So, Scientific American is preaching about the existence of God.
The sermon isn’t a pulpit-pounding-fire-and-brimstone oration.
But the message is clear for those who have ears to hear:
“…according to the Greek atomists, if we kept on dividing things into ever-smaller bits, at the end there would remain solid, indivisible particles called atoms, imagined to be so concrete as to have even particular shapes. Yet, as our understanding of physics progressed, we’ve realized that atoms themselves can be further divided into smaller bits, and those into yet smaller ones, and so on, until what is left lacks shape and solidity altogether. At the bottom of the chain of physical reduction there are only elusive, phantasmal entities we label as “energy” and “fields”—abstract conceptual tools for describing nature, which themselves seem to lack any real, concrete essence.”
Amen – Scientific American (March 25, 2019)
Context matters.
Read the whole article and you’ll realize my selected text misrepresents the intent of the article.
But that’s what you get when you publish theology in a science magazine.
Science can’t deal with abstracts.
For abstracts you need math, philosophy…or religion.
The natural sciences simply don’t work with things that aren’t physically “real”.
We have no idea what ideas are made of.
We don’t know what makes up a thought.
So we should take comments like this with a grain of salt:
The mental universe exists in mind but not in your personal mind alone. Instead, it is a transpersonal field of mentation that presents itself to us as physicality—with its concreteness, solidity and definiteness—once our personal mental processes interact with it through observation.
Amen and Amen – Scientific American (March 25, 2019)
You can try to disguise God by calling Him “a transpersonal field of mentation”…
…but you’re not fooling me.
31 Responses
P.S. They might as well show up with a sign that says “This bothered me!!!” 😀
I have to work on getting “transpersonal field of mentation” into a conversation today. Perhaps maybe just “Oh my transpersonal field of mentation” when I get bothered by something.
😂😂😂
Science trying to explain God is like a fish explaining life outside of his fishbowl. Amusing but not very helpful.
Yeah, because nothing covers the god angle than good old-fashioned “theosplaining.”
Why get a god to speak for himself when apologists can do all the work for him?
Are you making a point here?
Uh oh… Several Fundie-Atheists are going to struggle with this… 🙂
I overheard some atheists discussing dropping their subscriptions to SI because of this kind of heresy. Atheism can’t stand vigorous testing. It’s quite fragile. The magazine is going to need to publish another article about how it’s possible for information to appear from unguided processes or something. Otherwise they’ll lose a big chunk of stupid people from the subscriber list.
JB is going to need to define “information”, a recurring problem for all believers in immaterial forces. If he means genes, why doesn’t he just say so?
But then, he’d be talking about something physical. Can’t have that. Much better to traffic in transcendental abstractions. It explains so much more (insert something juvenile here, like an emoji or LOL).
Dropping their subscription is just a tiny part of what they should do. Proud Atheists should also add these researchers to the list of “Religious Quacks Who Can’t Be Trusted” (along with Hugh Ross and Francis Collins and pretty much every founding father of science)…
Only approved scientists may be published when they’re going to keep asking questions which lead to answers like “there’s something immaterial behind the material”.
Actually, I’d agree with the atheists when it comes to Hugh Ross.
“38 “Teacher,” said John, “we saw someone driving out demons in your name and we told him to stop, because he was not one of us.”
39 “Do not stop him,” Jesus said. “For no one who does a miracle in my name can in the next moment say anything bad about me,40 for whoever is not against us is for us.41 Truly I tell you, anyone who gives you a cup of water in my name because you belong to the Messiah will certainly not lose their reward.” (From Mark 9)
Ross professes that Jesus is Christ–he was raised from the dead for the forgiveness of our sins and now sits at the right hand of God.
Shame on anyone who has a list of BROTHERS they won’t trust because they disagree about something as insignificant as the age of the Earth.
In response to John, No I don’t agree that there is no God. I believe Hugh Ross is a “religious quack” however because he denies the obvious teachings of scripture and tries to force the scriptures to say what he has allowed himself to become convinced is the overarching truth of the age of the earth. Rather than starting with the word and conforming his beliefs and study to it, he starts with his incorrect and false beliefs and tries to conform and twist the word to it.
The age of the earth is not insignificant because it causes people to stray into heresy by putting death before sin and it makes a liar of Jesus who stated that “in the beginning he made them male and female”. To believe that the earth sat for ages waiting for God to create life means that one does not believe that Jesus knew what he was talking about.
Furthermore, Hugh Ross also does not believe in the world-wide flood that left evidence across the world and the bible states covered the highest mountain, which again shows that he twists or ignores scriptures to fit his false beliefs.
BTW, love listening to the podcast. Have only just managed to catch up to the point where you guys have introduced the intro. 🙂
Thanks for listening, Pkarghl…
As a heads up, you’re probably not going to like the 2 or 3 episodes where we discuss Genesis. 🙂
Disagreement for me is not a reason to not listen. I don’t think I’ve ever met a single person I agree with totally, so if I didn’t listen to anything I didn’t fully agree with, I’d have to listen to nothing, including myself, since there have been times I’ve changed my mind and no longer agreed with what I used to say and believe!
The question of the age of the earth is hardly “insignificant” if it evidentially negates the claims of YEC’s, or their scriptural interpretations.
No-one outside of YEC believes in a world-wide flood, for the simple reason that the evidence is lacking. Scripture is not empirical evidence, but YEC’s can’t tell the difference between the two.
One only has to look at the evidence with the correct worldview to see it all. When you refuse to open your eyes it’s very difficult to see.
Yes, I’ve heard schizophrenics and people who take psychedelic drugs say much the same thing.
Ahh… The ad hominem attack. The strategy of those that have no real evidence to support their statements. You resorted to that one pretty quickly. 🙂
Check out creation.com. It might assist you to see the truth without the drugs.
I love ad hom! So does JB, from whom I’ve learnt. He’s the master. But you’re putting a heavy burden on that word “truth”. Empirical evidence trumps your personal desires.
I checked out creation.com but more than one or two articles of that stuff is enough to do your head in. Why not, instead, talk to a few reputable geologists for the actual science on old-earth estimates?
Creationists are incompetent on that score.
What do you have against scientists who earned their PHDs at secular universities? They seem plenty competent, and their competencies in many cases led them to realise that the evidence supported a young earth which fit with the Biblical model, whether your personal desires will allow you to acknowledge it or not.
See https://creation.com/age-of-the-earth
You just demonstrated your own incompetence by citing a creationist horticulturalist on the question of the age of the earth.
You may as well say: when I have a problem with my car, I take it to the vet.
You just demonstrated your own closed-mindedness and your dogmatic religious atheism by your criticism of a trained scientist simply because his religious views are different to your own.
It sounds more to me that you’d rather take your car to an atheist vet rather than a creationist mechanic, which of course is stupid, whilst I wouldn’t even bother to ask about their worldview as long as they are honest and can fix my car!
Sorry, Ernest. You can’t have creationism AND science , because the latter tends to cancel out the former.
We also don’t do palliative care by treating patients according to voodoo practices. You’re simply trying to have your cake, and eat it too. Reality doesn’t work that way. I suggest you talk to some legitimate palaeontologists and geologists to get the proper lowdown on the mainstream consensus in those fields regarding such things as old-earth scenarios.
Go to a museum of natural history, or a geology department at your nearest university for such information.
Ahh… Now the appeal to authority. Another logical fallacy. How about bringing something useful to this conversation, such as evidence perhaps for your worldview that cannot be interpreted another way?
Historically, the fathers of most branches of science were creationists and the reason they were even able to use the scientific method was because of their faith that a logical God created the universe so there would be order behind it all, which is in fact what we find.
As stated by Louis Pasteur: “The more I study nature, the more I stand amazed at the work of the Creator. Science brings men nearer to God.”
and
“Little science takes you away from God but more of it takes you to Him.”
and
“Posterity will one day laugh at the sublime foolishness of the modern materialistic philosophy. The more I study nature, the more I stand amazed at the work of the Creator. I pray while I am engaged at my work in the laboratory.”
And Sir Isaac Newton: “Atheism is so senseless. When I look at the solar system, I see the earth at the right distance from the sun to receive the proper amounts of heat and light. This did not happen by chance.”
and
“In the absence of any other proof, the thumb alone would convince me of God’s existence.”
and
“I have a fundamental belief in the Bible as the Word of God, written by those who were inspired. I study the Bible daily.”
If not for the creationist fathers of science, you would still be visiting your nearest witch doctor for your infirmities.
Ernesto takes issue with the “appeal to authorities” argument, and then proceeds to avail himself of the very argument he just tried to discredit, by appealing to “authorities” like Pasteur and Newton! Truly, JB’s brand of comedy is birthing a whole new school of thought!
Ernesto: Newton was also a bit of a crackpot, obsessed with alchemy and Bible exegesis. Genius — in such cases– co-exists with craziness, quite compatibly. Nowadays, we would simply put such things down to the human ability to compartmentalize.
Most scientists pre-Darwin (and Wallace) were creationists. Most scientists post-Darwin are not creationists. I’ll leave you to put two and two together, and trust you not to shoot yourself in the foot.
Hippocrates is the “father” of the empirical methods of modern-day Western medical treatment, so I suggest you leave out non-sequiturs about “creationist fathers of science” providing the antidote to otherwise superstitious faith and recourse to witch doctors.
I’m a patronizing bastard, so I suggest this: try thinking for yourself; reading and studying more widely than just the Bible and apologetics; seeking out people who know more about science than you clearly do; and spending less time identifying what the various arguments and so-called fallacies are in debates such as these, as if merely calling them out as you’ve been inculcated to do, is enough to thereby discredit them.
Here endeth the lesson. Good luck.
You need to stop being so judgmental.
There is a difference between an appeal to authority and disproving the fallacious argument that one cannot be a serious scientist and a creationist (which is what I was demonstrating by quoting the 2 great scientists).
Now you are claiming that simply because more scientists are indoctrinated to your viewpoint, therefore you are right. If there was only one person left on the planet claiming that 2 + 2 = 4, then despite popular opinion, he would be right and everyone else wrong.
Truth isn’t democratic. Even if more scientists don’t believe in the Bible does not make it so. It is you who needs to actually take a look at the arguments of the other side, as I did before actually coming to this belief.
You continually argue against the straw man of creation that you have built up in your mind and find yourself victorious, but if you actually took an honest and open minded look into what creationist scientists are saying, you may actually find yourself surprised.
You agree that there is no God because Hugh Ross?
You can try to describe your god by calling him “transcendental”, or “immaterial”, or “existing outside of time and space”…
… but you’re not fooling anyone, apart from foolish theists.
I don’t know why Scientific American published this piece of drivel. Looking at the work focus (creating Artificial Intelligence) of the writer, this article confirms the mental, amoral and vacuous mentality of many involved in creating the dystopian virtual realities of human-created AI.
They reject God and are feverishly working on “digitally” creating their own God.
May God help and protect us all from these idjits.
Coming from Sarah Connor, this comment bears even more weight.