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Fuzzy
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10 Nov 2010, 5:03 am

iamnotaparakeet wrote:
Rather, why do people consider invisibility to be equivalent to nonexistence? Air is invisible, yet it exists. Most forms of light are invisible to us with our human eyes, with the exception of about 300 nanometers to 700 nanometers. Atoms are invisible to us, since they are smaller than the wavelengths of light our eyes have the ability to perceive.


Atoms are NOT invisible. What the heck do you think you are looking at when you look at stuff? Atoms(protons actually). Individual atoms are simply too small for us to see directly. But thats true of molecules, viruses, bacteria and even some animals.

So air is NOT invisible either. We are normally unable to see its index of refraction and its atoms are too sparse to create noticeable color.

Most forms of light: surely you mean most forms of electromagnetic radiation? (Visible) light by its very definition falls into the ~ 300-700 range.

And your claim that "people consider invisibility to be equivalent to nonexistence" is deceptive wording. All these things have secondary and tertiary effects. Like ionizing radiation?

We actually consider anything with no discernible influence to be equivalent to nonexistence. But thats a no brainer, isnt it? You had to bend the concept to make it seem reasonable. The effects of the idea of god(s) is very real; an actual god is not.


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DeaconBlues
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10 Nov 2010, 12:05 pm

Tell me, Fuzzy, why should it be necessary for a scientist to "set aside" faith in the supernatural when examining nature? Unless one subscribes to a particularly narrow literalist interpretation of Scripture, the claim by some of the more ignorant fundamentalist Christian sects that the Bible is literally some sort of inerrant history text that omits nothing, then there would be nothing in faith that would prevent a scientist from recognizing, for instance, the truth of Lister's observation about germs, or the existence of the gigantic, sharply-defined balls of energy recently discovered near the galactic core.

Gravity, nuclear fusion, redshift, the Lorentz-Fitzgerald contraction, quantum mechanics - unless you're a YEC literalist, none of it is in "contradiction" to faith; rather, it all exposes the true wonder of Creation, to the greater glory of its Creator.


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ruveyn
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10 Nov 2010, 12:37 pm

DeaconBlues wrote:

Gravity, nuclear fusion, redshift, the Lorentz-Fitzgerald contraction, quantum mechanics - unless you're a YEC literalist, none of it is in "contradiction" to faith; rather, it all exposes the true wonder of Creation, to the greater glory of its Creator.


One can appreciate all these natural wonders with or without a belief in God. God is irrelevant.

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Jono
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10 Nov 2010, 2:53 pm

ruveyn wrote:
DeaconBlues wrote:

Gravity, nuclear fusion, redshift, the Lorentz-Fitzgerald contraction, quantum mechanics - unless you're a YEC literalist, none of it is in "contradiction" to faith; rather, it all exposes the true wonder of Creation, to the greater glory of its Creator.


One can appreciate all these natural wonders with or without a belief in God. God is irrelevant.

ruveyn


Yes, you can. Although that is the current position of the Vatican.



DeaconBlues
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10 Nov 2010, 4:11 pm

ruveyn wrote:
DeaconBlues wrote:

Gravity, nuclear fusion, redshift, the Lorentz-Fitzgerald contraction, quantum mechanics - unless you're a YEC literalist, none of it is in "contradiction" to faith; rather, it all exposes the true wonder of Creation, to the greater glory of its Creator.


One can appreciate all these natural wonders with or without a belief in God. God is irrelevant.

ruveyn

True enough, and the point of one of my earlier posts, when someone was attempting to defend the concept of God in science by listing scientists with (apparently) religious beliefs (although it may be worth noting that many of them were operating in Europe and the US during the 17th-early 20th centuries, a period during which failing to mouth the shibboleths of the dominant religion could wind up in anything from being regarded as a crackpot, to being arrested, tried, and jailed for "blasphemy" in certain jurisdictions).

God is irrelevant to science, science is irrelevant to religion, and most attempts to wed the two wind up trivializing both.

The Torah (and its revisions, the Bible and the Qu'ran) was not intended as a historical text in the modern sense, nor as a scientific treatise. It's a work of philosophy, with history, legend, and fiction intermixed freely in order to promote a certain philosophy. Unfortunately, too many people try to treat it as history and science, and completely miss the philosophy, so they wind up doing the opposite of what it says to do (particularly true of the Biblical Gospels)...


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ruveyn
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11 Nov 2010, 11:31 am

Fuzzy wrote:

Atoms are NOT invisible. What the heck do you think you are looking at when you look at stuff? Atoms(protons actually). Individual atoms are simply too small for us to see directly. But thats true of molecules, viruses, bacteria and even some animals.



What we perceive is the result of photons in the visible light frequency range. Our ability to perceive light is very limited, covering only a minute pass band of the electromagnetic frequency/energy spectrum

ruveyn