No but it is primitve to spread rumors, and it is primitive to believe everything you hear without any back-up to it. either what you are saying is true and we could evolve to become a a psychic society which would be advanced or it is false and we blindly believe you which is primitive. You have no backing and it would be primitive of us to assume the former is going to happen.

You said "We don't need science to evolve". Quantum mechanics is part of science.

That's the thing though. Once upon a time, interdimensional travel and exiting time were not in the realm of science, they barely qualified as pseudo-science.

But science has evolved to a point where these things are actually tangible. Psychic phenomena is no longer needed in a world where science can actually confirm our craziest ideas. I am massively interested by both of those things, because science shows that we can do them.

Psychic phenomena is not science until somebody comes up with a way to test it. Science does not deal with the supernatural.

At the end of the day, they are both ways of seeking truth. Difference is that I pick the one with solid evidence and a proven track record of success.

just read this essay, I'm not going to sum it up for you because you take everything that i say as pish posh, so maybe a physics professors essay will open your eyes

You mean claiming radical conspiracy theories without any evidence, or arguing that we don't need science when you don't seem to understand what it is, It is not necessarily you, I listen to everyone with an open-mind, but being open-minded doesn't mean believing everything you hear without evidence, it means acknowledging the possibility of its truth, and everything you say COULD be true but you have provided no reason to believe it to be true.

There is no way to describe scientifically the origin of the universe without treading upon territory held for Milena to be sacred.

If the "territory" they are talking about is religion, that is only if religion is true, which there is no evidence that it is. Otherwise this statement doesn't really make itself clear, and fails at communicating its points and clarifying.

Beliefs about the origin of the universe are at the root of our consciousness as human beings.

Once again another vague statement that holds little meaning. Lets try to analyze it here. by "Beliefs about the origin of the universe" I think they are talking about religion; "are at the root of our consciousness as human beings" the key word here is consciousness so what is the exact definition of consciousness?

"1.

the state of being conscious; awareness of one's own existence, sensations, thoughts, surroundings, etc.

2.

the thoughts and feelings, collectively, of an individual or of an aggregate of people: the moral consciousness of a nation.

3.

full activity of the mind and senses, as in waking life: to regain consciousness after fainting.

4.

awareness of something for what it is; internal knowledge: consciousness of wrongdoing.

5.

concern, interest, or acute awareness: class consciousness."

Consciousness is being conscious as it is a possession of a conscious state. In a nutshell you could say to be conscious of something specifically means to be acknowledging of that thing. To be conscious in general means to be self-aware. so the part of the statement are "consciousness as human beings" meaning to be self aware of our own existence, "to think therefore I am". So "Belief in the origins of the universe" can be replaced with religion, and "consciousness as human beings" means to be aware of our own existence, so the statement "Beliefs about the origin of the universe are at the root of our consciousness as human beings." can be appropriately replaced with "Religion is at the root of our own self-awareness."

Of course it is, God is a convenient answer to "Where we come from?" but there is no evidence of god, and thus all we are doing is assuming the answer to that very question. We don't know where we came from, but that doesn't mean god did it, that is a part of the "god-gap argument". If you don't know the answer just say "god did it".

This is a place where science, willingly or unwillingly, encounters concerns traditionally associated with a spiritual dimension.

That is only if you want to assume god created us because we don't have the answer, otherwise science won't have to touch on that supposed spiritual dimension. Even if it were true that god was the answer the only way we would discover it is through science which this itself has just admitted.

For thousands of years people have wondered, speculated, and argued about the origin of the universe without actually knowing anything about it.

Which is why it is all so stupid, that is why there is no place for religion, before we can speculate where the universe came from, and ESPECIALLY before we start arguing about it we need to at least have a lead, a clue, something before we start assuming. Our biggest lead to understand the origins of the universe would be the big bang theory as it already has a little bit of evidence. You want to know what the sad part is though, there will always be the problem of "where did that come from?" and then "where did that come from?" and even god is just as much of a victim as that, because where did god come from? When you think about it the very existence of the universe at this point in time can't be thought of anything as irrational because the existence of everything no matter what anyone thinks is going to have to be an infinite stream of cause and effect even if there was a god.

In the closing years of the twentieth century, we're learning enough to begin to peer across the gulf that separates our universe from its source at the beginning of-or perhaps before-the Big Bang.

We at the end of the 1900s can now look across space itself, sooner or later we are going to start getting clues to actually HOW the universe came to be.

A story is emerging in modern cosmology that will, if it follows the pattern of earlier shifts in cosmology, change our culture in ways no one can yet predict.

Which if true was discovered by science, and doesn't necessarily mean anything when it comes to god, and is in that regard irrelevant.

A story is emerging in modern cosmology that will, if it follows the pattern of earlier shifts in cosmology, change our culture in ways no one can yet predict.

By meaning, does he mean what will happen next, which then I agree, if he thinks that there is going to be some sort of mystical moral the universe teaches us by a godly power, I personally think he is getting quite ahead of himself.

Rather than assuming that science and spirit are separate jurisdictions, I assume that reality is one, and that truth grows and evolves with the universe of which it speaks.

I do agree that reality is one, it is what it is, there is no reason to think that there is an afterlife though, there is just one universe, no afterlife as far as we can tell. Religion and Science are two different things because one is about truth, and the other is about likely myths that provide no evidence to be other than such.

Why is this important? In a speech given in July 1994, on the state of the world and its prospects, the Czech poet-president Vaclav Havel said that the planet is in transition.

None of this so far is proving we don't need science, in fact all of this is proving that science is a good thing. So far I agree with a lot of what it is saying and disagree with a lot to, though it hasn't given any convincing argument to change my mind about anything or given me any good reason to change my opinion on anything so, so far I don't see the point of you posting this essay for me.

As vastly different cultures collide, all consistent value systems are collapsing.

Cultures have been clashing since culture has existed, cultures every where differentiate and are are aware of each other. If by "consistent value systems" you mean people are starting to lose morals? not everyone is moral and not all set of morals will consistently be followed.

We cannot foresee the results.

It would help if he could specify exactly what he was talking about.

Science, which has been the bedrock of industrial civilization for so long, he said, "fails to connect with the most intrinsic nature of reality and with natural human experience. It is now more a source of disintegration and doubt than a source of integration and meaning.... We may know immeasurably more about the universe than our ancestors did, and yet it increasingly seems they knew something more essential about it than we do, something that escapes us.... Paradoxically, inspiration for the renewal of this lost integrity can once again be found in science...a science producing ideas that in a certain sense allow it to transcend its own limits.... Transcendence is the only real alternative to extinction."

So what evidence is there that those past civilizations knew something we didn't? Maybe the quoter is appealed by the past civilizations sense of culture, and that is not science's responsibility.

Modern cosmology is now undergoing a foundation-building revolution as it seeks a verifiable description of the nature and origin of the universe.

Cosmology being a science.

This revolution may require that we transcend previous notions of space, time, and even reality.

Of course we must always try to better our understanding of the universe.

This seems to me the kind of science Havel is hoping for-a science whose metaphors may illuminate not only the subject matter of its own field but possibly also problems of humanity and the earth from a cosmic perspective.

Cool, understanding the evolution of space itself is a pretty neat science to me too.

Every religion is a metaphor system, and like scientific theories, every religious myth is limited.

Except the difference between religion and scientific theories, is that scientific theories need to be tested, have accurate math (make sense in other words), and be backed up by evidence. religion is never backed up by evidence, and the reason religious myths are limited is because they aren't credible where scientific theories get verified, to become more and more accurate has to become more detailed and thus more detailed thus can't be willy-nilly applied to anything we want it to be.

Perhaps progress in religion can occur as it does in science: without invalidating a theory, a greater myth may encompass it respectfully, the way General Relativity encompasses Newtonian Mechanics.

Except one is where we actually observe the universe thus it is always improving and the other is making shit up, the only way religion improves is socially, by becoming more adaptive as society advances and forces it to become less primitive in philosophy, but one day society will be too advanced to humor the assumptions it even makes.

In the next few decades, powerful ideas of modern cosmology could inspire a spiritual renaissance, but they could also be totally ignored by almost everyone as irrelevant and elitist.

because religion and spiritual ideas has found its way in society to be the first thing we go to when we see something beautiful, the universe is beautiful thus the understanding of the universe's evolution is easy to put as a "spiritual experience" when in reality it doesn't prove an afterlife in any way and doesn't prove god.

In the worst of circumstances, they could be abusively interpreted and turned into a tool of exploitation-as some would contend that the medieval hierarchical cosmology was interpreted as a justification for a hierarchical organization of society in which the vast majority of people were oppressed.

If he means cosmology inspiring new religions, I doubt that would happen because people have no reason to make new religions at this point, people become extremely spiritual they will more likely join a religion than make a new one up, and in this day and age, I doubt if we did make a new religion it would be as barbaric as the past ones were.

How well our cosmology is interpreted in language meaningful to ordinary people will determine how well its elemental stories are understood, which may in turn affect how positive the consequences for society turn out to be.

I think he is getting ahead of himself, new religions aren't going to start being born, and its not like we are going to look at the sky and become so inspired that we will all of a sudden radically change.

There is a moral responsibility involved in tampering with the underpinnings of reality.

Underpinnings meaning a foundation, he is saying there is a moral responsibility with tampering with the foundation of truth, but you see we can't tamper with the foundation of truth, we can't change the laws of physics.

Anthropologists tell us that in virtually all traditional cultures, a cosmology is what gives its members their fundamental sense of where they come from, who they are, and what their personal role in life's larger picture might be.

Because the primitive minds of the past can't comprehend the universe and will believe and assume anything for a quick answer to it all.

Cosmology is whatever picture of the universe a culture agrees on.

The definition i searched up was the evolution of space itself, or the understanding of the structure of the universe itself. This is admitting that the people could have had an extremely flawed understanding of the universe when creating religion and beliefs.

Together with the picture-upholding the picture-is a story that is understood to explain the sacred relationship between the way the world is and the way human beings should behave.

Nothing in the universe tells us how we should behave, there are no objective answers to that.

Other cultures' stories may not have been correct by modern scientific standards, but they were valid by their own standards, and they had the power to ground people's codes of behavior and their sense of identity within a larger picture.

he means they were right in there own minds, but they don't decide what is good science for the universe, and the reason the culture's stories (religion) had power over people, is because people didn't want to be punished by these gods.

This sense of identity may be part of what Havel feels has been lost.

We don't need religion to have a sense of identity.

If you ask a modern audience of people fascinated by cosmology but untrained in it to close their eyes and visualize the universe, some will report seeing endless space with stars scattered unimaginably far apart, others will see great spiral galaxies, and others will see an exotic scene such as the rising of an ember-red moon over an unknown planet. They do not realize that these are merely snapshots on a given scale of the universe-no more representative of the universe as a whole than is a single molecule of DNA or a moonrise over your own backyard. The strange fact is that in modern Western culture people have only the foggiest idea how to picture the universe, and certainly no consensus on it.

I agree.

The lack of social consensus on cosmology in the modern world has caused many people to close off their thinking to large issues and long time scales, so that small matters dominate their consciousness. Of course, modern people do know much more about many things than members of isolated, traditional cultures, but we are not so different in our basic needs from people milennia ago. We have to get our sense of context somewhere. It is worth looking at earlier cosmologies and the cultures in which they held sway in order to understand how deep and in fact inextricable the connection is.

If we are lacking in understanding how the universe is shaped then we should use our technologies to look around and start picturing, I am sure however that the more educated have a better picture as there are a lot of people out there who aren't well educated on the matter.

"In Biblical times when people looked up at a clear, blue sky, they saw a transparent dome that covered the entire flat earth [2]. It was an awesome object, created by God himself on the second day to hold back the endless quantities of blue water clearly visible above it. There was water above and water beyond the horizon; doubtless there was also water below. God had divided the waters "above" from the waters "below" by constructing this immense dome that held open the space for dry land. In ancient Egypt the dome had been the goddess Nut, who arched her back over the earth so that only her hands and feet touched the ground. She was the night sky, and the sun, the god Ra, was born from her every morning [3]. In the Hebrew Bible the dome is called "raqi'a," meaning a firm substance, and rendered in the King James translation as "the firmament"-a concept that cannot be understood independently of the flat earth cosmology in which it made sense. The firmament in Biblical times was understood to be firm only by the will of God. If God were angered, as everyone believed had actually happened in the time of Noah, "the windows of heaven" and "the fountains of the deep" could burst open once again and those lovely blue waters would destroy the earth. God was said to have promised not to do it a second time and to have sealed this covenant with the rainbow, but who could predict the behavior of God? A watery Sword of Damocles hung over every creature on the flat earth, and God held the threads. At more or less the same time that the Hebrew Bible as we know it was being compiled-about the 5th century BCE-Greek philosophers lived in a different universe. Their earth was not flat and domed but a round celestial object. Aristotle honed the picture so that the lunar sphere-a sphere the size of the orbit of the moon-was defined as the border between the earthly world of change and decay inside and the perfect, unchanging heavens outside. With modifications by the 2d century CE Alexandrian astronomer Ptolemy, who added details to account for careful astronomical observations, Aristotle's image of concentric spheres, and not the Bible's flat domed earth, had become by the Middle Ages the universe for Jews, Moslems, and Christians alike.

Thus on a clear night in Medieval Europe, a person looking up into the cathedral of the sky would have seen huge, transparent spheres nested inside each other, encircling the center of the universe, the earth [4]. In an uneasy alliance with Christian theology the planets were still identified with the Ancient Roman gods Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, and were still believed by many to be divine enough to influence people's lives. Immediately outside the sphere of the fixed stars lay Heaven. This was the monotheistic compromise with Aristotle and Ptolemy. God was physically right out there. Everything between heaven and earth had its eternal place, chosen by God. A worm in the soil, the lowliest serf, and the king himself had been placed by God exactly where they belonged in the great chain of being, and there was no questioning the divine hierarchy. The hierarchies of church, nobility, and the family were divinely sanctioned-they mirrored the cosmos itself. We may scoff that they saw such a cosmos, but not that they took the cosmos as the sacred model for society. They understood that humans can only be content by seeking to be in harmony with the universe. This is a lesson our culture could do well to learn.

How is any of this essay an argument that we don't need science, or for anything you said? How are we not in harmony with the universe if we are forced to live by its rules. If it is a subject of being harmful to nature that is not something science can fix, that is something we as people need to work on, and does not prove that science is unnecessary.

A new cosmology is subversive in the deepest sense of the word. The stable center was torn out of the Medieval universe at the beginning of the 17th century, when Galileo's observations showed that the Aristotelian-Ptolemaic earth-centered picture was wrong, and Kepler's geometric interpretations of Tycho Brahe's data were built upon the sun-centered model that Copernicus had put forward more than sixty years earlier [5]. Europe's conceptual universe was shaken. Like unreinforced buildings in an earthquake, the power structures of society were irreparably cracked and undermined, and this was soon obvious to all thinking people. As John Donne wrote in 1611 upon learning about Galileo's telescopic observations:

Too be continued.

The new Philosophy calls all in doubt,

The Element of fire is quite put out;

The Sun is lost, and th'earth, and no man's wit

Can well direct him where to look for it...

'Tis all in pieces, all coherence gone;

All just supply, and all Relation;

Prince, Subject, Father, Son, are things forgot... [6]

If earth was not the cosmic foundation, then nothing supported these human hierarchies any more. They could only continue by force of habit or by force of arms, and the church recognized this. When Galileo ridiculed the 1500-year old Ptolemaic cosmology in his Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, the Church forced him to recant and held him under house arrest for the rest of his life.

This was a frightening and sobering event for scientists all over Europe. It was perhaps only Galileo's status as the best known scientist of his time that saved him from being burned at the stake as Giordano Bruno had been. Eventually, following the lead of Bacon and Descartes, science protected itself by entering into a de facto pact of noninterference with religion: science would restrict its authority to the material world, and religion would hold unchallenged authority over matters of human meaning and the spirit. By the time Isaac Newton was born in 1642, the year of Galileo's death, the spoils of reality had been divided. The physical world and the world of human meaning were now two separate universes.

With the rise of modern science, standards of explanation became demanding in a way that neither art nor spiritual vision could satisfy, although for millennia these had been the sacred pair that together created the human-centered universes of all earlier societies. For more than 300 years, since the time of Isaac Newton, science has been understood by most educated people to imply an image of the universe as infinite, or at least incomprehensibly vast, almost empty space, with stars scattered at great distances from each other but no center, no purpose, no location for God, and no obvious implications for human behavior. Blaise Pascal wrote, "engulfed in the infinite immensity of spaces whereof I know nothing and which know nothing of me, I am terrified.... The eternal silence of these infinite spaces alarms me."[7] With an image of a cold universe in which humans play no necessary role whatsoever, and no serious explanation of how things got this way, a society suffers from a kind of rootlessness that prevents a sense of connection with the universe. "

We understand the universe better than ever, just because there are rational thinking people that realize there is no evidence for god doesn't mean we lost connection with the universe, in my opinion we probably have a bigger connection than ever with more understanding of the universe.

The disorienting impact upon Western culture of losing any agreed-upon sense of the universe may well be responsible for some of the social chaos of the last centuries, but in a world that values science there may have been no way to avoid this.

It is belief that has diversified our ideas of the universe, science only looks for truth and wouldn't supply us with different ideas, but the best one we can find.

It may have been necessary to wait for science to run its course while people contented themselves with what fragmentary philosophical or religious insights could be found. But scientific cosmology today has entered a golden age of discovery because of a combination of extraordinary new instruments and telescopes on the one hand and daring theoretical breakthroughs on the other. Data is flooding in, and cosmological theories are being honed to levels of precision unimaginable even a generation ago. We may see in the first decades of the 21st century the emergence of a new universe picture that can be globally acceptable, and with this and the contributions of image-making writers, artists, and spiritual visionaries, it is possible that the painful centuries-long hiatus in human connection with the universe will end. Many people will mentally remain in earlier universes, as they do today, but for those who continue to seek truth, whether through science or spirituality, there will be a universe for our time. This universe could become the most inspiring source of new ways of interpreting and addressing the problems of our planet. It is not Utopian to imagine that this could happen, since some variant of "as above, so below" is the way humans have functioned for most of our species' history, excluding only the last few centuries. The challenge will be to use for the first time a complicated and counter-intuitive cosmos as a model-ironically, one in which we return to that phrase knowing there is no above or below.

It will be though science, as spirituality has no evidence and if it did and it was connected to the way the universe is formed, than there would be a science behind that, all truth can be translated into science.

In daily speech "the universe" is essentially used as a basket term, a word invented to contain everything people can imagine, defined or undefined. In modern cosmology, however, the universe is something it itself, something evolving, something mysterious. But it cannot be pictured the way a galaxy, for example, can be pictured in a photograph or painting for at least three reasons: First, a photograph is of something outside the eye, and the universe is not outside us, and we are never outside it. We are it on our scale.

This argument implies that it is impossible to picture the earth then unless you've been outside of it. we can travel across the universe if we had the tech and map out the universe to discover what it looks like entirely.

Second, a photograph captures a moment in time, but the universe encompasses time itself and no slice of time can even suggest that.

Which means WE NEED SCIENCE to figure out a way to understand how the universe is changing thus we can always understand what it will look like.

And third, the universe cannot be imagined as a picture because it's almost all invisible dark matter. Moreover, all the radiation in the universe is also invisible to us, except for the tiny band of frequencies between red and blue. It is essential to give up trying to imagine the universe through the eyes, yet people need something visual.

We don't need to picture it necessarily just understand what it is. We need to know what it looks like to, that is just another question of the universe unanswered "what does it look like?" the radiation and dark-matter would just be invisible in its image.

The best solution I have found is to represent the universe using one of the oldest symbols for it known to humankind, a symbol found in countless cultures around the globe. It is the snake swallowing its tail-an "uroboros" as the Greeks called it. Earlier peoples used it to represent eternal life, partly because snakes were often believed to live forever, since the sloughing of their skin was seen as a rebirth; and partly because the circle of its body was a cycle without end. The uroboros had different meanings in different cultures, but it tended to represent whatever was seen as fundamental in a culture. Now it might carry a new interpretation.

Sounds pretty cool.

The Cosmic Uroboros represents the universe as a continuity of vastly different size scales, of which the largest and smallest may be linked by gravity. Sixty orders of magnitude separate the very smallest from the very largest. Traveling around the serpent from head to tail, we move from the scale of the cosmic horizon to that of a galaxy supercluster, a single galaxy, the solar system, the sun, the moon, a mountain, a human, a single-celled creature, a strand of DNA, an atom, a nucleus, the scale of the weak interactions, and approaching the tail the extremely small size scales on which physicists hope to find evidence for Supersymmetry (SUSY), dark matter particles such as the axion, and a Grand Unified Theory. There are other connections between large and small: electromagnetic forces are most important from the scale of atoms to that of mountains; strong and weak forces govern both atomic nuclei and stars; cosmic inflation may have created the large-scale of the universe out of quantum-scale fluctuations

I really like this idea, a symbol for all science, I don't see how any of this proves we don't need science, in fact this symbol would be impossible without science.

Why is this symbol useful? People asked to visualize "the universe" will far more often think of the largest thing they know of than the smallest. Few realize that the universe exists on all scales, everywhere, all the time. This is a truly extravagant thought. Largeness is by no means the most important characteristic of the universe. Focusing on it makes people feel small, not because they are, but because they are simply ignoring all scales smaller than themselves in thinking about the universe. On the Cosmic Uroboros, as I call it, if the mouth swallowing the tail is drawn at the top, humans (at one meter or so) fall more or less at the bottom-i.e., at the center of all the size scales in the visible universe. Many students are so stunned by this apparently special place that they refuse to believe it and insist it must be a result of some tricky choice of units. I don't know if the center of the Cosmic Uroboros is in fact special, but finding themselves there certainly strikes a chord with most people. Perhaps it hearkens back to the soul-satisfying cosmology of the Middle Ages, where earth was truly the center of the universe.

Well it shows that compared to the size of the universe, the universe exists on all scales just as how my toe is just as much apart of me as my whole body, but the entire size of me is still my whole body, and atoms being apart of the universe, the entire universe is still the size of the entire universe. I like it though because it shows symbols of all sciences almost.

At different scales, different laws of physics tend to control events. The Cosmic Uroboros thus becomes not only a way of realizing that the universe exists on all scales but also a map of emergent properties, with new properties appearing as you move a few orders of magnitude in either direction along the body of the serpent.

agreed. still don't see how this proves we don't need science.

What the Uroboros does not represent is evolution. Modern cosmology will never be fully represented by a single idea. It contains several ideas that are each powerful enough to change people's thinking, if they can be communicated. Another example is Cosmic Inflation, which, of course, may or may not be true, but is the best explanation we have today for the initial conditions that led to the Big Bang and the relatively slow but stable expansion of the universe that has followed. In the tradition of "as above, so below," here is a suggestion [10] of how present-day issues could be seen in a new way through the metaphor of Cosmic Inflation.

Well DNA is a part of evolution.

It is well known that modern technological nations are addicted to overconsumption at the expense of poorer peoples and the global environment, yet our nations seem powerless to change course. While the global population increased about four-fold from 1860 to 1991, energy use increased by nearly two orders of magnitude. We have been told by experts for decades that the human species is heading for disaster on a potentially monstrous scale unless we change our ways, but most of us remain addicted to consumerism. The single most important question of this generation may be, how can global civilization make the transition gracefully from inflationary consumption to a sustainable level? No answer has been be found in normal political processes. I think it was Einstein who said that no fundamental problem is ever solved at the same level at which it is posed. On what level then might a solution be found? Mathematically meaningful patterns of the universe-for example, the transition from cosmic inflation to expansion-may exist on a human scale too. Applying them to large-scale human problems could burst us out of the narrow perspective within which these problems have seemed intractable. This narrow perspective justifies its failures with a trendy cynicism that threatens to doom us. In the larger perspective may lie Einstein's kind of solution.

We taking too much? wouldn't surprise me considering how overpopulated we are.

In "Cosmology and Culture," our course at the University of California, Santa Cruz, Nancy Abrams and I trace the effects of the major changes in cosmology in the cultures that were the soil and roots of our own. In alternate weeks, more or less, we look at the universe-pictures of the Ancient Middle East and Greece, of Medieval Christian and Jewish (Kabbalistic) Europe, of the Enlightenment cosmology of Newton, and of the global consumer world culture of today. In alternate weeks we introduce the fundamental elements of the expanding universe picture. We encourage students to think about how the emerging scientific cosmology may change their own worldviews.

Don't see how this proves that we are already being visited by aliens, how we have psychic powers, or any of your conspiracies, and how science is unnecessary for us to evolve.

Probably more than any particular knowledge or material goods, our society needs inspiration. This may be the only thing capable of drastically changing enough minds so that the human species does not, in Einstein's phrase, "drift toward unparalled catastrophes." Scientific research to me is not only an intellectual passion, therefore, but with luck will also make a social contribution-of inspiration, which is about as spiritual a concept as one can imagine. In this way, practicing science has a spiritual goal. In fact, it can be itself a spiritual practice.

Personally I don't see it as spiritual, maybe self-fulfilling, but it doesn't seem to have anything to do with an afterlife to me.

It is often said that science is the religion of the modern world.

I don't agree them then.

This may be true for many members of the modern world who see only the impressive results of science and do not understand the processes by which these results come to be. Worship is always possible in the face of mystery. But science is not a religion for a research scientist like me. Without attempting to define religion, I will say that for me, science as a spiritual practice involves no dogmas or creeds, no human authority, no sacred text, and no divine being. There are aspects of science that involve all these factors except the last, but they are not the spiritual aspects.

agreed, except nothing is spiritual to me because I don't believe in an afterlife.

These are four ways in which science is for me a spiritual practice.

I. I try to follow certain principles religiously, so to speak.

A. Rigorous honesty. I am scrupulous with others about my data, logic, procedures. In some sense, when I venture into predictions of how the universe will one day be found to behave, I am representing humanity, and that is a moral obligation I take seriously but with elation. The more difficult but equally crucial form of honesty is with myself, regarding the limitations of my, or anyone's, knowledge. Humility is an essential ingredient in honesty. I am always humble before the data, aware that theorists like myself can at best suggest interesting hypotheses and determine what conclusions follow from given hypotheses, while only observations can tell which hypotheses might be true.

B. Give credit where credit is due. My place in the universe is largely a place in other people's minds, and I want it to be accurate. By the same token, the role of each of my competitors and collaborators is a fact of nature, and to misrepresent that is an insult to the idea of science. At a spiritual level, gratitude is fundamentally a giving of credit where credit is due.

C. Value imagination; be original. This is a vote of confidence in the universe and in God.

sticking to the principles of science isn't necessarily spiritual but I can see how some would feel like it. How does this argue that science isn't necessary to advance, and how does it argue that science is something we should throw away?

II. Commitment.

Nature does not reveal her secrets easily, and to value those secrets requires a long-term commitment. It takes many years of schooling and constant study of the literature in one's field, not to mention teaching and service, to be able to continue research long enough and get enough support to penetrate even the smallest aspect of nature successfully. Science is a kind of calling very much like the priesthood, and of course the Medieval physicists were priests.

Commitment doesn't have to be spiritual necessarily either.

III. The ultimate goal is to be consciously in tune with the universe.

Much of modern physics and cosmology is counter-intuitive, but after years of working in the field, we scientists learn to expand our intuition. We have shifted our personal frame of reference from the common-sense world to the larger universe by believing that what we work on is real. To believe a theory is a leap of faith. Our theories may be wrong. Under the best of circumstances, they will be revised or encompassed some day. Nevertheless, they are the best truth of our time. This shift in emotional frame of reference not only increases our chances of being right by being original-it can be a path to spiritual fulfillment. The modern cosmologists' quest for the initial conditions, the composition, and the evolutionary history of the universe is the profoundly spiritual endeavor to know the universe as it truly is. We certainly don't do it for the money.

If he means understanding it better than I agree.

IV. I have a constantly reinforced faith in the ability of human beings, including myself, to dip into a bottomless well of ideas and enthusiasm in order to find what is needed to take the next step. There are moments when the right idea cascades into the prepared mind from no obvious source, and when that happens, there is a sense of grace. The search for scientific truth can be subject to guidance as divine as any other.

There is evidence that people can do amazing things so I wouldn't call that faith, and there is a big difference between faith and self-confidence to me.

I don't see how this in any way argued for anything you tried to argue towards me about... it all seems irrelevant. We still don't need belief, science is necessary to a world to evolve passed the dark ages, and science doesn't do anything bad or take away from any insight. none of this proved any theistic ideas, nor any of your conspiracy theories, I loved the essay and agreed a lot with what it had to say, and saw it as pretty educational, and thought the guy made a nice teacher, but quite irrelevant to your points here.

Normally I had a personal principal that you shouldn't make someone read an entire essay or watch a movie as an argument because arguments are supposed to be something YOU come up with providing only evidence for them, not other arguments. I thought what the hell though this can be fun though so here you go.