Blogs from 2007
Religious experiments
Sun Mar 11 13:20:16 EDT 2007
Is religious belief scientifically demonstrable? I've been thinking about science and evidence lately in the context of religion. People are not blind in their actions. They do things for reasons. Now I admit that sometimes the reasoning is thin, or just downright wrong, but people have reasons for what they do. Almost all people with some religious faith can cite some experience or set of experiences that helped form or solidify that faith, and I include myself in that category.
So, if people's faith is based in their experience why does science have such a hard time thinking of religious experiences as valid datapoints on which to experimentally evaluate religious truth? I think I've come up with at least one reason, and it completely interferes with one of the premises of the scientific method, as believed by academia. Now, when science is wrong it can stick its head in the sand and ignore the discrepancies, or it can try and develop new theories to reconcile observations.
The experimenter is one of the variables in the experiment. That is the secret which science doesn't like. Scientists want to define the experiment, all of the independent variables, and then allow multiple people to perform the same or related experiments to evaluate one another's results. That is fine, but what happens if characteristics of the person performing the experiment impact the outcome? A corollary is that two people can observe the same experiment and see different outcomes. For instance, two soldiers may endure the same hardships in war and one may loose faith in God while the other is more convinced of God's existence and love.
Now the faithful may not understand the mechanism for blessings from God, but they chalk it up to faith and God's grace. The scientist cannot explain the linkages and therefore assumes any actions and correlated blessings are coincidence rather than causation.
I personally think that the religious make the best scientists.
I am engaged!
Mon Feb 12 20:44:37 EST 2007
If you are wondering why I seem to have disappeared now you know. I proposed to Karen on 29 December and we are busy planning a wedding. 
My Christmas newsletter was put on hold since it seemed a bit silly to send out a letter saying my year was uneventful and then to announce my engagement a few weeks later. My newsletter will probably be a spring newsletter this year. I have to plan another mailer first.
Wedding Registry
Sun Mar 25 12:16:01 EDT 2007
In case anyone needed to know, my fiance Karen and I are registered at Bed Bath & Beyond and also at Target.
