LSU has many more scientists than the "everyday teachers at LSU" that you may have seen as an undergraduate. The top dawgs only work with select graduate students. Many pure research departments like my own, don't teach classes at all. Our Boyd Professors are internationally renowned by definition, it's a requirement of the honor. But many more LSU researchers are "top men in their field". Are you sure you want to argue this? I shouldn't have to prove it. That's not what your article states. It states that 60-79% of National Academy of Science members it polled expressed disbelief of Gods existence. That leaves 21-40% scientists who did not express disbelief, which is significant and certainly not "tiny". It also mentions that 50% percent of NAS members polled did not respond. It didn't mention Christianity at all. All true, I'm not arguing for Christian alternate reality. Just pointing out that you went overboard in stating that "a truly elite scientist who is also a christian, really doesnt exist." They do exist. Benjamin Franklin was raised as an Episcopalian but was a Deist as an adult. From: http://earlyamerica.com/review/summer/franklin/index.htm Franklin, who normally preferred to contemplate the eternal in the privacy of his own home, had been invited by Jedediah Andrews to become a member of the Presbyterian church. He attended for five Sundays in a row. He became a pew holder and a contributor, but he nevertheless ceased to attend weekly services... In general, most Franklin scholars have found him to be quite moderate in his attitude toward religion. Typically, Alfred Owen Aldridge has described Franklin as a confirmed Deist, who, in contrast to more militant Deists like Tom Paine, did not attempt to "wither Christianity by ridicule or bludgeon it to death by argument." Benjamin Franklin is identified as an Episcopalian by the Library of Congress. A Worthy Company: Brief Lives of the Framers of the United States Constitution by M. E. Bradford was cited as the source stating he was later a Deist. (Source: Ian Dorion, "Table of the Religious Affiliations of American Founders", 1997). I was trying to trip you on Darwin. He probably was still a Christian when he wrote "Origin" as a younger man, but later in life was an agnostic--NOT an atheist. Darwin's autobiography reveals that he was all over the map in terms of religious beliefs. As a young scientist he was a devout Christian. "During these two years[1] I was led to think much about religion. Whilst on board the Beagle I was quite orthodox, and I remember being heartily laughed at by several of the officers (though themselves orthodox) for quoting the Bible as an unanswerable authority on some point of morality." Later he came to reject much of his former orthodoxy but still habored religious thoughts that suggested intelligent design. "Another source of conviction in the existance of God connected with the reason and not the feelings, impresses me as having much more weight. This follows from the extreme difficulty or rather impossibility of conceiving this immense and wonderful universe, including man with his capability of looking far backwards and far into futurity, as the result of blind chance or necessity. When thus reflecting I feel compelled to look at a first cause having an intelliegent mind in some degree analogous to that of man; and I deserve to be called a theist." But finally, he recognized the issues regarding God were essentially unsolvable. "I cannot pretend to throw the least light on such abstruse problems. The mystery of the beginning of all things is insoluble to us; and I for one must be content to remain an Agnostic."
no, i wont argue it. i am sure by your definition every large university has elites or top men or whatever. don't reshuffle what i said, i used the word "tiny" not for non-disbelievers, but explicity for christians. the article specifically says that the guys who didnt explicitly express disbelief, "Most ..were agnostics on both issues, with few believers". that means not christians. and it stated what i said, because i quoted the article. (my bold): "among the top natural scientists, disbelief is greater than ever — almost total." "Our survey found near universal rejection of the transcendent by NAS natural scientists." the words "universal rejection" and "almost total" are not my words, they are the words of the journal nature. take your quibbles up with them. i think the skills necessary to be a serious critical thinker/scientist and the skills necessary to be an adult christian are mutually exclusive. and this is basically borne out by the numbers. if he is a deist, why did you have him on your christian list? right. trying to trip me up. you put him on the christian list, and he isnt christian. nice work. yeah, he belongs on the christian list alright. i dont see the point of putting up false lists to further your argument, unless you actively hate your credibility.
Darwin was Christian when he wrote "Origin". So was Franklin for much of his life. My research and my credibility blow yours away, junior. You can't annoy me with catcalls from the peanut gallery. When you shift tactics to trying to discredit your opponent . . . you have lost the debate.
earlier you said he was "He probably was still a Christian when he wrote "Origin" as a younger man". i guess you changed your mind. and then you claimed ben franklin as christian, and then reverse yourself and called him a deist? why? dont blame me, i cant help that you reverse yourself and still claim to be right. ok, if you say so. but nevertheless you made a mistake on your research here, as you do on occasion. i dunno what to tell you dude, next time make less mistakes. or next time just say "oops, i made a mistake". nobody is buying that "I was trying to trip you on Darwin" line.
Knowing this will do nothing to change the position of the various posters on this topic, I will offer it anyway. From below, I find most interesting: "Freeman Dyson has said that science and religion are two windows through which we get a view of the same reality. Each of these windows presents a partial view of that reality from a different perspective, but each of them looks at the same reality." http://www.stnews.org/research-2922.htm By William D. Phillips (July 31, 2006) INTERPRETING THE UNIVERSE: Science and religion explain what can be observed about the physical world in different, but not necessarily conflicting, ways. (Source: Anthony Marquette/Morguefile) I am an expert in some small areas of science. I do research. I publish my results, and although my colleagues may not always agree with everything I say, they don’t think I’m a nut. I would claim that I’m pretty conventional in this regard. I am not an expert in religion. I go to church, I sing in a choir, I go to Sunday school — sometimes I have even taught Sunday school. In my church, there are people who are more liberal than I am, people who are more conservative than I am, and we all get along just fine. In that regard, I think I am an ordinary person of faith. The take-home message here is that there is nothing odd about this. Faith vs. science? Let me preface this discussion with a story. When my older daughter first went to high school, she met new friends. One day she was talking with one of these friends, who said, “My mother is a scientist, so of course she is an atheist.” My daughter replied, “You wouldn’t be able to walk across the fellowship hall of our church without bumping into half-a-dozen physicists.” There’s a pervasive myth in our society that being a scientist is incompatible with being a person of faith. It simply isn’t true. Most of the physicists I know are people of faith, and most of these people are quite conventional in both their science and in their understanding of their faith. So what is all the fuss about? Unfortunately, a minority of scientists think that people of faith are superstitious simpletons. And some people of faith believe that some of the teachings of science are an evil apostasy, the work of the devil. Neither one of these points of view represents a majority, but the controversy makes a great story. And when you are trying to sell newspapers or get people to watch television programs, it makes more sense to concentrate on what goes on in court cases in Dover, Pa., than it does to talk about all of the convergence between science and religion. I believe that if you subscribe to either extreme point of view, you will miss some of God’s greatest blessings. On the one hand, you would miss the astounding, majestic history of the universe. On the other hand, you would miss the joy of a relationship with a Creator who is also a friend. The roots of conflict So let’s examine the mythology of conflict. Many people believe that science and religion are in fundamental, irresolvable conflict. Science explains things by citing natural causes, whereas religion claims God as the ultimate cause. Science tells us the universe, the stars and everything else have evolved over the last 14 billion years, and the Bible tells us that God created the cosmos in six days. What I’m claiming is that you can be serious about both the understanding you gain from science and the understanding you gain from religion. I contend that this kind of thinking is not at all unusual, but many people seem to think that there is a fundamental conflict between these two approaches. Generally, science and religion address different kinds of questions. Science addresses questions like: How does this work? What is the sequence of events? It answers those questions based on observation and experiment. Religion asks: What is the relationship between God and creation? How should we behave to one another? The answers to these questions are based on a different way of knowing: faith and revelation. I think much of the problem that we have with the relationship between science and religion has involved putting the wrong question to the wrong discipline. My view, which I believe is a conventional view among most scientists, is that a scientific statement or a scientific claim has to be falsifiable. By that I mean you have to be able to imagine the procedure by which you can show such a statement is false. It’s not necessary to be able to prove the statement is true, but it must be possible to prove that the statement is false. For example, scientists, especially physicists, believe in the conservation of energy. It’s easy to imagine a way in which you could prove it false. Nobody ever has, but it’s a falsifiable statement. On the other hand, religious statements do not fall into that category. I don’t know of any process that could be applied to disprove the statement, “God loves us and God wants us to love one another.” It’s not a falsifiable statement. That doesn’t mean it is a meaningless or worthless statement. It just means it doesn’t fall into the category of statements that I call scientific. Just as science cannot prove the existence of God, I insist just as firmly that science cannot disprove the existence of God because it’s not a scientific issue. Seeing through many windows Freeman Dyson has said that science and religion are two windows through which we get a view of the same reality. Each of these windows presents a partial view of that reality from a different perspective, but each of them looks at the same reality. To expand that concept, I say we look at life and the world through a lot of different windows. Science and religion are two of the most important, but there are others such as love, literature, philosophy, art and music. Would anyone seriously consider living his or her life looking through a single window? I don’t think so. I would say even the most devout atheist is going to embrace more than one window during a lifetime. If you ridicule the religion window because it is not scientific, then I ask: Why pick that window out among all of the windows that are not scientific? We don’t experience art and music in a scientific way, and even people who believe there is a completely consistent biochemical explanation for love don’t want to think that way when they are on a romantic, moonlit walk. Art, literature, music and religion are completely different sources of truth than science. I would argue against scientism, the view that the scientific way is the only way of knowing things. I suspect, albeit without much scriptural support, that God chooses not to leave fingerprints. By fingerprints, I mean conclusive evidence by which God could be “convicted” in court of having done the things that he reportedly has done. I believe that God acts in the universe in really important ways, and that we will never be able to prove scientifically that this is the case. Finally, I would like to consider how important this entire discussion is. Certainly, science and religion are two of the most important forces affecting our lives in the 21st century. It is certainly appropriate that we consider the relationship between these important areas. Nevertheless, many other things are far more important. On the day of judgment, I don’t expect my views on science and religion to be anywhere near the top of the list of concerns. I believe that God is far more interested in how we behave toward one another, and especially how we treat the poor, the hungry and all those in need. There is a lot of work to be done, and we should get to it. William D. Phillips is co-recipient of the 1997 Nobel Prize in physics, a physicist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, Md. and a distinguished university professor of physics at the University of Maryland, College Park. This essay is adapted from remarks delivered as part of the Trotter Endowed Lecture Series at Texas A&M University. From the rebuttalist website http://www.atheists.org/flash.line/atheism6.htm If there is a downside to the Witham-Larson study as presented in Scientific American, though, it is the suggestion that maybe, just maybe, this disbelief among the "greater" cohort of scientific intellectuals is due a process of subtle selection. "Are the deepest contemporary scientific minds drawn to atheism, or do the higher echelons of academia select for the trait of disbelief?" they ask. Matthew Cartmill, president of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists is quoted: "Many scientists are atheists or agnostics who want to believe that the natural world they study is all there is, and being only human, they try to persuade themselves that science gives them the grounds for that belief..." "It's an honest belief," he told Discover magazine, "but it isn't a research finding." Larson and Witham then go on to discuss the 1997 symposium of the Society for Neuroscience where the so-called "God module" was the hot topic of discussion, "a spot in the brain that apparently produces religious feelings." So, Larson and Witham -- and those like Cartmill who make similar statements -- thus buy into a kind of one-sided postmodernism. The claims of the Templeton winners, scientists like Paul Davies, are provocative enough to be taken seriously -- maybe, just maybe there is indeed this grand reconciliation between the frontiers of science and theological doctrine. Those who "believe" in atheism -- a system of thought that is actually more of a lack of belief in the supernatural -- are thus presented as "cobelievers" of a sort. Unlike Leuba, or even Larson and Witham when confining themselves to replicating the earlier surveys, there is no statistical evidence to profile these alleged scientists so enthralled by their disbelief that they, presumably, filter and selectively distort any experimental evidence.
Feller, this ain't research, this is knocking around topics on the internet. if you find weakneses to exploit in my argument, that's what we're here for. I certainly expose yours with frequency and delight. Better, I responded with all I knew about Franklin and Darwins religiousness, pointing out that that they had both Christian and deist periods in their life. Either way, they believed in a diety and were not atheist. I am a little disturbed at letting you lure me into defending the SupaDeek position.
uh-huh. you didnt make a mistake, you were "trying to trip" me up and did it on purpose. and when there are mistakes in your research, it isnt research, it is knocking around topics. it works this way: 1. i assert something you do know know about, perhaps that a hard drive manufacturer is american, or how superheated water works. 2. you dont know anything about it, so you do some bad research and present it to me as if you proved me wrong 3. your shoddy research (i mean topic-knocking-around) leads to a mistake, which i point out and you deny in a humorous sort of bill-clinton way. at no point did anyone ever claim they were atheists. you brought them up out of nowhere as examples of christians. as a favor to you i am gonna quit making fun of your mistakes at this point. lets hope we all learned something.
That's right, on Darwin I figured you would lock into his later diest views and miss the fact that he was also Christian as an adult. Franklin was a straightforward addition. He never made a statement renouncing Christianity that I know of, we have only his biographers opinion that he was a diest in later life. I had thought you would object that he was not a "professional" scientist. Go ahead with your schoolyard antics if it makes you feel important, it tells quite another story to the rest of us. Just because you can find arguing points isn't proving a mistake, you know. Both of the men were baptised Christians, this is not an error. Were they trick listings?--Yes. Were they errors?--No. Did you trip over them?--Yes. And I'm amused that you can only find two other arguable comments in 8,000 posts. You bring them up over and over. Geez, that knocks my reliability back to 99.99975% doesn't it. :lol:
