No benefit? Who says so? AFAIK, scientists haven't derived any equations for love either... so what do they know?
They do, however, have evidence to suggest that love exists.
Not all models are mathematical. There are many things that no equations exist for, yet we still have evidence of.
Originally Posted By: Hal Itosis
Put all the geniuses on the planet into a [sterile] building and supply them with barrels containing every element in the universe, plus an unlimited amount of every type of energy. With all that, they couldn't even create a cockroach.
Not yet, anyway. They can put together individual living cells from scratch, but not a cockroach.
Yet.
That's just an engineering challenge, though. We know that it is possible to make living things from non-living things, and at this point even someone in a reasonably well-equipped college molecular biology lab can do it as his thesis project. The rest is just tailoring the cells and assembling them in the right order. It'll happen.
Originally Posted By: Hal Itosis
Life and love are supposed to remain mysterious wonders.
"Supposed" to? Why? I for one find the universe wondrous enough as it is without believing in Things Man Was Not Meant To Know. I've never met a working scientist who is not filled, every day, with joy and wonder and awe at the physical universe.
Originally Posted By: macnerd10
I also disagree. Many physics and chemistry predictions of the last century were based upon some theoretical calculations and conclusions but not on any evidence. When the new particles are discovered in physics, chances are that they have been predicted but no real evidence existed.
True. And without the evidence, these hypothesis may be considered interesting, but they are not believed.
Einstein's general theory of relativity was published decades before any evidence existed to support it--and it was considered a curiosity, an interesting idea, until the evidence came along. It wasn't until that evidence came along that it was believed, and moved into being one of the cornerstones of our understanding of nature.
Today, string theory is considered an interesting idea, but people don't believe it, except insofar as there are people who find it plausible. Nobody will really believe it until and unless evidence presents itself.
Originally Posted By: macnerd10
We are not talking about star or planet discoveries because in many cases the orbits of the neighboring bodies were not as they should have been should no star/planet be present there. You may be right about benefits because they are hard to define, but this is definitely not a fundamental axiom of science. Suspicions and abstract mathematical predictions cannot generally be classified as evidence.
Yep, and without that evidence, things are considered possibilities, nothing more.
But I'm actually talking about something a little different. When i talk about faith, I'm talking about things that are not supported by evidence and for which no evidence can ever exist. If you talk to ten people who give you ten completely different, utterly incompatible faith-based beliefs (there is a single invisible man in the sky who created everything; no, there are hundreds of invisible entities who created the universe; no, there are three all-powerful invisible entities who made the world happen; no, the world was created by an animistic, self-aware force that exists in everything; and so on, and so on), which do you believe?
All of them? That's not possible; they contradict each other. The one you were told to believe when you were a child? If so, what separates them from belief in Santa Claus? What benefit do you get from believing any of them?
