So... science and scientists don't have to exclude -- or include -- that possibility. It's a personal matter. Can't your scientific mind even grasp the concept? [you don't have to agree... but your understanding seems somewhat impoverished.]
Originally Posted By: tacit
When you look at the world of faith, you see the same things repeated over and over again. People invent all sorts of stories, with not a tiny shred of evidence to support them, which other people accept as truth on faith. These stories inevitably describe a physical universe wich is smaller and simpler than the reality. How many times has a faith-based system said "Oh, my God, we were wrong! The universe is even older, even larger, even grander than we thought!"?
When you look to inventing belief systems without any physical evidence to support them, you find that human imagination is rather feeble. If all these faiths are true, how come they all describe such small worlds? How come no prophet or seer has ever received a vision from god that tells him that the universe is incomprehensibly huge and incomprehensibly fine-grained and billions of years old?
No, prophets and seers tell us of tiny worlds, with the stars mere pinpricks in the sky rather than entire suns in their own right. Prophets and seers tell us that the world (75% of which is covered with water) was invented specifically for man (who has no gills).
It's sad, really, to be so insecure as to have to believe all these nonsense stories in order to feel good about ourselves. It's sad, it blinds us to the truth, and it makes us petty and evil. People are altogether too eager to kill one another over who has the best imaginary friend; what, in all that, is the value of believing stories without any reason to suppose they are true?
I quoted all of that (this time) simply because it has absolutely nothing to do with me or my particular flavor of "faith", and it illustrates (epitomizes/proves) how obsessed you are with the topic in general... but blissfully ignorant as to the personal nature of faith. All that noise has nothing to do with me... and therefore has no purpose [in a reply to me] but obfuscation.
Originally Posted By: tacit
Um...reality?
Really?... you mean "perception" or what? [Your turn now]: why is the sky blue?
Originally Posted By: tacit
BWAH ha ha ha! *gasp* *gasp* Hee hee hee! Stop, you're killing me! The Tao of Physics, that completely discredited old rag that is the laughingstock of real physicists, that feeble and desperate attempt to do some incredibly creative metaphoric interpretation of Hindu superstition in order to try to convince people that, no, it really really looks like a layperson's flawed understanding of quantum mechanics?
Really?... layperson?... let's see now.
Quote:
After receiving his Ph.D. in theoretical physics from the University of Vienna in 1966, Capra did research in particle physics at the University of Paris (1966-68), the University of California at Santa Cruz (1968-70), the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (1970), Imperial College, University of London (1971-74), and the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory at the University of California (1975-88). He also taught at U.C. Santa Cruz, U.C. Berkeley, and San Francisco State University.
[Your turn now]: your scientific credentials are what?
Originally Posted By: tacit
Still, I do think there's a valuable point lurking in there. I think it's interesting that people will, on the one hand, try to claim that we can know truth through faith without looking at evidence, and on the other hand, somewhere deep inside will still try to act like rationalists. That's why we see the faithful clutching desperately for science to justify their faith.
It's not just books like The Tao of Physics or twaddle like What The Bleep Do We Know. Look in any religious book store and you will find entire sections filled with so-called "scientific proofs" that this or that faith is "real." You'll see books that try to "prove" that Jesus is the Messiah or that Mohammad talked to some god or other.
Even faiths in things like young-earth creationism try to wrap themselves up in the language and dressing of science. They long for the legitimacy of science, because on some level they seem aware that science is a tool that has had, and continues to have, success at exploring and understanding the nature of the physical world that faith has never matched.
How many times have we had a faith-based, supernatural explanation for some part of the physical world, and then replaced it with a natural explanation? Many, which is why faith has to be anti-intellectual.
How many times have we had a natural explanation for some part of the physical world, and then replaced it with a faith-based, supernatural explanation? Um...exactly never.
You're supernatural -- write a book why don't you? Perhaps others will get off on (or feel comforted by) all the negative energy.
-- write a book why don't you? 
