Has Science made God irrelevant?

Junk DNA (sorry, I have to leave, so i through some stuff together):

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2012/sep/05/genes-genome-junk-dna-encode

http://www.godandscience.org/evolution/junkdna.html

http://www.icr.org/article/junk-dna-myth-continues-its-demise/

Snopes isn't credible because of their heavy liberal bias.

http://www.topix.com/forum/city/cookeville-tn/TP56UGMBR8DRD59L0

http://accuracyinpolitics.blogspot.com/2013/05/snopes-got-snoped.html

Since when did I boast 2 billion followers of Christianity? I highly doubt those are all true Christians- most are lukewarm. I have to finish later, sorry.

BadSheep said:

Junk DNA (sorry, I have to leave, so i through some stuff together):

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2012/sep/05/genes-genome-junk-dna-encode

http://www.godandscience.org/evolution/junkdna.html

http://www.icr.org/article/junk-dna-myth-continues-its-demise/

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(I'm going to ignore the second link because it's a Christian apologist website -- which I specifically asked you not to cite as a source -- and has no grounds in science.)

Honestly, did you understand the article? Did you read any one of the actual studies? Not one part discredited the idea of noncoding or 'junk' DNA. The title may have mislead you: there is no doubt that over 98% of the genome is noncoding. What is being debated among scientists in this context is the biological function of the noncoding DNA. Encode was a breakthrough because it revealed biochemical activity in the human genome that scientists have not observed for decades. Again this does nothing to discredit junk DNA but merely suggests that it is in fact more vital to life than previously thought.

BadSheep said:

Snopes isn't credible because of their heavy liberal bias.

http://www.topix.com/forum/city/cookeville-tn/TP56UGMBR8DRD59L0

http://accuracyinpolitics.blogspot.com/2013/05/snopes-got-snoped.html

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if you don't trust snopes then surely you'll trust about.com?

http://urbanlegends.about.com/b/2013/06/21/government-purchased-30000-guillotines.htm

BadSheep said:

I have to finish later, sorry.

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Take your time haha. btw do you happen to be the same person as or related to BadPokemon? Just curious lol

Deceptio said:

This will be short and sweet.

If you mean relevancy in the most literal sense. Then no, it has not, because so many people put their belief into a God that it effects literally everyone else on the planet. Making it so that God, whether it exists or not, is unfortunately never irrelevant.

If you really want to find out if God is real? If it really matters that much? (It really doesn't in the long run, regardless of whteher you're a believer or not.)

Jump off a cliff and die.

That'll give you answer enough, just don't expect to be able to spread the good news if you were right. Other than the above method there's no other way to be certain however. Especially if you're an atheist like me and think that "full on religious experiences" where one "truly communes with and hears God" are more ascribed to insanity from constant self belief than anything else.

In the end the only reason people believe in anything is because they're sentient and they're absolutely petrified of there NOT being one, Religion itself is just the result of one massive existential crisis in my eyes. Non-sentient and semi-sentient beings don't have this problem at all because they are incapable of having panic attacks over being the result of coincidence in a Universe without the divine.

Do you think your pet dog believes in God? Well no, he doesn't, because he doesn't need to.

Don't get me wrong, you have every right to believe what you want for your own reasons. I won't stop or judge you for it. But from my perspective the entire notion of religion is a little bit sad.

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you do know that according to islamic studies, all animals except humans can see angels and bark at Shaytaan(the devil) when he comes to close to a human or is inside one. A bark is an indicator of the devils presence and if you pay attention, you look at who or what its barking at especially if its you

Oh my fucking sides. I could win a bingo board from this thread if it had just some of the sheer intellectual sins creationists make. I can't decide if "Christian Persecution Complex" or "Liberally Biased Reality" should go in my free spot!

BadSheep said:

1. I dont have the time to explain all of the proof,[1] so I said one quick thing. Macro evolution is impossible because DNA cannot change- you cannot gain DNA. [2] There are mutations, but most mutations are harmful as seen by the bee experiment. It would be impossible for this one mutation to spread to a whole species because it might not if pass on to the children!

WWII was observed by others and recorded. We can see the effects even today. We know that was real for those reasons.[3]

2. You trust scientists to come up with the correct answers and put a lot of trust in how the earth came from a 1 in trillions chance of occurring from the big bang. [4]

3. Creationists use science everyday to prove the existence of God and the validity of the Bible. When one comes out with a book...scientists ridicule them for their beliefs because the science is right! We are looking at the same proof here, it is how most logically it can be interpreted.[5]

4. I can tell a story if you want to hear it, but I can not find an article on it because my mom told me about it a while ago. I found another source a while ago, but again, can not find it. Sorry. :/ [1]

5. Ancient Rome. Christians were killed and persecuted since the founding. We had other religious groups against us such as the Pharisees and Sadducees. Rome hated us until some emperors ended the persecution (Edict of Milan). Now, Christians are persecuted.[6]

https://www.opendoorsusa.org/christian-persecution/

+many more sources. In addition, it is predicted in the Bible that the world will become anti-God, which it is. Pop culture is horribly satanic, as well as other forms of culture. Just research and you will find many reasons why I am so cynical and why culture today is (and becoming) anti-Christian.[7]

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• [1] "I have a truly marvelous proof of Creation by Sky Wizard that this forum post (or your deluded Darwinist brain) is too narrow to contain."
• [2] Yes, genes can duplicate and complexity certainly increases in populations. Thus, information due to DNA encoding can increase. In fact, there's probably some interesting mathematical reason why arguing against information increase is precisely the argument against entropy increases, and just as bad. This post is far too narrow for that though.
• [3] Yeah, and the Genesis creation myth, and the Noah Flood myth, and the Jesus Christ myth. Good thing God was there to tell all about to some obscure, totally legit writers.
• [4] Scientists don't even trust other scientists! They breathe fire on grad students and will rip your pet theories a new one every chance they get. You know something is convincing if it's practically the consensus among those Godless savages!
• [5]No, that's not how science works. You find evidence and then draw conclusions. You don't get to make up fairy tales, cut out the block letters from a scientific journal, and paste them into one of those threatening-looking notes you see in mystery shows with the message "FAiRY tALE".
• [6] Because what Ancient Rome did nearly 2,000 years ago is very much relevant to why my particular church of my particularly recent flavor of Christianity is so very persecuted.
• [7] Think maybe your cynicism is the reason why your beliefs are just not cool in most civilized countries?

BadSheep said:

When and who recorded evolution?

Macro evolution is impossible because DNA can not change. Recently, scientists have discovered junk DNA (leftovers from evolution)- i mean the lack of it in human DNA. Evolutionists claim for 80% junk DNA at least and some even more for evolution to occur. Except we are confirmed 99% free of junk DNA and are discovering that we may not have any! And the fact that we have "common" DNA with monkeys and other wildlife is proof of a common designer- not evolution. For example, we share 50% DNA with bananas. You have to be crazy to think we came from bananas or vice-versa. Again, common designer.

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Today I learned evolution biologists think we come from bananas.

Pentenshi said:

you do know that according to islamic studies, all animals except humans can see angels and bark at Shaytaan(the devil) when he comes to close to a human or is inside one. A bark is an indicator of the devils presence and if you pay attention, you look at who or what its barking at especially if its you

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Oh, nice one, Darwin, we get to know how to invent smartphones and how to do this whole physics thing but now we can't see the devil.


Perhaps it's bad to think this, but I believe many creationists are beyond reason and any acceptable capacity for logic, to a point that it's threatening really, when you think about how much of this is getting pushed in some US states.

let's not be crude shall we

^ "Let's not be crude shall we," thus spoketh God. (PC 2:46)

Biochemist here! A lot of us (the smarter ones >>) actually believe that articles like the Guardian one which claims that the junk theory of DNA has been overturned are wrong. To put it simply, we contend that those ENCODE experiments don't indicate that much of DNA is functional. To be more precise, just because some DNA responds to your experiment doesn't mean it's functional in the sense that it's making a difference in your cells, so it wasn't a good experiment because it didn't really measure or analyze what the experimenters set out to address.

I believe that much of DNA is in fact junk in the sense that most of it doesn't make a difference in your cells. It gets more complicated, and you'll have to remember your grade 12 biology, but the gist is that just because a piece of DNA is transcribed or translated doesn't mean it's functional. Biological hardware is inherently "sloppy" because it isn't machine-designed to okay I don't know if I can continue without sounding too obscure. The point is, most pieces DNA can be transcribed and translated by accident (without being functional in any way) and this is the reason why a lot of DNA pops up in ENCODE but also why having a lot of DNA popping up in ENCODE doesn't necessarily mean anything (we call this transcriptional/translational noise, kind of similar to the concept of radio noise - that buzzing that you hear and which is sensed by the radio receiver but doesn't mean anything. Get it?). Feel free to ask questions if you're interested in learning more about this stuff.

Also, I have to say that a lot of creationist "understanding" of science is no more than gossip. Basically, somebody reads a "science" article off a creationist website and assumes that "oh gee I guess that's how science works" without actually trying to understand how science works. Like if you wanted to know if Jimmy was actually cheating on Molly, why would you ask Suzie, who has a crush on Jimmy? Of course you're not going to have a good understanding of science if you just go by a watered-down and distorted version that somebody who doesn't care about understanding science tells you.

God (or religion/spirituality more generally) and Science are not necessarily contradictory ideas.

Science provides empirical knowledge, but doesn't describe why that knowledge exists, if it has a purpose, and if so, what that purpose is.

Why is it that molecules/atoms behave in a way which promotes congregation into, organelles, cells, tissues, organs, and organisms? Why do some atoms repel or attract one another? The laws of physics are a requisite to ideas like natural selection, mating, social interactions, fight or flight responses, and ultimately living creatures desires such as living. Why do we behave the way we do is essentially a question which you must question, "why does physics exist in the way it does". Physical laws explain human behavior, they are inherent, and we must operate within the confines of these natural laws.

Did these laws of physics/nature always exist? Scientists often focus on, did matter always exist...but it's more interesting to imagine why the building blocks of life behave as they do. Is there intentionality?

Now, some of the claims made by religious organizations may be in competition with science, but that doesn't mean there is some unfathomable entity with intentionality that has caused material and laws that govern that material to create life as we know it. Or, there is the possibility of unintentionality of an agent...which at face seems less attractive.

That's why I remain agnostic in belief systems, but ultimately, desire for there to be an intentional agent that cause the conditions of life since it provides life more purpose. Rather, without purpose, life and our desires is guided by laws of physics, which are random and inherent, lacking intention, seems a bit bleak.

Hypothesis: this world that we live in, and the things which inhabit it have purpose.

Null hypothesis: this world that we live in, and the things which inhabit it have no purpose.

I think both are worth investigating. The issue I take with a lot of religions is that it presumes the hypothesis and doesn't explore the alternative.

I'd like to add that no "studies" in creationist websites like Answers in Genesis are even peer-reviewed lol

The Void said:

I'd like to add that no "studies" in creationist websites like Answers in Genesis are even peer-reviewed lol

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Because peer review is obviously a liberal, Darwinist conspiracy to cover up the teachings of our True Christian™ religion. How dare they! What scandal! For them to actually make us think about our creation myth!

I don't think it really has. I think the idea of God will stay for a long time until proven wrong (If it even is wrong). I consider myself Agnostic, because I really don't know if God exists or does not exist. I really don't know, but I do have my own opinions. I don't think their is a God, but I don't know for sure. I DO believe in an afterlife, although I don't want there to be one, but again, I don't know for sure. I don't think science can render religion irrelevant. Religion is too much of a personal thing for science to change it. Some people wholeheartedly believe in God, others don't. I don't see this as a thing that science can disprove. Maybe fire large cannons into the religion, ripping wholes in it (Evolution and Carbon Dating for example (Don't start arguing those, all I'm going to say is evolution is a nearly proven thing. We have literally watched it happen, and no, the bee does not disprove evolution. Carbon Dating is different, as it could be incorrect, but I believe it is correct the majority of the time.)), but not make it irrelevant.

Science is fact on the other hand god is one's belief.So I don't think science has made god irrelevant.There are many things that happen in the nature which cannot be explained by science.At these moments god comes in play.
Also though science has a great impact on our lives we still follow many superstitions.That's cause we believe something bad will happen if we don't act accordingly the superstition.

punkysaur said:

Science is fact on the other hand god is one's belief.So I don't think science has made god irrelevant.There are many things that happen in the nature which cannot be explained by science.At these moments god comes in play.
Also though science has a great impact on our lives we still follow many superstitions.That's cause we believe something bad will happen if we don't act accordingly the superstition.

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We certainly know more about the world around us through science now than we did two hundred years ago. Does that mean that god stopped coming into play for certain things over the course of the past two hundred years? Does that mean that god would stop coming into play the more we learn about the world? Is there a point where we know enough about the world such that whatever part god plays is negligible or insignificant?

Kanzler said:

We certainly know more about the world around us through science now than we did two hundred years ago. Does that mean that god stopped coming into play for certain things over the course of the past two hundred years? Does that mean that god would stop coming into play the more we learn about the world? Is there a point where we know enough about the world such that whatever part god plays is negligible or insignificant?

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Umm you misunderstood me! Pls re-think what I said.You have wrongly interpreted the 'comes in play' phrase here.

punkysaur said:

Umm you misunderstood me! Pls re-think what I said.You have wrongly interpreted the 'comes in play' phrase here.

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What do you mean by that phrase? It's quite vague, "comes into play", and I don't want to misinterpret it so I just restated in the same way you said it. And besides, my points still stand even if I have misinterpreted what you said the way you meant it; I think they're worth considering.

Kanzler said:

Hypothesis: this world that we live in, and the things which inhabit it have purpose.

Null hypothesis: this world that we live in, and the things which inhabit it have no purpose.

I think both are worth investigating. The issue I take with a lot of religions is that it presumes the hypothesis and doesn't explore the alternative.

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I've noticed that the atheist community often assumes that life has no purpose, without really exploring the alternative.

I think pursuing the question is more important than coming up with a definitive answer; it reveals what is important within one's own perception of reality.

punkysaur said:

Science is fact on the other hand god is one's belief.So I don't think science has made god irrelevant.There are many things that happen in the nature which cannot be explained by science.At these moments god comes in play.
Also though science has a great impact on our lives we still follow many superstitions.That's cause we believe something bad will happen if we don't act accordingly the superstition.

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Superstition is a mental construct which develops early on and often persists throughout life. It's part of the meaning-making machine that is Homo Sapiens.

Also, belief in God does exist, but so does direct experience of transcendental Divine reality. But because Western society often chooses not to apply the scientific method to non-material phenomena, we are left with the untested assumption that God - or Something similar - does not exist.

Furthermore, it's pretty common for people to simply accept scientific findings without examining them. This is essentially "belief in Science", which is just as conformist and pre-rational as "belief in God".

Not that conformity is inherently bad; it has its place in giving stability to human culture. It's simply very limited in scope, and becomes limiting as individuals and collectives develop.