Does Science prove God does not exist?

Science shows God's work.

True enough. Even if you believe in the scientific theories and findings, the absolute worst-case scenario is that God didn't do it quite like it was described in the Bible.

And so what? That's just something else to shove over from the "literal" column to the "allegorical" one.

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To them, you're just a freak, like me! They need you right now, but when they don't, they'll cast you out, like a leper!
You see, their morals, their code, it's a bad joke. Dropped at the first sign of trouble. They're only as good as the world allows them to be. I'll show you. When the chips are down, these... these civilized people, they'll eat each other.

See, I'm not a monster. I'm just ahead of the curve.

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If you believe God created the natural world, and science is the study of the natural world, then then you are correct.

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"If we begin with certainties, we shall end in doubts; if we begin with doubts, and are patient, we shall end in certainties."
-Marcus Aurelius

Dude, I got an A in logic and you've shown none of the principles I learned to show a logical relationship here. You seem to imply that it is proven that items 1 through 4 are known. You're begging the question.

What you are saying (in summary), breaking it down:

A. The creater, if he exists, must be omnipotent.
B. Omnipotence is impossible.
A and B = No creator

While A is true, B has not been proven. Be is not necessarily true.

Same with 3 and 4, except in 4, Benevolence is possible, so it in its simplest form, your logic on number 4 proves the existence of God.

A. The creater, if he exists, must be benevolent.
B. Benevolence is CERTAINLY possible for someone to be.
A and B means creater is possible (wrt Benevolence only).

You would probably want to throw 4 out since it is irrelevant to your argument.

Bottom line is you can't prove a the non-existence of a creator without searching the entire universe and the other 6 of the 10 theorized dimensions (reference on the dimensions available upon request). Unless, of course, you state some rather extensive assumptions.

Actually, it's A that is not necessarily true. Deity only has to be powerful enough to do the actions ascribed to it: creating the universe, raising the dead, etc. It is a man-made extrapolation from the power required for these actions that deity is omnipotent.

What you see in the post you quoted is an example of a strawman argument.

That's one way of doing it. Search the entire search space. The other way to do so is to demonstrate that the actions ascribed to deity were not done by deity. That is, to show that the universe arose thru a process other than creation by an intelligent entity. Hawking realizes that, if No Boundary is true, then that is what he has done. In No Boundary the universe just IS and wasn't created. The catch is that No Boundary has not been shown to be correct. It might be correct. But then again, creation by a deity might be correct.

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"If sound science appears to contradict the Bible, we may be sure that it is our interpretation of the Bible that is at fault." Christian Observer, 1832, pg. 437

"Christians should look on evolution simply as the method by which God works." Rev. James McCosh, theologian and President of Princeton, 1890

This is equivalent to saying that consciousness requires an intelligent entity -- consciousness -- to exist. You are making a revised Argument from Design. You obviously haven't been paying attention to science fiction in a while. Remember Data on the show Star Trek: The Next Generation? Here was a postulated "robot" (actually android) capable of self-programming. The result was consciousness. In more contemporary philosophical thought, Daniel Dennett has explored the issue in the books Consciousness Explained and Darwin's Dangerous Idea. Before you accept your argument as "proof", you should read and understand these.

Several programs made by Darwinian selection have produced elements of consciousness that have been good enough to fool other humans. One example is Darwinian selection to produce inventions. These inventions and the logic behind them cannot be told from inventions made by humans, and the Patent Office is considering two novel inventions by this program.

24. Jr Koza, MA Keane, MJ Streeter, Evolving inventions. Scientific American, 52-59, Feb 2003 check out www.genetic-programming.com

Oh, yes, read these two articles also:
1. GM Edelman and G Tononi, A Universe of Consciousness How Matter Becomes Imagination, Basic Books, 2000. Argue that a Darwinian model can be applied to neural activity to explain consciousness. In this "neural Darwinism", selective mechanisms on various scales arise, favoring certain neuronal firing patterns over others.
2. http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/conten.../294/5544/1030 Review of memory and learning as chemical processes.

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"If sound science appears to contradict the Bible, we may be sure that it is our interpretation of the Bible that is at fault." Christian Observer, 1832, pg. 437

"Christians should look on evolution simply as the method by which God works." Rev. James McCosh, theologian and President of Princeton, 1890

This is an old thread, but it has some misconceptions that still need to be corrected.

This is not methodologial naturalism. What you have defined is philosophical naturalism.

Methodological naturalism states that science is limited, by its methodology, to looking only at "natural" or material causes. Science is unable to test directly for non-natural causes. They could well exist; but science hasn't got the methodological tools to look for them directly.

Here you contradict your definition. If supernatural processes cannot be studied by "natural" tools and methods, then you can't say that the universe can be understood by natural processes alone.

So what science gives you is the material component of an explanation or process. Science doesn't tell you whether there is also a supernatural component to the explanation or process.

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"If sound science appears to contradict the Bible, we may be sure that it is our interpretation of the Bible that is at fault." Christian Observer, 1832, pg. 437

"Christians should look on evolution simply as the method by which God works." Rev. James McCosh, theologian and President of Princeton, 1890

If anything, the fact that evolution, if I do come to accept it, has led us to the point we're at now, it makes it all the more likely that evolutionary processes were directed.

If I ever do come to accept evolution, I'd be forced to stick with theistic evolution. That eliminates the probability factors that we see of the eye and brain evolving, etc.

Nothing science could possibly come up with could ever prove God did not exist. It would at best only 'prove' that our view of Him and His creation is wrong. You may be able to prove that this god or that god does not exist, but to prove that no god exists is impossible. Nothing contradicts God's law or being- just what we understand of it/Him. TTYL Jesus loves you!

I understood you to be a theistic evolutionist lucaspa. Your post to Ben_Hur seems to hint at something else.

Also, the fact that no boundary has not be demonstrated to be correct- are you saying there is no proof that the universe is isotropic? Alas, my feeble mind is confused again.

Third, how would no boundary prove that there is no God?

As others have indicated, science cannot make any *direct* claims about the existence of God, or lack thereof. Science is methodological naturalism, that is, for the sake of procedure in the discipline, all phenomena are treated as if they driven by purely naturalistic processes.

However, while science is only methodological naturalism, the completeness of the method casts serious doubt on any falsification of ontological naturalism. In many areas of thought, humans make methodological assumptions-- geometry, mechanics, interpersonal relations, etc. Practically everything.

However, in most cases, these methodological assumptions can and have been demostrated to be only that. Take, for example, the methodological assumption in simple mechanics that air resistance is negligible. In most cases, this assumption is perfectly valid, and for good reasons-- most objects that we fire about in the air have minimal surface area and/or are aerodynamically designed. But if we were to drop a large sheet to the ground of surface area 10 (m^2), our methodological assumption would fail us-- our sheet would fall far slower than it would be predicted to with our assumption.

These kind of 'exceptions' exist to counterpoint the vast majority of methodological assumptions-- but this is not the case in science. There is no case where our methodological assumption of naturalism has failed us. If naturalism truly *was* only methodological in nature, we would expect that there would exist instances where methodological naturalism is unable to explain. Simply put, *one single well-confirmed and gratuitous* breach of 'natural law' would undercut all of our arguments for ontological naturalism. At best, it would force us to re-examine our understanding of fundamental principles, and at worse, we would have to conclude that methodological naturalism is simply inadequate for explaining the universe.

The fact that no such event has occured can lead us to one of a few conclusions:

1) Ontological naturalism is true.
2) Ontological naturalism is false, but God/god/gods are, in the visible realm, acting entirely through processes describable by naturalism, or are simply refraining from engaging in the process at all.

Of course, (2) is always a possibility. You cannot ever disprove it-- this is why a deistic-style or 'hidden' god remains a possibility that everyone must remain at least agnostic towards. Science doesn't disprove god, but the completeness of science gives us very good reason to question the rationale behind arguments for ontological metaphysical happenings.

~AA