I think you're wrong about science. Al Gore claims man-made global warming is true because of a consensus of scientists. Science is politics - e.g. scientific truth is truth because of a vote? Astrobiology is science. Or is it. Explain how it is if you dare Ask scientists if there's life elsewhere in the universe and they say with near certainty there is, yet there's not a shred of scientific evidence there is. It's a BELIEF that there is, almost religious in nature.
that is all true except for the word faith, which doesn't fit. people believe in evolution (for example) because they are compelled to do so by objective evidence. that is the OPPOSITE of faith, which is by definition belief without evidence.
Statistics say there should be other life out there. Billions of galaxies, billions of stars within those galaxies, billions of planets revolving around those billions of stars...and all it takes is one. Its very egotistical to think we are the only living things in the entire universe. A more than educated guess would say there is life out there.
there is a consensus that we are excellerating global warming, but there is no consensus on how much. many scientists think most of the current warming trend is mostly just part of a normal cycle that we can do nothing about. it goes without saying that what the government decides is "scientific truth" is frequently different than actual truth. obviously governments don't work by the scientific method. anything you can test for is science. this is just false. a few will tell you the probability is very high based on statistical analysis, but you won't find any that believe it in the sense of religious faith.
That's the original belief. I've been watching documentaries recently on the Science channel, and more and more scientists believe that glacial movement carved out the Grand Canyon. This is part of growing evidence that ice once extended across the Earth all the way to the tropics, which was previously not thought.
we didn't come from modern monkeys. modern apes and humans branched/evolved from ape-like species that are long extinct.
That's not science. That's an opinion by those scientists (which is not universal). There's a big difference in personal opinions by scientists and scientific beliefs.
A few things with regards to your post above: Evolution: You are making an assumption about evolution that just isn't true. You assume that everyone who supports the theory of evolution blindly holds to a single interpretation. That just isn’t true. Though most scientists support the overall ideas of evolution, many have radically different ideas about how it came about. Creationism, on the other hand, really only has one way to go. Prayer in school: As many others have pointed out, only forced prayer has been removed from schools. Once upon a time school opened up with a prayer. At the school I went to (East Elementary in Tillamook, OR), that was happening up until the 4th grade. Folks got together to pray all the time from then on. It’s just that no one was forced to. Suicide (or I like to call it, Death with Dignity): The question is not that it is illegal. The question why the hell IS it illegal. One reason could very well be the idea that the Christian God frowns on people taking their own life. This would one case out of many where the morality from Christianity has found it’s way into our laws. Public Decency, Obscenity, Prostitution, Sodomy, Gay Marriage and Drug laws are other examples. Book Banning: This must be some sort of joke. You honestly believe that book banning doesn’t happen for anything other then religious texts. I recommend using Google. Marriage: It is true that marriage has changed in nature, just like everything else. It used to be that marriage was more of a business arrangement then an act of love. However, that didn’t ruin marriage, it just made it different. Once again, your argument that gay marriage is illegal doesn’t really address what was said. Why is it illegal? Progressive Judges: Judges on both sides of the aisle do this sort of thing. I can think of one story where a woman’s child was taken from her because she was a member of the Church of the Subgenius. The reason? She wasn’t providing a good moral foundation, while the father, a christian, would. This assumption on the part of many, that being christian makes you morally superior to non-christians is extremely pervasive in American society. Many, many family court cases are handled like the one above. I will give you another of other examples where christian ideals are used: In US Courts when you testify you are asked to swear in, which is an incantation where you put your hand on a Christian Bible and say you will not lie “so help me God”. For an Atheist like myself, this holds no meaning. Swearing on a McDonalds Happy Meal would mean as much to me. The President is sworn in a similar manner. The christian influence in our society is ubiquitous. I can’t get away from it, ever. Our laws are based in christian morality. Hell, the prevailing sense of what is right and wrong outside of the law is heavily influenced by christianity. That is what the original poster was trying to get at. You are making an assumption about evolution that just isn't true. You assume that everyone who supports the theory of evolution blindly holds to a single inturpretation
Astrobiology is the study of biology of Extra Terrestrials, of which there are none. These "scientists" are govt. funded, and their task is to theorize what life forms might look like if we ever find them. May as well theorize what god looks like. The probability argument is hogwash (that there is life elsewhere). While the numbers may be empirical, they do not point to any logical conclusions. It is no better than saying "there's a tree, God must have made it. There's lots of trees and that's empirical, too."
Another flaw in this wager is that it assumes that God is fundamentally good. What if, instead, your God has tricked you into following his rules just so he can enslave you in Heaven? In that case, it may not be worse to "burn in hell". It also doesn't give any value to your mortal life. What if I would enjoy my life so much being a non believer that it would balance out going to hell? This is consistent with the christian belief that this world is just some sort of waystation between being born and finally getting to go somewhere nice. Given the overwhelming evidence I see in the World around me, I wouldn't assume God is all that great.
That doesn't appear to be an accurate description of astrobiology. Here's the definition Wikipedia provides: "Astrobiology (other terms have been exobiology, exopaleontology, and bioastronomy) is the study of the origin, evolution, distribution, and future of life in the universe. This interdisciplinary field encompasses the search for habitable environments in our Solar System and habitable planets outside our Solar System, the search for evidence of prebiotic chemistry, life on Mars and other bodies in our Solar System, laboratory and field research into the origins and early evolution of life on Earth, and studies of the potential for life to adapt to challenges on Earth and in space.[2]" Those seem like pretty legitimate avenues of scientific inquiry to me.
sounds like you're arguing what government should and shouldn't be funding, not what is or isn't scientific consensus. a lot of scientists would agree with what you say. just like a lot of physicists consider string theory a waste of research time because they think it's more likely than not to end up being intrinsically untestable.
In other words, they are doing nothing more than playing god - guessing at what life outside of Earth (which isn't at all proven to exist) would look like. They go to the extremes of making 3D models of life forms that have no relationship to any existing life (life made in their own image/imagination). It's not science. Plain old biology and geology are sufficient to look for fossils in places we can only send robots.
I actually do believe in Science and have little interest in religious explanations. What I'm arguing is that Science needs to be Science and not "something else" - that something else being political (vote/consensus) or belief based (there's so many stars, there must be life), or mob mentality (findings that go against the accepted wisdom are ridiculed), or the pursuit of funding.
i'm guessing that's a fringe theory that the science channel thought would make a good show. i think most agree the canyon was formed by combination of uplift of the continental plate and erosion by water, both gradually by the river and supplimented by several huge flash floods created when natural lava dams broke (so in a sense large floods were partially responsible for the canyon, just not a global flood).
Your "in other words" doesn't really describe the blurb you quoted. Astrobiology does a number of things; one of those things is to speculate what alien life forms would look like based on everything we know about science and what we know about the make-ups of others planets. That speculation isn't science, no. But it is based in science and serves a useful purpose...as our data grows, we can formulate better understandings of what we types of things we might expect to find. It's not random speculation. For example, they have concepts of what types of life would flourish in a gas giant...which is based on what we know of the composition of gas giants and our understandings of biochemistry and physics, how such a life form would sustain itself and what kinds of structures would be needed to do that. The other things that astrobiologists do (which I quoted) are scientific in nature, not speculative.
