From my past pursuits of physiology of nervous system and the phenomena the stimuli from the environs bring out and from the experiences I have gained from the study of sensations, perceptions, conceptions and judgments leading
to the formation of memories, including those which have no objective reality in the physical plane, I strongly feel that my comments were/are not biased, not the least meant to open and close the issues involved with some smart idea of making sound: When I put the words, it was straight from my learning of what religion is, what belief represents and what science means. The definitions were quoted from most referred to Dictionaries. I hesitate to think that you would disagree with the meanings of these words, (religion, belief and science) which I had quoted.

I am primarily a world citizen and secondly an India born Indian. Being an Indian does not and should not necessarily make a person an Advait: I know what is “Thatvamassi:- I AM THAT. The very complexity in the development of human brain, the development that led to the formation of second signal system, enabled humans to think, evaluate and present things that have empirical evidence and also things which cannot be proved through the method of science. All those philosophical thoughts and explanations, including Thatvamassi are the products of the latter caliber. In the annals of history of sciences, it is never ever written that an invention at a particular point of time in space is final and unalterable. Such a concept is foreign to science, it is against the principles of science, it is anathema.

Science and religion represent different paths, one path cannot be equated with the other path: Path of science traverses a different line of pursuits from that of religion. What I said in my comments was not at criticism
of religion in the perverse sense it purports but a critique of factual positions of both science and religion.

As on date, Astronomy concludes that the universe came into being as a result of that big explosion of the tiny but heavily concentrated ball-like matter. This big bang theory is currently being studied by CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research): Results of the experiments at LHC (Large Hadron Collider) conducted in November 2009 indicate that there is ample credence in the premise of the “big bang”. Religion might agree to the idea of big bang but the exception religion makes is that god created the bang, no proof, no experiments to fathom the mystery as to how and when god made the explosion. Nothing to wonder about it: For, that is the difference between science and religion, nay, science and god.

CDN, I thank you for your advise to think straight and to remove bias: The process of thinking is a physiological function of the Central Nervous System. In this process there is no such thing as straight or curved thinking. I have no biases: really, truly.

PKN – 2.30 PM IST – 17-3-2010.

I will start by responding to your second paragraph as it leads logically to the first one.

In response to “For your other misconception, actually, a “religious” person doesn’t say the universe came out of nothing (that’s what scientists say), but “religious” persons say the universe came out of God. ” PLEASE DO READ texts from Hinduism, Buddhism or Taoism. That is EXACTLY what these religions say i.e GOD is Emptiness, Nothingness, Cognizing Emptiness. The crux of all these religious teachings is the “Nothingness that is the potent source of everything” or “cognizing emptiness” as the Buddhists refer to it. (If you want I would be happy to quote dozens of ancient books that mention EXACTLY that – but you can google it yourself and read. Among the modern western experts on this topic read Sailor Bob Adamson, Leo Hartong, Randall Friend, Francis Lucille, etc or read from India Nisargadatta or Ramana Maharishi). If you define “religion” to be just Christianity, then you may be right. I am not an expert on that. However, The Gospel of Thomas appears to be much closer to what the eastern religions say. However, for the sake of being a true Skeptic, do your research before dismissing eastern religions so lightly and flippantly. Please understand that is an “unscientific” attitude and does not meet the standards this website sets for itself in exploring all other matters.

This takes me to your first paragraph. The only difference between modern “science” and the Eastern religions is that the latter claims that every person can directly experience this truth (universe coming out of nothingness) for themselves. When the Eastern texts were written thousands of years ago,the only “lab” they had was the “internal” one. So yes, the essence of these religions do have a defined outcome. The outcome is experiencing the “Oneness”/”Non-duality” – the source of all creation – which is Cognizing Emptiness as the Buddhists refer to it or “Nothingness/Awareness” as it is interpreted in English.

For the sake of science and for the sake of truth, I invite each of you to PLEASE investigate this fully before dismissing it – failing which would make me, and others who read this site, lose faith in the Skeptic’s claim to, well, be a Skeptic (Dictionary.com defines Skeptic as “a person who questions the validity or authenticity of something purporting to be factual”).

Claiming that “religious people say universe came out of God” is NOT the same as “scientists claim the universe came out of nothing” is factually incorrect.

If you want to keep the discussion purely to Christianity vs. Science, then that statement may be ok.

For your other misconception, actually, a “religious” person doesn’t say the universe came out of nothing (that’s what scientists say), but “religious” persons say the universe came out of God. So, I’m afraid religious and scientists do not say the same on that point. As far as I know, “scientists” say the universe came out of a singular event called “big bang” about 14 billions years ago, while “religious” say the universe came out of a magic creation from a super being a few thousands years ago, and that it took him 6 days to create it… I do not see any commonality between those 2 statements.

Your comments smack of the same bias that the people you criticize appear to have. If you really had bothered to read the essence of religions (not the myths, folklore, fairy tales – but the principles they point to – since you are an India read Advaita – Ramana Maharishi’s talks or Nisargadatta’s I Am That), you would realize that it is NOT based on belief.

Just like you are shocked that “religious” people can talk about science, so am I that you can talk about religion! What perversity!

Science is arguably about the process you follow in arriving at your conclusions, not the conclusions themselves (otherwise there shouldn’t have been so many discoveries in science that go against what was previous accepted as scientific truth). So if it is really about the process, then how can you criticize religion without following the same process in investigating religion?

If a “religious” person says the universe came out of nothing, you would ridicule it. Scientists say the same – that the universe came out of nothing through a big bang. Ha! The statement would be “unscientific” coming out of the mouth of someone who has not followed a scientific process to investigate that statement and arrive the conclusion and vice versa.

Please get your thinking straight, try to remove your bias, investigate what you criticize with so much arrogance.

Have fun.

“The blood on the hands” is not a function of religion – its more a function of not being able to control ones mind and emotions. Patriotism has probably killed more people than religion. You could also argue atom bombs and the billions of dollars spent on weapons related science has killed even more people.

Assigning blame to religion for deaths shows an unscientific analysis – similar to the ones you criticize.

Cheers

CDN

Religion is a set of “beliefs” concerning the cause, nature and purpose of universe and it is an organized system of belief in and worship of god or gods. “Belief” is a process of holding as true in mind an event, matter,thing or anything that has no objective reality in the material world. Therefore the very sound ‘religion’ denotes something that has no truth or factuality, something that which is a product of subjectivism.

Science is a branch of knowledge or study dealing with a body of truths and facts systematically arranged and showing the operation of general laws of physical or material world.

How stupid it is if someone tries to equate religion with science! What a perversity it is on the part of those ‘learned’ religionalists to draw parallels between religion and science! Of course science is really omnipotent because science has authority science has power: But the authority and power are veste4d in the domain of physical world; not in the realm of hallucinatory imaginations of subjective cognition.