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Earth 2.0: Bad News for God


Pong Messiah
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It doesn't matter. Christians have been adjusting/rationalizing their religious views in reaction to science for a few hundred years now. Really it's only ever bad news for those who subscribe to a literal interpretation.

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This is a stretch, even for you Pong.

I dunno... I could see "new Earths" and interstellar travel weakening human faith in G_d, and hopefully contributing to the end of superstition. Admittedly this is wishful thinking on my part, but I don't think it's a huge stretch.

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In regards to creation, the end of time et al there is a "surprising" amount of Earth-centric Human-centric narrow mindedness in preached translations of the Bible considering the original Hebrew can allow for all sorts of things; including vast celestial existences, intelligences other than human both out there and right here. Humans, regardless of Faith, see what they want however so...

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Guest El Chalupacabra

Dude, calling Kepler-452b an "Earth" is a misleading at the very least. What we do know is that it is 60% larger, likely made up of rock, and has a similar orbit around a similar star. And that's it. Venus fits most of that description, but it is far from Earth-like in the sense it doesn't have oceans or life. For all we know, Kepler-452b could be more of a Venus-2.

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Some people will just adjust their "Creator/Intelligent Designer/Watchmaker" origin story to conform to new scientific discoveries, and it is true that many things people would have considered magic 2,000 years ago that weren't explicitly mentioned in holy texts (X-Ray Machines, Space Shuttles) haven't made people give up their faith. Religious faith is dropping, though, dramatically so among younger people, and many people who still call themselves "Christian" reject aspects of the belief system that don't jibe with modernity (creation myth, virgin birth, miracles, original sin, etc.). To me, this says that as we gain a greater understanding of the natural world and universe around it, our rational minds force us to reject more and more of our holy text as fairy tales. I don't know how many aspects of the web of faith must be rejected before people can't call themselves Christian any more, but at some point, the house of cards must fall.

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It doesn't matter. Christians have been adjusting/rationalizing their religious views in reaction to science for a few hundred years now. Really it's only ever bad news for those who subscribe to a literal interpretation.

This.

 

People very, very, very rarely ever base their religious views, or lack thereof, on pure scientific fact, I suspect. Arguments over things like evolution, intelligent design, cultural issues and the like are philosophical proxy wars waged between people who like the idea of some kind of supreme intelligent cosmic agency being behind everything, and people who don't. The real issues are, I think, the moral, political and existential implications of living in a universe with an intelligent designer the implications of living in a universe without one. People will use whatever arguments that shore up their preferred view.

 

Religious faith is dropping, though, dramatically so among younger people, and many people who still call themselves "Christian" reject aspects of the belief system that don't jibe with modernity (creation myth, virgin birth, miracles, original sin, etc.). To me, this says that as we gain a greater understanding of the natural world and universe around it, our rational minds force us to reject more and more of our holy text as fairy tales. I don't know how many aspects of the web of faith must be rejected before people can't call themselves Christian any more, but at some point, the house of cards must fall.

Religious faith is falling, yes. But faith itself never will. This has happened before - religious sentiment plummeted in Europe after the first world war. This turned out to hardly be a triumph for pure reason - the swastika and the hammer+sickle merely replaced the crucifix as holy symbols. Today, the rainbow pride flag and women's liberation symbols fulfill the same role.

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Guest El Chalupacabra

New planets r kewl.

 

Actually this is kinda neat. Eventually we could send a probe there or something that could push us further into space.

Admittedly, this is a topic I am TOTALLY out of my league on, but from what I do know, sending a probe to such a planet is impossible for the foreseeable future. Kepler-452b is 1400 lightyears away...that means we are seeing it now LITERALLY when Mohammed was alive, barely a century and a half after the Western Roman Empire fell, and other events of the 7th century were happening.

 

I would love to hear thoughts of Destiny Skywalker or Pavonis on this, but I am thinking that it would be a lot more practical to develop technology that can give us a better picture of this planet (or others) using some sort of carrier waves that travel at faster than light that can scan a planet at that distance, than developing a probe that travels there physically. Sci fi like Star Trek would call it subspace transmissions or something similar, but I am not sure if there is a real-world theory that is comparable to that. I am not sure I am making sense there, but maybe they know what I am trying to say :)

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I dunno... I could see "new Earths" and interstellar travel weakening human faith in G_d, and hopefully contributing to the end of superstition.

Don't worry, Pong. When the aliens come down and we're all forced to convert to alien-god worship at alien lasergun-point, we'll get a good laugh at the expense of the Christians over the irony of it all (right before we all become mindless alien-slaves). :thumbsup:

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My reaction is that I would hardly call that a scientific article, and it came off like some ranty atheist going off on the usual arguments against Christianity. El Chalupacabra asked far deeper questions than this article did.

 

I'm all about the discovery of planets and the search for other intelligent life. I'm admittedly not all that well-versed in biology or biochemistry. Modern physics and astronomy can help us find what's out there, but determining whether it's a hunk of dirt or a planet teeming with life is not that easily determinable. Pavonis probably knows much more on that subject than I do, my friends who are astronomers are mostly from the observational astronomy field. I think they might be able to tell if a planet has an atmosphere based on some of their observations, but that may be limited by distance, not sure.

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Guest El Chalupacabra

Yeah, I have to agree with Destiny. As someone who isn't particularly religious, simply discovering said planet does not prove or disprove the existence of God. A true scientific article would be impartial, and let the facts speak for themselves, but this article does seem (to me at least) to read more like an op-ed piece, starting from the title "Earth 2.0: Bad News for God," on.

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Thing is though it's impossible to prove the non-existence of something. But the existence of more Earth like planets does poke holes into the established version of events that most religions subscribe to. Or at least I think so.

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I would love to hear thoughts of Destiny Skywalker or Pavonis on this, but I am thinking that it would be a lot more practical to develop technology that can give us a better picture of this planet (or others) using some sort of carrier waves that can travel at faster than light that can scan a planet at a distance, than developing a probe that travels there physically. Sci fi like Star Trek would call it subspace transmissions or something similar, but I am not sure if there is a real-world theory that is comparable to that. I am not sure I am making sense there, but maybe they know what I am trying to say. :)

 

 

 

Faster-than-light waves are pretty much out of the question, sense they break one of the postulates of the theory of relativity.

 

I agree that the article is far from being a scientific one, only someone's opinion, but I tend to agree with the author. Religion will always remain immune to new scientific findings. Believers will either ignore those findings altogether (like those creationists who claim that dinosaur fossils are a hoax), or they'll rationalize to the point where those findings are no longer a threat to their belief system.

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