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?

Comments

God, Like an Unseen Hair

[smittyoneeach]

God, like an unseen hair
Untouched by intellectual stare
Refuses bending to mortal will
Yet teasing the human soul still
Burma Shave

Re:God, Like an Unseen Hair

[BarbaraHudson]

Keeping the population busy
With stupid fights they're all a'tizzy.
It's enough to make you dizzy.
Used to be angels on a pin
And who is hit by original sin,
Or the immorality of Huck Finn.
And all the other "sins" we've seen of late
If you're not the chosen, then infidels you hate,
Your martyr's death, and paradise await.
Better to tackle the extremists problem all over,
'Cuz while zealots are fools, we still run for cover.
These haters will turn son against mother.
This argument about whether god does exit,
I look at priorities, it's far, far down the list.
We exist, therefore we are,
As for the rest, be it near or far,
Whether they exist or not proves nothing you see,
It's just speculative clickbait to lure you and me.
Again, I exist, therefore I am,
Now please enjoy your green eggs and spam.
Burma Shave

Oh, and Happy new year in a bit
For those who celebrate that sort of ____

God is dead.

[Anonymous Coward]

So is Nietzsche. But you know who's alive? Kim Kardashian. Where's the justice in that?

Well That About Wraps It Up For God

[tverbeek]

"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)

Re: Well That About Wraps It Up For God

[smittyoneeach]

"Shut up," said the turtle on the bottom of the stack.

Re:Well That About Wraps It Up For God

[Anonymous Coward]

"I refuse to prove that I exist," says God

Between the burning bush, smiting that dude that saved the Ark from falling off a cart, fucking with Job, wrestling with Jacob, telling Saul to build him a temple, actually occupying tents set up for him, any many more examples, if Douglas had read the Bible, he'd have known that God loved to prove that he existed. It wasn't until the New that he said "Peace! I'm out! If you need anything, ask the kid."

Not that it matters. Proof doesn't deny faith in the first place. Faith exists in the absence of proof as well in the confirmation of proof.

Re:Well That About Wraps It Up For God

[Charliemopps]

"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)

And that's about the most intelligent thing a person can say on the matter.

Ones the subject of logic and evidence. The other is the subject of faith. Those that lack logic and evidence seem to be completely baffled by people of sciences inability to have any spiritual understanding what-so-ever. And those that lack faith seem to be completely baffled by those that are spirituals complete lack of logic. The 2 subjects have little to do with one another other and to try and prove or disprove Science or God with Science or God makes about as much sense as what Douglas Adams eloquently illustrates in his example.

It's like if I were to play you Beethoven 5th and say "Isn't that a fantastic peace?" and you were to turn to me and say "Music is nothing is superstition!" and then recite to me the Pythagorean theorem. And to make matters worse I then force you to listen to the Beatles and claim that "Octopuses Garden" clearly shows that Calculus is actually just a government conspiracy.

I personally hope there is a God and that science is the method to understanding of his design. If I'm wrong? Oh well. At least I got Christmas out of the deal.

Re:The idea or concept of god...

[taustin]

... 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.

I'm curious. Are you saying that you can point to, say, love, beauty, or freedom? Or are you saying that they don't exist?

What a sad, empty life it would be, to live in a world without abstract concepts.

I'm a Catholic and a scientist.

[jpellino]

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.

Nothing to see here

[david_thornley]

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?

It is simple

[Anonymous Coward]

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.