(December 9, 2014 at 4:59 am)Godschild Wrote: Really, what about dark matter, can't be touched, be smelled, be seen. None of the physical attributes you demand of God, yet you accept it without question. I've heard the argument that we can observe the effects it has on other things, I've said the same about God, yet dark matter is all you accept. Until I can see it touch it and smell it I want believe it, that's close to what atheist say about God, right.A scientist who makes claims about dark matter will make his observations known and explain how and why he came to that conclusion. His work can then be investigated and researched by others, who might add to it or even reject it, and they must show their work as well. That allows more and more people to check the work and either begin to build a workable theory or dismiss it as invalid. No one "accepts it without question." On the contrary, it continues to be questioned. That is how our knowledge of the universe improves.
Claims about god are all over the map; there are many different gods, and many different versions of the same gods. People can make claims about how they "detect" or "experience" god, but those claims cannot be researched or confirmed because there is no standard method for doing so. And while you may accept one experience because it supports the god you believe in, you will dismiss those experiences which point to a different god.
And accepting or rejecting dark matter has no effect on my life in general, since I'm not a theoretical physicist. It's just information and potential knowledge. I can take it or leave it. I don't think you see god in the same way. Don't you think it's crazy that there is a much more rigorous path for claims about dark matter than there is for claims about god?
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould
