[SillyEvee]

OK, here it is. It's long and it gives a lot of examples. Feel free to skip some paragraphs if you don't care about the examples I'm giving.

I am a Jewish, G-d-loving, G-d-fearing scientist. Deal with it. I do.

Science and religion both have some of the same objectives, true. They both describe the natural world, to some extent. I'm not really sure why reasonable people can't reconcile their versions, but maybe I just give people too much credit, thinking them reasonable when they aren't. Perhaps this is particularly dangerous on a teen site (which I say from the wise old age of 17).

But mostly what I don't get is that people continue to believe that you can't be rational or logical or like testing things out if you believe in G-d! Seriously! I've just desined an experiment to see the effects of electron fluenence and flux have on the size of platinum particles created by electron beam-induced depostion (this is for real), but I have no trouble celebrating the actual miricle of the Giving of the Torah on Mt. Sinai next week. Yup, I believe that G-d spoke to Moses and gave him the five books of the Torah, and I also believe that the quantam model of the atom is a pretty darned good description of the atom. On top of that, I believe that Schroddinger's cat is simultaneously alive and dead until the moment I open the box, and there's only a 99.9999% chance that that cat's even in that box. That darned cat could be anywhere other than in my sight, until I see him or can otherwise measure his position.

Seriously, to believe a scientific theory is to accept that it's the best description we've got so far. Everyone accepts that scientific theories will be improved over time, right? The atomic model is a prime example! "Hm..." said Rutherford "I wonder why these atoms behave the way they do? Hey, this electron-cloud idea makes a lot of sense!" "But wait!" said Bohr "They seemed to be arranged in identifiable patterns! It's probably a lot like these rings...nice, eh?" And then, a bunch of scientists got together and were all like "Hey, those rings were nice, Niels, but they're not quite the right shape. It's more like this super-cool quantum model. Great work laying the foundations, though." And now, well, what's inside a quark? Strings of energy? 11 dimensions? I wonder...

Honestly, religion is about how to go about your business. Science is about how things other than humans go about their business--how the Earth orbits the sun, which is part of a galaxy which is revolving around a central black hole, which is only one of many galaxies.

Nothing in Genesis contradicts the idea that there are multiple galaxies. And really, Genesis never gives an absolute timeline for creation. It just says "and the darkness and the light were the nth day." It never says "and twenty-four, sixty-minute hours later (each minute of which had sixty seconds), it was yet another day." What does "a day" mean if there's nothing around to live it? Who's to say that the "first day" in which G-d created the earth and the sky wasn't a quadrillion years long as we keep track of time now? Genesis tells that life started with aquatic plants and animals, just like science. (Well, current theories say it all started with aquatic bacteria, but as any biologist knows, all aquatic plants need bacteria to live, so it's not unreasonable to say that of course the bacteria came first, but who the f cares? we don't eat the bacteria! We eat the seaweed!)

I see no reason that our scientific understanding of things can't be compatible with belief in a creator god, regardless of who that god is. Even if you believe in god at all, you can't explain everything with science. And it's all fine and well to say that you think science will explain it later and we just haven't gotten there yet, but there's no way you'll ever be able to figure out how it all started. I make the leap of Fatih to G-d. If you don't want to, that your own business, but don't tell me that you won't because you're "logical," "rational," or you "like things that can be proven and tested." Well, we're not going to get a proveable answer to that question, so your theory of "I dunno but humans will probably eventually figure it out" is no more creditable than my "I believe G-d did it."

PLUS, I also like things that can be proven and be tested. I believe in the validity of the scientific method. If someone's gonna tell me that smoking cures cancer, I wanna see the scientific studies that back it up. I'll be skeptical if I don't see proof because humans make mistakes when they're on their own. The more humans we have doing the same task together, the less likely they are to make a mistake in their final product right? That's why we have editors.

G-d doesn't make mistakes. He gave the Torah to Moses and edited it while Moses was writing it down. It doesn't have mistakes. If you're finding fault in it, you need to revise your interpretation. Just like when Bohr found fault in Rutherford's model. Did he say "This is total baloney!" and throw it out? No. He found what still worked in the model and made adjustments as new facts came to light. When we have new findings that contradict parts of our old models, we fix the model and we keep what's useful.

When you find religion in conflict with science, you don't have to pick one. You just have to take a look at the way you're looking at the science you've found and the religion you follow. Why create a conflict where there isn't any? Scientists say that dinosaurs died out 65 million years ago, WAY before modern man existed, but Genesis says that land animals were created on the fifth day and man on the sixth, eh? Well, let's look at the way we use the word "day." G-d tried out the idea of huge reptiles, didn't much like it, killed most of em and turned the rest into birds. Seems compatible to me.

OK, so tell me that I'm just blurring lines in order to make my beliefs seems real. Um...OK. I am. Those lines were drawn by humans, too, you know. What if G-d told Moses that the darkness and the light were the nth period in the creation of the world? Moses got "period of time consisting of darkness and light" and called it "day?" Anyone every notice that there are six geological periods since The Big Bang? Ever think that the background radiation we observe in Deep Space is the result of G-d's creation of the Earth and everything else?

Rant over for now, but I'll keep going if someone wants to contest one of my points. I'll ignore name-calling and stupidity, though, so if you want to post something in that vein, I suggest you make another thread. You can call it SillyEvee's Too Silly for Words if you like.

Sorry to be a bitch about this, but I'm sick of my scientist friends assuming I'm an atheist and my religious friends being shocked that I'm in AP Bio loving evolution.