TORAH & SCIENCE-----science & truth

"The so-called scientists have yet to figure it out. They should get a life."

Reb Moderator, scientists have a life, a very honorable one. They are engaged in the pursuit of truth, in discovery of the rules set down by G-d to govern his creation. Scientists are almost pathologically honest. In other endeavors one profits from falsification. A scientist who is even suspected of tolerating falsification has ended his career.

The atheist Steven Weinberg didn't have to publish his calculation of the Big Bang's precise energy. He felt obliged to reveal a fact which devastates his extra-scientific nonsense about random evolution.

The snake poison sack is a very minor difficulty compared to Cosmo-genesis, Biogenesis and the fossil record. Relativity is no longer a theory. It is as accepted as Newtonian mechanics.

Evolution is very much a theory, and a very unsatisfactory one. As one British biologist put it, evolution doesn't explain anything, but the alternative is philosophically undesirable.

A better refutation of biogenesis is the chirality of organic molecules. Amino acids, proteins and of course DNA are not symmetrical. Like human hands, they cannot be superimposed on their mirror images. Alice wondered if looking-glass milk is good to drink. It is definitely not, since left-handed amino acids are indigestible or toxic.

If I want to synthesize an amino acid in the laboratory, I have to use a naturally occurring right-handed substance to resolve the mixture of right- and left-handed products. Anything that can happen on the right can just as easily happen on the left. The universe has no handedness, and neither to molecules in a reaction.

Someone complained in the New York Times that intelligent design theory only pushes the creation problem one step further--who created G-d? Well then, who created what existed before the Big Bang? There was literally nothing in the universe before that moment, and the very laws of physics did not apply. You can't have a law where there is no matter and no energy. Why did the Big Bang occur at a specific moment in time? Notice how these questions are the very ones addressed by certain important inyanim in Kabbala.



If they are engaged in the pursuit of truth, the philosophical undesirability of a truthful conclusion should lead them to change their philosophy, not disregard the conclusion. Especially since scientists are not experts in philosophy, what they mean by this is, "We don’t like the conclusion because it means religion is true. So instead of becoming religious, we will make believe the truth doesn’t exist."

Scientists are involved in finding "scientific fact", which is not the same as "truth", or even plain "fact." This is because scientists - not science - have agreed to restrict "scientific proof" to things that fulfill their own self-imposed criteria, which limits the type of truth they will find. Example: If an experiment cannot be reproduced in the laboratory, it is not considered scientifically proven.

Now while I understand the need for such restrictions in order to weed out charlatans, it also weeds out much truth. So that if you have a miraculous event, witnessed by millions of people, such as Kabbalas HaTorah, and documented meticulously, that is still not considered "proof" to the scientists.

There are many methods of reaching truth that are not considered "scientific". Philosophical, logical, and intuitive thinking is not "scientific proof".

Consider the following example of confusing "scientific proof" with "truth."

You have 100 impeccable witnesses stating that the defendant stabbed his victim to death, his fingerprints are on the knife, there are 100 contradictions in his own testimony, and he has been convicted in the past of committing the exact same type of murders, 30 times.

None of that constitutes "scientific proof." So "scientifically", the defendant would be found "Not guilty".

Ironically, there is no scientific proof that the scientific method of proof is the most valid method of proof.

Science finds truth to an extent. But only to an extent. The problem is, that often, philosophy, logic, and intuition also play a role in the quest for truth. And there, scientists are not trained, and worse, they are trained not to be interested.

Science does not claim, really, to find "truth". It is based on theory and falsification thereof. That is not enough for "truth."

I agree that the snake problem is merely one of many proofs against evolution, but it is the simplest, and can be used by anyone confidently, and without any scientific knowledge, which is why I chose to post it here.

But see, evolution should have long been considered "falsified" by now, since the world could not have come by accident. And once you concede to design, and a Designer, evolution is no longer necessary. The fact that it has not been, merely shows that science is an incomplete method of seeking truth.

The person in the NY Times was mistaken. Not everything needs or has a creator. The rule that A^2+B^2=C^2 did not need a "creator". Facts do not need creators, only measurable "things" do. Hashem is more similar to a Law than He is to a physical item. In any case, it is an error to say that everything needs a creator. But nature definitely does.