The ultimate and inevitable conclusion about science and religion

tryptophan said:

I don't think there is any scientific reason to believe in God, but I do think that one can come to a belief in God from personal experience or thought. I don't think that it is inevitable that science will state that belief in God is counter to sense. I think that for some people, belief in God is something inherrent in them. Whether that belief comes from God himself or just some basic physiological thing is a point for another thread.

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Nice post!

DJ_Ghost said:

Because it is a central tenet of science that it does not provided answers to the metaphysical. It has to be, because science can only study the natural. That does not mean it excludes the possibility of things outside the natural, only that science can’t look into those possibilities.

I am afraid i can’t answer that question for you, if you don’t have faith I can’t explain why others do. I am not even certain I can articulate why I do. Other people who have often (but not, I must add) understand. Now that's not an attempt to dodge your question it is an admission that I am not articulate enough to explain my reasons. (And oh how I hate to admit such a fallibility )

Ghost

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Socrastein said:

I could have just as easily given an example that we don't have evidence for or against that people would still consider crazy. Like a man who believes there is an tiny, intangible, magical elf that lives in side his right ear canal? No evidence either way, but that wouldn't stop the vast majority of people from saying this guy is crazy.

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Wait; I have an idea...maybe the idea of God as some know it/him/her fills the metaphysical needs better than a magical elf in someone's ear. Consider what it would mean if there really was a magical elf, as opposed to a god. The consequences of these are very different, especially the way we understand the two concepts today. So it's easy to understand why no one believes in a magical elf; how would that help them in any way, especially compared to how a god could help them?

So, people have faith, and believe in a god, because it answers metaphysical questions and satisfies metaphysical needs better. God-belief is like a good-fitting gear in a clock that turns other gears...as opposed to an elf-belief, which would be an ill-fitting gear and it wouldn't be able to turn the other gears...

Fine - the magic elf Joe Crazy believes in supposedly will give him $8.3 billion on his 50th birthday if he still believes in him, and after he dies Joe will be able to live in a magical forest where hot naked women will caress him all day and he will be fed ice cream sandwiches forever, but never grow fat! Also, the elf created the universe and gave man morality

Is that better? Does it make it any less crazy if the magical being brings good consequences? No, it does not. The fact remains that God is immune to the stigma of "Crazy unsupported conjecture" that just about any other idea would be stuck with.

enlightenment said:

Undisputed criteria:

• The earth is old, the universe is old, the sun is old. These things are proven; there simply is no debate. Those who deny such things deny the evidence that is before them and which has been accepted by countless people smarter and more trained in science than those in objection.
• Those who continue to support the idea of a young earth and universe and sun, do so because ideology and religious superstition are put above objectivity.
• As time has gone on in the U.S. and people have become more literate and more educated in science, and in general, as people have become less superstitious, the arguments traditionally used to vouch for the existence of god or gods or spirits have eroded.
• Whereas all of nature and its mysterious forces were before attributed to God or the gods or other spirits, and are now attributed to the behavior of matter acting according to natural laws, in modern times God has been reduced to the explanation for the big bang or a random quantum fluctuation.
• As these arguments were picked away gradually, and as science more sharply conflicted with traditional religious ideas, those who militantly clung to the traditional ideas as opposed to science became fundamentalists and founded the fundamentalist movement.
• Because fundamentalist doctrine favored ideological and religious views over science, the element of anti-intellectualism and intellectual dishonesty manifested itself in creationist teaching.

Further criteria:
Science explains the natural world through theories with natural, verifiable tests. Superstition, such as that found in ancient nature religions and in witchcraft, are the backbone of religious ideas. Superstition is belief in a supernatural explanation for the behavior of the universe. Religion is organized superstition.

How can, or why would, anyone believe in a god, even a pantheistic god, when there is no reason to believe in one?

Conclusion:
There is no god. Science shows us that everything has a natural cause. Using gaps in our current knowledge (i.e. first cause argument) to show that god could exist, does not show that one does exist. There is no reason to believe that a god or gods or spirits exist.

Challenge:
Show me one single case of a supernatural event occurring, such as levitation. There is none.

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I think you made some good points, but there's nothing among them that makes the nonexistence of God an inevitable conclusion. At best, perhaps you've rendered God unnecessary.

Socrastein said:

Fine - the magic elf Joe Crazy believes in supposedly will give him $8.3 billion on his 50th birthday if he still believes in him.

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That bits testable.

Ghost

Lol, how did I miss that DJ ghost. How about - the elf will give him happiness if and only if Joe truly believes in him on his 50th birthday? Nonfalsifiable

Socrastein said:

Lol, how did I miss that DJ ghost. How about - the elf will give him happiness if and only if Joe truly believes in him on his 50th birthday? Nonfalsifiable

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Lol. Now I think you have it, that should be unfalsifible. (Unless he is hit by a bus, declaired bankrupt, diagnosed with hepatitis and abandoned by his wife all on his 50th birthday of course!).

Ghost

enlightenment said:

Undisputed criteria:

• The earth is old, the universe is old, the sun is old. These things are proven; there simply is no debate. Those who deny such things deny the evidence that is before them and which has been accepted by countless people smarter and more trained in science than those in objection.
• Those who continue to support the idea of a young earth and universe and sun, do so because ideology and religious superstition are put above objectivity.
• As time has gone on in the U.S. and people have become more literate and more educated in science, and in general, as people have become less superstitious, the arguments traditionally used to vouch for the existence of god or gods or spirits have eroded.
• Whereas all of nature and its mysterious forces were before attributed to God or the gods or other spirits, and are now attributed to the behavior of matter acting according to natural laws, in modern times God has been reduced to the explanation for the big bang or a random quantum fluctuation.
• As these arguments were picked away gradually, and as science more sharply conflicted with traditional religious ideas, those who militantly clung to the traditional ideas as opposed to science became fundamentalists and founded the fundamentalist movement.
• Because fundamentalist doctrine favored ideological and religious views over science, the element of anti-intellectualism and intellectual dishonesty manifested itself in creationist teaching.

Further criteria:
Science explains the natural world through theories with natural, verifiable tests. Superstition, such as that found in ancient nature religions and in witchcraft, are the backbone of religious ideas. Superstition is belief in a supernatural explanation for the behavior of the universe. Religion is organized superstition.

How can, or why would, anyone believe in a god, even a pantheistic god, when there is no reason to believe in one?

Conclusion:
There is no god. Science shows us that everything has a natural cause. Using gaps in our current knowledge (i.e. first cause argument) to show that god could exist, does not show that one does exist. There is no reason to believe that a god or gods or spirits exist.

Challenge:
Show me one single case of a supernatural event occurring, such as levitation. There is none.

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Until all of science is learned, one will wait before declaring anything absolutely proven.

Dj Ghost said:

Lol. Now I think you have it, that should be unfalsifible. (Unless he is hit by a bus, declaired bankrupt, diagnosed with hepatitis and abandoned by his wife all on his 50th birthday of course!).

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Ah but then we could say he didn't really believe in the elf Poor Joe, he of little faith.

And speaking of magical elves...

Question:
Is the idea that everything just materialized out of nowhere, some kind of spontaneous generation (the atheist's view of how the universe, electrons etc. came into existence) any more reasonable than believing in a magical elf?

Answer:
No. It's not.

You may as well say there was nothing before the big bang (or big bangs)... and expect us to believe that 'nothing' exploded. Yeah right.

At best, science can explain the methods and materials used in the creation process. It can't explain how those materials appeared out of total nothingness. And you can't clam 'percieved nothingness' is true nothingness. I'm not talking about that... I'm speaking of the truest void.




But even if this is all an infinite continuum, a kind of cosmic multi-dimensional mobeus strip, there must be something ... oh wait... Alpha and Omega, the beginning and end, the eternal source and and eternal conclusion. Anything less, and I wouldn't call it my God.

mrkguy75 said:

You may as well say there was nothing before the big bang (or big bangs)... and expect us to believe that 'nothing' exploded. Yeah right.

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The Big Bang was not an explosion.

Ghost

Mrkguy75

http://www.christianforums.com/t1672852-refutation-of-the-first-cause-argument.html

Socrastein said:

Mrkguy75

http://www.christianforums.com/t1672852-refutation-of-the-first-cause-argument.html

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Thank you for the link, Socrastein. A fascinating read (though I lost some of the article by viewing it through Photoshop... my copy of Acrobat Reader isn't working at the moment).


The acausality of the universe, as discussed in that thread, appears very similar to the notion that God is infinite, and also acausal. A universe without beginning or end sounds a lot like the 'Alpha and Omega' of theological thought. As such, still I don't see support for the idea that 'the ultimate and inevitible conclusion about science and religion' is that there is no God. From my point of view, that simply shows there's more similarity between our views than previously thought. It nearly reduced it down to a question of how one defines God, or how one defines the universe.


DJ_Ghost: Whether or not the big bang was actually a 'bang' or not, let alone the true beginning of electrons etc., doesn't really doesn't change my views, just my knowledge. I should have realized the 'big bang first' notion wouldn't be accepted by many thinking atheists at this point in time (kind of like if an atheist said that christians believe the Sun revolves aorund the Earth) ... unfortunately the 'magical elf' analogy prompted me to go after that weakness (even though, not surprisingly, it isn't really an issue).


Anyway, I should really read these threads more often. So many thought-provoking ideas on all sides...

Current scientific thinking doesn't say the universe is without beginning or end. It had a beginning, about 14.5 billion years ago. From a pure vacuum (Nothing) the universe randomly quantum tunneled into a false vacuum (A smidge of not-quite-nothing). This bundle of energy expanded exponentially into the inflation of the big bang. In the first fractions of a second, symmetry broke, and the laws of physics as we know them were created. Later on the energy cooled and became matter, much like water vapor cools into snowflakes, and from this matter stars and galaxies and what not formed.

This isn't yet a scientific theory, but it is consistent with all known data and science, it violates no known scientific principles, and it is parsimonious. All of this combined renders any appeal to the supernatural for an explanation of the universe completely irrational and unnecessary.

DJ_Ghost said:

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Fallacy of forced analogy. In the case of God we have no evidence at all either way. In the case of Santa Clause we have evidence of his none existence (We know who really delivers the presents), in the case of the Easter bunny and the tooth fairy we also have evidence, we know who really does what is attributed to them. The thing about a deity is that we would never know one way or the other (unless the deity was an interventionist one I suppose).

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I think the santa clause analogy is a good one because he can be or cannot be falsified depending on the way you define him. As has already been pointed out, all the children may have been bad. Therefore the parents were forced to deliver the presents. Why wasn't santa at the north pole? He was taking a trip to Africa for awhile. Why wasn't he found in Africa? Well, Santa can turn invisible at will. This is the same with God, you have to keep redefining him to leave the possibility of his existence.
Of course, no one can disprove every single type of god, but I have yet to meet an atheist who claims that.

Hey, I need one more post before I can choose my own avatar!

Socrastein said:

Current scientific thinking doesn't say the universe is without beginning or end. It had a beginning, about 14.5 billion years ago. From a pure vacuum (Nothing) the universe randomly quantum tunneled into a false vacuum (A smidge of not-quite-nothing). This bundle of energy expanded exponentially into the inflation of the big bang. In the first fractions of a second, symmetry broke, and the laws of physics as we know them were created. Later on the energy cooled and became matter, much like water vapor cools into snowflakes, and from this matter stars and galaxies and what not formed.

This isn't yet a scientific theory, but it is consistent with all known data and science, it violates no known scientific principles, and it is parsimonious. All of this combined renders any appeal to the supernatural for an explanation of the universe completely irrational and unnecessary.

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Ok, back to square one. If one says universe randomly quantum tunneled into "A smidgen of not-quite nothing", one cannot also say that the universe came from a pure vacuum. Something was there. Enough "something", in fact, to give us stars, naked mole rats and, ultimately, Taco Bell. What we call 'the universe' may very well have formed 14.5 billion years ago. And that is fascinating, but the theory you represent leaves plenty of room to question what came before it. It still doesn't explain where the original energy came from. Sure, there's much energy to be extracted from a single atom, for example, but that potential energy was there to begin with.

I think the theory is deceptive in that it puts forth some reasonable science, sucks us into its cosmology, and then attempts to pull a fast one, hoping the reader will continue to agree without noticing the big ol' slab of prejudice stapled to it.

True science can only claim so much as is verifiable, and it should ideally remain detatched from peoples' prejudices (and we all have them, to varying degrees). If allowed to progress that way, it will never make claims about the existence of a creator or not. One must still interperet the data available, and draw his or her own conclusions.

spanner365 said:

This is the same with God, you have to keep redefining him to leave the possibility of his existence.

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That depends. If you set up a straw-man, only to knock it down, people will inevitably remind you that your definition is off. Of course, not all people devote time to thinking about this sort of thing. Perhaps for some people, their belief in God is, in fact, like a belief in Santa Clause. However, the idea of God as the infinite source/creator has been a common thread across many cultures throughout history. And the definition of universe as infinite, and the source of all things (which, regrettably, you're not doing here), comes close to that age-old definition of God.

...and that all people who believe in a Deity are young earth creationists (which very many of us are not);
...and that all people who believe in a Deity are also fundamentalists (which very many of us are not);
...and that all people who believe in a Deity also believe that the Bible is the only accurate source of early history (which very many of us do not -- and we're also aware of, and accept carbon dating, the fossil record, and other pre-Biblical writings such as the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Mesopotamian creation myths).

In fact, there are a good many of us religious folks who believe that while science and religion use different tools to explore the different facts of what these two areas are about; the two areas actually work very much in tandem, e.g., what we learn about science, and the universe (both macro- and micro-), and mathematics, and logic, and philosophy, and chemistry, and so on also tells us something about the way God works in the universe.

Don't make the mistake of assuming that all religious folks are conservative Christian fundamentalists who are young earth creationists. That description fits actually only a very small minority of religious folks.

mrkguy75 said:

Ok, back to square one. If one says universe randomly quantum tunneled into "A smidgen of not-quite nothing", one cannot also say that the universe came from a pure vacuum. Something was there.

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No cosmological model states that the Universe came from anything. There was never any point in time when the Universe was not there; it's always been around. Just happens that 'always' may or may not be past-eternal.