Just to be crystal clear, the series of posts explaining why I think Science and my religion are compatible don't exist yet. What I linked to is a series of posts explaining what I think Science is. I wanted to pin that down first before asking what is, or is not, compatible with it. Besides, how Science works is interesting in its own right.
Although I do believe in an afterlife, I do not believe that the mechanism for this is that the soul is immaterial. My "soul" is a pattern of information in my neurons, which is eventually going to be downloaded to new hardware.
It's true I was... (read more)
yes
The lack of any valid arguments that they are incompatible?
But if you want a much more detailed answer, I'm going to be discussing just this question in the next few weeks on my blog. The posts which already exist are trying to define exactly what Science is, in order to lay the groundwork for this.
On the contrary, I want to take seriously all the reasonable arguments on both sides. The fact that I have an opinion about where the evidence as a whole leads does not prima facie make me impossible to argue with. Do you think it's pointless to argue with anyone who has a strong opinion about anything? Or do you think religion is a special case?
As for why I think Christianity is better than other religions, it's mainly because I believe that the Christian miracle claims are supported by better historical evidence than the miracle claims of other religions. Obviously in order to demonstrate this one would have to... (read more)
Recently I started a new blog, named "Undivided Looking: comments on physics and theology". You can find it here:
http://www.wall.org/~aron/blog/
My main goals are to:
(My day job is researching quantum gravity at UC Santa Barbara, so I actually know what I'm talking about when it comes to the science.)
I'm posting this to Less Wrong in order to solicit comments from intelligent and civil members of the rationalist community. I'm a Christian, but I want to avoid groupthink in the comments section, since I believe ideas should be developed and... (read more)
Taking logs of a dimensionful quantity is possible, if you know what you're doing. (In math, we make up our own rules: no one is allowed to tell us what we can and cannot do. Whether or not it's useful is another question.) Here's the real scoop:
In physics, we only really and truly care about dimensionless quantities. These are the quantities which do not change when we change the system of units, i.e. they are "invariant". Anything which is not invariant is a purely arbitrary human convention, which doesn't really tell me anything about the world. For example, if I want to know if I fit... (read more)
Do you really think that the best way to encourage critical thinking when you're older, is to avoid doing it when you're younger?