God particle discovery is a win for science over superstition

I don't recall any religious person ever positing God as the physical reason mass has matter.

 

Just trying to help with the language barrier. The two words are unrelated. An emotional person may be highly educated or ignorant. An ignorant person can be highly logical, depressive of emotions or highly emotional. The concepts are unrelated.

 

No, I'm very serious. Immortality is the goal. Longevity of our species through colonization of extra-terrestrial habitats is one perhaps more achievable. But I'm talking about personal immortality for each individual.

 

If they were illiterate you wouldn't know anything about them.

They didn't write anything about any of that stuff. Not in the way you want to suggest anyway.

They had atheists back then. Why didn't they set 'em straight? Why did religious people have to give us the enlightenment on the coattails of the reformers in order to get science going? Why do so many libertarians need to attack religion all the time? I understand that many of you are young atheists, and I'm not asking you to become a Christian (not right now anyway), but how are libertarians supposed to get any political traction with you guys acting this way? If you must post crap like this, at least take down the Gary Johnson sticker when you do it.

 

Ok, fair enough. Hard to tell when some one is joking or serious from a post.

Yea immortality would be cool.

 

Not in the reality. Everyone needs emotions if he likes to learn.

http://youtu.be/72O__iTEFLw

 

The two terms are not contradictory, even if your premise is accepted.

 

I find it highly unlikely that we can dodge entropy either personal or universal.

Of course we are better off in certain ways. We have a lot more toys. We have more time to play with them. But spiritually we are no any better off merely more distracted.

 

So we are better off every way but spiritually?

 

Hmmmmm...
The Higgs particle is merely the hoped for addtion to the puzzle of materialism.

"This new high ground in that struggle which pushes our understanding of the universe out to a new horizon" does not negate the Bible's claim that Truth is our savior.
In fact, it is evidence that our salvation does depend upon finding just such truths to add to our ever growing supply of them.

This work is a direct application of christianity in that "Jesus is the Truth, and the way, and the life" more abundant for man.

 

?
More truths enhance The Truth.

Man is the Truth-searcher.
Man is using the facts-of-life to cope against the costs of living in the harsh Reality.
Man is turning the Reality to beneficial uses as he discovers its secrets.
Man even hopes in the discoveries of Truth for the very salvation of our species from the constant threat of extinction, held, as a sword, over the head of all living things.

 

This is interesting.
If this is the sole issue that makes science valuable, then you have essentially lowered science to the typical terrified striving that created most religion.

 

In fact, I lowered every conceivable action by humans to typical terrified striving. None of what we do has any value if we are all ultimately doomed. It only has value if our minds survive to assign value.

 

Yep.

Proverbs 1:7
The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge:

Science is just a method by which men can find the knowledge useful to them in limiting their fears of the harshness of Reality.
Science is really the discipline where men seek the truth about the realities they must coope within order to survive.

Fear was that first pause in the state of our mind when self will had evolved, and living things could make a decision whether to fight or flee.
Human consciousness evolved from such simplistic early roots into a 24 hour, seven day a week project directed at forethought that would become mother to our deeds.

 

Survival is the value.
Adaption to the environment is the survival mechanism.

Man has become a tool of Reality which now unfolds in accord with the Law of Probabilities, but hence forth will be a direct evolution in chnages which man is used to open doors of chance.*
This god, Reality, is now wed to Truth it inspired.

 

I agree that science has created the potential for a more humane world, but it is equally true that man is covetous and so seeks to rest control of that potential and direct it toward only their chosen group, and not make it universal.
The irony of science is it reveals the capacity for man to sustain the entirety of the species, but the knowledge is co-opted by people who will ultimately use it to destroy it.
Gun powder helped in hunting, but was turned into a weapon to threaten human life.
Discovery of the atoms power was quickly turned into weaponry.
Discoveries that led to enormously greater crop production turned those with the technology into super powers but was kept from others to their great detriment.
Theoretical science leads to greater and greater insights into the great questions that plague man's imagination. The practical applications almost always lead to a greater potential for him to destroy himself.
Entropy being what it is, the practical applications will eventually succeed.

 

But survival in its most fundamental sense is a given: the conservation of energy allows for a 100% survival rate of everything in existence. It is the particular arrangements of these items that make up our bodies which we alone hold dear. Without us, our typical notion of survival is meaningless. So even survival would cease to be valued in the absence of humans. And for my part, it already means nothing if I am to die some day.

 

But what one learns can lead to knowledge or ignorance.
The racist "learns" about the superiority of his own group.
The Christian, buddhist, Muslim and voodoo practitioner all "learn" with a great deal of enthusiasm, yet they come to differing conclusion, leading to the necessary realization that for some (if not all) their enthusiasm has led to ignorance.
These terms are wholly unrelated.

 

This shows the problem that science runs into. It's the old "What's In It For Me" syndrome. To me, the value of science is what it reveals about truth which is unrelated to how that impacts my immortality. People being what they are, though, want to use knowledge for their own personal gain, and that is what perverts science into a potential doomsday machine.

 

And the collective mind of man does. It is simply the individual that does not.

 

But science doesn't always comfort, does it?
Engineering, which is the practical application of science in a variety of ways, could be characterized as a survival response, but pure science is simply investigative and discovers truth without agenda.

 

And you can value that truth revelation for as long as you live, and even pass that value down to your descendents. Eventually, that value will disappear and our knowledge will cease to exist.

Meanwhile, the universe already knew the truth of how it worked all along. And our science amounts only to feeble attempts to relate that truth to something a certain arrangement of parts of the universe can compute and comprehend.

I personally value the simple quest for greater knowledge, as you do. My point was that it's ultimately all meaningless if our species is doomed. My own values are meaningless when I consider that I am nothing more than a descendent of scum pooped out by a dying star. Should science result in man's truly becoming a greater being by escaping mortality, then I feel it will have met the criteria of obtaining true value in the grand scheme of things.

 

Fair and true enough.

 

It is my opinion that scientific inquiry is the ONLY human action with any potential to reach that goal. To me, that makes it the most important. Adding to mankind's breadth of knowledge is a treat. I just won't argue that this endeavor alone is any more valuable than any other taken by man.

 

I elevate it because it makes our brief stay more compelling and interesting. I would suggest that it doesn't have any chance of staving off the inevitable, because no matter what science discovers, it won't learn enough to keep the sun from imploding eventually, and then it is game over. But I understand your point, though I believe it to be overstated, because of the time frame of the eventualities. Science has an immense impact for the foreseable future.
My theory however is that impact will be used to accelerate our demise.