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Spider Savage
Mountain climber
SoCal
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Oct 29, 2010 - 10:28am PT
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Benedict vs. Hawking
Both leaders of seemingly incomprehensible subjects. Pitted against each other through popular media that does not understand either the men or the subjects.
Christianity: On p1 of the New Testament we are asked to believe that Jesus was born of virgin birth and that he is the chosen one because his father Joseph is related to King David. ???? This illogic is just the beginning. I've no argument with Jesus. Probably a great guy for sure. Never wrote anything down so in fact, we know nothing.
Modern Science: Is a faith. Unless you can observe the science yourself, you have to believe others who supposedly know.
Both Subjects: Are used by individuals to check the confusion that is life.
Don't be suggestible. Look for yourself.
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Spider Savage
Mountain climber
SoCal
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Oct 29, 2010 - 10:37am PT
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"Spontaneous creation is the reason why there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist," - Benedict
This I have observed to be true. I learned it while climbing in Yosemite. You move across the stone, into the unknown. You imagine that there will be holds and look. At first they are not there. Then as if by force of your own will, they appear.
The creator is the being with enough acceptance of personal responsibility to admit that they are in control and causing it to happen.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Oct 29, 2010 - 11:49am PT
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I don't know why fattrad trolls in these waters...
As for science and religion, I see no comparison, perhaps with the exception that a person with no curiosity of the world around them or of little patience for ideas that tax or challenge their capacity for thought, might be averse to spending time considering the issues being raised in either case.
Science is open to all, you do not need someone to interpret a single, authoritative text to help you find the truth that you seek. Science is not about preserving the truth, it is about a continuous unfolding of understanding, based on empirical verification. As I have said before on other threads, the scientific method allows us to progress in this understanding even though humans have a tendency to screw things up along the way... You can learn science, it is open to all, it doesn't hide its results, methods, observations or analyses.
Religion, on the other hand, tends to preserve a truth, with the institutions built around an authority to interpret that truth. Religion aims at providing a absolute way of viewing the universe, this way is passed down across generations, and often the way is obscured. In general, the authority comes from revelation, the revealing events being interpreted as direct communication between the source of religious authority and individuals. These events are not reproducible, nor even well documented, but depend on the faith of the followers in the authority of the religion. The revealed truth does not lead to anything new, but preserves the old.
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WBraun
climber
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Oct 29, 2010 - 11:54am PT
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These events are not reproducible
That is where you are completely wrong.
Events must absolutely be reproducible otherwise no sane person would even consider.
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Toker Villain
Big Wall climber
Toquerville, Utah
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Oct 29, 2010 - 12:09pm PT
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I think Sylvester Stallone took it a little too far when, in Rocking Chair Rocky, he fought Hawking.
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Tony Bird
climber
Northridge, CA
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Oct 29, 2010 - 01:27pm PT
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the problem with the pope is that he thinks he has all the answers that matter. the problem with hawking is that he thinks the same.
in my lifetime, science has revised itself drastically several times. until relatively recently, the forces of nature numbered five: magnetism, electricity, weak atomic force, strong atomic force, and gravity. magnetism and electricity, united in calculusty matrimony by james clerk maxwell 150 years ago, were recently cajoled into a ménage à trois with the weak force by that rakish italian, carlo rubbio. we now have to call it "electroweak" in polite cocktail party conversation. seems just a shadow of its former self. the quest continued for a grand unified theory, a great orgy of the forces lying down with each other. my hunch is that GUT is no longer sexy. how 'bout it, ed?
science is only open in the sense that anyone can subscribe to a journal of theoretical physics. it is so inaccessible, however, that only those who devote their entire lives to the pursuit can be truly conversant. if they spent the time trying to educate others that they do talking down to them, that might change, but it never seems to happen.
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The Wolf
Trad climber
Friend of Dope Miller
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Oct 29, 2010 - 01:31pm PT
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Hey, that Pope has a little hat just like the one I wear in temple, on the very very very very rare occasion that I go. Hawking is right, and the Pope should focus more on "The Clash"
I agree. let's focus on The Clash. 30th anniversary of the release of Sandinista
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
Full Silos of Iowa
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Oct 29, 2010 - 01:44pm PT
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10:29a
Sloppy and flippant as usual. Standard fare in America nowadays. Today's ongoing political campaign ads - no better or worse.
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Crodog
Social climber
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Oct 29, 2010 - 01:57pm PT
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Gravity results from mass. Example: Earth.
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Tony Bird
climber
Northridge, CA
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Oct 29, 2010 - 01:59pm PT
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gravity is inherent in all masses. example: gregorian chant.
flippant, yes, but gimme a break, not sloppy.
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Oct 29, 2010 - 02:30pm PT
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So as we've settled what causes gravity, what causes mass? (And I don't mean the pope's version thereof.)
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Tony Bird
climber
Northridge, CA
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Oct 29, 2010 - 02:46pm PT
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i'm a little curious here--might be fun to ask ed a direct question about this.
we all know chongo of "chongo nation"--r.i.p. to his brother who recently passed away. the better-known chongo, spending much of his adult life on yosemite big walls, turned to the contemplation of advanced physics and purports to have a self-taught grasp of quantum theory. he has even self-published a book on the subject, as i understand, though not nearly the success of his big wall book.
how about it, ed? ever talked this stuff with chongo? how does he do with it? have you seen his book?
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Oct 29, 2010 - 02:49pm PT
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my flip answer above probably causes more problems in this audience then it cures...
special relativity requires that the universe is invariant to a Lorentz transformation. What this means is that if you are moving at constant velocity you cannot tell by doing any experiment that that velocity is... that's why the speed of light is constant no matter how fast you're going, and also why it is the universal speed limit...
the equivalence principle states that you cannot tell the difference between a gravitation field and an acceleration. For example, if you are in a windowless box sitting on the surface of the earth, you feel a "force" pulling you "down." However, you cannot do an experiment in that box that distinguishes between gravity pulling you down and the box accelerating in some direction at 10 m/s/s.
finally, we have that the forces act locally, which is a statement regarding field theory, that is, a force is transmitted by a field, in this case a gravitation field, that permeates all of space. The force you feel is actually the local coupling of your mass to the local gravitational field.
Given those principles, and the observation that there is a force between masses, we can write out the most general form of that force, which is what General Relativity (GR) is...
the coupling is not just to mass, but to energy too, so the gravitational field of GR interacts with itself, which gives rise to the complexity of understanding it.. it is non-linear... but even if everything were massless gravity would still be a big effect...
...now how do things "get mass"?
That is from another set of ideas having to do with other fields, in the case of mass, it is the Higgs field that gives mass to everything. This field is hypothesized to exist, and is being searched for at CERN at the LHC.
Where gravity, electricity, magnetism, etc, etc, come from? Currently we are thinking that they are all manifestations of the same thing... one unified field. That may or may not be the case, it is just a hypothesis, but as we develop the hypothesis and perform more tests, we come closer to the explanation of "where gravity comes from."
And in some ways, come closer to the point of testing the limits of the scientific method that you crusty skeptics of science, Tony, (or not so crusty, Jennie) are so fond of pointing out...
...an interesting aspect of doing science is that the process contains the seeds of its own demise.
In my way of thinking, something can't be right if it can't shown to be wrong... good luck with your religious/spiritual/mystical systems on that one... as far as I can see, none of those have a way of being shown to be wrong.
edit never talked to Chongo about this...
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Gordon
Trad climber
South Florida
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Oct 29, 2010 - 03:21pm PT
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If people could just be comfortable with the phrase "I don't know... yet", there'd be absolutely no reason or need for religion. Unless you consider power, wealth, and the ability to control others to be good reasons.
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atchafalaya
climber
Babylon
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Oct 29, 2010 - 03:24pm PT
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Facts vs. fiction; It is really not a fair fight.
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Tony Bird
climber
Northridge, CA
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Oct 29, 2010 - 04:08pm PT
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i appreciate the non-flip post, ed. it appears that cutting-edge theory consists of several sets of ideas, to use your term. the layperson never gets a clear picture because i don't think physicists really have one yet themselves.
i wouldn't consider myself a skeptic of science. i think you're casting me in that role because you seem to have an almost religious fervor about scientific belief, and i dare say orthodoxy. science is the natural process of conjecture and experiment. real knowledge accumulates over time. my skepticism is reserved for those who think they have the final word.
my heart goes out to someone like chongo. curious minds who don't get into the scientific channels are left to starve out here with the sort of condescending books you find on the science shelf at barnes and noble.
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Jennie
Trad climber
Elk Creek, Idaho
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Oct 29, 2010 - 04:39pm PT
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Are we so shackled by Western history and societal polarization... as to require impulsifying science and religion as antipodal opposites?
Perhaps the Pope and Dr Hawking merely purge their brains in different dimensions. Hawking, the man of science, demands the "right of wave", spinning clockwise through ten dimensions... the Popes spin counterclockwise in twenty-six ("Dude...I was just tuning the Vatican Roulette Wheel").
Conceivably, there's hope for both gentlemen... (and myself).
No offense intended to the Pope or Dr Hawking. Hopefully, Fatty won't break a wine bottle over either man's head at a future sushifest...
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
Full Silos of Iowa
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Oct 29, 2010 - 04:41pm PT
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Engineering and everyday engineering products (like microsecond switching in computers to corrective lense to camming protective devices) are the everyday real-time proof of causality and its constancy across time and space in the natural world.
That is so cool.
What's more, if ever there were a blip in the physics and chemistry of nature - in other words, the mechanistic mechanics of nature - our engineering products would pick up on it - they would signal the blip - via malfunction. They don't so we can be assured in real time everyday that the lifeblood of nature is causality and that it is the truest Old Faithful.
.....
Reality consists of limits - the limits of the natural world. So does life and all living things. That means we humans, too. Churches and Mosques won't ever get around to coming to grips with these modern revelations or perhaps more importantly to promoting new attitudes, new expectations, based on them. So it's time we developed new centers, new communities, new institutions to pick up where these old ones fail. I believe it's already underway.
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Crodog
Social climber
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Oct 29, 2010 - 04:43pm PT
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If I were a betting man I would bet on the Pope because he has God on his side.
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Reggaemylitis
Sport climber
Sacramento, CA
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Oct 29, 2010 - 04:50pm PT
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As an atheist in search of god, I think Ben Weasel of Screeching Weasel summed up my beliefs pretty well:
If you've ever questioned beliefs that you hold
you're not alone
But you oughtta realize that every myth is a metaphor
In the case of Christianity
and Judaism there exists the belief
that spiritual matters are enslaved to history
The Buddhists believe that the functional aspects override the myth
while other religions use the literal core
to build foundations with
See half the world sees the myth as fact
while it's seen as a lie by the other half
and the simple truth is that it's none of that
and somehow no matter what the world keeps turning
Somehow we get by without ever learning
Science and religion are not mutually exclusive
In fact for better understanding
we take the facts of science and apply them
And if both factors keep evolving
then we continue getting information
but closing off possibilities
makes it hard to see the bigger picture
Consider the case of the women whose faith helped her make it through
when she was raped and cut up
left for dead in a trunk her beliefs held true
It doesn't matter if it's real or not
cause some things are better left without a doubt
and if it works then it gets the job done
Somehow, no matter what, the world keeps turning
Somehow we get by without ever learning
That being said, I'll believe in gravity, or that god does not exist, when they find the graviton or aliens, not before! :)
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