revolutionary but the testing is largely incremental.

Sorry if that's too slow, Dave2002 - the journey's the thing

[Serial_Apologist]

I guess that I'm disappointed by Dave2002's response which appears to suggest that if we can't anticipate what the journey's end will be then the journey is not worth making.

Good scientific progress occurs in incremental steps - the theories may be revolutionary but the testing is largely incremental.

Sorry if that's too slow, Dave2002 - the journey's the thing

Exactement..........

[scottycelt]

The same problems crop up even if you believe in God - if God created the universe (& all the other possible universes) where & how did God exist before the universe was created? What was there before God created the universe? Believeing in God as the creator doesn't answer any of the questions that arise if you don't believe in God as the/a creator - not even if you are a creationist & believe that God created everything exactly as we see it now.

You're dead right there, Floss. A belief in God answers none of these questions.

However, I simply cannot understand how any person can consider something like the human brain ... yes, even Bernard Manning's ... and still believe that such an amazing organ 'emerged' after billions of years from 'stuff' that just happened to be around at the time, even though time never mind 'stuff' presumably didn't even exist in the first place.

Atheists accuse believers in a Supreme Power of 'believing in fairies' and undoubtedly there is a significant element of naivety and superstition in a lot of belief that passes for religion.

Still, the idea that things 'just happened' from an original void requires a quite astounding degree of irrational gullibilty far surpassing that of the believer, imo.

One thing for sure, even atheists very obviously believe in miracles ...