Science is limited

[livingwordlabels]

Science, by definition, can only accept something which can be proven or tested in some way. It is therefore limited to making conclusions about physical things.
I'm not saying this limitation undermines science as a valid and extremely useful source of knowledge. However, what does undermine its reliability is when people use it to make assumptions and conclusions without acknowledging this limitation.

For example, when people try to use their scientific way of thinking to decide whether God exists or not. God is spiritual, not physical - a concept completely alien to science.

Also when people use only what they can observe to explain how mankind was created. This inevitably fails, as they have to limit life to something physical and we get the absurd idea of life evolving out of matter. The Bible offers us a more plausible explanation - that God created man from the dust of the ground and breathed into him the breath of life. If we believe the Bible, we can see that humans are spiritual as well as physical.

My conclusion? If you want to understand God, how we were made, our purpose for living, our relationship with God and even our future, then you need something more than science.

[JohnA]

You make up stuff because you are losing the debate, and you put words in my mouth and try to make it seem as if I said something when I actually didn't.

Whether there's even a debate here is debatable.

At this point I feel like we're just correcting your misconceptions, providing evidence you should have already known (eg. Hubble images), and arguing over semantics. There's nothing much left to say.

Yep, the way I see it I can trust the Socrates quote:
“When the debate is lost, slander becomes the tool of the loser.�

That is the only thing that I got from this so called debate.

But at least it does seem like I called the cognitive dissonance out correct!

LOL. Science is a faith based non-entity enterprise. How on earth can anyone pontificate this drivel is absolutely beyond comprehension.

I make no excuse for my lack of incoherency.

[WinePusher]

Yep, the way I see it I can trust the Socrates quote:
“When the debate is lost, slander becomes the tool of the loser.�

I that why you wrote this slanderous statement?

These people have faulty reason filters. They run when being exposed. What baffles me is that they realize it, but somehow do not correct it. They merely find some justification to continue. This is a serious case of cognitive dissonance.

From the outset of this thread you haven't even been staying on topic. All you've done is make unproductive personal comments and post irrelevant rants. If you plan on staying on this forum please stop making insulting personal remarks and posting irrelevant rants. And please, as a courtesy for other users who read your posts, please try to write better. This should be something everybody on this forum strives for. Good writing strengthens the force of what your saying.

[keithprosser3]

I make no excuse for my lack of incoherency.

Don't worry - I don't think anybody noticed.

oops - I'm meant to be ignoring you, aren't I?

[JohnA]

I make no excuse for my lack of incoherency.

Don't worry - I don't think anybody noticed.

oops - I'm meant to be ignoring you, aren't I?

HAHA.

Did you enjoy that (non-entity enterprise) debate, or the lack of it, or was it too one-sided?

Debate is easy when you have the objective facts on your side. Sometimes I wish the other side could grasp it.

[livingwordlabels]

There is no such thing as a spirit. Therefore humans are not spiritual. God is not spiritual, he is imaginary. Humans have imaginations, therefore humans have gods.

Do you have any proof for saying there is no such thing as a spirit? If not, why be so certain?

Science does not have to understand God, it only has to understand those that believe in gods. That is entirely possible.

I would go further and say science can't understand God.

[livingwordlabels]

My conclusion? If you want to understand God, how we were made, our purpose for living, our relationship with God and even our future, then you need something more than science.

If you leave out the 'God' bits I don't think many scientists would disagree.
Science isn't about understanding our purpose for living. Science will lay bare the mechanism of life, but not the meaning of life.

But what science has done is show that the meaning of life is not grounded in the notion of a god, or gods. I won't recap the arguments that lead to that conclusion or this post will be longer than war and peace, but science has shown us that we are on our own. There isn't a god to reward the good and punish the bad if not on this earth then in the next. If we want justice then we have to be just ourselves, if we want to be spiritual we have to find spirituality within ourselves.

But has science shown us we are on our own? It can only do this if it can disprove the existence of the spiritual realm, but as I stated in the introductory post, science by definition, rules out this possibility. It assumes it does not exist rather than proves it.

We don't have immortal souls. This life is all we will ever have, and it is this life we should treat as precious, and every other life with it.

Where is your proof?

But how can man be spiritual when science has swept away the foundations of spirituality? The answer it that the 'foundations' science swept away were were not the foundations at all. We thought human spirituality was founded on some remote and fantastic god, but science has revealed the real foundations of human spirituality was - is, and always will be - within ourselves the whole time.

This highlights the point I am trying to make. Science assumes by definition there is no spiritual dimension. It hasn't swept away anything at all.

[livingwordlabels]

I feel you are mistaken about science. It does not only deal in the physical.

You see, if there was a god out there that wasn't detectable, but was claimed to answer prayers, we could detect the effect that this undetectable god has on answering prayer.

I agree that we should be able to see God affect us in some way especially in answer to prayer. Indeed many Christians, myself included, would state that they have seen God answer some of their prayers.

This has been done, and has shown that there does not seem to be a god out there that answers prayers. This was only done in relation to the Christian god that I am aware of. So perhaps Allah, or one of the other thousands of god concepts out there are true. I sure have not seen any evidence of this though.

You don't mention who has done this, but if this was done in some sort of scientific experiment, I would not be surprised at all by the result. The problem is science requires physical proof and it is impossible for science to link some physical phenomenon with a supernatural being. By definition, science would have to reject the link and assert some thing else instead, such as a coincidence.

Do you have any evidence, or is "breathing into dust" really all you need to consider?

The point I am trying to make on this thread is that it is impossible to get scientific evidence to support something spiritual. So the answer to your question is no, I have no evidence to back up 'breathing into dust'.

[livingwordlabels]

Science, by definition, can only accept something which can be proven or tested in some way. It is therefore limited to making conclusions about physical things.

No, science doesn't really attempt to prove, at least not formally.

It's true that usually (although not always) science must be testable and falsifiable. In other words, science typically disproves, it doesn't prove. Our understanding is improved when theory is confirmed by testing and withstands scrutiny.

Proof is usually reserved for math and logic (and liquor).

I will agree with you on one thing... science is definitely LIMITED... to that which actually exists lol.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/sciproof.html

Why do you assume science can know everything? Most other people believe in a spiritual dimension of some sort. Why not keep an open mind about it?
(By the way I couldn't get your link to work.)

[livingwordlabels]

Science, by definition, can only accept something which can be proven or tested in some way. It is therefore limited to making conclusions about physical things.
I'm not saying this limitation undermines science as a valid and extremely useful source of knowledge. However, what does undermine its reliability is when people use it to make assumptions and conclusions without acknowledging this limitation.

For example, when people try to use their scientific way of thinking to decide whether God exists or not. God is spiritual, not physical - a concept completely alien to science.

For example, when people try to use their scientific way of thinking to decide whether Allah exists or not. Allah is spiritual, not physical - a concept completely alien to science

For example, when people try to use their scientific way of thinking to decide whether Zeus exists or not. Zeus is spiritual, not physical - a concept completely alien to science

For example, when people try to use their scientific way of thinking to decide whether the tooth fairy exists or not. The tooth fairy is spiritual, not physical - a concept completely alien to science

For example, when people try to use their scientific way of thinking to decide whether Santa exists or not. Santa is spiritual, not physical - a concept completely alien to science

Are you saying that we should believe that God, Allah, Zeus, the Tooth Fairy and Santa are real because there is no good evidence they are real?

You are correct that science is limited in that it cannot analyze and process FAIRY TALES. That doesn't mean that therefore fairy tales are real.

If the method by which you arrive to the conclusion that God is real is no different from the method by which a child comes to the conclusion that Santa is real, then there is no more validity to your belief in God than there is to a child's belief in Santa.

I'm not saying you should accept any and every story because science can't offer evidence to support or reject it. What I am saying is that if you use science as your only basis for determining truth, you will reject everything spiritual. Not because science disproved it, rather that science is limited in its scope.

[livingwordlabels]

[Replying to post 1 by livingwordlabels]
Perhaps when (if) our use of science enables us to learn all that there is to learn and made every possible discovery, we will discover that we are so much part of god that asking for proof of god is as pointless as asking for proof of us.
The snag is it would take an eternity and we probably only got a few thousand years at best..

I don't think science will ever learn anything about God, because God is spiritual and science limits itself to the physical dimension.