Silvana

I take your point. In grade school I had a science teacher who wouldn't let us say something was discovered, but that it's existence was discovered, because, of course, it had been there all along.

On 1/3/2019 at 2:15 PM, beecee said:

The Higgs Boson was actually a hypothetical developed along the lines of present knowledge, which of course now has been confirmed. It was not a idea dragged out of someone's rear end, but as a result of other basic fundamental particles that obviously combine and interact to explain the universe we see and experience today. A guess certainly, but an educated guess, not a guess based on ignorance.

I don't disagree, my point was that initially, some of the knowledge used to hypothesize the Higgs Boson was not always considered "knowledge" or even proven. It had to be proven each step to get to the Higgs Boson. And the methods and ways to prove it also had to be developed and tested.

There have been studies trying to prove whether or not payers work as well as studies trying to prove the existence of God. 

This article flips it, and asks if there is a science to prayers? I don't think there is a concrete answer to either question.

http://www.ifcj.org/learn/holy-land-moments/daily-devotionals/jacobs-sword-and-bow-1.html

My take is exactly this from the article: "Ultimately, it’s hard to study something that can’t be seen or measured. For believers, it’s from faith and experience that we know how deeply prayer impacts our lives."

And I would say it is the same for skeptics. What would it take to convince a skeptic to believe, or a believer not to believe?

In both spirituality and science, at some point, you have to decide something is true and decide to believe based on that belief. Science has more ways to demonstrate that your belief may be right, but that hasn't always been so. For example, Higgs boson was just a theory until its existence was confirmed. In order to do that, the Hadron collider needed to be developed. So, theoretically, the existence of spiritual concepts could be demonstrated with the right equipment.

How would you define proof, anyway? What measurements would you require? Would there be any way to duplicate results? As long as any of this is in question, you will always have believers and disbeliivers. 

On 10/5/2018 at 5:57 AM, jajrussel said:

But to haul someone around in chains from village to village and allow them to have company over to socialize, to send and receive mail, all seems well, a little bit too civilized. I realise that we can believe incredibly foolish negative things about the way other peoples in other societies live, but did the Romans actually send out roving patrols to police and gather up specific persons to haul around in chains until their circuit route was complete, all the while affording them every social courtesy presumably entitled to every Roman citizen? It seems  stretch if the imagination.

2

Don't we do similar with house arrest monitors? The only reason we don't drag them around is because we no longer have routes and circuits.

Did the snake lie, or was he just not telling all of the truth? Meaning, would eating the apple make Eve like god in every way, or just in some ways, e.g, having knowledge of good and evil, but not being godlike.

Science can neither prove nor disprove the existence of God. And whether it does or not, those who believe will continue to believe, and those who don't won't.

Perhaps homosapien's evolution stopped, but who knows really, since evolution takes so long. There may also be other species still evolving.

Belief or non-belief doesn't negate the existence of something that can't be proven.