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.

Comments

A Simple Retort

[thedonger]

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."

Re:A Simple Retort

[sbaker]

You have that a little wrong. God *can* (in principle) be proven. 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.

God cannot, however, be DISproven. It's an unfalsifiable hypothesis. So, you're right, science cannot ever say, definitively, that god doesn't exist. It also can't disprove the hypothesis that the universe was created by an invisible pink unicorn...or any other random idea that humans might come up with that entails a literally omnipotent/omniscient being.

But that COMPLETELY misses what this is all about. The original WSJ article is a non-scientist claiming that science has indeed proven the existence of god. That's quite clearly incorrect...and I think you'd have to look very hard to find a competent scientist in the fields involved who'd agree with that claim. So WSJ (essentially) published something that's completely untrue, incorrect, misleading - just plain *WRONG*...and journalistic integrity says that they should now be working very hard to fix that...not rejecting a perfectly sensible response from someone who knows exactly what he's talking about.

So bad on WSJ...and at least we can make that badness clear by discussing it here.

and for a good reason.

[nimbius]

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.

Re:Yawn

[Atzanteol]

You seem to be confusing "I don't care about it" with "it's not newsworthy." Your strongest argument is "they have the right to do it."

Well damn - nothing ever newsworthy involves somebody doing something they have the right to do? So if they start publishing pro-nazi propaganda that's not "newsworthy?"

The very fact that people are discussing the issue makes it newsworthy - your apathy notwithstanding.

Dumping the Magisteria POV... whoops

[fyngyrz]

You make the assumption that religion is outside the "natural world". That's not very scientific of you.

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.