Do you think Science sometimes disproves itself?

Question

Science, generally speaking, denies the existence of God or a supernatural being. On this, we got used to seeing questions about God's existence. But, what I see, science sometimes entangles itself in it's own web. I was reading the timeline of world history on Encarta Encyclopedia, it says Big Bang occurred about 13.7 billion years ago. As I proceeded, suddenly it says, "Prokaryotes, one-celled organisms and the ancestors of all life-forms, appear in 3.8 to 2.5 billion years ago." "Dinosaurs appeared 230 million years ago."

It's like everything appear from nothing. Appear dramatically. lol! Science teaches us each and every event is an effect of a cause.
But fails to address what caused those to appear. It also says it doesn't make sense to think about what was before Big Bang. And its makes sense that life origins appeared from nothing!

Answer 1

Are you actually this stupid in real life too?

First of all, that is WHAT science does, tries to disprove theories. Science is testable. If it fails the test, the theory is refined. When it passes the test, other tests are thought of to disprove it. When enough scientists have asked enough questions and done enough test and can't disprove it.....it becomes a Theory. Theory of Gravitation, the Theory of Electromagnetism, and the Theory of Evolution, for example

2nd, you know damn well that science doesnt' say that dinosaurs or prokaryotes suddenly appeared from nothing....that is the bible hypothesis. Life evolved slowly through cumulative selection of beneficial random mutations over an unimaginably long period of time.

Answer 2

You are half right, and half wrong. First, yes, Science does sometimes "disprove" itself. For example, Einstein's Relativity disproved parts of Issac Newton's classical physics. But note that I said it disproved "parts", not all of Newton's theory. There have been quite a few of these revolutions in Science when a significant new understanding is reached. But these revolutions usually just fix limitations in the previous theory, and do not completely replace the previous theory.

The timeline you reference is a very compressed timeline, and only references events that we have fairly strong evidence for. The timeline does not claim that one-celled organisms came from nowhere. There are theories for Abiogenesis that explain how simple self-replicating molecules (precursors to RNA and DNA) could have formed from simple organic molecules, and then cells could have formed. This would have happened over the roughly one billion years before Prokaryotes appeared that the Earth existed.

Science does NOT deny God. Science is agnostic with respect to a possible deity. Science does contradict parts of the Bible. Some devout Bible believers jump to the conclusion that Science therefore completely denies the possibility of any deity, but that is not true. Science limits itself to the natural world and what can be learned about the world through repeatable experiments. No one has yet thought of any possible repeatable experiment that can tell us if there is there is a God or not, so Science doesn't even try to address that question.

Please note that there are plenty of Christians who are trained in Science and would agree with all that I said above. It is possible to believe the tenets of Christianity and still believe in the value of the scientific method, and to believe what science has taught us. However, these Christians do have to accept that the creation story in Genesis is allegorical, not literal.

Answer 3

Well put dude, but you have to consider that science has presented this to be a running theory, not fact. There is very little evidence to support the "big bang theory" or the "something from nothing theory". To simply use some mythical entity that is the be all end all is hardly educated, it is purely based on faith, every bit as much as santa claus is based on faith. Science continues to look for the answers to our existence, in a few years there may be another revelation in our begginings that will turn the science world upside down, but at least they continue to search for answers to these questions instead of forming a belief structure around no evidence whatsoever other than a handful of people 2000 years go who proclaim to have spoken to god which in this day and age you would refuse to believe if anyone one of us claim to have spoken to god. Science doesn't have all the answers, but then again they don't proclaim to like religion does. Science is mortal man's exploration of it's existence, there is a spirituality in science that most people fail to see because they believe that god is the definitive answer to all things good and evil. Science will always and forever challenge your intelligence, science will never ever have all the answer,but science will continue til the end of time exploring these very questions that may or may not have a definitive answer.

Answer 4

Wow, I don't even know where to start with this question, so I'll try to here: 40% of scientists believe in God, so although they are in the minority, it's not 'generally speaking'.

When science uses the term 'appeared', scientists don't mean "out of nothing". Scientific use of 'appeared' is vastly different from the creationist usage of 'appeared'. When scientists state that "dinosaurs appeared 230 million years ago", they mean that life forms had evolved into the dinosaur, and they started appearing (I use the term loosely) in large numbers. The same goes for prokaryotes, and other other life form that "appeared".

"It's like everything appear from nothing", you say. However, science holds this impossible. The Law of the Conservation of Mass, and Law of Conservation of Energy state that matter and energy, respectively, cannot be created, nor destroyed; only transferred. Yet, Christian Fundamentalism holds that approximately 6,000 years ago, the universe, earth, and 'heavens' were created ex nihilo: out of nothing.

Answer 5

I fail to see what your logic is... The best I can do is to explain a mathematical answer to your question:

Math is pretty much the only a priori science, and used as a basis of application for every other science. There is evidence in physics that supports the fact that the Big Bang occurred between 13-18 billion years ago...in fact pretty much anything you can think of can be explained through mathematical equations. How do we know this? Because we've been able to predict future events through this. There are certain things that can't be proved using logic/math however. In specific, trying to explain something that happened before the Big Bang (which current theory provides as the creation of our 4 dimensional manifold universe, as well as all physical and logic law inside of it) is in itself an incoherent question because time would have evolved from the Big Bang. Indeed the theory of general relativity cannot explain what came before the Big Bang, and as a matter of fact the Big Bang is considered to be the lower limit of where general relativity is active. Could a god have created the universe and everything in it "before" the Big Bang? Yes, but to our current knowledge, everything beyond the Big Bang up until this point in time can be explained by general relativity. So a respondant question for you: It is admittable that there is a possibility of a god creating this universe (and the Big Bang) even by mathematicians and scientists, but can you see where our current view leads us to believe AT THE VERY LEAST he/she/it left the universe to be ruled by his created laws and is not known to intervene on their use?

(I wrote this quickly in one sitting so forgive any errors)

Answer 6

You have some interesting ideas. I would suggest that you first start to do some more research into your own questions as you will be able to find answers to all of them in a short amount of time using the Internet (go to peer reviewed journals in science and use search engines like Ebsco).

The main error that I saw right away was your claim about science and God. Science cannot say ANYTHING about the existence or non-existence of God. This is way science is not atheistic as that is a statement about God. Science can only make claims about natural occurrences. Once you start talking about God you leave science and enter the realm of Theology.

Answer 7

First off, science does not deny a god. Science says there is no evidence for a god.

As for prokaryote cells, yes they are a fascinating accomplishment for any planet. But if you think of the quintillions of atoms floating around a primordial planet, you will realize that possibly after millions of years, the right combination had to come together to form a cell. All cells are made of atoms. The cell grew and reproduced. Eventually they started joining together and forming bacteria and such. It all snowballs.

Does science say it is possible for a supernatural being to have started it? Yes. Does science say there is evidence for it? No.

Answer 8

Actually, it does. You just need to look into it a little more than reading a short website. Go take a class or open a book. There are no contridictions in the science you will run into. Things don't just 'appear', they had ancestors. The Encyclopedia will not dispute this.

Answer 9

Science doesnt deny the existence of God, people do. I believe in God the Creator, but I totally agree with science on how it was done and how long ago it happened. Can't you understand that however it happened, it's how God wanted it to happen? Who are you to say any different when you believe in the magical fairytale of the Genesis story? When they say one-celled organisms "appeared" or dinosaurs "appeared", they mean that's how long ago the oldest evidence was. Are you really this dumb?

Answer 10

Someone also pointed out that we claim some stars are 30 billion light years away. I don't know if that's true or not, but how DOES light come from 30 billion years whent he univers ist 14 billion!

Science is doing a lot of speculating with little information. This doesn't invalidate it, but they often use a leap of faith on things.

Science also doesn't invalidate religion and many scientists are religous.

The person who postulated the Big Bang was a Catholic Jesuit.

Answer 11

Technically science dose not confirm or deny the existence of G-d because that is outside its scope. Scientists on the other hand can say if their is or is not a G-d.

And yes science changes all the time the Big Bang was only developed and accepted about 70 years ago. Before that everyone belived that the Universe was around forever.