A Different Creation Model

Our naked senses can detect an almost infinitesimally small amount of the universe - a negligible amount.The 4% we think we know about and the 96% that we don't is mostly deduced from mathematics, based on instruments that detect stuff that we are unable to unaided. We'll probably work out what the rest is in a generation or so. So then we'll know.I don't know where that gets you?

Uh oh! Absolutely beyond all doubt it is. We've quite literally only just started beginning to understand it. Basically you can invent anything here you like. But I'm not sure why you would. I think you need to start again with this 4% business. You're taking it too literally. We can't percieve the 4%. We have only deduced it. To all intents and purposes, rounded to the nearest whole number our senses tell us about 0% of the universe. Our intelligence has calculated to 4% (if that's the right number.)If, next week, a genius discovers what the remaining 96% is then we'll know all of it. But like I say, I don't know where that gets you - we'll only know it as hard physics, not experience.

But that's what you both do anyway... Yes, that's what religions have to do to prevent them dying when discoveries are made. If the dogma tries to hold on it just makes itself look stupid - earth being the centre of the universe, young earth, immutability of species etcWrong believes can't survive facts. But it takes time. Sure, but it doesn't work for at least two reasons. First, neither of you actually understand the science - and probably what science actually is (unless you've actually done any, it's hard to understand the discipline) - so you think you can just make stuff up. For scientists this sort of ad-hocery is non-scientific and/or just silly.And second, you can't recocile the bible with science - there's no point of contact. What you're indulging in is is a weird kind of pseudo-scientific, magical thinking. Yes, exactly, but we're only ever going to experience stuff like dark matter mathematically.On a more general note, those that refuse to acknowledge the facts of scientific discoveries are killing off religious belief because they're provably wrong. But those that accept them are having to indulge in these fantacies. It must be tricky - it would certainly have been easier a couple of hundred years ago when you could just accept what the preacher told you.It can only get harder too. In the coming years we'll probably create life from chemicals, find life on other planets, understand the neurology of beliefs and mess about with our own genomes.Religion is going to have to bend over backwards to keep any relevance at all. It's going to be an era of declining traditional beliefs and increasing fantastical and magical ones.

Well ok, but without actual knowledge about how things work and the ability to think in ways that grounded in that knowledge what you have is just science fantasy. It makes for good fiction but it's not science. The knowledge that there's an enormous gap in our understanding of matter and energy doesn't allow us to fill that gap with just anything at all. It must start with what we know. We can only percieve a tiny fraction fraction of the universe with our own senses. Surely that's obvious? Our senses are localised pretty much to this planet and close astral neighours. And even here we are extremely limited. We can't see the very small or the very distant, we can only see a small part of the radio spectrum - no UV no infra red, no gamma, no x-rays. We can't hear outside a small range and our other senses are extremely localised.Our knowledge of the universe is not directly from our senses it's from our intelligent brain which we use to design instruments to make up for our lack of them and to calculate models that we can eventually test. We're no longer even capable of calculating the models ourselves - we have to use machines to do it for us. Our reach into knowledge about the universe is extended almost totally artificially.Our explanations of what we find are intangible - they exist only in our brains. The 96% of missing dark matter and energy is not something anyone can ever sense, it's a mathematical calculation based on how we've modelled the forces we think are making it work. We'll work out what it is in a while, but it won't change anything in our lives, we'll just know a bit more about how stuff works.Just for completeness, whatever it is, it won't be god :-)