Non-believers are baffled by Christians believing they eat the blood and body of Christ during transubstantiation.
We can accept it as a metaphor, but not as something "real".
We cannot literally accept that we eat the blood and body of Christ.
What are we taking "literally"?
We see food and we think it is solid.
We think this "literally".
But food and matter is made up of atoms.
Atoms are almost made up of... nothing. They are mainly void space.
And even the small particles inside these atoms, are a matter of energy fields (call me Higgs) substantiating themselves into
something we have modeled as the "things" we call "particles".
So?
Come again?
What are we taking "literally"?
What is the right and wrong here?
We have been so much blinded by our faith in what Science has been TOLD US to believe, that we cannot accept anyone else believing anything else. As if we know everything...
Philosophy Wire by Spiros Kakos [2012-12-23]: One of the biggest discoveries of 2012 was the discovery of the mysterious Majorana fermion, which was detected in a nanowire according to Dutch nanoscientist Leo Kouwenhoven. [source: 1, 2] These fermions are in the verge of matter and anti-matter: they are the anti-particles of them selves. As mysterious as the physicist who predicted their existence (Majorana disappeared during a boat trip leaving no trace at 1938), these particles may actually be the key to our understanding of the cosmos. Opposites being One. The essence of Being.
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Man has to awaken to wonder - and so perhaps do peoples.
Science is a way of sending him to sleep again.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Philosophy Wire by Spiros Kakos [2012-12-14]: Scientists announce with certainty that we have discovered all the basic particles in physics and that we do not expect any surprises in this area, with a confidence level of 99,9%. [source: web news, Physical Review Letters] When you are dominant you do not think at all of ways to cover or beautify your dogmatism. You just proclaim it with pride.
Philosophy Wire by Spiros Kakos [2012-07-05]: A Higgs boson-like particle discovery was claimed at LHC [source: BBC News].
![09D2693BCE7B5E77947FD3D85BD4E4C7_thumb[1]](http://lh6.ggpht.com/-c3K0vlz7f24/T_NTBmTUmoI/AAAAAAAAEds/CqYiNlbhw6o/s1600-h/09D2693BCE7B5E77947FD3D85BD4E4C7_thumb%25255B1%25255D%25255B3%25255D.jpg "09D2693BCE7B5E77947FD3D85BD4E4C7_thumb[1]")
Philosophy Wire by Spiros Kakos [2012-07-03]: Everyone is ready to see the announcement for the discovery of Higgs particle, the particle which gives… particles their mass! Don’t try too much to think about how something HAS mass, while it is the thing which actually CREATES mass…
Philosophy Wire by Spiros Kakos [2011-12-23]: Boson Chi-b 3P was discovered at CERN. However it is not a basic particle since it is constituted by two other particles [source: web news, BBC News]. Science has become so stupid, boring and disconnected from the real human needs. Particles consisted of other particles, which are consisted of other particles, which are consisted of other particles, which are…
Philosophy Wire by Spiros Kakos [2011-10-30]: Scientists who announced that sub-atomic particles might be able to travel faster than light (see Opera experiment) are to rerun their experiment in a different way, in order to verify the findings [source: BBC News]. Other scientists claimed that some kind of systematic error must exist in the experiment and the new trials will try to answer those claims. Verifying experimental results is good. However one must be aware of the other side of the coin: holding your self attached to the current established theory, makes you too reluctant to any new experimental result that could refute that theory. And this could be a good thing again (asking for objective data is the foundation of exact science after all – at least for the things that are in the scope of exact science see Religion and Science unification - Towards religional science), if that happened in a non dogmatic way. However calling any experiment that threatens your theory as “wrong” is near that thin line where dogmatism lies. And scientists should be very careful when treading near that line…
Philosophy Wire by Spiros Kakos [2011-07-02]: Scientists from the Tevatron accelerator claim that preliminary results show a possible explanation of the great mystery of why matter is much more than anti-matter in our Universe [source: BBC News]. When protons and anti-protons collide, new particles are formed which start decaying. Scientists claim they have found that some matter particles decay faster than other anti-matter ones. But what is that? Is that an explanation? Or merely a tautology? When you do not know why matter is more than anti-matter, is the claim “some matter particles decay slower than their anti-matter counterparts” a scientific explanation? Or do we just push back the problem to the previous step? If we ask “why is A > B”, is the claim “because A = C and C is greater than B” and explanation, or do we need to justify why C is greater than A also? Wittgenstein thought all mathematics is a mere tautology. What we learn today is that this may be applied to physics as well…
Philosophy Wire by Spiros Kakos [2011-06-17]: An expert committee to establish whether or not a new, unanticipated sub-atomic particle has been detected by scientists at the US Tevatron accelerator [source: BBC News]. The subjectivity of Reality at its best: "Existence" from the hands of philosophers to the hands of a... committee!!!
Philosophy Wire by Spiros Kakos [2011-06-16]: Scientists from the T2K project in Japan discovered that neutrinos can possibly interchange states between the three possible states of that particle type [source: BBC News]. No matter how much we want to disregard Zenon and no matter how much we like to believe in the notion of Change, Nature always finds ways to remind us of the unity of all things…
PS. And with the ability to add as many electrons, protons and neutrons we want to, nothing can stop us! We will decide to make “existent” as many elements as we want!!!
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