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WSJ Refused To Publish Lawrence Krauss' Response To "Science Proves Religion"
First time accepted submitter Kubla Kahhhn! writes Recently, the WSJ posted a controversial piece "Science Increasingly Makes a Case for God", written by non-scientist Eric Metaxas. Noted astrophysicist Lawrence Krauss wrote a simple and clear retort in a letter to the editor, which the WSJ declined to publish, but Richard Dawkins did.
So they didn't print a letter.
Let me guess, it was written by Oolon Colluphid.
Business folding to the religious as usual. Hope we don't offend anyone by saying their religion and religious leaders are wrong about everything.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
The nature of God is such that it cannot be proven. Otherwise, we lose the choice to believe.
That said, science has yet to prove what the universe is, so how could we expect it to prove something outside of it?
Note: My philosophy is "when you die, you're dead."
Help fight poverty: Punch a poor person.
"The article [which was printed] was written by the evangelical author Eric Metaxas, and in it, he argued that scientists have determined that life is so improbable it must have been created."
"Krauss concluded [in a letter which was not printed] by writing that '[r]eligious arguments for the existence of God thinly veiled as scientific arguments do a disservice to both science and religion, and by allowing a Christian apologist to masquerade as a scientist [Wall Street Journal] did a disservice to its readers.'"
I would now expect nothing less from the WSJ, once it became a sister publication to the Boston Herald or the New York Post or any of the other myriad rag sheets put out by that wonderful, effervescent, owner, Rupert Murdoch.
WSJ = Wall Street Journal(?) for those who don't feel like googling to expand the title.
WSJ, Fox News, CNN, NYT, you name it: they are all about flattering their demographic's preconceived notions about reality.
Alienating your readers/viewers is bad for business. News at 11.
I'm a believer in God and I'm terrible at statistics, but even I know Metaxas is a fool.
There are an estimated 100 billion planets in the Milky Way alone. If the odds were 1 in 1 billion chance for life to evolve on a planet, then with 100 billion chances life should evolve somewhere in this galaxy alone. Since we are life, then of course we experience this extraordinarily low probability happenstance.
What if it is the other way? Christians are right and the world is wrong?
It really does seam more like Science Proves God is real with ever new discovery.
It was bought by Murdoch in 2007 and it's editorial director fired in 2008. Since then, it's just another mouthpiece for conservative Republicans (Murdoch also owns Fox News). The Wall Street Journal purchase was made to make Murdoch's news organizations look respectable.
As is turns out, it was just an expensive suit on a cheap hustler who got lucky enough to get rich with media organizations after inheriting the family business from his father.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
Talk about stupidity. Major publication editor allows a worthless fluff piece to antagonize and provoke a major religion. Great click-bait, terrible tactical decision making. Now they have controversy on their hands for kicking sand at Atheists for no reason other than... what? A couple of worthless ad-clicks so a loud-mouthed Theist can claim premature victory in a controversial debate over the tangible merits of intangible theorys?
Institutions like the Wall Steet Journal no longer exist to serve meaningful information to people in order to assist in their formation of knowledge, wisdom, or even understanding of the wold around them. Thanks to clenchfist profiteering as a normative model of business in the 21st century we get articles about things that drive advertising revenue and in turn function as a means to consumption, not knowledge. Taking a cursory glance at the WSJ we have 'us stocks drop sharply' 'A Nonprofit Restaurant Falls to the Minimum Wage ' and 'Russian Fund Boss Vanishes '. the wallstreet journal, as does every other news outlet controlled by our modern robberbarons, pedals fear uncertainty and doubt as a model through which products and services are delivered, not practical or even contextual study of matters at hand
actual, useful information about how god is not in fact validated, or even designed to be validated, by science will not be tolerated. There is no product to be consumed or shared in this, and it may in fact be slightly detremental to the seasonal consumption holiday in the united states and other nations to simply tell people there isnt a valid point to be had in adhering to a religeon outside of subjugation. being told that a system of detection, observation and analysis has confirmed a superstition serves to re-enforce a behavior that benefits no one but plutocrats and oligarchs.
Good people go to bed earlier.
It really is tiring to see such incendiary articles posted to slashdot. I mean, whether religious or non, is anyone here hoping to have an intelligent or civil debate on the subject? Aren't you just allowing the editors to prove how well they are doing to their Dice overlords by pointing to a piece such as this and saying "look, 600 comments! think of all the ad-revenue this article must have generated!"
If you want to be religious and non-scientific, do that. Likewise, if you choose to be scientific and non-religious, do that as well. One can also be both or neither, and those are both valid options for how one should live his life, too. However, it serves no purpose but to further degrade the quality of this site when we engage in such a meaningless flame-war, especially when it is generated by such blatant pandering.
Your 'faith' gets restored in Slashdot. Now, off to watching Starship Troopers 3. :-)
ergo unbiased, fair and balanced Op-Ed does not exist there
The reply (with which I agree) is that it's silly to calculate the probability of life out of context when you don't know what context(s) allow life. Take a simpler example. Assume I tell you to pick a random number between 1 and a quadrillion. You pick 709,108,554,989,243. Taken out of context someone can ask, "What are the chances that this exact number would turn up, one in a quadrillion!? They're so slim, this can't be random!" In fact you could have picked any of a much larger set of numbers and the same could be said about all of those. Calculating probabilities on an unknown domain doesn't work.
WSJ is just another Murdoch rag. Who cares what they think?
Mr Jrauss is a theoretical physicist and cosmologist, so whatever his politial leanings, he is in fact qualified to hold an opinion on science; probably more so than Eric Metaxas or a jeering Anonymous Coward.
Krauss's letter was fine until he had to go and end it with:
"Religious arguments for the existence of God thinly veiled as scientific arguments do a disservice to both science and religion, and by allowing a Christian apologist to masquerade as a scientist WSJ did a disservice to its readers."
What a condescending butt head. I'd have ignored his letter as well.
I'm unaware of Murdoch's religious tendencies. As for you, you'd better get some new tinfoil for that hat of yours.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
Someone alert the ACLU!
Yawn. Nothing to see here. Loosen up your fedoras and pull your panties out of your cracks, ladies.
Since when does anyone with a brain give a shit about what The Wall Street Journal publishes? Mainstream "news" is really just propaganda perpetuated by advertisement firms to push the opinion of the consumers of their products. Sitting here bitching about "journalistic integrity" and what not is beating on a dead horse.
Frankly it's more surprising that a respectable publication, even a right-leaning one like the Wall Street Journal would think it's a good idea to wade into the religion/science "debate" even in its opinion section. Of course it is irresponsible for a newspaper to not publish articulate expert-authored responses to an opinion piece, newspapers have a responsibility to publish responses written by more-famous and more-qualified persons when the response meets the paper's basic standards. But the WSJ is owned by Rupert Murdoch so I can't say this is a particularly surprising lapse of journalism. (This is hardly first time their editorials have been accused of deliberate bias imposed by the paper, over and above the author's opinion)
In defense of the WSJ, they do seem to keep their bias to the opinions section, which is the appropriate place for it after all.
More interesting will be seeing what the long term effects of Murdoch's influence does to the paper's reputation; in the extreme case it may turn out like Fox News (also owned by Murdoch) and become a punch line to anyone who isn't among their readership. Though I think it's more likely they will successfully navigate the slippery slope, and maintain their position despite having these minor scandals every year or so.
It's a bit depressing, since the editorial in TFA and all their climate nonsense are counterfactual in the fairly literal sense of ignoring and misapplying science and logic in a way that could nominally support any conclusion whatsoever. A newspaper of the WSJ's former caliber should and surely does know better, but such is the state of the american press in 2015.
completely different animals. One of them is reasonably accurate, the other is a partisan shop.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Absent a paywall, it'll probably get read more, but sadly not by as many who would need to read it.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Since Rupert Murdock and his News Corp own the Wall Street Journal now,journalist integrity has been thrown out the window,just like at other News Corp businesses -case in point Fox(FAUX)news.Now the WSJ is just another right wing nut job mouthpiece.
The Geek Hillbilly
God cannot, however, be DISproven. It's an unfalsifiable hypothesis. So, you're right, science cannot ever say, definitively, that god doesn't exist.
True but science CAN definitively disprove specific claims about the nature of god. There are innumerable and fairly specific claims made in religious texts detailing the nature and actions of god(s). Many of these are of such a nature that they are falsifiable and thus can be subjected to scientific inquiry. Unsurprisingly most of these claims regarding god turn out to be made up nonsense when looked at objectively or have been so twisted from the actual facts as to be effectively unrecognizable from what actually occurred.
So if someone wants to make a completely vague assertion that there is a god and make no specific claims regarding the nature of said deity then no, science cannot disprove that. (though it doesn't mean we should believe said claim either) But it's hard to make a believable story about god without adding some details to the story and that is usually where the wheels come off. Claims about the physical world we live in can (frequently) be tested and dismissed as the made up poppycock that they so often are.
Most media is worthless fluff pieces including most of what is right here on Slashdot.
As for Lawrence Krauss... if only the man could calm down about being an atheist for 5 minutes maybe he'd find some respect. This guy makes religious fundies look normal.... and I say this as someone with no real religious outlook. The guy just can't get over being an atheist and crying that he's persecuted for it. He's a grade A loon.
God is outside of the realm of science, but science is not outside of God's.
*note the difference between god and God.
Extreme right corrupt businessman, pandering to the GOP that will be voted in so they will continue favorable laws for his organisations, one of which happens to be a dedicated mouthpiece for the GOP.
Name one.
Athiesm is philosophy, not science.
That is indeed true. However atheism is essentially a null hypothesis. It makes FAR more sense, in the absence of credible evidence, to believe that there is no "god(s)" than to by default in a theist position. Believing in a deity as a default position because you can't prove one doesn't exist is completely irrational. By comparison the only irrational position an atheist can take is to say they are unwilling to be convinced by credible evidence that a god of some description exists. But since no such credible objective evidence actually has ever been presented it's only irrational in principle since their conclusion (the null hypothesis) remains the same.
Since scientists tend to be rational thinkers they would logically start with the null hypothesis that there is no god unless evidence shows otherwise. Most would be willing to be convinced that god exists (call that agnosticism if you want) but can find no sane basis to do so without some amount of credible evidence. So they maintain the null hypothesis that there is no god as there is no evidence to move them from the null hypothesis.
Way to go WSJ...
There's no point in having a useless debate. I question them posting the original article, but there's no reason to make it worse by pretending there's any way to come up with a retort. Science cannot, ever, prove or disprove religion. Period. Religion cannot, ever, prove or disprove Science. They are polar opposites and not related.
At best, Science could claim that Religion is an fascinating form of Philosophy and an interesting topic for study. While Religion could say that Science was an interesting way to study Gods design. Anyone that goes further is just trying to pick a fight and will never concede their point so just avoid it all together.
Only to those who don't understand science...
Guys, calm down. This is the Wall Street Journal, the most schizophrenic company in the world. Read a couple of issues of the newspaper and you'll see what I mean.
Articles - 99% of the paper, well written, fact based pieces on current issues of the day. Not balanced since it's understandably tilted toward the business aspects of those issues but an extremely reliable source of information.
Editorials - 2 pages, far right diatribes with the basic premise that big business & capitalism == good, everything else bad.
I don't know how the feature reporters survive in that environment but I applaud them for living in a harsh environment and doing an excellent job.
Don Dugger
"Censeo Toto nos in Kansa esse decisse." - D. Gale
The press at large isn't interested in informing the public one whit but in encouraging actions by the public in one direction or another. I'm depressed that so many people rely on bought-and-sold sources of information.
At least rely on the internet for your news. Contrary to popular belief it is better: It's much harder to manipulate the beliefs of the masses when argument can be had right at the source of information.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
No you have only proven an entity is capable of that. You have not provided evidence that that entity is a god or similar avatar. Misquoting clark : sufficientely advanced science can look like magic. How do you prove that entity you describe is a god, or in reality is not but a very advanced technologically civilisation with very advanced tech, with an unknown agenda wanting to make us believe they have/are god ? You can't.
God is essentially unknowable, as no matter what feat it does, there could be a technological ET having mastered tech being able to reproduce that. God can neither be proven nor disproven, except maybe if you meet him after death, instead of oblivion.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
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What if Zeus is right and the Christian god is wrong? What if Odin is right and Zeus is wrong? Choices, choices...
All this says is that scientifically, one cannot prove the existence of God simply 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 by Krauss's own admission, that appearance is "overwhelming". I would suggest, therefore, it is not wholly 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 refutation to this merely echoes the sentiment hat there are alternative explanations for that appearance, which doesn't refute the point that life could actually have been designed is nonetheless still 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. One might very well believe that to be the case, and such a belief might be the only thing that one is capable of believing that is consistent with their world view, but that belief, no matter how certain, is no more proof than even an overwhelming appearance of design constitutes definitive proof of design.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
There are prejudicial, holier than thou, Atheists in the scientific communities who like to continually bash and make fun of everyone different then them.
So we shouldn't point out the crazy irrational people in our midst. If I stood in the middle of Times Square and demanded that we all worship hippos you would rightly treat me as a crazy person. But I'm supposed to respect the beliefs of someone who claims that we were all created by some mythical invisible being who is unknowable and for which there is no actual objective evidence of their existence? Sorry no. They get the crazy person treatment too. I'll be courteous and civil (as long as they are) but I'm not going to respect some I think is stone cold nuts.
Who like to take science, and pretend that it disproves God and that is says that every religious person is ethically and intellectually inferior to themselves.
No reasonable scientist is claiming the science disproves god. It's an unfalsifiable claim so there would be no point in even trying. However scientists can, do and should examine specific claims about the nature and "actions" of this alleged god. And there are innumerable claims that can and have been tested and not surprisingly have mostly been shown to be complete nonsense.
And yet.. Twitter Published NDTs bombshell for Christmas
Now we know where the reall moral fiber has move to.. #Twitter
The word 'god' is so ill-defined that it's not possible to be convinced by credible evidence of anything regarding it. It's not possible to distinguish between a 'god', a sufficiently advanced alien, a 'wizard', living in a simulation, etc.
Aliens.
Esra Erimez
Sorry, mate, but you can't be more wrong. Offense is something that is taken, not given. You can insult people, but being offended is something people decide all on their own.
You can live your life trying not to offend anyone, but it's a losing proposition and you only end up placating those whiners that are better off being ignored anyway.
Then again, you're probably one of these whiners and so vain you think the post was specifically about you and your pathetic excuse for what you call spiritual thinking (teaching point: THAT was an insult).
-Anonymous coward (irony++)
"He's a grade A loon." - careful, you are projecting too much
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
WSJ is known for its "technical" incompetence. In the following article, they credit mostly Xerox with inventing the Internet.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB...
The grossest error is that the author blatantly dismisses the ARPA invention of packet switching JUST because it was originally (allegedly) used for NON-computers. (For example, terminals.) Packet switching is THE primary feature of the Internet, regardless of the nature of the traffic (content). The fact that the content of the packets can be anything is part of what makes the Internet the Internet.
The cable design itself, which the article over-emphasizes, is fairly arbitrary and had decent alternatives at the time. Plus, the inventor of Ethernet gained a lot of his knowledge from prior gov't funded projects before working for Xerox.
I suspect it's the anti-government slant of the WSJ that creates such bad articles rather than mere incompetence. Look at the record of who it's owned by.
Table-ized A.I.
Quoting someone's comment on the article: "Distilled down, this is your argument for god. God set the fine scale variation so that 13.8 billions years later, we could evolve and Jesus could visit so we could kill him and save the universe. So if someone were to dispose of this error in your thinking, would you dispose of god."
What some people don't quite realize is that we can have Jesus'es without God. A Jesus is just a cultural archetype that arises in times of (societal) turmoil who teaches some (ethical) principles, which are then spread by followers. This sort of thing happens all the time, with Jesus being a particular case. There were lots of messiahs at the time of Jesus, and Jesus is just the one who became the most famous. Buddha is another Jesus. In Science, Einstein is a Jesus of sorts. Also, there are other kinds of cultural architypes besides Jesus'es.
If you restrict yourself to political and social Jesus'es, which has happened many times on Earth, it seems inevitable that Jesus will come to "visit" alien societies. The alien world will experience some very alien concept of societal difficulty. Someone (or lots of someones) will arise in this time and teach some useful lessons. One of those Jesus'es will become the most famous (although many of the others' lessons will be attributed to this individual), and some of those messages will survive in an alien religious way. This all assumes alien worlds that have "individuals," which is surely not always the case.
What is Christianity anyhow? It's just a set of ethical principles (which have been horribly bastardized by most of the followers). Everyone is created equal under the eyes of [Abstract Deity], even women and slaves. Everyone has done some bad things. Forgiveness is available to those who acknowledge that they've done bad things and truly prefer to not do bad things. Most of the rest of it (accepting Jesus as your savior, the virgin birth, his death and resurrection, various Hebrew rules, etc.) is all fluff there to perpetuate the religion, which is only maintained due to cultural natural selection (those religions without properties like this don't survive, so those things are just artifacts).
but... clearly Zeus, Odin, and all the others did not protect their followers when the Christians and Muslims murdered them and tore down their temples, so clearly YHWH is right by the ancient rite of 'Ultimate Fight: Last God Standing'.
You statement doesn't at all address what he questioned, merely spouted liberal talking points.
> But since no such credible objective evidence actually has ever been presented it's only irrational in principle since their conclusion (the null hypothesis) remains the same.
Anselm's ontological argument has been verified as logically sound.
http://www.csl.sri.com/~rushby/papers/ontological.pdf
There's even a simplification of it that was discovered by a mechanical prover. Seems like it's one of the earliest examples of a diagonal argument -
http://mally.stanford.edu/Papers/ontological-computational.pdf
They didn't print an opposing and well written view by one of the leading voices in the scientific community on this issue.
If he's one of the "lead voices" then you don't want to be led by him:
Lawrence Krauss’s book A Universe from Nothing managed something few thought possible -- to outdo Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion in sheer intellectual frivolousness.
* http://edwardfeser.blogspot.ca/2013/02/forgetting-nothing-learning-nothing.html
What’s the difference between a philosopher of science and a scientist who comments on philosophy? The difference is that the philosopher usually makes sure he’s done his homework before opening his mouth.
* http://edwardfeser.blogspot.ca/2012/01/maudlin-on-philosophy-of-cosmology.html
* http://edwardfeser.blogspot.ca/2013/07/fifty-shades-of-nothing.html
I'm sure Krauss is very good at his scientific niche, but he (like Dawkins, Hawkins, and many others) are out of their depth when it comes to these things.
...did Krauss offer up irrefutable, peer-reviewed, proof, that all of the matter for the Big Bang just appeared (or existed) out of nowhere before the Big Bang actually happened?
The universe can't have been made without matter....and the matter can't exist without being created via some process.
Since, science, you know, can't prove that matter can spontaneously come into existence without any outside pieces....
The whole of "intelligent design" arguments come down to this same argument: something is really unlikely; therefore the only possibility left is god. It's not a scientific argument. It's not even a logical argument. It's an emotional one predicated on couching it in emotional terms and then relying on the fallacy that unlikely things never happen, or pseudo-mathematically, "p == 0 for p epsilon, for suitably small values of epsilon".
It's really an argument from ignorance. "Anything I can't understand must have been made by god."
Isn't Krauss being ridiculous here?
1. The OP writer never claimed to be a scientist.
2. Why criticise a person with an agenda? Why is an 'agenda' something bad? Doesn't the article go against Krauss' own agenda anyway?
2. You don't need to be a "scientist" to have the right to analyze scientific knowledge. Journalists do it all the time.
Go cry in a corner, Krauss.
A null hypothesis is generally the commonly held view or answer compared to the alternate hypothesis.
That is not what a null hypothesis is at all. A null hypothesis must be falsifiable. The position that there is no god because there is no evidence is falsifiable by finding evidence. The position that there is a god in spite of the lack of any evidence is not falsifiable and thus cannot be a null hypothesis. A null hypothesis is NOT merely the more commonly held view.
You could simply say that "I don't know, but I'm sure it wasn't a deity," but that's about as scientific as the missionary's position, and a lot less well developed.
Nobody says that. They simply say that there is no evidence to support the assertion that it was a deity and therefore my current hypothesis that there is no god remains intact. It would also be perfectly reasonable to say "I doubt it was a deity".
Point being, for most people, a creation based on a deity or first mover is the null hypothesis.
It is not and cannot be a null hypothesis because it is not falsifiable. There is no way to ever test or show that the null hypothesis is false for a theist. It is only a hypothesis if you can actually test it. Otherwise it is merely a fantasy.
The WSJ lost credibility some time ago. They have succumb to the same clickbait that most papers have resorted to.
People very frequently choose not to believe proven things, like the utility of vaccines, that the moon landings happened, that the holocaust happened, that some people are born gay, that human-caused global warming is real and will bite is in the ass, and so on.
Furthermore, the choice to believe and the choice to obey are two very different things. And even furthermore this notion that it is somehow noble and virtuous to believe a claim that lacks evidence is ridiculous. Upon reflection it becomes clear that rejecting a belief in God is not so much disobeying a God that told you to believe as it is disagreeing with all the fallible humans that wrote the Bible. It doesn't make sense that disagreeing with a bunch of fallible humans would be a sin worthy of eternal torture.
Ok I'm done.
"If the sky breaks open, choirs of angels break forth, a 10km-long arm reaches down from the skies and an 8km golden-haired, bearded face looks down upon humanity and utters words of unshakable truth...then God is proven."
No, I would just think that the acid I have today is extra good.
LOL. If it's not outside the natural world, then it has every characteristic of the most dishonest bunkum, and no characteristics of something -- anything -- to do with objective reality. In other words, if you remove the "disjoint magisteria" claim from the assessment of religion, you don't have anything left worth a plugged nickle.
Which is not to say you have much with the "disjoint magisteria" argument; but at least you have something.
The whole argument boils down to "there's no scientific proof of religion because science has no access to religion, and that's the way God wants it." As soon as you assert science does have access to religion... game over, because now you require consensually experiential, repeatable evidence to back your assertion -- and no one's been able to meet that standard since day one. Not that it wouldn't be super if you could do it; but all of human experience lands on the side of the scale that says you won't.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
I've read both the offending article and the response from Krauss and frankly Krauss is right on the money. The article is so painfully full of woo and so devoid of fact I can only come to the conclusion that the editors at the WSJ are a bunch of biased religious pandering idiots. What's even more enjoyable is how the refused to print his rebuttal because in doing so it would have show how painfully shotty their editorial process is.
Dr. Krauss has done us a service by clearly demonstrating the WSJ is good for nothing more than lining the bottoms of bird cages where it can get treated with the respect it fully deserves.
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
while the smart retort can be read by everyone - seems o.k. to me.
make sense now?
... how, exactly?
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There are serious concerns with many versions of the fine-tuning argument, but Krauss raises none of those concerns. Instead, he raises the sorts of objections that someone unfamiliar with claims about fine-tuning would raise, objections that would be covered in a "first, let's quickly set aside all the bad objections to fine-tuning arguments so we can get onto the interesting parts" section of a lecture. His response is the work of an intelligent person who thinks that just because they're an expert in one area, they must be an expert in all.
Why should the WSJ publish rubbish like that?
To ammuse him self.
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Just because it's from a reputable scientist doesn't make the response brilliant.
The argument that in a universe with different values for constants, life could exist --- just not as we know it --- is weak. Evolution requires heritable traits subject to selection pressure. A serious argument for "life, but not as we know it" needs some thought experiments suggesting how evolution could work in alternative universes, e.g. universes where hydrogen is the only element that can exist. I've read widely in this area but not found such thought experiments. In their absence, it would have been better to leave this argument out.
IMHO by far the biggest problem for the claim that life must be abundant in the universe is Fermi's paradox. Such claim must be accompanied by an explanation for the absence of evidence (not unlike many religious claims!). There are various possible explanations for Fermi's paradox, but the credibility of the life-everywhere hypothesis depends on them so they have to be made. That wouldn't fit into a short letter-to-the-editor rebuttal, which means a short-letter-to-the-editor rebuttal is not a good format for addressing this issue.
What if Zeus is right and the Christian god is wrong? What if Odin is right and Zeus is wrong? Choices, choices...
Odin promised to rid the world of ice giant, whereas the Christian god promised to eliminate poverty and hate. I haven't seen any ice giants recently...
But, if Zeus was right, we'd be worshipping Zeus and the Christian God would be a tale told in D&D. Same goes for Odin.
This is not saying the Christian God is obviously right because he's worshipped more widely--just that your implied assertion that "because it could be any of them means it's probably not any of them" is wrong.
If the sky breaks open, choirs of angels break forth, a 10km-long arm reaches down from the skies and an 8km golden-haired, bearded face looks down upon humanity and utters words of unshakable truth...then God is proven.
Well, although I believe some sort of supernatural entity created the universe, the scenario you describe would not "prove" the existence of God to me.
"What does God need with a starship?" James T. Kirk famously asked in Star Trek V.
What does God need with a beard, or a cohort of angels, or an arm or a face, or anything resembling the body of an earthly living being, for that matter?
If I see a 10 km-long arm in the sky, I will think "damn, that's an impressive hoax."
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
His personal beliefs are irrelevant. His business belief that siding with the conservative extremists will generate the most profit is all you need to be aware of. Much like Rush Limbaugh has recanted, but not renounced his show. When asked about what *he* believes, he stresses that he's an entertainer that's trying to get an audience, not a reporter trying to report the truth.
Learn to love Alaska
. A scientist's argument when dealing within their scientific expertise is more likely to be valid, yes.
It's an an appeal to authority when it's a direct refutation withing ones expertise. It's a appeal to authority if I say, he said it, he is an scientist, therefor I am right.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
CAUTION, wild tangent here.
Unfortunately, the one it proves is not the one the religion finds satisfying.
The history of science is that the more we learn, the more we find we need to know.
Every time we unpeel a layer of nature, we find another.
Think chemistry, atoms, quarks.
This trend says it is unlikely that we will ever have a clue as to what made the universe.
It just was/is.
It is also everything, AKA all powerful.
All powerful is pretty much the definition of God.
So if you have two all powerful things (Universe and God) they must be the same thing.
Which says if you have a universe, (science pretty much says we do), the you have a God.
Unfortunately, it is not God that takes personal interest in what you do kind of religious god.
Which pretty much eliminates the need for religion
And all the good and evil it provides.
So the interesting question is what made God/ the universe.
That's pretty much a faith issue of it just was.
Like I said, warning a wild tangent.
But pretty much matches the scientific facts.
Which says science proves God, just not a satisfying one.
Why would we be worshipping Zeus if he was right? After all, he was worshipped at one time. And could well be worshipped again for all we know. Gods keep rising and falling...
You might very well be worse off than if you had believed in no god.
Just curious but how do you actually choose whether or not to believe in something? Generally I find it is a process of listening to the evidence and then making up my mind whether or not something is true. That 'belief' can be changed by evidence, thoughts or ideas - either ones I come up with or ones others share in a discussion - but it never seems to me to be a conscious decision about whether or not I want to believe something: either something seems correct or it doesn't.
This is what I find fascinating about an argument like this. You can certainly act like you believe in $deity but can you really make yourself actually believe in something (or not believe) by making a conscious decision to do so? I'm not sure that I could in which case such arguments become utterly invalid since your belief, or lack of it, is not something you really control.
The nature of God is such that it cannot be proven. Otherwise, we lose the choice to believe.
Incorrect. The existence of a god could (in theory) be proven. A god could simply choose to reveal itself if it were real. What cannot be proven conclusively is the NON-existence of a god.
That said, science has yet to prove what the universe is, so how could we expect it to prove something outside of it?
If we don't know what the universe is then we cannot presume that any deity is "outside of it", whatever that means.
And many chose not to.
Others have their choice made for them when they're still in awe of grown ups merely for the accident of not having died for many years, something any idiot can manage to do.
Sigh ....can this forum be used for tech and not politics ?????
For many scientists the study of nature is the study of God's creation.
Many of the great men and scientists throughout history had faith in God.
Einstein said that he was just trying to figure out the universe that God created.
Newton spent most of his adult life studying God.
Actually science 'kind' of can prove that God exists . . only it just isn't the God of religion. The anthropic question hits a massive insurmountable barrier in the nature of the creation of the universe in the fine tuning of physics. The simple rule of chance alone is staggeringly improbable (off memory 1 : 10^10^128 against), finite multiverses cant reduce this improbability significantly, infinite multiverses .. fail for other reasons. Basically even though its a terrible solution God is currently a front runner by a mile..
But it isn't much like the God in the Bible. - A mindless force that creates increasing order. As such it no longer even exists - its energy actually was / is the Big Bang and its 'death' was the birth of our universe.. It creates and destroys billions of suns every day - we and the Earth are beyond utterly insignificant to it.. Given that its primary rule for doing anything seems to be / is evolution it doesn't fit well with the traditional image of a 'good' God that serves human-kind.. (As such humanity being a peak of 'natural' evolution also represents an apex of billions of years of suffering and death. )
Of course the real truth is that the scientific analysis of God is the last thing religion wants. Once you penetrate and solve Gods 'mystery' there is a cold hard reality waiting on the other side, and a reality where there is no place to hide..
Below the speed of light Special Relativity is one of the most accurate theories in physics - above the speed of light..
But is he qualified to hold an opinion on God?
this stupid mutherfucker also thinks Jeff Epstein is a model citizen. And he's in Dick Dawkins camp. Nice....