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Politics : Evolution -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Nate who wrote (697)	9/17/1999 11:10:00 AM
From: TigerPaw	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 69300

accept it on faith There is very little faith involved in science. The fields of science and mathmatics do have some underlying principles which cannot be proven and must just be accepted. You may call that faith, we call them axioms. One axiom is that 1 + 2 = 3. I can't prove this, it's part of the definition of our number system. It has to be true or the rest of mathmatics don't make sense. I just accept it because it is. In the physical sciences there are much fewer axioms. Cause and Effect is pretty close to an axiom. The general theory of relativity is a way to allow time and space to vary while preserving cause and effect. (The reason scientists accept that nothing travels faster than "the speed of light" is because otherwise things would be affected by events that haven't happened yet). Other things thought to be constant are fundamental quantities such as the charge of an electron, but scientits are always vigilant in reexamining these axioms. There has been speculation that some of these constants, such as the strength of gravity, was different at the time of the big bang. Those who challenge the axioms are not run out of the business, or sent to some eternal flames, they are just asked to provide good evidence if they want to be believed or considered for the Nobel prize. Why don't we do a little experiment. Gather a bunch of religous people and have them pray to be on mars. Lets see if they can beat the scientists to it. TP