AW! Epistles
Coptic Christians’ Scientific Wisdom
Abstract
Monday, 01 September 2003
Big Problem for Coptic Christians
From Mike
I was amused to come across this discussion entitled “Big Problem” on a Coptic Christian list. It is typical of Christian obfuscation and lies. These correspondents are so indoctrinated with their fantasies and half truths that they lie without noticing it. Or perhaps they just expect the faithful sheep not to notice. I add my comments. It began with this plea…
Coptic Christians
Can anyone go to this website and tell me what is going on?
http://www.askwhy.co.uk/truth/010Atkins.html
And invited these replies…
It seems to be a pretty typical casual scientist’s reply to religion. He does a categorical affirmation of everything in science and denunciation of everything in religion without going into any of the specifics of either one.
This correspondent has not visited the site, or has not examined what is here if he did. This page is one of a large number that go in exhaustive detail to show that Christianity is either false, confused or misunderstood. The /truth/ pages also show that the proper alternative to religion as a belief system is science. This folder alone has 130 pages. The /judaism/ folder has another 68 and the Christianity folder has another 130. The average size of these, not counting illustrations, is 50KB. To say that the site does not deal with "specifics of either one" is described simply: it is a lie.
I can tell you that there are many, many things that science does not explain well.
Indeed there are, but there is nothing that religion explains at all! Religious explanations are just baseless assertions, and these correspondents prove it.
We have actually made very little movement in understanding how most processes in the origin of life could have occurred in a natural setting, how many of the early steps of evolution could have progressed, and how many details in more recent evolution could have happened so quickly.
These are bald assertions with no evidence and no criteria of their truth. That is typically Christian, but only Christians are fooled by it. This writer is obviously preaching to the converted, but it does not make it any more correct because his audience believes him without evidence or tests to establish his assertions as true or false.
Consciousness is still not well understood, and science can not in any way explain free will and therefore must deny that it exists. The origin of the universe (not Big Bang, but pre-Big Bang) is even considered outside of the realm of science by many scientists.
More assertions several of which are false. There is no point in saying more because Christians refuse to believe it as a point of faith, but anyone can find answers on many scientific web pages, including the ones that are dismissed here.
Of course, most of the miracles that we as Christians have seen are outside of scientific possibility and are therefore disregarded by scientists.
This writer makes it sound as though he sees them by the minute. Miracles are supernatural. They are therefore impossible because nature, even if Christians think God made it, is natural. There are therefore no miracles. Even some Christians accept that God will not lay down rules so that he can gratuitously break them to make His infants gawp.
Even if all of these factual phenomena were explained, the meaning behind the facts would still be outside of scientific understanding. If we knew how the universe was created, science could still not tell us why it happened. Even if we understood every step of evolution, science could not tell us whether those steps occurred randomly or a Creator was watching over every one.
More absurd assertions. Why don’t Christians learn how to argue a case instead of merely asserting it? What has Christianity to offer in answer to the “why” questions? “God” no doubt, but God is an assumption and this is nothing but another unproven assertion. By deflecting it to another hypothetical entity, the question is not answered. Why does God do it? Why is there a God? What made God? Christians claim to be able to answer questions that they cannot. Science does not make such claims but works towards an answer methodically.
Science will never be able to explain the feelings we have of a consciousness and free will outside of biological determinism.
Whoever has written this has not read the page under discussion which specifically deals with consciousness. These “grandiose questions beloved by the religious—including the purpose of our existence, the role of evil, free will and the prospect of eternal life—appear profound but are not challenging problems to science” because they are based on false assumptions or are asked beyond their bounds of applicability. What is true on a macroscopic scale is not necessarily true on a micro or a mega scale.
Science won’t tell you why people can show so much love to others, serve others, be willing to give up their lives for others. And science will never explain whether we should have love, service, devotion, or humbleness. If we seek to answer these questions and truly understand ourselves, then God is the only one to whom we can turn.
More sheer assertions—lies, in fact. The article denies all of this. Science can handle these matters. The article says: “Can science elucidate such qualities as love and aesthetic appreciation? Why not?” “Love is a complex emotion, involving genetically controlled responses, hormonal excretions, and intellectual reflections and considerations. Mysterious and complex love may be, but it holds open the prospect of elucidation.”
The psychology of the Christian’s final statement is interesting. Unless this correspondent is a professional Christian, he has a curious and childish dependence on a figmentary father. It is proof of arrested development caused often by parents but sometimes by the activities of Christian professionals. They are charlatans conjuring with words and emotions, but who cannot explain one single thing. Asserting is not explaining.
p.s. - I hate adding this on the end of every science-related message, but I want to make sure that people understand that I have a basis for these statements and am not just speaking on issues I do not understand. I recieved my B.S. in Biophysics (with a concentration in psychology) from Harvey Mudd College, and took specific coursework on the origin and evolution on life on Earth, the philosophy of morality, and the history of conflict in science and religion.
What is this Harvey Mudd College? If it taught this correspondent what he says then it did not do a good job. Perhaps it is Christian College teaching pseudo-science to would-be vicars. No one who has studied science properly could believe a fraction of the rubbish he has expressed here.
The next reply was…
There’s no problem at all. Whoever runs that site is an idiot… simple as that. His belief system is not only wrong and arguable. His points are not only debatable, but they are prototypes of the philosophically absurd, and intellectually challenged. His site displays a complete lack of understanding of human knowledge, and the metaphysical. A two-year-old could reach more accurate conclusions than this man.
A Christian apologist would be up in arms here, growling, “ad hominem, ad hominem!” There can be nothing wrong in calling someone an idiot so long as the case is properly argued. This correspondent does the usual Christian thing and presents a lot of assertions with no supporting evidence. He even braggs…
It is extremely easy to show that everything he says reaches new heights in absurdity (well, I shouldn’t say “new”… what he says has been said before, by people just as stupid), and that everything he says is full of logical contradictions, and that his belief system is based on a faith so blind so as to have no justification whatsoever. What’s more, he is so arrogant as to mock the established truths taught to us from the beginning of time, and to challenge God’s very word… He will continue to wallow in his pathetic ignorance, and will drown in his choking arrogance. There will be no hope for people like him, unless he repents and bows the knee to the Lord of hosts.
Christians plainly have strong opinions, though never any “new” ones, and will not say how they got them. We have to deduce that God gave them them by whispering in their heads. If there are logical contradictions—and who outside of Startrek is perfectly logical—why not present them as evidence? And is this man taking the Michael in speaking of “a faith so blind as to have no justification whatsoever”? If this sentence alone is not sufficient proof that these cracked pots just project their own failings on to their critics, it must be hard to find better proof. Here is someone who knows “truths taught to us since the beginning of time”. Well we know that God is fancied by these people to have lived before time began, but now it seems that “we” did too! I must just have a bad memory. It only goes back to about 1944.
If you think I sound arrogant… read what David says to Goliath when they first meet.
He says:
What shall be done to the man that killeth this Philistine, and taketh away the reproach from Israel? for who is this uncircumcised Philistine, that he should defy the armies of the living God?2 Sam 17:26
When you know the God of the armies of Israel is on your side, you can boast against His foes all you want. You can boast in His name with all confidence, and sureness, and assertiveness. You can mock and laugh at any idea, army, plan, government, or website that attempts to challenge Him or His word, with full certainty that what you say will be proven and revealed to all sooner rather than later, for “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my word will by no means pass away”. Even so, “He who sits in the heavens shall laugh; The LORD shall hold them in derision. Then He shall speak to them in His wrath, And distress them in His deep displeasure (Psalm 2:4-5).”
Of course, such deranged ranting and citing of ancient apocalyptic desires can only show that these poor twerps are no more advanced than the primitive natives depicted as David and Goliath that he highlights. David’s simple tribe believed that their God—this is the same as the Christian God!—lived in a box called the Ark that they carried into battle with them to guarantee them victory. Did it work? Unfortunately not! The Philistine enemy even captured it but were not melted like the Nazis in Raiders of the Lost Ark, as these intellectual infants believe they should have been. This belief of theirs that God wants to melt Philistines and Nazis and governments and armes and even website producers is supposed to be evidence of a God who is pure love. But that is in the second part of the Holy Fiction, where the Christian God actually appears in the flesh to tell his sheep what to think. Needless to say, they ignored him and reverted to the God they preferred—the Jewish God who wanted to kill everyone in His “deep displeasure” and even “wrath”. There is something in the Holy Bibble to suit every kind of nutter, but little to suit anyone with any discernment. The Christian nut cases just pick the bits they prefer and ignore the rest. They are, of course, guided in this by God. So, do the ones who prefer the loving God ever rail against the ones who prefer the angry murderous one? No chance. They are all Christians, good or bad! All are saved just by calling themselves Christian!
Then came this one…
He says that science can explain everything, and therefore there is no need for religion.
Atkins says science explains “relevant questions of existence”, and therefore everything that matters to us. “What is the purpose of the universe?” is an invalid question because it assumes the universe has a purpose. First, it must be asked, “Has the universe got a purpose?” No Christian has yet shown it has. They believe in God, and therefore believe He has created the universe for a purpose. Unverified and uncritical belief is not scientific, it is religious.
Science points to the necessity of a first cause. There are things that exist, they have to come from somewhere. Even if you go with the big bang theory, where’d the bang come from? There has to be something causing things that isn’t caused or nothing can start. So science points to a creator God if not the God of Christianity specifically.
Immediately, our Coptic friend launches into mumbo-jumbo as if it meant anything to anyone other than his own chums. Here is the normal non sequitur of the Christian Creation belief in God. Things “have to come from somewhere”, but, even so, there has to be something that is not caused! Not only do Christians not see the contradiction in this, this one says it shows it is scientific that there must be a God. If something must not be caused then why must it be a God? Why not just the Big Bang? Again, the Christian begins, in fact, with their assumption of a God when no such assumption is called for, and their supposed proof is simply the assumption made explicit.
Even if science can explain everything, and God still exists, He should still be worshipped!
If God needs to be worshipped, it proves to anyone rational that the superbeing is just a megalomaniac.
But science can’t explain everything. He claims that science will explain everything given time. But that’s just a baseless boast, he gives no reason to beleive that. There’s a lot science is learning, but what’s left to be learnt is infinite! Only God knows everything about His creation.
It is very hard for Christians not to exaggerate even when they do not openly lie. It helps them seem to win arguments that they cannot win honestly. Atkins says that science is making commendable progress, and has gone much further in a short time than dogma ever did. The Christian extrapolates from this that science only needs time to explain everything. Perhaps it is true, but science deals with reality, and Atkins is comparing science with religion now! The Christian might be convinced that the figment they call God knows everything, but that does not explain how any particular Christian can know everything. Where science and religion have disputed things, science has turned out to be right. As for infinity, the simplest equation like v = u + ft expresses an infinite number of truths, and the equation which describes the whole of being does not have to be infinitely complicated. God is an equation, simple friends.
Science and religion are completely compatable. Religion is a relationship with the creator, and science is seeking to understand the creation.
They simply cannot get away from their assumption that there is a God and that He created the material world. Some scientists call the material world “the creation” for historical reasons. Science does not accept that the material world was created. Christians might like to think they have a relationship with their powerful imaginary friend, but children, even lonely ones, grow out of the phase of imaginary friends quite naturally unless charlatans or deluded parents insist on keeping it alive in their heads. Throughout history, not least today, we have seen where this delusion of God leads.
Knowing more about how great God’s works are only help us to praise Him.
This desire to praise and to worship, is a likely sign that the worshipper is mentally an inferior human being. They have the natural instinct to roll over and expose their bellies to a dominant animal, but because this is no longer a requirement of a just and secular society, they relieve their tension by doing it to the supernatural dominant mega-animal they call God. They kneel in obeisance like slaves to an eastern potentate, and, not surprisingly, that is the origin of it all. Anyone who did not bow suitably or offer the appropriate blandishments to a eastern potentate invited his “deep displeasure”, and they would be severely punished or killed. This is simply the Old Testament God, that these people prefer.
For example, in the Bible it records that light was created before the sun. This would make no sense to the people of the time, it would have to be accepted on faith, but now science tells us about a nebula that was bright and condensed into the sun and solar system. So science is learning about God’s creation, which in no way interferes with or removed the necessity for relationship with the creator.
It is another of their empty fallacies that the creation stories of the bible have been verified by the astonishing discoveries of the cosmologists, astronomers and biologists. There is not the slightest comparison, even though single lines can be taken and made to seem compatible. Here the Christian is just lying as usual. It is not that creating light before the sun is remarkable in the Genesis story. People knew that the sun was not the only source of light as our mendacious friend implies. The nights were much clearer then and the stars seemed brighter, so there was light that could have been created before the sun. The point is that the Genesis story has days and nights, mornings and evenings before the sun had been created (Gen 1:4-5)! That is impossible. These crafty kidders do not expect their sheep to check what they have said, because Christians are not meant to check anything, but to take what their pastors and vicars—professional or amateur—say on trust. They cannot be trusted. The basis of science is that things must be verified.
Religion isn’t about explaining scientific stuff, the physical sciences. We need science to learn about that because the purpose of Christianity is to teach us about the history of man’s fall and redemption, about how to be close to God and walk with Him, it tells us that God created, but doesn’t tell us how He created or about what He created is like. That’s what science teaches us. They are completely complementary, although religion is much more important.
Well, let us take it as a concession that science can tell us something that a Christian will accept. What about them being complementary? For them to be complementary, the scientists would have to accept that they are, and therefore accept that Christian claims are true. No honest and rational scientist can do this. It means accepting vast assumptions that are preposterous, and, more important, unnecessary. This Coptic correspondent speaks of man’s fall and redemption. What evidence is this based on? The scientific evidence is that far from falling from some higher and angelic or otherwise immortal or privileged state, humanity is evolving from an animal state. Another assumption is that our state is higher than that of the animals, and that is arguable, but it is no evidence of us evolving from a previous angelic state. Why then should any scientist accept this infantile myth of the origin of naughtiness? Christians think they can walk with God, but any of us can do impossible things in our minds. It is not even evidence of God, let alone proof. Science and Christianity are not compatible. For any religion to be compatible with science, it had better begin by accepting science as its foundation.
The author of that site seems to hold the point of view that mind and brain are synomynous. There has been no scientific proof of this, and I can tell you that there never will be since they are distinct. The brain is an organ, and there’s a lot about it we dont’ know yet. But it can’t account for our spirts, who we are. Immeterial thought dosn’t come from a material brain. We’re not just biological machines, our actions and responses are not dictated soley by the positining of particles in our brains.
Once again, the Christian falls back upon bald assertions with no evidence presented at all. That is simply because there is none. Yet this correspondent claims there is no scientific proof that brain is the source of mind, and, turning to his prophetic function declares there never will be because “they are distinct”. Revelations abound! Christian fakes always ask for “scientific proof” but never offer any themselves—or even evidence. Science has evidence. It never has proof, except in mathematics or logic. Despite that, science speaks with confidence because the evidence is overwhelming. Few Christians know what logic is, and those that do waste their time using it to derive false theorems from the false premises they begin with. No Christian can accept the evidence for the brain being responsible for our thoughts and personality because their promise to believers is that the Christian personality will survive physical death. Every item of physical evidence science has accumulated contains nothing to signify a life after physical death, but it has much to show the opposite. No Christian has stepped forward to volunteer to have their brains removed while their bodies are on a life support system to prove that they will still have a personality. When brains are even slightly damaged, our consciousness goes, and our personality with it. Damage to parts of the brain, or surgery changes the human personality, a cause of types of madness and the way it has been treated in the past. Drugs effect our brains and thereby affect our perception and personalities. To maintain that there is something which survives death is not a position that would be tenable in a rational society. It is the persistence of Christianity, and similar patriarchal religions that depend on it, that keeps people believing it.
Who we are can’t be fully explained by the dust we’re made of. We’re spiritual beings as well.
More bald assertions. It seems remarkable to anyone with a vestige of critical ability that so many people in the world will just accept anything they are told, especially by Christians. They are the last people anyone should believe. They have the habit of telling everyone that their opinion is the truth.
We have a will, we can make choices. North America wants to dismis the spiritual as untrue and focus soley on the physical just because the physical is easier to measure and study, but the spiritual is equally real. The ignoring of the spiritial is resulting in a culture where everything is thought to be curable by a pill, a needle, or an operatoin. In fact a lot of times what people need is the sacraments & relation with God to be made whole.
It is all the usual mumbo-jumbo reiterated. What these people mean by spiritual is their false assumption that the mind is independent of the brain. “The spiritual is equally real”, it is just hard to measure. That being true, why is the Christian convinced it is as real as the physical. Why has God made it so hard to “measure” if He wants us to believe it is “real”. When things are hard to find, it usually means that they are not there! As for sacraments and church ritual, it is again impossible for anyone not gullible to believe that any entity powerful enough to create the world would want his followers to perform primitive magic rituals before an altar to get the divine rewards.
Then came another one…
He additionally attacks religionists’ assertion that science will hit a barrier and in the end, we will have to appeal to God as an explanation, as a baseless assertion as science has not hit any barriers. First of all, this is absurd, because the concept of science has to do with overcoming barriers. So, whatever scientists are working on now, it’s a barrier. The ones they’ve overcome in the past results in theories that are accepted today, but what about barriers that were not yet overcome? Since the time of Einstein, physicists have been trying to come up with a “theory of everything”, but could not. Gravity cannot be treated by quantum mechanics, whereas the other forces (electrostatic, magnetic, strong and weak) are quantum-mechanically treatable.
Ho hum! More dishonesty. Let us see what the article actually said: “No case has science grinding to a halt, or coming up against a barrier to further explanation. Nothing suggests science is circumscribed and that beyond a boundary the only recourse to comprehension is to God.” Where does it say that science has not got to do with “overcoming barriers”? It says that no such barrier has yet proved a limit beyond which God must be the explanation. The idea of the “God of the Gaps”, once favoured by Christians, has been dropped by the clever ones because it exposed the failings of religion as an explanation, and the absence of God as science explained all those gaps that He had once occupied to keep scientists out. Here we have one who is not too clever because he thinks that science cannot come up with some particular theory because Einstein could not. It is a gap that God is defending, so our Coptic friend will be praying that this gap will never be closed. The Christian view expressed here is that because so far no mathematician has found an adequate treatment of quantum gravity, it will never be found. Scientists have being trying to unite gravity with the other forces in nature since Einstein, but Einstein has only been dead for fifty years. Christianity has been working on it for 2000 years, and further up this page, we learnt that God has been instructing Christians since the beginning of time. Do not expect any Christian to be fair. Fundamentalist Bush would not give Blix and the weapons inspectors a few more months to settle the Iraq WMD issue but has not yet found WMDs nonths later. Well, they cannot stop scientists from having as much time as they need to find a theory that unites all the forces of nature. When they do, will the Christians accept that God has nowhere else to hide?
Having said this, the point is rendered moot because he still misunderstands the religionist assertion. The point is that whatever you explain, you can always ask why. So, whether or not science will be able to explain more, you will never be able to know if science found out everything. If it did, you wouldn’t even know it. You can ask: “has science discovered everything? or explained everything?” The answer will never be definite, because you can only account for what you know, but what if there’s one area, one aspect of the universe you’ve never encountered? Will you be able to explain it if you’ve never encountered it? Would you even know that it exists if you’ve never encountered it? This assertion is quite different, and this is what he is referring to. It is impossible to provide an answer to this objection. So, he can try till he goes mad.
The correspondent has either confused himself or is trying to set up a straw doll to knock over. The Coptic brother has got mixed up with his mention of the “Theory of Everything” which means, in fact, the theory of quantum gravity, as he knows, but now pretends scientists claim it is actually a theory that explains everything that could ever be. Science claims that no limits circumscribe it in illuminating the relevant questions of existence. It is religion that claims to answer everything, not science. So, let us ask our Coptic guru, “How does a Christian know that Christianity answers everything, as they think?” The article says:
“Many regard God as an explanation of everything, and regard science as incomplete or ponderous. They do not understand the scientific method. To believe that God is an explanation of anything, let alone everything, is simple-mindedness. It accepts ignorance is an explanation, and even shrouds it in deceit. ”
Additionally, there’s the philosophical problem of induction, which upon being discovered poses a very real problem that science cannot be trusted. No one has ever been able to solve the problem of induction, and accordingly, the only reason people have any trust in science is pure faith in science. Science cannot explain why science works, nor can it prove that science works. If you’d like more explanation on this, I’d love to offer it, but people sometimes aren’t interested in these types of things, and it’s time-consuming to attempt to explain it. So, if you want explanation of the problem of induciton, please ask about it specifically, and I’ll try my best to post one.
Our guru seems to be copping out. He suggests some serious problem with science but cannot be bothered to explain it because the little lambs would not comprehend. It is too hard for them, which is why they go for simplistic explanations that explain nothing. Perhaps he can assure us why religion can be trusted to answer questions that science, he thinks, cannot. How does he know there is life beyond death? It is his pure faith in an ancient book manifestly unreliable in the parts of it that can be checked. Why then should anyone trust the parts that cannot be checked, like the promise of the impossible—living after we have apparently died? Again the Christian wants proof, presumably something like a syllogism. Science does not need such proof. The vast assembly of modern knowledge is proof enough. It is practical proof. If it did not work, this computer would not be working, aeroplanes would not fly, and hearts would not be transplanted. Religion has nothing to do with anything at all in the world that saves people in practical ways. Science has.
Finally, there was a post that mentioned consciousness, how it is not completely understood. This is true, but not only is it not understood, it’s actually inexplicable by science by the mere definition of what science is. Science is descriptive of what we observe. Consciousness is the faculty of observing. So, even if people study the brain etc, it’ll tell you nothing about consciousness… actually nothing at all. Here’s why… You can watch a movie, but the movie itself, watching it, will never tell you anything about the phenomenon about how a movie is projected onto the screen. It’ll only tell you what the characters in the movie are doing. Even if the movie explains the mechanisms of a movie projector, what reason do you have to trust in the producers in the movie that they’ll explain it accurately? The only reason you’ll accept their explanations is that you trust their authority. However, in the case of consciousness, you don’t even have access to “the projector” so-to-speak. You only have access to the film itself, what you observe. So, the physical world can never the basis for explaining consciousness and perception. It is what is perceived. Consciousness is what perceives. The experience of perceiving can never explain how come perceiving is experienced. Sorry if this is too abstract. I believe it’s quite accurate though. It takes a lot of thinking on your own for it to click, even if I explained it well (which I don’t think I have).
Ever since Bishop Butler published his famous book on the Analogy of Religion, Christians have been fooling their lambs with analogies. An anology can be a useful method of getting over a concept, but what Christians do not get is that it is merely a similarity. It is not an explanation. Consciousness is not supernatural and can perfectly well be observed, offering the reason why people have coined a word for it. Be assured that the scientists who are studying consciousness will not be put of by some would-be Coptic guru saying that they cannot do it. The FBI have enough faith in their “Brain Fingerprinting” technique for testing whether someone is familiar with a visual cue that they are developing it to catch serious criminals. It recognizes when someone has seen something before. What they have previously perceived!
More interesting is the distrust the Coptic brother expresses about the producers of the movie in his analogy. Are we to apply this skepticism to the producers of the Christian movie? Presumably not, for that is just what these pages do and what the Christians do not like. There is every reason to think that many people have been gulled by the false Christian projection over the centuries. Usually, the gulled ones are simple and ignorant people. The more educated and sophisticated they are the less likely they are to be gulled by the Christian film maker’s trickery. But as long as the confidence tricksters can get away with comfortable livings and even social admiration for their confidence tricks, there will always be tricksters and gulled, shepherds and sheep.
Here was a final note…
Probably the author of the article was put off religion because of encounters with annoying Fundamentalist Protestants who insist the world was created in 7 literal days, etc, etc, that make us look really dumb, and do make religion contradict science, although true religion does not.
Quite so! But true religion? Is this antithesis meant to be ironical? It truly is in the proper Greek sense (eironikos = lying or falsely ignorant)!
