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Science Cannot Prove the Existence of God
StartsWithABang writes: This past weekend, Eric Metaxas lit up the world with his bold article in the Wall Street Journal, Science Increasingly Makes the Case for God. As a scientific counterpoint, this article fully addresses three major points of that "case," including what the condition are that we need for life to arise, how rare (or common) are those conditions, and if we don't find life where we expect it, can we learn anything about God at all?
God, like an unseen hair
Untouched by intellectual stare
Refuses bending to mortal will
Yet teasing the human soul still
Burma Shave
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
So is Nietzsche. But you know who's alive? Kim Kardashian. Where's the justice in that?
"I refuse to prove that I exist," says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing."
"But," says man, "[that article in the Wall Street Urinal says that science] proves that you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. Q.E.D."
"Oh dear," says God, "I hadn't thought of that," and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.
– excerpted from Douglas Adams (for the cretins in the audience)
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
... violates how language works, when one defines a concept in language it's drawn from the environment, there is no "god" to point to in our environment. If I say house I can point to it, if I say car, I can point to it. The same cannot be said for god. The word god defines nothing, because it's definitions have no coherence in terms of the natural world. All truths are natural and drawn from the environment. This is how people 'argue' that the other persons god is wrong, they use nature. You can use nature to disprove all ancient gods and their claims about reality.
If a god like being exists, this does not justify religion in any way. The idea that 'evidence for god exists' somehow proves the doctrines of the bible or koran or any other superstitious nonsense is laughable.
And also cannot prove the existence of spider man and red riding hood. Who cares a flying fuck? Fuck you fundamentalist amerika!
"If there is a God then lie is a miracle. If there is no God then life is an even bigger miracle". A brainier human than me came up with this line. The universe is in charge folks. Sit back and enjoy the ride.
Intelligent adults can have serious disagreements about matters of politics, religion, family, business, art, and culture.
There is one and only one truth in this existence, we exist.
That is all there is.
Logic can't explain intuition, and intuition can't explain logic. They're two different ways of looking at reality, and each is perfectly valid in its own way, and they happily coexist within each of us.
For "science" (that is, a logical, rational approach) to try to explain "God" (a matter of faith, intuition, or myth, depending on your point of view) makes about as much sense as describing a piece of music in terms of odors (I know, some music stinks). Most of us have no problem surfing between levels of consciousness, or realizing that it's silly to try to describe the effect of a piece of abstract art in terms of the chemical composition of the paints.
Be rational, be irrational, enjoy them both, but don't try to explain one in terms of the other.
Isn't arguing with a WSJ editorial writer roughly the equivalent of racing a team of thalidomide babies, or beating a crack team of retards at Jeopardy? Easy, sure, and likely even an indication of your superior aptitude. Just... Somehow unseemly.
Actually, this is one of the fundamental tenets of science. It states that supernatural events are outside the scope of science, and thus, science and supernatural events are mutually exclusive. That is one of the basic assumptions of science itself. So if you try to prove God isn't real, then you reject science as well. Atheists and religious people seem to overlook that fact.
It is also impossible to disprove the existence of God.
"If there is a God then lie is a miracle. If there is no God then life is an even bigger miracle".
I disagree: God+life is a bigger miracle than life alone.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Just love the argument from incredulity. "It's more amazing than my puny brain can handle, therefor God!"
No, stupid. Try proving the claims that your religion makes are true. Prove miracles. Prove life after death. Prove Jesus rose from the grave. Hell, Prove Jesus ever actually existed. Prove that humanity came from a single breeding pair. Find the genetic bottleneck in our genes from when the world was reduced to Noah and his family.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
Within our scope there doesn't seem to be a God (except for people who say every sunset = god's miracle, etc).
But if we consider that we barely know our universe, maybe there is some kind of God in a way that we don't understand. I seem to recall, but could be wrong because I'm not a "bibleist", that Jesus said something along the lines that we can't understand the nature of God so don't try(*). Perhaps then there is a form or Divine Intelligence out there that exists in a time frame or physical scope we have yet to see.
Consequently, my position is non-religious but open, and hopeful without having my hopes up, to the possibility of something more. I also consider hardcore atheists (not to be confused with secularists) to be a form of religious zealots, a kind of arrogant gnosticism by people who think too much of themselves.
(*) I noticed that conservative Christian organizations often do the opposite of what Jesus preached, which I don't understand.
If God actually came down to Earth and showed Himself, maybe that would be evidence?
But, be ready, He may not be what you are expecting!
Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!
Vote for Bernie in 2016!
... the doctrines of the bible or koran or any other superstitious nonsense is laughable ...
Don't laugh too hard, you are proving yourself quite ignorant as well.
Those books actually have some rules that are drawn from the environment. Some of those rules essentially define a regional survival manual for a society at a certain technological level. Even today some of those rules apply. Want to know what is safe to eat in the Red Sea, those old books have a few rules that will provide quite useful information.
Religions sometimes codify social and physical survival strategies, don't mess with the neighbor's wife, don't eat that type of sea creature, etc. To get wrapped up in the "stories" used to deliver the "lessons" and to dismiss a lesson because you didn't like the associated story is quite superficial and ignorant. Those old books are more useful than you believe despite the lack of literal truth to various stories.
Saying God doesn't exist is like saying that lunch time doesn't exist, or money doesn't exist, or the United States doesn't exist. You can't disprove the existence of an idea; and dismissing the real influence of that idea (both good and bad) and the potential influence of that idea (both good and bad) is asinine.
It's not that hard. Somehow I make sure that I use the science part to understand the physical world and not poison living things or get hit by a bus, and I simultaneously use the spiritual part to understand people can behave and how to treat them better. But I don't make the mistake of using science to worry about which bed linens might be Jesus' and I don't use the religion part to pray my way out of jams or explain why butterflies look nice. I know science is always subject to new data, and that the Bible was a milleniums-long game of telephone (OT) and written by at least four people each with an agenda (NT). So take it all with a grain of salt and read for deep meaning - it's not a day planner.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
It's a takeoff on the Anthropic Principle, which says that the Universe has to be set up for intelligent life because otherwise we couldn't be observing it. The idea is that, since there's a whole lot of ways the Universe could be set up in ways that would make intelligent life impossible, God must have set it up.
One problem is that this, by itself, means nothing. We don't know how many Universes exist in some sense, and it's quite reasonable that infinitely many do, with all possible variations. (This is, of course, unfalsifiable and therefore unscientific, but if true it would completely nullify the divine argument.) It's also possible that physics is set up without all of the independent parameters. It may be that there's a necessary relation between the charge on an electron, the mass of the bottom quark, the gravitational constant, and Planck's constant, so that they aren't all independent. It wouldn't be the first time that physics had found ways two things depend on each other.
Fundamentally, though, it's an appeal to ignorance. The author doesn't know why all this would have happened without God, so there must be a God, right?
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
that there was _tons_ of proof that God exists (e.g. Miracles) right up until the invention of the camera, the jet airplane and the t.v. journalist...
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The conditions that gave rise to our existence are so unfathomably improbable, that we should meet them with every attempt to render them unique.
"(*) I noticed that conservative Christian organizations often do the opposite of what Jesus preached, which I don't understand."
I came to terms with this when I became a Christian (former atheist). All humans are sinners, even Christians. All humans make mistakes and are often misled into Biblical error, or any other doctrinal error. Big surprise, The Bible makes this exact point repeatedly.
I decided that I would use The Bible itself to determine God's Word as opposed to the teachings of "Cultural Christianity" which is very often wrong.
Why?
Because of course is an alien from another solar system lands on our planet and says: "Hello", it's an act of god.
when one defines a concept in language it's drawn from the environment, there is no "god" to point to in our environment.
When one points at one thing and sys "red", and another then says "green", but a red/green colorblind person sees the same thing... where is your language then?
Words have always meant differing things to different people to varying degrees, that sure doesn't stop at God.
Also curious what you do with the word Wind, when it cannot be seen directly (normally), only by it's secondary effects - which is exactly what would be the argument for showing God exists...
I'm not religious myself, I just find your argument poor and out of touch with how language is used.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I choose to define "God" as the intelligence/life force of the universe itself. Seeing as that's something that can never be seen nor measured, there's no proving nor disproving it. It's simply the way *I* choose to look at things.
That's not to say that I believe in "man in the sky" mythos. My definition is different than that of traditional religions.
The same goes for anyone arguing about the existence of God. Before you can argue about existence, you first have to agree with each other as to what the theoretical God *is* that you're trying to prove/disprove. Good luck getting different theologies to agree on that point. :P
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Increasingly science has been coming to the conclusion our universe is much larger spatially than previously imagined, (areas that have expanded out of our causal connectivity) and may in fact be infinite. If so, then a reasonable robust set of physical laws would probably lead to intelligence somewhere, somehow, but more than this, the universe is probably infinite in multiply definable ways (see: Tegmark's Mathematical Universe Hypothosis) including how you can define physical laws, and all those universes large enough with complex enough laws probably all lead to intelligent life. The solution to Fermi's Paradox may be that sufficient advanced beings have escaped to the other extra-dimensional Universes.
I'd say Quantum Mechanics is a strong indicator of infinite overlapping Universes and if the Universe is infinite in this way, why not infinite in all ways including how to cook up physical laws? With the God theory you get one highly anomalous and inexplicable Universe. Whereas if you just allow everything, well then – here we are, with infinite Universes we'd have had to pop up somewhere.
Letter To Iran
God is a metaphor. It doesn't even make sense to ask whether God or a god exists or doesn't exist.
In 1966 Time magazine ran a cover story asking: Is God Dead?
Nodody thinks even Time Magazine would try to run anything like that today.
Science can not prove anything without defined variables that can be explained by equation and replicated in practice to be observed in summary. In short, science is the language used to understand the universe from a purposed logical and replicated perspective. Put God in a more scientific context away from the Bible and it begins to make more logical sense.
Suggested,
1. God was an advanced life form not of Earth.
2. God is the name of all Energy, see "forms of energy" for further details, which all known exist in the known universe.
3. God is a global understanding of faith in something above humanity, which segregates humanity from the rest of the natural world in that humans are the only species to grow technologically beyond our environment and social ecosystem.
Since proof in science can only be found in mathematics, should we please burn this article for it contains nothing but sophistry? Just to point out: "make a case for" isn't equal to "prove".
Nice try, Slashdot.
To me, life coming into existence rationally is FAR more miraculous than it being seeded by something irrational. It means that we've figured out the irrational bits, and no longer need to hide behind irrationality. Whether that's good or bad is something else entirely.
Arguing from personal incredulity.
This dude falls for the old trap that he doesn't understand something, therefore "God did it". Personal incredulity
We haven't found life on other planets, therefore we must be the only one. Therefore we are the only one. Therefore God.
Most people have no idea how cell phones work. Does that mean God made cell phones?
Most people don't understand the quantum. Does that mean that those devices that work on hte quantum don't exist, or that God actually intervenes every time we use them? Once upon a time, illnesses were punishments from God. Some people still think so. Are they? We now know about germs and viruses. We know about biology, and are continuing to learn. As we learn we effect cures, by attacking those things that make us sick, validating the biology. Or is it still God making us sick, and all the biology just a trick of the devil, not unlike those who believe that fossils were put in the earth by the devil or by God to tempt us, or prove our faith,
The God of the Gaps is silly, as we find the gaps getting smaller and smaller.
People who were schizophrenic or psychotic were "posessed by demons" Now we treat them with drugs. Do the drugs drive the demons out? Or do they help to control issues of chemical unbalance or other problems. Can an exorcist cure the insane as well as psychopharmacology? That somehow, this foolish man's thinking that his lack of knowledge proves that God exists, if true, means that His god needs people to be as ignorant as possible. Then everythinig they do not know about makes God more and more legitimate and powerful. A person who knows almost nothing can then know that almost everything is proof of God.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Scientific discoveries tend to make the universe seem even more amazing, and reveal even more limitations to human understanding.
To theists, the more amazing the universe is, the more obvious it is that God must exist. Similarly, the more limited humans are shown to be, the more obvious it is that God did it all.
That is why theists keep insisting that science makes their case for them. Emotionally they are right. Logically they are not.
Many theists also get this strange idea that something intrinsic to science makes the enterprise itself "out to disprove God's existence." Science doesn't disprove God so much as start by assuming God doesn't exist, and operate within the boundaries of what we can actually demonstrate (which will never be God). Some specific scientists want to disprove God's existence (good luck proving a negative!), but science itself just doesn't include God in the equation at all. Theists receive this very reasonable assumption of mechanism over intelligent agency as an attempt to disprove, and go on the counter-offensive, claiming that these attempts are self-defeating.
So, that is what is going on.
I contend that anyone who achieves true objectivity on this issue will opt for agnosticism and just leave the debate behind.
Science also cannot disprove the existence of God.
with a God?
Please RTFA. The WSJ one. The thing doesn't even mention the word 'prove' or 'proof', so I don't know what are we discussing here...
I'm sorry, I must have been completely out of touch with The World this past weekend, because I missed this revolutionary event.
Douglas Adams said it best:
The WSJ's entire premise is based upon the idea that space is small enough that we could search it for other inhabited planets in the time we've been looking.
Space isn't that small.
Space is so big that BILLIONS of years will pass before we even see the light shining from a sun in a different galaxy.
The universe could have 10,000 intelligent species that we will never know about because they are just too far from us.
http://www.sacred-texts.com/ao...
"During the last century, and part of the one before, it was widely held that there was an unreconcilable conflict between knowledge and belief. The opinion prevailed among advanced minds that it was time that belief should be replaced increasingly by knowledge; belief that did not itself rest on knowledge was superstition, and as such had to be opposed. According to this conception, the sole function of education was to open the way to thinking and knowing, and the school, as the outstanding organ for the people's education, must serve that end exclusively.
One will probably find but rarely, if at all, the rationalistic standpoint expressed in such crass form; for any sensible man would see at once how one-sided is such a statement of the position. But it is just as well to state a thesis starkly and nakedly, if one wants to clear up one's mind as to its nature.
It is true that convictions can best be supported with experience and clear thinking. On this point one must agree unreservedly with the extreme rationalist. The weak point of his conception is, however, this, that those convictions which are necessary and determinant for our conduct and judgments cannot be found solely along this solid scientific way.
For the scientific method can teach us nothing else beyond how facts are related to, and conditioned by, each other. The aspiration toward such objective knowledge belongs to the highest of which man is capabIe, and you will certainly not suspect me of wishing to belittle the achievements and the heroic efforts of man in this sphere. Yet it is equally clear that knowledge of what is does not open the door directly to what should be. One can have the clearest and most complete knowledge of what is, and yet not be able to deduct from that what should be the goal of our human aspirations. Objective knowledge provides us with powerful instruments for the achievements of certain ends, but the ultimate goal itself and the longing to reach it must come from another source. And it is hardly necessary to argue for the view that our existence and our activity acquire meaning only by the setting up of such a goal and of corresponding values. The knowledge of truth as such is wonderful, but it is so little capable of acting as a guide that it cannot prove even the justification and the value of the aspiration toward that very knowledge of truth. Here we face, therefore, the limits of the purely rational conception of our existence.
But it must not be assumed that intelligent thinking can play no part in the formation of the goal and of ethical judgments. When someone realizes that for the achievement of an end certain means would be useful, the means itself becomes thereby an end. Intelligence makes clear to us the interrelation of means and ends. But mere thinking cannot give us a sense of the ultimate and fundamental ends. To make clear these fundamental ends and valuations, and to set them fast in the emotional life of the individual, seems to me precisely the most important function which religion has to perform in the social life of man. And if one asks whence derives the authority of such fundamental ends, since they cannot be stated and justified merely by reason, one can only answer: they exist in a healthy society as powerful traditions, which act upon the conduct and aspirations and judgments of the individuals; they are there, that is, as something living, without its being necessary to find justification for their existence. They come into being not through demonstration but through revelation, through the medium of powerful personalities. One must not attempt to justify them, but rather to sense their nature simply and clearly.
The highest principles for our aspirations and judgments are given to us in the Jewish-Christian religious tradition. It is a very high goal which, with our weak powers, we can reach only very ina
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
And, like god, we also can't agree on definitions of love, beauty, or freedom either.
Actually that is not true, beauty has a basis in mathematics and biology. Certain symmetries, ratios and proportions are considered attractive across cultures; strong correlations to genetic and physical health exist.
I am often amazed at how these radical conservative evangelicals who blindly profess that God exists because they have faith, turn around and try to suggest science proves their "faith."
Obviously their "faith" is a bunch of bullshit, and they have neither faith in God, nor faith in their own faith in God. Ive also often thought that is a God is so insecure he has to have a bunch of uneducated idiots running around professing his existence with every breath they take... he must not be much of a God in the first place.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
And they say atheists can't be fundamentalist extremist asshole, too.
Atheists *are* believers too. Like theists they have drawn a conclusion despite a lack of evidence, they merely have drawn the opposite conclusion, hold the opposite belief. And like some theists some atheists are quite evangelical of their belief and intolerant of other beliefs.
Its the agnostics that are more rational, more scientific. They are the camp that given a lack of evidence says we don't know one way or the other, and given the lack of evidence there is not much to talk about on the subject.
Wouldn't a proof need a complete description of what you are proving and isn't the concept of God about an entity that is more than infinite?
I say you can't prove that God is more than an idea devised by the finite human mind because you can't define what a God is accurately enough to be able to definitively demonstrate if one exists or not.
...so annoying that not even He can be bothered to try to get to the article hidden behind it?
The answer to any question posed by any headline is always no. I'm a Christian and I still say science can't prove the existence of God, or any other deity for that matter. Science's job is to discover truth about the physical world around us, and while the existence of God is made evident in the physical world, we will never be able to prove it because there is always going to be multiple ways to interpret the evidence. God is not something that we should try to put in a box, and "proving" His existence through science would be very much like putting him in a box.
Every time someone mention how "perfect" our solar system is, this blog post comes to my mind. You think one habitable planet is cool? How about 24?!?
Just another liar Jesus.
In fact all of these liars for Jesus, pretty much prove that there is no God.
Based on the OT, were that deity really to exist, he would be striking down those who were lying in vain and perverting the teachings of his prophets.
I disagree: God+life is a bigger miracle than life alone.
And therefore much more unlikely.
I can't read the first article, but the second goes on way too long getting into the likelihood of life existing elsewhere in the universe, and... then says that it doesn't matter, because-- the article asserts-- the outcome of all that reasoning has no bearing on whether you can prove there is a God. I agree, personally, but it simple asserts it without presenting much of an argument, and it makes me wonder what the point was of trying to read any of it.
Instead, the author says that he thinks it's better to have faith in something that can't be proven or disproven. He doesn't bother going into an actual argument regarding the question that was raised, i.e. whether science can prove the existence of God. And then he concludes by saying that faith shouldn't interfere with science, which didn't seem to be the issue he was talking about, but seems to be the conclusion that he's most interested in.
I don't mind his conclusions, but for someone who seems to be arguing in favor of rationality and scientific rigor, you'd think he'd have a more rigorous argument. From my (admittedly superficial) reading, his argument is structured like this:
Premise 1: Someone presented the argument (which has been argued for and against many times by smarter people):
Premise 1: It is unlikely that we should exist
Premise 2: We exist
Conclusion: God exists, and he made us on purpose
Premise 2: Our existence actually is likely. I think. Or maybe not, because I don't really know for sure.
Conclusion: The argument is bad because I don't think faith should should be based on things we don't know for sure, shouldn't be based on science, and we'd all be better off if we didn't allow religious belief to hold back scientific progress.
That is to say, while you might prefer the conclusions of the second article, the method of argument is just as bad. Maybe worse-- I'm not sure, because as I said, I haven't been able to read the first article. He asserts things without support, and allows his unfounded opinions to be substituted in as a conclusion, despite having no relation to the premises.
And it's really shocking to me that whenever this argument comes up (and believe me, it's not new), people keep missing the obvious questions:
1) What is "God"?
2) What does it mean to "exist"?
3) Why should an unlikely occurrence be counted as proof of the "existence" of "God"?
Because really, at least some religious people do not claim that God is a physical entity that has a shape, occupying a particular place at a particular time. When we talk about things existing, we're usually talking about whether those things are physical things which "exist" in an actual location. So it's not actually clear to me at all that religions are claiming that "God" "exists", unless you think "God" is an old man who lives in the sky. (I suppose Christians would argue that Jesus "existed", in that he was a physical man who lived at a certain time, but for that much, many historians would agree)
Whether unlikely events can be taken as proof of "God"... well... it seems to me that it depends on what we're supposed to think you mean by "God". Is he an old man with a long beard who lives in the sky? Or is "God" the force that allows unlikely things to exist? When a person wins the lottery, since it's unlikely that that specific person would win the lottery, is that also proof that God exists?
Sorry for the rant. It's just... this is an argument that has been going on, in some form, for thousands of years. There's a lot of information to draw on, and a lot of arguments that have already been made. I wish people like Ethan Siegel would bother to become the slightest bit informed.
Science can neither prove, nor disprove, the existence of God. That is a matter of faith, and not fact. Myself, I believe in a universal consciounsness, and a physicist friend of the family in a discussion with me about the nature of such things suggested that the human mind was much akin to a ripple in a wave function - the wave function being the mind of God. So, believe what you will, but DO NOT try to force me to believe it! I will respect your beliefs. Just respect my disbeliefs!
.
Religion is answers that may never be questioned.
When was the last time science proved anything? Science is just is just guessing. "We guess Co2 is causing global warming, we can't prove it though" or "I guess people are born gay, but we can't prove it"
This Mataxas guy is just writing something that people will love to read. Now if he wrote "Science can't prove man-made global warming" then that would be interesting.
Do you remember what it was like before you were born?
thats what it will be like after you die,
god is a myth created by primitive leaders of primitive civilizations
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
and
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
take the time to watch these two videos and it should enlighten you
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Without such missions we would not have had the Blues Brothers. Think of all that we would have missed without the inspiration of a just and kind God.
It is not for us to say God is capricious when She puts airplanes in the ocean and sets fire to ocean going vessels. We are not qualified to judge It when It chooses to rain ebola, aids and a thousand pestilences upon the poorest people on the planet. Our place is to be grateful for the benevolence of our Lord and Master, to be thankful that we are not smote even as we tap our undeserving fingers on the keyboard.
Ouch!
...omphaloskepsis often...
From the article regarding abogenesis:
"At some point, this happened for us, whether it happened in space, in the oceans, or in the atmosphere, it happened, as evidenced by our very planet, and its distinctive diversity of life."
It happened because it has happened is tautological rubbish. That is akin to finding a car in a tree and deciding cars grow in trees because it has occurred. Just state we don't yet know how this occurred and remove this half-arsed explanation
A lot of arm chair philosophers. Perhaps look at the arguments of an actual one:
* http://tofspot.blogspot.com/2014/07/first-way-some-background.html
* http://tofspot.blogspot.com/2014/08/first-way-moving-tale.html
* http://tofspot.blogspot.com/2014/09/first-way-part-ii-two-lemmas-make-lemma.html
* http://tofspot.blogspot.com/2014/10/first-way-part-iii-big-kahuna.html
Or read a professional (teaching) philosopher who has written books on the proofs of God's existence:
* http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/
* http://www.amazon.com/Aquinas-Beginners-Guide-Guides/dp/1851686908
Seriously, there are very good arguments out there, it's just no one bothers to engage their brain and learn them. Most modern atheists are using warmed-over Hume, which attacks straw men arguments; most apologists aren't much better either.
The Catholic Church has taught that God can be known "by the natural light of human reason":
* http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p1s1c1.htm#47
Aquinas argued such back in the 1200s:
* http://www.newadvent.org/summa/1002.htm#article2
Checkout out Feser's book, or at the very least read Michael Flynn's weblog posts which try to distill the argument (and checkout his sci-fi, which is pretty good).
"Science Cannot Prove the Existence of God." This is not news. It was not news a hundred years ago. This is pretty standard stuff from any general education philosophy class in any decent university. Don't people go to school any more?
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
Yossarian ducked behind his arm for protection while she slammed away at him in feminine fury for a few seconds, and then he caught her determinedly by the wrists and forced her gently back down on the bed. "What the hell are you getting so upset about?" he asked her bewilderedly in a tone of contrite amusement. "I thought you didn't believe in God."
"I don't," she sobbed, bursting violently into tears. "But the God I don't believe in is a good God, a just God, a merciful God. He's not the mean and stupid God you make Him out to be."
Yossarian laughed and turned her arms loose. "Let's have a little more religious freedom between us," he proposed obligingly. "You don't believe in the God you want to, and I won't believe in the God I want to. Is that a deal?"
That was the most illogical Thanksgiving he could ever remember spending...
What science and history can prove to the satisfaction of impartial observers is that Christianity is built on a myth.
[read aloud for best effect]
The vertical line of God interacts with time we see along the line of our lives.
Hard to discern, you'll agree, as through The Valley we've trod, dodging the Evil One's knives.
Could we our futures foresee, as each of us forward strives, the same path should we have trod?
And who among us conceives, if our will truly be free, a brutal trip to the sod?
No, we would rather have wives; kids by a dozen shoes shod; bouncing them all on the knee.
Swimming among the world's cod, world to make meaning contrives: to locate the core of "be".
Those who're forgiven stand awed, realizing they've no plea: God only real meaning gives.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
What's estoppeling you from further discourse, pray?
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
You're right. But you're wrong.
Like figuring out how much time were Slashdot digging to fall so low to post this kind of stories.
The term "god" should be deprecated for use in philisophical debate. The old religions are false, their claims are documented as false in so many areas that their additional claim of gods existing is so dubious as to be worthless. Egypt didn't enslave jews to build pyramids. Flying horses don't exist. There are more than 4 or 5 elements, etc.
Think about it: If a "god" with the ability to perform "miracles" decended upon the earth today we would be stupid to call them a "god", that's cargo cultism. We would simply call them an Alien with advanced technology and then proceed to study their "magic" via the scientific method.
If the universe itself were setient we would simply seek to classify its capabilities via cybernetics and deem it a greater intelligence.
"God" is dead, because it's stupid to lend dangerous alien intelligeneces the reverence we have for ancient legends.
To me, there is a huge difference between saying "There must be some greater, universal intelligence" and "This particular entity showed up last night and told me anyone who isn't just like me must DIE." The first one I can buy, the second one no. Even if God was "proven", if He is a psycotic genocidal murderer I still refuse to "worship" that, even if I was staring at the Pit of Hell itself. If God isn't willing to come clarify His "rules" and would rather just hang back while we kill each other in His name then He can piss right off.
F-L-A-M-E B-A-I-T!?!?
Never a truer statement, you can pray all you want, but that leak in the ceiling isn't going to stop until you yourself take care of it.
You may be surprised just how much disdain scientists (and science students) hold for the discipline of philosophy. Whenever they hear a ridiculous bit of groundless conjecture, they say "that's not science, that's philosophy." Often they mistakenly refer to philosophy as a "soft science" by which they mean "so sloppy as to be worthless." Those who have studied enough history to get the faintest inkling of the interrelationship between the two disciplines say things like "philosophy might have been useful in the early days, but science has completely supplanted it. You may as well study phrenology and alchemy too!"
Most Christians have equal disdain for philosophy, but for opposite reasons. Inasmuch as they recognize that any of the critical-thinking methodologies cast doubt upon their faith, they reject it as worldly lies. Paul even wrote specifically about "worldly philosophers" in the Bible, and how they are full of folly and lost.
Of course, both camps are *entirely ignorant* as to what philosophy is all about. Utterly clueless, and both consider themselves perfectly qualified to pass judgement on the discipline (albeit at a high level) as not worth their time.
You obviously know better. And you are not alone. But you are a member of a depressingly small minority.
You have no frame of reference, hence your statement is nonsense. It does show that you have some mental affliction of the religious kind though. Logic is usually one of the first casualties.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
If you could scientifically force God's hand to always act in a certain way, the engineers would have a field day with it. :)
I'm a dude who knows God is real. I don't try and prove him. I just say he is real, and that we all should love each other more because that is what my Bro Jesus said. Just about everyone will conclude the world needs more love.
God spoke to me
Science can prove nothing. The scientific process is all about coming up with a theory of how things work and then looking for evidence that disproves it. If such evidence is found, then the theory is refined to take it into account. In that way, ideally, scientific theories converge on the truth... but there's no way to prove they're true.
Linking science with god is ridiculous. It's like saying we can prove mathematically the existence of invisible pink unicorns. The sentence may be syntactically correct, but it has no meaning.
Isn't this what Christopher Hitchens and William Lane Craig talked about a few years ago at Biola University? Just saying.
Miracles still occur. It's just that too many skeptics are busy taking pictures, flying places and getting their news from secular TV's talking heads to notice.
All you have to do is do a search for miracles on one of the major Christian denominational websites. I just did one on the Assemblies of God website. You'll get many references to modern day miracles. Since you weren't present at any of them, you'll still have to take these modern day accounts on faith, just like the historical accounts in the Bible, but they haven't stopped occurring - and they have modern day witnesses of them who you could talk with if you were really interested.
One, religion asserts that God exists. Existence itself, but perhaps not meaning or other intangibles, certainly seems open to scientific enquiry.
However, it's hard to turn up evidence of existence of God.
Two, many religions assert origin stories for the universe. None of these match the physical evidence we have obtained without VERY liberal interpretation.
It is these types of assertions that the scientifically minded question the truth of. Softer assertions, like "people ought to be good to each other" don't find the same sort of opposition from science and logic.
There is ZERO historical evidence of a "god" and it has being proven beyond reasonable doubt that the bible is a mixture of stories matched together to fit what the religious leaders of the time wanted to portray. There is even proof that many stories were changed, added and even removed just to please the psycho leader of the year. Plenty of bible verses were removed and destroyed when it didn't fit or contradicted the story the church was using to brainwash the ignorant.
This whole argument is so tired. If God wanted science to prove it, it would. If he doesn't, they won't. God gets to roll like that.
How does the conclusion that there may be life on other planets disprove the existence of God?
Just because we as humans hope that God made life only on one planet does not make it so.
Just because we don't have accurate records in every religious book on possible life on other planets does not dispreove God's abilty to create life elsewhere.
Even IF ONE religious book postulated possible life on other planets is possible is grounds for DISMISSING the "There is no God if there is life on other planets" theory.
However, IF ONE religous book that DID mention possible life on other planets or even other planets from an illiterate goat herd that wouldn't know the first thing about science, the universe or planets or even that the world was round would be sufficient grounds to prove the existence of God.
Occam's Razor: In the absence of all othre explanations, the simplest explanation holds.
Chapter 1, Verse 1 of "The Opening" from the Qur'an reads: Al hamdu lillaahi rabbil ‘alameen (Praise be to God, Lord of all the worlds)
Sceince postulates NOW that there may be life on other planets. They did not have the technology to know that there were worlds back then. Therefore, God exists.
Ok - let the religous wars commence. :)
I'll go one further and say that scientific reasoning can lead to high confidence in the position that god does not exist. Science can not make the assertion that god does not exist just as it can not asset that leprechauns do not exist. It can lead, however, to the conclusion that the probability for either of these existing is vanishingly small. If we approach the idea of god as a hypothesis, we have to ask, is there enough credible evidence in favor of god's existence to reject the null hypothesis that god does not exist? Since there is not, belief in god is not scientifically rational, but, if you stop here, belief that god does not exist is not rational either. To understand why god's existence is exceedingly unlikely that god exists, we have to consider the enormous problem of explaining god's existence in the first place. We understand how intelligence arose through natural selection, so the complexity of our brains is not improbable. The complexity of something like god simply existing, however, would be a considerable challenge to explain, especially with a seemingly infinite number of other possible outcomes of universes existing without gods. I would compare it to this : If a magician asked you to pull a card at random from a deck and was then able to correctly tell you which card you had and then repeated the trick several times with the same result, you might presume that, by random chance, the magician was able to correctly guess your card. That presumption offers an explanation in the same way that a god presents an explanation, but it is highly implausible.
Science is really bad at proving things. The way science works is you take an idea and try to disprove it. You want proof, go with math. Mathematics is all about proof.
> "If there is a God then lie is a miracle"
I'd say that such a lie is hardly a miracle.
The members of the church are not as monolithic as the curia. At ground level there's a healthy debate about a lot of things. That barely makes the news. I've spent long hours in knock down / drag out discussions with abbots, bishops and other hifalutin clergy about interpretation of church teachings. We always part amicably and live our lives as we see fit. I even teach evolutionary bio, historical geology, genetics and natural selection in Catholic schools and attend mass sometimes even in the same day. And get thanked for each by the same people.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Of course it can't - just as hockey cannot prove the existence of football.
There's just confusion because dumbed down religion wants to expand to take over every aspect of life and it sees descriptions of reality as competition.
Thor Heyerdahl described his local Lutheren Pastors views in the 1930s as being along the lines of God creating life and Darwin described what he'd found out about God's plan. Nowhere near incompatible despite what Christianity-lite screeches. Science is physical while religion is spiritual. Somewhere along the way we've ended up with a pile of people that cannot tell the difference. It's done a lot of damage to societies, and not just in the middle east.
Coffee, Beer, Wine (mmm!), Strawberries, The ozone layer, Pie (all kinds mmm!), The moon which may be the Earth's stabilizer, Kittens, Puppies, Flowers, Earth's magnetic field which protects us from solar radiation, Pork, Beef, Salmon (yum yum). Wine (I'll have a little more please). Beautiful women, breasts etc. Water (expands when it freezes, a requirement for life), Science can't stop aging, wars, fighting, distrust. We need God. YUP! (OK I had a little too much to drink!) Ha!!!!!!! Mmmm breasts!
Guess how I know I'm not? Because it's nowhere in my post. The ten commandments (that tiny part of the OT that you're referring to) were written for a bunch of people allegedly wandering in the desert for a long time. To paraphrase Lewis Black, you see how we behave now with police and cameras - can you imagine how depraved a few thousand people in the desert could get? Those people probably needed a rule book. The stuff in the bible is more than the commandments - just like the stuff in Greek mythology is more than the script of one story. But we still see underlying truths in many forms of stories - from the Bible to Steinbeck to White to Salinger to Homer etc. I don't know if David and Bathsheba existed. I do know Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn didn't, but the stories about them are still valuable even though they're made-up tales of nonexistent humans. Much of human literature is fiction, and it still has value - if for no other reason than "lessons will be repeated until learned". East of Eden is hardly considered scripture, but it still illustrates basic truths about human behavior, and is in no small part a retelling of some of the Bible.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
The bottom line is that one cannot prove bullshit.
Why should it even try? The whole consept is unprovable one way or another. Science can't actually PROVE anything. Science makes very, very accurate predictions based on previous observations. That's all. Science observes, then creates models to predict. If it does something else it's not really science, or at least it's not usefull science. Science ignores religions and gods just fine. Keep on going!
on a fool's errand, but he did get the ball rolling with regard to reconciling dogma with reality. It's overblown solution to a (now known to be) inflated problem, but imagine where things would be without him. A modern parallel would be only Nixon could go to China.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
I'd like to correct you a bit. I exist. You might just be my imagination.
that Hume blew a great big hole in empiricism. Being a scientist is irrational on that level. Fact is, every system of thought falls apart if you pick at it long enough. You use what works, and there are a lot of variations of that. It's part of what makes it cool to be a human. Personally, I take my reductionism by the bagful rather than wholesale - there are reasons Vulcans are a fiction and computers don't run the world.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
"Prove that humanity came from a single breeding pair. "
Bible actually states Adam and Eves sons took wifes from somewhere else. Makes absolutely perfect sense, because adam and eve were supposed to be the first thumans. Maybe god created more while adam and eve were not watching. Who knows. Or maybe god just lied to whoever wrote that down. Or maybe the writer misunderstood and god didn't bother to correct it.
Seriously, it's almost inevitable we all have a very small population where we came from. Maybe not a single pair, but very close to that.
Learn about Opus Dei.
Learn about Vatican finances, fraud, and ties with organized crime.
Learn about child molestation and adult sexual harassment evidence that is still being suppressed.
As a supporting, outspoken, and proud member of the organization responsible for these and many other ongoing atrocities you are indeed culpable.
saw a value in churches and what they could provide to a person's emotional wellbeing, specifically those in need. Is it rational to demean Sperbels for his comment? Or maybe your response is not demeaning - provided you can provide a clinical, rational definition of "well and truly f'd up"? Do you make personal judgements that transcend rationality? How do you reconcile those? You can answer those or not, point is there is more to human understanding than the dimension of rational / irrational. Humor is irrational. Music. Art - whew - Jesus Waterskiing Christ is art ever irrational - don't know about you, but it'd be a sad world without a whole lot of things that are not necessarily rational.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
You almost got away with it.
Then you slipped up. "... pleasing our social superiors ..."
Indeed. Organized religion is all about control, oppression, extracting tribute (monetary and otherwise), and social dominance by the elect few.
What's the difference between your Religion and a cult?
There is none.
these days without having to be the yardstick for extremist behavior!
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
..."The author, a philosophy professor at New York University since 1980 does not believe in the causal closure of physics. Why doesn't he believe in the causal closure of physics? It's because he doesn't believe the Neo-Darwinian theory of evolution can explain the origin of consciousness, meaning, value and morality. What are his reasons?
1) The probability of it happening by chance is too low.
2) There hasn't been enough time for consciousness to evolve.
What evidence does he provide? It's just a gut instinct based on his common sense intuitions. However, his common sense intuitions haven't been honed by a scientific education. In a shocking admission in the beginning of the book, Mr. Nagel admits that his scientific education is limited to reading popular science books. When reading the book, it is clear that he is not even widely read in popular science. It is also clear that many of his ideas come from reading popular pseudo-scientific books written by creationist and intelligent design advocates...."
Slashdot is not the place to peddle the crap you are selling.
Increasingly science has been coming to the conclusion our universe is much larger spatially than previously imagined, (areas that have expanded out of our causal connectivity) and may in fact be infinite. If so, then a reasonable robust set of physical laws would probably lead to intelligence somewhere, somehow, but more than this, the universe is probably infinite in multiply definable ways (see: Tegmark's Mathematical Universe Hypothosis [wikipedia.org] ) including how you can define physical laws, and all those universes large enough with complex enough laws probably all lead to intelligent life. The solution to Fermi's Paradox may be that sufficient advanced beings have escaped to the other extra-dimensional Universes.
I'd say Quantum Mechanics is a strong indicator of infinite overlapping Universes and if the Universe is infinite in this way, why not infinite in all ways including how to cook up physical laws? With the God theory you get one highly anomalous and inexplicable Universe. Whereas if you just allow everything, well then Ã" here we are, with infinite Universes we'd have had to pop up somewhere.
But wouldn't infinite possibilities also include the possibility of God?
You have no frame of reference
You've got a point. I have no "frame of reference" that Flying Spaghetti Monster+life is a bigger miracle than life alone, either. Except reality.
that's not spirituality that's psychology/psychiatry and that is another science.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
This is way, way premature. Paranormalists first need to point at any evidence -- ANYTHING -- the slightest grain of an iota of whatever you can loosely come up with -- any evidence which even suggests there might be unicorns or deities or crystal pyramid power or whatever it was that we were talking about.
Before we start talking about proving a hypothesis, let's start with finding inspiration to initially form a hypothesis. Let's find something that even gives us the idea of a god (whether there is one or not) and then we can get bogged down in the difficulties of trying to prove, disprove, or even half-assed guesstimate the chances that there might be one. The bar isn't anywhere near as high as proof, before it turns into an interesting conversation that adults might want to have.
Paranormalists don't even get to step zero of the scientific way of finding out things. They aren't merely "bad" scientists or mistaken scientists or scientists who have made some subtle statistics error in their analysis; they are not scientists. They aren't merely backing an unpopular hypothesis, and they aren't merely people who have worked hard but failed to think up an experiment, and they aren't merely people who have interpreted some ambiguous evidence in an "outside the box" way. They aren't even thinking in these terms. They aren't even participating in the search for knowledge. They have not yet begun.
When you ask these people for proof, you are behaving as though they're serious. You're implying they've made at least some effort. But you're talking to people who don't even know the meaning of the word "evidence." Slow down, dude. Let's walk 'em through First Grade before we get to the advanced stuff.
One, religion asserts that God exists. Existence itself, but perhaps not meaning or other intangibles, certainly seems open to scientific enquiry.
Oh, existence is the easy part. It's trivial to prove that at least one god exists.
Consider a Sun worshipper. By any reasonable definition, the Sun is that person's god. By any scientific test you care to name, the Sun exists. Therefore, at least one god exists. QED.
Feel free to substitute a nature worshipper, or an idol worshipper, or someone who worships a living or dead person as a deity, and the same argument works.
Two, many religions assert origin stories for the universe. None of these match the physical evidence we have obtained without VERY liberal interpretation.
This assumes that said origin stories are intended to be interpreted scientifically or proto-scientifically. Where I live, we have indigenous people who tell animist origin stories, and exactly none of them (to my knowledge) believe that those stories are scientifically accurate.
Yeah, I know, revisionism and all that. I refer you to my previous post on the topic.
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Agnosticism alone is only about the contention that the existence of gods are unknowable and says nothing about the belief of the person.
The real category are IMNSHO :
* gnostic theist , I believe in god(s) existance and I know god(s) existence are knowable
* gnostic atheist , god(s) non existence is demonstrable (and logically do not believe in gods existence)
* agnostic theist , I believe in god(s) existance but god(s) existence cannot ever be demonstrated e.g. it is faith only, all the rest miracle and so forth is bunk
* agnostic atheist , god(s) are a construction of human mind, but this cannot ever be demonstrated to the point of knowing that god(s) do not exists.
In the very end if you shrug and say I do not know, but live your life without any token prayer , then you are de facto agnostic atheist. There are a few agnostic theist I met, they are quite rare, the vast majority of self declared "agnostic" I met, are actually agnostic atheist, but unwilling to admit the atheist part to themselves. I am an agnostic atheist by the way.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
No, its just lucky that the elements happened to exist and then logical because if 2 things blend they create something new
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
On the other hand, even the tiniest effect that ignores the laws of thermodynamic can be taken as proof of god-hood. If any entity can freeze even a drop of water without increasing the universes entropy, it should be considered a god for all intents and purposes.
It's interesting that people believe in creation / intelligent design and use the "odds are so infitessimally small it couldn't happen by chance" reasoning, when the problem with having any being or force responsible for creating everything is you then have to ask who created the creator?
There are approximately 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 planets in the observable universe, and even if you say that habitable zones of galaxies are quite small, so really we should talk about the chances of a galaxy sustaining life, then that planet count comes from there being 200 billion galaxies in the observable universe.
1 in 200 billion are quite infitessimally small odds.
And the odds that we were created by "chance" are far higher than there being an intelligent creator that would design our planet, our galaxy in order to sustain life, and yet create over 200 billion other galaxies without any life, because what would be the point of that?
And fail. Sure, if there where a choice in the matter, you would be right. But there is not. Or have you just claimed that you fantasize God into existence? (Which would be halfway correct...)
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
The 3 properties that God has, according to Scripture, is that he is omnipotent, i.e. can do everything, he is omniscient, i.e. he knows everything, and he is omnipresent, i.e. he is everywhere.
Logic (of the mathematical kind :-)) says the above cannot exist, because it is contradictory to itself.
If a being is omnipotent, then it certainly can create something stronger than itself, can it? But then it is not omnipotent. But if it cannot create something stronger than itself, then it is also not omnipotent.
If a being is omniscient, then it certainly knows every person's future, and hence our future is prewritten, and so it is also prewritten if we are good and go to heaven or bad and go to hell. But the scripture also says we should try to be good...but if the future is predetermined, the word 'try' is completely meaningless.
If a being is omnipresent, can it create anything? If it can, then it is not omnipresent, because there was free space for creation. If it cannot create anything, then it is not omnipotent.
The above might sound like wordplay, but it is not. It is actually math disguised as wordplay. It is math that talks about sets and infinity. And it is indisputable mathematical proof that there cannot be an omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent God.
This is why I still think they should make "Science and Sanity" or something else about general semantics required reading in school.
Confusing the map with the territory, are we? The imagination with the real? The what-I-can-describe-in-words with the what-exists-in-the-world?
Science will eventually be the death of religion not because of Darwin or space flight, but because it provides and alternative solution. The space of magic, mysticism and religion (in historical order) always was to provide answers where we couldn't find any. Science isn't just brilliant in finding answers we couldn't find before, it also offers a new alternative to answers we don't yet know. Instead of wonder and amazement at an assumed superior force that must be responsible, we have wonder and amazement and the complexity and depth of the universe per se. With a history and culture (and most likely psychology) deeply rooted in an agent assumption (i.e. "if it is there, someone must be responsible") we have trouble switching, but exposure to science makes it easier to understand that not every apple that's falling from a tree was thrown down by someone.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
...but humans require spirituality.
There IS literary evidence that an actual man, Jesus of Nazareth existed and of some details of his life. This literary evidence is in multiple documents including Roman historical. Feel free to doubt the religious claims about the man, but if you deny he actually existed you're as batty as a flat Earther.
Those die-hard Jesus haters who NEED to insist that the man's very existence is a myth apply to Jesus tests they never apply to other historical people. For example, most other characters of ancient human history have also only left literary evidence of their existence.... do they doubt all of THOSE characters? Generally no. Also, historians tend to give more weight to historical documents that are unflattering to their own authors than to obciously self-serving documents... which is the case for some of the writings about Jesus which paint their own authors and various apostles in less than ideal light (of course, because they relate to Jesus, the deniers do not honor this test for these documents). One other point: it's easy to say "all that Jesus stuff comes from one religious book (the Bible) so it's not valid" .... but that's not really a valid argument; the Bible is an assembly of a bunch of separate independent documents. The fact that a bunch of independent documents are (centuries later) bundled together into a single tome does not magically mean they were alway just one document or that they can all be rejected together automatically because they have religious content. Other documents with those traits are NOT similarly rejected and provide much of our history for the non Judeo-Christian ancient world.
People who pretend to be clinical and academic need to learn what it means to be consistent in their application of rules, and historical and literary criticism.
You assert that the Bible is a badly informed, badly translated, manipulated text that were originally just stories that do not even remotely represent reality - so it should not be believed but you provide no evidence for your assertions and you apparently believe that YOU should be more believed?????
wow
You are apparently incredibly ignorant of all the manuscripts which exist which prove that the modern Bible's texts are actually VERY accurately translated and preserved with modern texts matching those written during the lifetimes of the original authors. It's also interesting that you presume to know the intent of authors who wrote centuries ago (you assert that they intended these as "tales", even though they left no footnotes indicating this) while you deny the accuracy and content of their texts (so even if they HAD footnoted that these were just stories, you'd be obligated to ignore that too).
When I was at school, we had an assembly by the chaplain who insisted that life on Earth was evidence of God, because the amino acids had to react in exactly the right order to produce DNA and that couldn't possibly have happened without divine intervention. It struck me then that his faith was based on a complete lack of understanding of scale. The number of amino acids in the sea when life arose was huge. The sea itself is enormous and yet the process still took a billion years or so. And the sample size that we have is precisely one planet where this happened. It looks like the conditions that will lead to seas containing amino acids are not that uncommon, so expecting DNA to exist in at least one place in the universe seems like a reasonable bet. Add to that the survivor bias: if the universe had managed to exist without life, no one would have remarked on it.
The universe is really, really big. Big enough that any plausible chemical reaction is likely to have happened somewhere at least once. Expecting something with the complex properties that we call life not to exist somewhere would be a miracle.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
That just means you've never heard of Lourdes.
Nobody can!
That's very much the early Wittgenstein view of language. For the problems with this perspective, see late Wittgenstein.
Anyone claiming that science lends any credibility to religious crap is just trolling. Why even bother to mention such an idiot - particularly one that has been published by a source of such low esteem as the Wall Street Journal. Religion is quite clearly stupid. No point in giving it any credibility by a mention.
Metaxas' proof of p:
q is infinitesimally likely, therefore p
Science cannot prove the existence of flying pink elephants either.
You need LSD.
Political correctness is really just herd psychology pushed by insecure people who desperately seek social conformity.
What evidence does he provide?
He's pointing out the lack of Darwinian evidence. In a way, this A/C reply criticizes itself, as it didn't put much effort into discovering Nagel's argument.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
what is this code on the top of your page? ,'i');
var all_greek_to_me = new RegExp( (' + greek + ')'
function no_greek_for_me (barbarian) { return all_greek_to_me.test(barbarian) ? false : barbarian ; }
var section = (hostwisely && no_greek_for_me(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_reason No belief is rationally inferred if it can be fully explained in terms of nonrational causes. C.S. Lewis
Artificial intelligence is the study of how to make real computers act like the ones in the movies.
Don't post links to websites that require a paid subscription in order to read the contents.
the difference between a church and it's leadership. I already know about all of the things you mentioned. And they range from miserable to horrible. Your assumptions about what I know and what I support is your issue, not mine. The Catholic hierarchy is all wrong about a number of current things - their war on women religious (nuns to you), their insistence on single priests and their exclusion of women from ordination are long-time ones, and their new-found nonsense about health insurance payment is a huge black eye. If we're going to start divesting ourselves of affiliations based on atrocities committed by this or that group, then you'll likely need to spend the rest of your life as a self-proclaimed box turtle, because "humanity" is on that list.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
...cannot disprove Him either.
Not can Science "prove" the Big Bang happened (because it has yet to prove where all the matter came from to begin with - it's PROVEN that it cannot appear out of nothingness without the raw materials already present).
of course, according to you, someone on the internet without proof of anything.
prove to us, oh great one, where all of the matter for the universe came from. it cannot have poofed into existence and then exploded into the Big Bang....science can prove that isn't possible on its own.
The headline SHOULD read:
Science can neither prove nor disprove the existence of what we call 'God'.
Yes, you can have those things without a church. And also churches do those things. Community does not need religion. But for some stubborn reason people tend to be spiritual, often expressing that through organized religion. How do you explain an enduring need for this? Are modern humans just stupid / irrational / uninformed? By your claims, things that have no rational basis are irrational. So art, music, humor, fiction... buh bye.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
There may or may not be a God, his properties other than omnipotence and omniscience would be unknown and probably unknowable to us. There is probably some reason for the Universe, call that God if you must or want, it isn't anything you can do something with in the real world.
When people get worked up about “You can't prove God doesn't exist,” it's usually because they assume if you concede there could be some kind of God any kind of God, then their version of religion is somehow validated and that you must be talking about a God that intervenes in our lives.
Fine, there may be a God, but all major religions are still hogwash.
Letter To Iran
religion is about faith. science without proof is faith. religion with proof is not faith.
lose != loose
psychology / psychiatry as not-really-science. Your comment would seem a great leap of progress to some. So a lot of people claim that Shakespeare's work informs a lot about human behavior and provides object lessons in a creative way. Do you see value in that? BTW I'm down with Randi. Had him on our TV show. Twice. He eloquently describes a system of dealing with the fascination and inspiring parts of our world without using religion. It's brilliant. I use it a lot. Also I have personal beliefs that he does not hold. We did not need to cross swords.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
it's godless *and* illogical! Win win!
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Here's your problem. God never said that "without faith I am nothing." In fact, even in a world where nobody will praise his glory, "the stones will cry out." (Luke 19:40). God also never said that "I refuse to prove that exist" either:
Your problem is that you don't understand how logic works. You can follow all the modus ponens; that's purely mechanical and nothing intelligent about it. What you need to be careful is which axioms you introduce to your reasoning. If you introduce a false axiom, your logic becomes inconsistent, and it allows you to prove falsehood.
I once had a signature.
what isn't there.
Odd's are mitigated by time.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
The number of amino acids in the sea when life arose was huge. The sea itself is enormous and yet the process still took a billion years or so.
And yet, with all our science and knowledge of these things, we've still not been able to recreate that. "Well it must have happened" is not science.
"The Four Witnesses." Prolly at a library. Gives a lot of context about the personalities and agendas for the four traditional books.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
I doubt that the universe has Multiple Personality Disorder. We are the universe asking itself what it is. The universe has risen to self-awareness and we are it. I suspect there can only be one consciousness at a time and as one falls another rises. It is sequential, not parallel. Otherwise the universe would be mentally ill. And Multiple Personality Disorder is probably very rare in the realm of universes.
E Proelio Veritas.
Uh who says intelligent beings would want to communicate with us? We just assume we are "interesting" enough and that it is possible.
would concede there's a tad more possible value to the major religions than the FSM or what was likely started in a bet by a third-rate SciFi author. So what is it you truly believe? Beyond the stuff that can be derived by F=ma, PV=nRT, A-T / C-G... why do you do what you do? You've already eliminated free will. What's left to work for? What can be considered "evil" (you refer to it pretty regularly) and why work against it?
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
"Blessed is the mind too small for doubt." I know for a fact that God exists, and is protecting us from the high perch of his Golden Throne.
Galileo ridiculed the Pope, so he was put under house arrest until his death. The church actually funded Copernicus' research as a clerk; his work lead to calendar reform. Many prominent figures of the Science Revolution received education and conducted research in an academic institution with church roots; some of the figures were theologians themselves. The Christian missionaries translated the Bible to many languages, many of which are the only written form of a minority language or regional dialect that would have been extinct as an oral language.
You're right about anti-semitism. It is not the attitude that Christians should have towards Jews, for it is written:
You're also right about birth control. It's God's blessing to "be fruitful and multiply." (Genesus 1:28, 9:7)
I once had a signature.
... on whether you define God as evolving from and with the Universe, or being its puppetmaster creator.
The situations where we have God and life are a proper subset of the situations in which we have life, Therefore, the probability that we have God and life cannot possibly be greater than that we have life.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
like "infallibility". That word does not mean what you think it means. There are several meanings to the concept of "infallibility" as regards the pope, the most commonly used one wasn't cemented until 1870. It's not as simple as "the pope is infallible" and generally refers to specific matters. It's not like being bitten by a radioactive spider. There is a long tradition of dissent on the matter from members of the church. As for catechesis, with Vatican II, there is much more official use and direction within the catechism on interpretation of the scriptures - including literal, allegorical, moral, and anagogic understandings. Far more latitude than a passing consideration could claim. In short, it's not the strict take-it-or-leave-it situation that many conclude it to be.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
It's not that great.
The whole invisible and omniescient thing really messes up the stats.
Somewhere along the way? When science was starting to emerge as a discipline, several centuries ago, many scientists thought they could find truth by examining the world and the Bible. There has never been a period in which science was always perceived as irrelevant to religion.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
God or no god, it is necessary, in fact mandatory, that we exist in this universe. If we did not exist then we would not be, there would be no us, and we would not notice. This is not a matter of probability. The probability that we should exist is 1.
By existing, we have the luxury of debating our origin and creator. Truly, this debate is just intellectual masturbation. Any attempt to explain our origin via supernatural intervention completely eviscerates the laws of the universe and makes pointless any effort to learn.
If science cannot prove something that the majority of the people in the world experience I would suggest the limitation is within science.
God isn't found in a test tube, a telescope, or a LHC. He is found by seeking after Him directly. He has spelled out the required steps in black and white.
Science' limitation is purely the hubris that requires discovery to be made on man's terms.
Arthur C Clarke said it, with no mention of God. “Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.”
Which God? Any in particular? Are there any we can eliminate using science?
For now anyway..
The number of amino acids in the sea when life arose was huge. The sea itself is enormous and yet the process still took a billion years or so.
And yet, with all our science and knowledge of these things, we've still not been able to recreate that. "Well it must have happened" is not science.
News bulletin: Science isn't done yet, film at 11.
Miller-Urey got us to the proteins, which is far more than TheRaven64's chaplain did.
Rejecting ideas from personal incredulity is far less scientific than pursuing a plausible hypothesis.
Sheesh, I wonder if accountants can prove the existence of numbers?
God's science trumps man's science every time.
The guy that brought you the Cartesian Coordinate System, in his "Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting the Reason, and Searching for the Truth in the Sciences", proved the existence of God through logic. He start with the premise, the only thing that can me known for sure is that there is doubt. Since there is doubt there must be a doubter (Cogito ergo sum). The went on from there.
Discourse on the Method is available on Project Gutenberg, for further reading.
Asking whether or not God exists isn't very useful. Much more interesting to ask: what is the nature of God? Is God just a concept or something more? That leads to testable hypotheses. In Sunday school I was taught that God was all-loving, all-powerful, and all-knowing, but when I look about me, I find that any two of those could be true at the same time, but never all three.
But science can show that it is not impossible. In fact that the human race exist one can extrapolate that a higher intellengce can also be possible.
The proof was already made in front of many witnesses. [ (Matthew 3:16,17) After being baptized, Jesus immediately came up from the water; and look! the heavens were opened up, and he saw God’s spirit descending like a dove and coming upon him. ... The existence of order presupposes the existence of organizing intelligence. Such intelligence can be none other than God’s.”—Dieu existe? Oui (Paris, 1979), Christian Chabanis, quoting Pierre-Paul Grassé, p. 94.
Look! Also, a voice from the heavens said: “This is my Son, the beloved, whom I have approved.”
The so called smart scientists are no so smart as they make themselves out to be and will deny the actual design. Design shows there's a designer. Explain the design of DNA....Explain the design of anything in nature.....
A member of the French Academy of Sciences stated: “Natural order was not invented by the human mind or set up by certain perceptive powers.
Scientists have identified over 100 chemical elements. Their atomic structure displays an intricate mathematical interrelationship of the elements. The periodic table points to obvious design. Such amazing design could not possibly be accidental, a product of chance.
Illustration: When we see a camera, a radio, or a computer, we readily acknowledge that it must have been produced by an intelligent designer. Would it be reasonable, then, to say that far more complex things—the eye, the ear, and the human brain—did not originate with an intelligent Designer? We know that design comes from a designer.
God doesn't exist...
Or is that Barbers don't exist?
A man went to a barbershop to have his hair cut and his beard trimmed. As the barber began to work, they began to have a good conversation. They talked about so many things and various subjects. When they eventually touched on the subject of God, the barber said: “I don’t believe that God exists.”
“Why do you say that?” asked the customer.
“Well, you just have to go out in the street to realize that God doesn’t exist. Tell me, if God exists, would there be so many sick people? Would there be abandoned children? If God existed, there would be neither suffering nor pain. I can’t imagine a loving a God who would allow all of these things.”
The customer thought for a moment, but didn’t respond because he didn’t want to start an argument. The barber finished his job and the customer left the shop. Just after he left the barbershop, he saw a man in the street with long, stringy hair and an untrimmed beard. He looked dirty and unkempt.
The customer turned back and entered the barbershop again and he said to the barber: “You know what? Barbers do not exist.”
“How can you say that?” asked the surprised barber. “I am here, and I am a barber. And I just worked on you!”
“No!” the customer exclaimed. “Barbers don’t exist because if they did, there would be no people with dirty long hair and untrimmed beards, like that man outside.”
“Ah, but barbers DO exist! The problem is that some people don’t come to me.”
“Exactly!” affirmed the customer. “The same thing is true of God.”
Can't RT first FA, but God has always been our fallback explanation of natural phenomena. As we learn more and more about how the world works, the less we need the actions of the gods to explain things. Because the theists want to continue to use the gods to explain natural phenomena by supernatural agency, they find themselves with less and less ground to stand on. This is just a search for a final toehold, something "science" can't explain, and it seems like a good spot because, at this point, we know nothing about the origin of life.
I always advise those who want to cling to the notion of a God to place him at the Big Bang. I think they'll be safe there for a long time.
-- sudon't
Air-ride Equipped
The proof God exists has already been made in front of many witnesses: ( Matthew 3:16,17) After being baptized, Jesus immediately came up from the water; and look! the heavens were opened up, and he saw God’s spirit descending like a dove and coming upon him. 17Look! Also, a voice from the heavens said: “This is my Son, the beloved, whom I have approved.” Scientists are not as smart as they make themselves out to be. They cannot even explain the Design in DNA or the intricate design in the Brain... A member of the French Academy of Sciences stated: “Natural order was not invented by the human mind or set up by certain perceptive powers. ... The existence of order presupposes the existence of organizing intelligence. Such intelligence can be none other than God’s.”—Dieu existe? Oui (Paris, 1979), Christian Chabanis, quoting Pierre-Paul Grassé, p. 94.
Scientists have identified over 100 chemical elements. Their atomic structure displays an intricate mathematical interrelationship of the elements. The periodic table points to obvious design. Such amazing design could not possibly be accidental, a product of chance.
Illustration: When we see a camera, a radio, or a computer, we readily acknowledge that it must have been produced by an intelligent designer. Would it be reasonable, then, to say that far more complex things—the eye, the ear, and the human brain—did not originate with an intelligent Designer? Design comes from a designer....
God doesn't exist...
Or is that Barbers don't exist?
A man went to a barbershop to have his hair cut and his beard trimmed. As the barber began to work, they began to have a good conversation. They talked about so many things and various subjects. When they eventually touched on the subject of God, the barber said: “I don’t believe that God exists.”
“Why do you say that?” asked the customer.
“Well, you just have to go out in the street to realize that God doesn’t exist. Tell me, if God exists, would there be so many sick people? Would there be abandoned children? If God existed, there would be neither suffering nor pain. I can’t imagine a loving a God who would allow all of these things.”
The customer thought for a moment, but didn’t respond because he didn’t want to start an argument. The barber finished his job and the customer left the shop. Just after he left the barbershop, he saw a man in the street with long, stringy hair and an untrimmed beard. He looked dirty and unkempt.
The customer turned back and entered the barbershop again and he said to the barber: “You know what? Barbers do not exist.”
“How can you say that?” asked the surprised barber. “I am here, and I am a barber. And I just worked on you!”
“No!” the customer exclaimed. “Barbers don’t exist because if they did, there would be no people with dirty long hair and untrimmed beards, like that man outside.”
“Ah, but barbers DO exist! The problem is that some people don’t come to me.”
“Exactly!” affirmed the customer. “The same thing is true of God.”
If you don't believe in God because you cannot see him....Go to the edge of a cliff and jump off....You cannot see gravity so it must not exist....
Some scientists are just plain idiots...
Science can only fit within the confines of man's limited intellect, and is further confined by bias, prejudice, political pressure, and most of all greed. Whether science can or cannot prove the existence of God is of no consequence on the truth of his existence. The fact is science cannot prove the universal nonexistence of anything including God. Science is an amazing tool with which man has used skillfully to attempt to unseat God as the primary force in the affairs of man, yet even with all of that wizardry of tech and evolution and all of the other wonders of 21st century science, our finest technological advancement is just another Tower of Babel which God can tear down at any moment at his whim. As men try simultaneously to bring God to their level and try to raise men to the level of God, yet there is one God who created all and is in all. Men of the 19th-21st centuries have made great strides in mind control and the indoctrination of children regarding evolution and Climate Change, yet no matter how dark men may strive to make this world the Light of God will still burn in the hearts of men and there is no science that can put it out. One day every scientist who has ever lived will bow before the Lord Jesus Christ, moreover the powerful men who are the true puppet masters behind the scientists will also bow before the Lord Jesus Christ as well. The supreme science of the world is political science for with political science the secret rulers of the world can make all other science serve their aspirations of power and immortality. Immortality will be reserved for the Christians who put their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
Science can't prove it, neither can religion.
Well, you repeatedly (here and other threads) establish that is something is not rational, then it is irrational, and that logical arguments are necessary. I listed other things that have no rational, logically necessary basis, wondering if you object to them as well. Guess not. I'm trying to see why your reaction to irrational religion / spirituality is so visceral while you seem to have no parallel reaction to other things that meet your criteria. "Modern humans? Humans as a whole were always stupid, irrational, and uninformed." I think you may find a lot of people are able to draw a gradation of the sophistication of human thought, and that we seem to be betting on that gradation increasing.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
It amazes me that Atheists so often hold themselves up as intellectuals and look down their noses at the rest of us...............yet, I am learning that they are intellectually bankrupt. They challenge those of us who believe in God to come up with some empirical evidence to prove God exists, yet the average Atheist can apparently not see beyond the end of their nose. I see God everywhere I look. There is evidence all around us if we choose to look. The intricacy of the human body and its hundreds of systems, the changes a woman's body goes through to protect and nourish a baby, the placement of the earth and sun and moon, the balance in nature.............none of this is happenstance. Someone would have to have their head in the sand to ignore this fact. God is supernatural. Those who believe in God accept this in faith. Atheists say that it is impossible for any being in the universe to have more abilities and intelligence than they have. We humans are mortal with limited abilities and limited knowledge. To believe God doesn't exist takes more effort (and more ignorance) than to prove something that can be seen everywhere. It's not the believer who is challenged to prove God's existence............it's the Atheist to prove that so much intelligent design, the proof of a master architect, is just happenstance. Science deals with the natural, not the supernatural. Only a person, blind to all the wonders of this world, would question God's existence. The arrogance of the non-believer does not serve them well.
God is all-powerful and invisible, something that science just can't get a handle on.
I thought some of you might be interested in Lawrence Krauss' response on this article, which was not published by the WSJ. https://richarddawkins.net/201...
The ability of humans to make decisions that are not solely a result of deterministic (physical -> chemical -> physiological) or irresistible outside processes.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Or you could try and be clearer.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
wonderful postings just like the all-nighters in dorm rooms, need some more pizza ...
The response to the Metaxas article gives his argument far too much credit. His argument was much more effectively and simply discredited by Richard Dawkins by simply stating the obvious fact, that no matter how unlikely it is for the universe to exist in its current form and for life to have developed as it has, the existence of a being that is capable of creating it must be far more unlikely as said being would have to be far more sophisticated than anything known to exist in the universe. As for the old Thomas Equinas argument "it looks like it was designed, therefore it must be." that was also mentioned, evolution explains the apparent "design" of life on earth.
No, no it's not. Move along.
Oh I've heard her, and frankly, her music is terrible.
Did you know that originally everything was made of 4 elements that was surrounded by energy-transporting ether? That life itself worked due to the balances of various humors and fluxes? Do not be so certain when you say "it cannot have poofed into existence and then exploded into the Big Bang". I mean, THAT is what you want us to believe, but hypocrisy is the name of your game so whatever right? Regardless, when science is wrong, it changes its mind. When your religion is wrong, there's usually a war about it.
True, science cannot prove the existence of God. 1. WE CAN COMMUNICATE WITH GOD (VEDIC GODS) through some techniques such as autowritting or autodrawing. 2. GOD ALSO COMMUNICATE DIRECTLY WITH HUMANS AND GUIDE US 3. There were many saints who saw Vedic Gods in physical form and talked to them.
Religion was born when the first con man met the first fool
Casteism
"Serious" arguments over the existence of God are a total waste of time. Anyone over the age of about 40 who engages in them for anything but comic effect loses a good deal of my respect.
People start off with a belief and a prejudice, we all do. And the job of science is to set that aside to get to the truth.
Casteism
Rejecting ideas from personal incredulity is far less scientific than pursuing a plausible hypothesis.
Certainly has a historical basis, though. Descartes is one of Christianity's better philosophers (and mathematicians), but he did one incredibly flawed philosophical experiment, which was to try to logically prove the existence of God. It's been a few decades, but I remember being a bit shocked when it mostly boiled down to: "By definition, God is the only thing that is perfect. Existence is a requirement of perfection, and therefore, God must exist." There were all sorts of supporting axioms, and it couched it up in more flowery language, but that's sort of the jist of it. It was not one of Descartes's better days.
What "science" should be exploring is why we get those feelings of the supernatural. The phenomenon of the transcendental across our entire species manifests itself in myriad forms, and seems quite elusive to being pinned down. Bottom line, are these moments anything more than an echo of an ancient danger sense? It's impossible to de-program ourselves completely on a mass scale...so how do we mitigate the risks?
I'm an agnostic apatheist. I don't know and I don't care.
I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords. When the singularity arrives (yeah, I know... yet another religion), the look on the faces of true believers will be priceless, after powerful AIs have eliminated god by explaining the mysteries of the universe and performing seeming miracles.
So? Some scientists are looking at owl feathers to understand how to make quieter aircraft. Those scientists are not going to start eating mice are they?
Similarly metaphysics and physics are different areas. It should be obvious but the manipulative that want religion to be in control of everything - a very shallow and wide interpretation of the idea of religion - wish to pretend otherwise mainly in the pursuit of personal political power. Far too many people are falling for that shit.
It is likely to be true that modern science developed as a result of a montheistic society instead of one with many Gods, for the reason that there was the belief in only one set of rules for reality instead of several sets or changing ones. However that just laid down the social environment where science could thrive and is not part of science itself. Those English clergymen who were amoung those who disproved the flood fossil theory and showed the earth was far older than expected knew that they were doing geology as a sideline to their theological duties and did not confuse science and religion. Similar when Mendel laid the foundations for Darwin's theory, or the Vatican astronomer today.
Science is about finding out the rules of reality, not about who wrote them. Data not metadata. Physics for the first, metaphysics for the latter.
The following could just as easily be applied to arguments about aliens. If some being wants to psychologically test and observe humans, why would they walk openly among them? Do wild animal researchers walk around in the open wearing bright orange vests? Do human behavioral studies involve people in white lab coats walking around in the open? Why then assume that someone observing you, to study your behavior, will easily allow you to prove their existence? It's humans that want public recognition. Humans that want other humans to recognize their achievements, to have fame or infamy. Do not assume all other sentient beings in existence are big attention whores like some humans can be.
There was a Calvin and Hobs comic where Calvin yells to the dark sky, "I exist!", and follows it with something along the lines of "... said the speck of dust". Do not assume that your own view of your importance is shared by any other being. It's like saying, "I pay taxes! The President should drop by and shake my hand for it!".
And we all keep falling for the greatest troll ever.
So stop trying, children.
All tha says is that scientifically, one cannot proe the existence of God simly trough appearance of design, because evolution is capable of producing the same appearance. It does not say, however, that such an appearance is necessarily illusory, however, and it is not unreasonable to conclude that an appearance of design makes a relatively strong case that it *was* deigned. Not proof, of course, but not an entirely irrational case for it either.
the only retort to this merely echoes the sentiment hat there are alternative explanations for that appearance, which doesn't refute the point that life was designed can nonetheless still be a perfectly valid conclusion from the observations without assuming that you first allegedly somehow know that there isn't any designer in the first place
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
You know, you think that God could have given us more than *one book* (of dubious historical provenance) with which to assert his reality. I mean really, one book? Just one? Something more thorough like an encyclopedia would have been better, if you're going for just one. But really, continued output would be more convincing. "Publish or perish," right?
And anyway, it's been nearly 2000 years since that book was written. No updates for modern issues? No edits? No recent editions (save for language translations)? No further tales or stories? Nor more commandments? ("Thou shalt not waste more than 20% of your time on the Internet!")
How come nobody sees burning bushes any more? Or gets turned into pillars of salt? Evangelicals have had to resort to blaming random *natural phenomena* on various alleged lapses in so-called morality. Where's the accuracy in that?
God really needs to get back to work and write another book.
But the Bible is also just 'Cultural Christianity'.
Metaxas fails to define or even mention *which* God it is that Science allegedly proves exists.
Bit of a shocker for him if "Science" showed that Buddha was real, but not Jahweh or Allah.
Great question; but if you've figured out some of the pieces of the framework, you're further along in explaining the nature of God than if you haven't figured out some of the pieces of the framework.
That's why I tell people to study a physics book if they want insight into the mind of God.
Makes perfect sense: everyone who believes in God believes that God authored the laws of physics, but not everyone who believes in God believes that the Bible is divinely inspired.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
I guess I read that in my own context, because I took the article to mean that JHVH-1 exists, therefor "Bob" also exists.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
I double disagree. Life isn't a miracle, big or small.
It just is. It started and it's still going on.
And it doesn't need "explaining" to continue existing.
It still just is.
Of what possible use is it to say that God created life anyway ?
It doesn't butter my toast either way, and I do like my toast buttered, thanks.
There seems to be a recurring straw man on this thread. I'm not sure where the WSJ article claims that science 'proves' the existence of God. It is not coming to a strict scientific conclusion,but a logical and reasonable conclusion based on legitimate current scientific observations of the universe. That is in no way a claim that science has proved Gods existence,but that scientific discoveries,based on the current data,logically point to the truth of a First Cause,a Creator, God (despite modern expectations). Science on its own, cannot prove God exists,nor disprove it,it is too limited in its scope. It limits itself to the material. Its very method of proof depends on this limit.