As far as settling other worlds, that’s a given. The sun itself will not last forever. However, many prognosticators who were considered the top minds of their era predicted the demise of mankind a long, long time ago. I think the Earth will still be a decent place to live in 1,000 years. Whether or not man has advanced again or gone back to caves will be the only issue.

“Regarding Hawking, I didn’t concern myself too much with the entire circumstances of his comment, I simply noted that on the same day Bad Astronomy attacked all Republicans, a physicist was illustrating the conflicts between religion and science. That struggle between religious conservatism and science has existed and is well documented. Some religious sects still shun most technological advances to this day. For Phil to summarily lump that historical struggle into a purely partisian issue is what bothered me.”

Bad Astronomy attacked Republicans for their connection with the so-called Religious Right, as if people who have faith don’t believe in or advance science. This is as big a canard as any I’ve ever heard. For example, the man who founded my son’s Catholic school holds several patents for optical network switches relative to the Internet, was one of the original founders of Cisco Systems and is now CEO and founder of his own company. He is a devout Catholic and I often see him at daily Mass in the morning. I guess no one’s ever told him that his faith is supposed to be incompatible with his scientific and engineering degrees. I’m sure he would laugh at the thought.

Hawking wasn’t illustrating the conflicts between religion and science. He was dissing the Roman Catholic Church by misrepresenting what was actually said. Part of the reason for this is that Hawking carries a lot of baggage from his mother, to whome he was very close, and who was a member of the Communist party in England. Hawking himself does not believe in God either.

So often the Catholic Church takes a hit for being anti-science which is nearly always utter and complete bull crap. Galileo is nearly always mentioned, when the historical record doesn’t support the assertion. If you look at history, if you look at what was actually said vs. what was reported, you find that the Catholic Church is not anti-science.

A case in point: It is widely reported in the media that the Catholic Church is against all stem cell research. This is flatly untrue. The Catholic Church doesn’t believe that it’s right to destroy embryos (human life) in order to obtain stem cells. BUT there are NO objections to research regarding adult stem cells, placental stem cells and the one other of the four different kinds of stem cells that can be used for medical research. What’s more, there are real scientific problems with using embryonic stem cells (rapid and uncontrollable cell division leading to cancer).

Storm, yes I saw Hawking’s comments about “conquering” other planets. That’s going to be a bit difficult unless we can figure out a way to shield our bodies from solar radiation during space travel (let alone finding the appropriate atmosphere when we arrive). There was an article about this recently in one of the science magazines, can’t remember which one. Even going to Mars would be quite difficult. Our bodies are highly adapted to Earth.

Man must conquer other planets to survive, says Hawking
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=390524&in_page_id=1770

Regarding Hawking, I didn’t concern myself too much with the entire circumstances of his comment, I simply noted that on the same day Bad Astronomy attacked all Republicans, a physicist was illustrating the conflicts between religion and science. That struggle between religious conservatism and science has existed and is well documented. Some religious sects still shun most technological advances to this day. For Phil to summarily lump that historical struggle into a purely partisian issue is what bothered me.

“Every scientific hypothesis about the origin of the world, such as the one that says that there is a basic atom from which the whole of the physical universe is derived, leaves unanswered the problem concerning the beginning of the universe. By itself science cannot resolve such a question….’ The pope then quoted Pope Pius XII as saying, ‘We would wait in vain for an answer from the natural sciences which declare, on the contrary, that they honestly find themselves faced with an insoluble enigma.”

This is not exactly what Stephen Hawking claimed the Pope said, is it? Further, In 1988, John Paul said that “Science can purify religion from error and superstition….” So Pope John Paul II wasn’t exactly the anti-science guy Hawking’s is making him out to be.

Stephen Hawking’s real beef is that he has posited a theory that space-time has no beginning and no end, i.e., no boundaries. Hawking doesn’t think there was a beginning of the universe. So he’s not operating on the same assumptions as the classic Big Bang model that most scientists accept. There’s no point in going into the physics of it here, because that would be too long a dissertation. The point is that Hawking has a fundamental disagreement with the Big Bang theorists, who do posit a beginning of the universe, and he wasn’t being honest about that when he misquoted the Pope.

2 That the NRO attacked your Congressman had nothing to do with religion one way or the other. It had to do with a political position on which the NRO was, quite simply, misinformed. Religion had nothing to do with it.

I agree with pretty much everything else you’ve written, especially the part about not all Republicans agreeing with the National party. I certainly don’t, particularly on spending and immigration issues.

Amd Mike B., this very day an announcement was made possibly finding a real treatment for alzheimers. Watch Fox and you’ll hear the story. The Rovers have been circling Mars about as long as Bush has been in office. It’s funding was due to end a year or so ago. It wasn’t. And, I’m not sure how many times I have to repeat it, even in this one post, but Bush was the first ever president to fund stem cell research of any kind. Just because he didn’t open that research wide open for abortion clinics and anyone else who happened to have a dead baby laying around it’s been totally spun as a ban. Google breakthroughs in stem cell research 2001-2006, there’s a LOT more than anyone’s willing to admit. Then do the same Google for 1993-2001. How many extra-solar planets have been discovered in the last five years? How many had been discovered before 2001? I mean, come on, there’s stuff in the news every day. I blog on stuff every day. So, to sit here and try to tell me science has had war declared on it by Republicans ONLY in the last five years is just pure BS.