The scientific approach is considered to be the gold standard for discovering truth, and not without good reason: science is a rigorous, systematic method for teasing out the details of how the universe works.
Wow, your way deep Steve amazing. I would just like to make two small points. "The universe is understood to have begun about 3.7 million years ago and has undergone enormous multifaceted transformations since.... If you were taking about the solar system, it would make sense. But the universe has NO beginning. It always was. To say the universe has a beginning suggests pre-existing matter/forces were already there. If the big bang created the universe what is an explosion? It is a fusion of matter. So pre-existing matter would already exist for the explosion to even happen.
2nd point about science being considered the gold standard for truth: Science has been politicized and scientists are bound by political considerations and increasingly scientists are in cahoots with advocacy groups who use legal and economic pressure to influence the findings of scientific research or the way it is disseminated, reported or interpreted.
The specifics of the big bang and other cosmological theories were not my focus in this essay. I had thrown that in at the last moment. And I took it out before I received your message because I thought it distracted from the main point of the essay.
I think that good philosophy needs to use contemporary science as a way to eliminate the impossible from our thinking so that we can focus in on what is more likely. But still it will never be easy to separate fact from fantasy.
Regarding morality.
"If there is no God then everything and anything is permissible."
This assertion depicts a very stark universe.
Wow, your way deep Steve amazing. I would just like to make two small points. "The universe is understood to have begun about 3.7 million years ago and has undergone enormous multifaceted transformations since.... If you were taking about the solar system, it would make sense. But the universe has NO beginning. It always was. To say the universe has a beginning suggests pre-existing matter/forces were already there. If the big bang created the universe what is an explosion? It is a fusion of matter. So pre-existing matter would already exist for the explosion to even happen.
2nd point about science being considered the gold standard for truth: Science has been politicized and scientists are bound by political considerations and increasingly scientists are in cahoots with advocacy groups who use legal and economic pressure to influence the findings of scientific research or the way it is disseminated, reported or interpreted.
Thanks Joseph.
The specifics of the big bang and other cosmological theories were not my focus in this essay. I had thrown that in at the last moment. And I took it out before I received your message because I thought it distracted from the main point of the essay.
I think that good philosophy needs to use contemporary science as a way to eliminate the impossible from our thinking so that we can focus in on what is more likely. But still it will never be easy to separate fact from fantasy.