Pope says gravity proves technology can't supplant God
The Pope has warned the faithful of the folly of thinking that technology could replace the almighty. Pope Benedict, speaking at a Palm Sunday Mass to kick off Holy Week, noted that mankind had always sought to become "like God". But, Reuters reports, Pope Benedict said: "Mankind has managed to accomplish so many things: we can …
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The man's an idiot
I see nothing in what the pontiff says that in any way demonstrates the existence of a god. If he thinks that any of what he has said proves there is a god then he's a bigger idiot than I first took him for.
Scientific Process
@Charles9 and Alex67 and many others...
A scientific investigation should always begin with a 'null hypothesis', such that we presume the reverse of our theory to be true and must then devise a way to successfully demonstrate to every one of our pedantic peers that this presumption simply cannot be the case (the basic premise is very Spock-ist - once we remove all the impossible explanations... etc)
For example: To investigate the possible existence of God (in whatever form, race, sex, species you wish) one must begin by presuming that there simply is not, cannot be and never was a God.
Now search for any single proven event that absolutely could not have happened but for the intervention of an omnipotent being (anything that made it into King James' redaction of holy scripts in the early 1600s are gossip and conjecture at best and are therefore inadmissable).
Ah, there aren't any.
Not one?
Oh bugger. No God then.
Trouble with that is that...
...your proof by contradiction is incomplete. You also have to prove that there can be NO POSSIBLE provably supernatural event by showing that any that could would inherently contradict. As it stands, that hasn't happened.
Which means that there may well have been some provably supernatural events. However, they may not be documented well enough to survive the test of skepticism.
Sorry Pope - the debate is over
The brightest theologians and philiosophical consensus all came to the same conclusion back in the thirties. You cannot prove God nor that there is none. All sources of evidence for a deity whether authority, revelation, scripture or hearsay may be simply rejected by the sceptic. Proof being not possible, the only justification of faith is a conscious decision to believe in the impossible, which is the choice of the religious; or to decline to do that, which is the choice of the sceptic. The absence of faith is not itself a faith - this accusation often leveled against science or atheism is based on a false argument. Science is perennially contingent and in the face of evidence evolves, changes, sometimes reflects often contradicts for a while. Then it moves on. This is why science supplants religions but has nothing, that is not provisional, to say about the impossible until a testable hypothesis is framed . Above all you can personally test any of its hypotheses if you have the smarts, the cash and favourable peer reviews. No revelation required. The success of this approach must stick in your pontificate craw as so much of what was claimed by your predecessors as theirs to proclaim (origins of man, place of earth in the universe, age of the planet etc) has been shown to be just wrong.
So, Pope, your usurpation of the scientific terminology of proof, to debunk a claim never made for technology, that it seeks to supplant your God, reveals not just your ignorance of science (for gravity is the weakest of the forces we know), but also reveals your true fear. Religions - yours as all the others - may just become irrelevant. The opposite of God is not Satan, far less Science, but "Who cares?"
Nous n'avons besoin de cette hypothese.........
If you want to see scientists behaving with faith look at the boundaries where we don't know. Some have faith in Supersymmetry, others in standard model and Higgs. More believe in branes or foams or multiverses. They all know that their "faith" will be tested in a hadron collider or supernova somewhen and many will be proved wrong. Science will embrace the new and move on. A good scientist (though many are human too) will joyously toss his prior certainty aside and embrace any new proof of a theorm for the real achievement it represents.
Popes on the other hand? Wibble.
...the elephant in the room
is that religious people overwhelmingly believe the religion of the society into which they were born...
What a funny coincidence, that...
So to all the people trying desperately to reconcile a dark-ages belief in supernatural beings which have no measurable effect on anything I say this:
Were you born in a different town or a different part in history, you'd still be sure you're right, only you'd be wriggling out of confronting a different set of inconsistencies which flow naturally from *every* made up belief system.
Yahweh, the God of the Bible and the Koran, is such a slippery notion. It's hard enough getting believers in the same religion to agree on what he actually is.
In the end, what he is is:
a) A part of self identity
b) A means to connect with one community and (as a consequence) reject others from another
c) A convenient excuse to dress up unappealing views about other humans (be they the wrong religion, gender, nationality or sexuality) as some sort of divine law.
Other than that, he intervenes and doesn't intervene.
he breaks the laws of nature and doesn't break the laws of nature.
He has an absurd demand to be told how good he is, usually via the medium of badly written songs or unusual body poses.
I think a pint of beer is in order. Fetch me to hell!
@Charles re "proof by contradiction"
Thank you sir, you are absolutely correct.
The Pope is an Embarrassment to God
The Pope does more damage to God’s rep than any atheist.
All that crying and crock-tears in front of the cross - bahhh!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6-SD5phNmA
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