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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 they say atheists can't be fundamentalist extremist asshole, too.
Which of those categories does UNIX editors fit under?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
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.
"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.
Religion, you Emacs lover, you!
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
It is also impossible to disprove the existence of anyone's god(s).
FTFY
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Actually, science "states" (or rather, simply recognizes) that it can't investigate anything that doesn't leave any observable evidence. It's religion that works hard to ensure that their cherished phenomena all stay in that category.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
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."
Wait. That's like saying the scientific method is a tool, characterizing the "what" of existence, leaving the "why" to others.
You're not going to get any kind of shooting war going with a rational approach like that, sir.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
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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I figure that if God were interested in dropping a closed-form mathematical proof, there are any number of simpler ways to go about it than a few dozen Jews and the odd Greek composing The Bible.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Those books actually have some rules that are drawn from the environment. ...
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.
Sure. Those books hold some good advice. And some bad. A little useful knowledge. And some outdated knowledge. (We have replaced "don't eat pigs" with "just check for parasites first", for example.) And these books have ridiculous fantasies about supernatural powers.
In short, those books are mix of so much - only a little of which is useful. Not particularly worthy of respect, and they wouldn't be remarkable at all if they weren't chosen as underpinnings for some religions. (You can find a lot of other religious manuscripts that nearly nobody cares about - chapters that didn't make it into the bible and so on. The same kind of stuff - a few pieces of good advice, lots of religious mumbo-jumbo.)
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
And sometimes they tell you to kill gay people, or a disrepectful teenagers, or your wife if she doesn't mess up the blankets so you can display them on the morning after you are married, or witches or blasphemers or someone you see working on the sabbath, or that you are supposed to kill everyone from the neighboring town except for the young virgin girls or offer your daughters to be raped by people at the door or that it's okay to have children with those same daughters.
I'll take my chances with the bacon and the seafood instead of trying to pick and choose who I have to kill.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
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.
Someone made up that supernatural/natural thing. Science can certainly prove the existence of god, if you care to define god in any kind of concrete terms, in principle. He might have to cooperate though.
If some dude shows up one day who can perform real magic, create planets out of thin air, and make it rain a lot, then science can examine him closely and be pretty sure god exists.
If a kid appears who can, without technological aid, turn water into wine, walk on water and reconstitute himself after dead, there's the new testament god.
Science doesn't require that the phenomenon it studies be "natural." Only that they be observable and consistent.
...so annoying that not even He can be bothered to try to get to the article hidden behind it?
I'm not Christian. Never claimed to be. So stop lying about what other people have said. Atheists seem to do that a lot.
You seem to be have some kind of demonic picture in your head about what an atheist is. Simply not believing in a deity does not magically transform everyone into a cunt, you know.
I disagree: God+life is a bigger miracle than life alone.
And therefore much more unlikely.
You forgot about infanticide (Psalm 137:9)
You seem to be have some kind of demonic picture in your head about what an atheist is.
If I do, it's because that's what I see from pretty much everyone who calls themselves an atheist. I can only comment on what I see.
Simply not believing in a deity does not magically transform everyone into a cunt, you know.
Perhaps you're confusing cause and effect. Maybe being a cunt magically transforms you in to an atheist.
"Maybe being a cunt magically transforms you in to an atheist." But, I thought you stated you weren't atheist?
.
Religion is answers that may never be questioned.
"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.
"Intelligent"? Since when is "I don't know; therefore, god." intelligent?
In many ways, Maoism or soviet style Stalinism are religions in about the same way we consider Confucianism or Taoism a religion. They are closed belief systems with a fundamental set of dogmata, they appeared preconceived by their founding fathers and all following discussions were just about how to correctly interpret the holy scriptures.
... 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.
See, "Cows, Pigs, Wars and Witches: The Riddles of Culture" by Marvin Harris." Read it for a social anthropology class back in the mid-1970s. In a nutshell, Harris claimed and did a reasonable job of showing that many of the quirks of various religions/cultures actually were ways of adopting the culture to the environment it existed in.
Note that he didn't show that each culture's $DEITY therefore existed since they had handed down these wonderful rules. Only that various societies encoded their rules as religious beliefs. Much easier to get the ignorant to go along by saying $DEITY will smite thee if you don't obey the rules than going through the years of cultural evolution that led to the rues.
Cheers,
Dave
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
"sometimes they tell you to kill gay people"
You made that shit up. Not one of the big 3 guys said to kill gay people.
If only I had made it up.
Leviticus 20:13 "If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them."
That's from the King James version. There are several other mentions, but that is one that's pretty direct.
side note: I wonder why the Christian Fundamentalists who use this as their rationale for promoting things like th edefense of marriage act don't pay any attention to the abomination that is marrying a non virgin woman. You're suppose to display the bedsheets so you can see her hymenal blood.
That one is seriously creepy, I think,
But these fundies, always a hoot, believe that gay marriage demeans the sanctity of their fourth marriage.
Perhaps you or I are confusing who 'they' are. If by they, you mean zealots and people who make war, then yeah; fucking people. Gotta hate 'em.
True enough. I always note that people make God in their own image, as their God just so happens to hate the very same things they do. So the zealots do their evil in the name of their God who happens to, well you know the rest..
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
More like subscription bait.
> I'll take my chances with the bacon and the seafood instead of trying to pick and choose who I have to kill.
You are doing that thing that extremist athiests do - miss the fact that it doesn't take religion to convince people to kill and otherwise mistreat one another.
No, I'm not missing that. People have a genetic flaw in that we really really really enjoy killing each other. Our hyper aggressive trait is probably going to be the source of our extinction.
But using one's God as the rationale for killing others is just as bad as athiests using whatever reasons they use.
In my mind, it is worse, because when your God wants you to kill people it makes it pretty easy to do
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Make sense. I had to use Vim once, and it felt like I was in Hell.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
says the plastid to the other: "I don't have to prove the cell exists, if you believe in the cell, you prove it! I have no need of the cell."
overhearing, neurons laugh, "the brain is all around us!"
cynically, the id says to the ego "can't prove there is a mind"
Ouroborus, muffled, might add "where's the rest of this snake!"
The Admin and the Engineer
> Sorry I must have missed when the KKK became a church.
They can be reasonable considered a cult: an extreme Christian sect. With several million members at their peak, with regular church and prayer meetings, and frequent invocations of God's support for their actions, I'm afraid they fitted most definitions.
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
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.