marc9000 writes:
Science doesn’t know what the nature of consciousness is, or how conscious mental activity arises out of physical brain activity.
Sure they do.
Research is going on all the time that further refines our knowledge of how neurological activity relates to various states of consciousness.
marc9000 writes:
It doesn’t know why the universe exists — why there is something rather than nothing.
Nope, nor does this matter much in the end. Science can explain most "why" questions in terms of causality, sure. Why is the sky blue?
It's not really. It looks that way because that's how the atmosphere scatters light. Why does ice float?
Because the molecular structure of water makes it less dense in its solid state than in its liquid state. Those are the sort of why questions that science deals with, becuase it's so, so terribly atheistic and naturalistic. If, on the other hand, you want to arbitrarily invoke supernatural causes - if you want to explain light-scattering principles by saying that God made the light spectrum such that we'd be reminded of his mercy, as represented by the color blue - then feel free to make up as many stories as you like. They don't add anything to the conversation.
Maybe the universe exists because it's there are lots of ways for something to exist but only one way for nothing to exist, so existence is just more likely.
marc9000 writes:
It doesn’t know why the universe has three spatial dimensions and only one time dimension.
It almost certainly doesn't. The physics and math apparently work out much better for a
ten- or eleven-dimensional universe. Just because that's difficult to comprehend doesn't make it not so.
marc9000 writes:
It doesn’t know what the nature of mass is.
Sure it does.
Mass is the measure of how much "stuff" there is in a given body, either in terms of its resistance to inertial change or how much potential energy it has. Beyond that, you can start investigating the nature of spacetime and energy and fundamental particles. (My apologies to people who really understand physics.)
marc9000 writes:
It doesn’t know what the universe is made of (most of it seems to be ‘dark matter, but we don’t know what dark matter is)
True, and isn't that a fascinating area of research?
marc9000 writes:
It doesn’t have a single fundamental theory of physics (the TWO theories it does have, general relativity and quantum theory, are incompatible)
You're about a hundred years out of date.
String theory appears to be able to do quite a good job at reconciling the two. Again, just because it's hard to understand (well beyond my primate brain's capacity) or still not fully developed doesn't make it not so.
Essentially, all you have is an argument from ignorance. In any of the above cases, does invoking supernatural phenomena give you
better explanations than the naturalistic ones?
Let me ask you that again. How does invoking the supernatural give you
better answers than the ones that naturalistic science proposes?
Supernatural explanations are worthless. They can't be tested, verifies, or falsified. By being able to explain anything, supernaturalism explains nothing. I remind you of Laplace's reply to Napoleon when asked why his work on mathematical astronomy didn't mention God:
"I had no need of that hypothesis."
You tell me why we need to bring in Jehovah to make sense of String Theory, and then we'll talk.
IMPORTANT ABE:
quote:
Those are the sort of why questions that science deals with, becuase it's so, so terribly atheistic and naturalistic.
This doesn't make sense. What I actually
meant to say was "Those are the sort of "why" questions that science deals with,
not because it's so terribly atheistic and godless, but because it deals with verifiable facts. It's that simple."
Edited by ZenMonkey, : Attempted repair of tangle logic.
I have no time for lies and fantasy, and neither should you. Enjoy or die.
-John Lydon
What's the difference between a conspiracy theorist and a new puppy? The puppy eventually grows up and quits whining.
-Steven Dutch
™ Version 4.2