God vs. Science

[cloudyday2]

Not sure what you mean "indifferent to those who seek Him"?

Can you elaborate?

God is a personality right? (Oh wait, some theists say we must never claim anything about God... whatever.)

What is a personality? A personality takes inputs and generates semi-random outputs. If the outputs are too random, then the personality seems insane. If the outputs are too predictable, then the personality seems robotic. So we want the output to be semi-random.

So that is what I would seek to detect as evidence for God. Supposedly humans can have a relationship with God, so we must be able to see rational patterns in God's outputs. God isn't so far beyond us that we can't understand Him at all. So we look at God's hypothetical goals, and we test to see if those goals are being achieved better than would be expected by chance. That would be my approach.

 

[LoAmmi]

If you set your expectations are low enough, then you will never be disappointed with God. (I'm not criticizing you specifically, because I know this type of thinking is widely admired among theists.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tikkun_olam

It's our responsibility to repair the world. If it were a world that were perfect and there was no suffering, we wouldn't have any work to do.

 

[cloudyday2]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tikkun_olam

It's our responsibility to repair the world. If it were a world that were perfect and there was no suffering, we wouldn't have any work to do.

I like that ... tikkun_olam

 

[LoAmmi]

I like that ... tikkun_olam

It's one of my favorite concepts. Unlike Christianity, Judaism doesn't believe we live in some kind of fallen, bad world. On the contrary, the world is a good place. But it is our responsibility to make it better.

 

[light upon light]

Is a world without suffering such an unreasonable goal? Science has been gradually achieving this goal.

I think religion has also been working on the goal to reduce suffering. For example, all of the charitable works done by religious individuals and institutions.

Also, in my experience and statistically, those who have no religion are much more prone to depression and suicide than the religious.

As for a life without *any* suffering, I think it would be as meaningless as a novel with no dramatic tension.

 

[light upon light]

It's one of my favorite concepts. Unlike Christianity, Judaism doesn't believe we live in some kind of fallen, bad world. On the contrary, the world is a good place. But it is our responsibility to make it better.

It's a fabulous, wonderful concept.

Muslims and Baha'is also agree that "the fall" is an incorrect understanding of Genesis.

 

[light upon light]

God is a personality right?

I wouldn't agree with this at all.

What is a personality? A personality takes inputs and generates semi-random outputs.

I don't see this either.

 

[Zstar]

'Sprig of Parsley' - give me a break.

There is a Source for all one can see and touch...no, then how?

I don’t know you. If you think so maybe compensate for that density in what you’re finding in research. I believe God would take certain people in if they believe in the said Entity or not, depends on the life they led – some could be re-born to continue learning. Mind you this is a personal perceptive, mixed from various studies and experiences.

It all come down to you in the end - if you want to understand or dis-miss this or that for this or that, or learn from your life experiences or ignore them, you got to figure it out yourself what you accept. Hope the information you received here helps in your quest.

From my perspective the concepts of the God and science have no contradiction whatsoever except in the mind of those who don’t understand the concepts of things the way they are.

 

[cloudyday2]

I wouldn't agree with this at all.

I don't see this either.

o.k. that's fine.

 

[cloudyday2]

I don’t know you. If you think so maybe compensate for that density in what you’re finding in research. I believe God would take certain people in if they believe in the said Entity or not, depends on the life they led – some could be re-born to continue learning. Mind you this is a personal perceptive, mixed from various studies and experiences.

It all come down to you in the end - if you want to understand or dis-miss this or that for this or that, or learn from your life experiences or ignore them, you got to figure it out yourself what you accept. Hope the information you received here helps in your quest.

From my perspective the concepts of the God and science have no contradiction whatsoever except in the mind of those who don’t understand the concepts of things the way they are.

o.k., thanks.

 

[dcalling]

God is a personality right?...What is a personality? A personality takes inputs and generates semi-random outputs. If the outputs are too random, then the personality seems insane. If the outputs are too predictable, then the personality seems robotic. So we want the output to be semi-random.

When I was an atheist, I held the view that the entire universe is per-determined, and if you have a fast enough computer you can calculate a semi reliable future.

So that is what I would seek to detect as evidence for God. Supposedly humans can have a relationship with God, so we must be able to see rational patterns in God's outputs. God isn't so far beyond us that we can't understand Him at all. So we look at God's hypothetical goals, and we test to see if those goals are being achieved better than would be expected by chance. That would be my approach.

The only Goal we know of God is that God wants us to love him, love each other, love our enemies. It is not easy to survive in this world with those commandments, but you do see many people try and follow.

 

[cloudyday2]

When I was an atheist, I held the view that the entire universe is per-determined, and if you have a fast enough computer you can calculate a semi reliable future.

Exactly my thoughts. The only problem is QM, because it says we can only predict exact outcomes at the particle level. Certain structures of particles might be chaotic, so that the individual behavior of particles can drastically change the outcome at the macroscopic level. A computer is designed to NOT be sensitive to these things, but a human brain MIGHT be sensitive. If a human brain is sensitive, then this could provide a means for God to communicate with humans without violating any physical laws. This could also provide a means for some transcendent part of humans to inspire the associated physical part.

The only Goal we know of God is that God wants us to love him, love each other, love our enemies. It is not easy to survive in this world with those commandments, but you do see many people try and follow.

If a computer can someday simulate a human, then we could compare actual human behavior against the computer's predicted human behavior. If actual human behavior shows more love than the computer's predictions, then we might suspect God exists.

 

[dcalling]

Exactly my thoughts. The only problem is QM, because it says we can only predict exact outcomes at the particle level. Certain structures of particles might be chaotic, so that the individual behavior of particles can drastically change the outcome at the macroscopic level. A computer is designed to NOT be sensitive to these things, but a human brain MIGHT be sensitive. If a human brain is sensitive, then this could provide a means for God to communicate with humans without violating any physical laws. This could also provide a means for some transcendent part of humans to inspire the associated physical part.

The paring in Quantum physics kind of going that way, but you never know, since this world is so complex that what we have learned is very little. If you think of world as a big computer simulation, God can do anything even violating physical laws, because it is all just a simulation and God set the rules

If a computer can someday simulate a human, then we could compare actual human behavior against the computer's predicted human behavior. If actual human behavior shows more love than the computer's predictions, then we might suspect God exists.

That will not be possible (just as my experience of a software engineer and I wrote some computer AI, and I would say most computer sciense majors will agree with me). If you learn any computer language, you will find that none of those can really archive self awareness, and no program can be truly creative, the computer random number generator is not truly random..... This will be verified very soon, as at current speed of development, the computation power of computers will soon exceed the computation power of all humans combined, and it will just show raw computation power is no answer to intelligence.

What computers do: they do simple (or per-defined) calculations at increasing faster speeds. The best we could do is faking, so that they acts increasingly like us, but they can't create (they might look like they are creating, i.e. generating interesting graphs, but that are just algrithms and some database of transforms).

Not only that, I just found that we might not able to create life either (i.e. meaning from scratch). Look at the second (or third) step of evolution, we can't even create a RNA that can replicate. Which might lead to the believe that we can't create life from scratch.

 

[cloudyday2]

The paring in Quantum physics kind of going that way, but you never know, since this world is so complex that what we have learned is very little. If you think of world as a big computer simulation, God can do anything even violating physical laws, because it is all just a simulation and God set the rules



That will not be possible (just as my experience of a software engineer and I wrote some computer AI, and I would say most computer sciense majors will agree with me). If you learn any computer language, you will find that none of those can really archive self awareness, and no program can be truly creative, the computer random number generator is not truly random..... This will be verified very soon, as at current speed of development, the computation power of computers will soon exceed the computation power of all humans combined, and it will just show raw computation power is no answer to intelligence.

What computers do: they do simple (or per-defined) calculations at increasing faster speeds. The best we could do is faking, so that they acts increasingly like us, but they can't create (they might look like they are creating, i.e. generating interesting graphs, but that are just algrithms and some database of transforms).

Not only that, I just found that we might not able to create life either (i.e. meaning from scratch). Look at the second (or third) step of evolution, we can't even create a RNA that can replicate. Which might lead to the believe that we can't create life from scratch.

That is a good point about the possibility that we are living in a computer simulation. @LoAmmi, brought that up earlier. In the simulation, God can break the rules and erase all traces of his lawlessness - the perfect crime. Or God can rewind time and tweak the state of some molecules to test alternative time lines.

Thanks, I'm not sure I agree that computers cannot simulate humans. Here is a google of many projects of various ambitions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Brain_Project
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technolo...odels-one-second-of-human-brain-activity.html
https://www.humanbrainproject.eu/-/a-simulated-mouse-brain-in-a-virtual-mouse-bo-2

A very achievable objective IMO would be to determine the sensitivity of reasoning and creativity to quantum randomness. Here is are some links about QM's role in the sense of smell:
http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110214/full/news.2011.39.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vibration_theory_of_olfaction

 

[PrincetonGuy]

I know that the majority of Christians, Muslims, and Jews accept science's theories about the origins of life on Earth, the origins of the universe, etc. Most religious people rely on science to solve their practical problems too. If they are sick, they go to the doctor. God becomes like a sprig of parsley decorating a plate while science becomes the edible food.

Naturalism is the belief that everything is exclusively physical. Science is built on methodological naturalism which means accepting that naturalism is 99.999% of the explanation for everything. Scientists can be religious, but only if God is merely a garnishment.

Quantum mechanics says that particles are probability waves punctuated by events that momentarily localize them (sorry to any physicists who might cringe at my bad understanding ). So some randomness is part of nature. This randomness may or may not be real. There is an interpretation of QM that imagines hidden variables to make nature deterministic, but there are other interpretations that make nature non-deterministic.

... Anyway, is it possible for God to exist and yet never appear as an essential ingredient in any scientific theories? The randomness in QM provides a big lever for hidden variables to exert some influence without detection, but if this influence is part of a goal that humans can comprehend, wouldn't this be measurable? Like if science could say that God should want a probability wave to collapse into a particular event, and we measured that collapse consistently, what would that mean? (I forgot to mention Maxwell's demon - partly because I don't understand it - but it might be a consideration too.)

I know my ideas are rambling. Any thoughts? (I didn't mention the pantheistic and panentheistic religions, however, I believe science makes them into a frivolous garnishment too.)

Before becoming a Christian, I was an agnostic evolutionary biologist. Having become a conservative, evangelical Christian, pastor, and teacher of the Bible, my views of evolutionary biology have changed only in so far as the science itself has changed—which in the grand scheme of things is very little. Today, most Bible scholars agree that the first eleven chapters of Genesis are a collection of heavily redacted epic tales, myths, legends, or sagas—and that references in other parts of the Bible to the stories in those chapters are simply a consequence of subsequent biblical writers using these very well known stories to teach their current message. The supposed conflict between the Bible and science is due to ignorance on the part radicalized Christian fundamentalists.

For scientists that are true Christians, their faith in Christ is far more than a mere a garnishment. Indeed, Christ is the very center of their lives—not just at the center of their lives, but the very center of their lives. Measuring the supernatural is outside the bounds of science, so of course it has not been measured by science. That does not mean or suggest, however, that the supernatural is any less real than the natural that is measured by science.

 

[cloudyday2]

Measuring the supernatural is outside the bounds of science, so of course it has not been measured by science. That does not mean or suggest, however, that the supernatural is any less real than the natural that is measured by science.

"Supernatural" must be relevant to our lives - otherwise we should eliminate the word from our vocabulary. If something is relevant to our lives, I contend that it is measurable. If it is measurable, then science can study it.

I agree that detecting God would be difficult. We need some clear ideas about God's goals and what God will and will not do. Supposedly religions have ideas on these things, so it should be possible to test the claims of those religions scientifically. The religious people who claim that we can't do this (because we can't say anything about God) must ask themselves why they even include "God" in their vocabulary.

 

[PrincetonGuy]

"Supernatural" must be relevant to our lives - otherwise we should eliminate the word from our vocabulary. If something is relevant to our lives, I contend that it is measurable. If it is measurable, then science can study it.

I agree that detecting God would be difficult. We need some clear ideas about God's goals and what God will and will not do. Supposedly religions have ideas on these things, so it should be possible to test the claims of those religions scientifically. The religious people who claim that we can't do this, because we can't say anything about God must ask themselves why they even include "God" in their vocabulary.

No, science cannot study the supernatural because science is the study of the natural. When scientists delve into the realm of the supernatural as researchers, as did Drs. J. B. Rhine and J. G. Pratt of Duke University in the 1930’s, scientists call a fowl. However, detecting God is an everyday experience as a Christian—whether he be a scientist or a cleric.

 

[cloudyday2]

No, science cannot study the supernatural because science is the study of the natural. When scientists delve into the realm of the supernatural as researchers, as did Drs. J. B. Rhine and J. G. Pratt of Duke University in the 1930’s, scientists call a fowl. However, detecting God is an everyday experience as a Christian—whether he be a scientist or a cleric.

If Christians detect God everyday, then they must have some hypotheses for how God reacts in various circumstances. When a certain circumstance happens, they expect God to do something, and apparently God does what they expect more often than can be accounted for by chance. God doesn't need to part the Red Sea. Maybe God gives you insights while studying the Bible. Science should be able to demonstrate that your insights cannot be explained by your own intelligence.

I would say that anything relevant to our lives can be studied using science. By some definitions, this would classify God as "natural" if God is relevant to our lives, but that's o.k. "Supernatural" is like Russell's teapot - it can't be detected, because it doesn't affect anything in our lives.

 

[dcalling]

Thanks, I'm not sure I agree that computers cannot simulate humans. Here is a google of many projects of various ambitions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Brain_Project
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technolo...odels-one-second-of-human-brain-activity.html
https://www.humanbrainproject.eu/-/a-simulated-mouse-brain-in-a-virtual-mouse-bo-2

A very achievable objective IMO would be to determine the sensitivity of reasoning and creativity to quantum randomness. Here is are some links about QM's role in the sense of smell:
http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110214/full/news.2011.39.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vibration_theory_of_olfaction

This is the part of our differences and it is my conclusion that humans brain can't be simulated that lead me to believe there must be God.

If you read the articles carefully, you will see the first 2, almost (or over 10 years old), went pretty much no where, and one of the project is pretty honest ("Rather than providing new insight into the organ the project’s main goal was to test the limits of simulation technology and the capabilities of the K computer.")

The third one, Google's attempt to simulate a mouse brain, is just a new attempt of the previous ones. Just go learn some simple computer language, or study some training algorithms or nero-networks, you will realize that there is no way we can code self awareness, the best we can do is fake them (i.e. checkout tuning test).

You will keep hearing people trying to do this (there were science books back in 1980s that talking about using if-then-else statements to simulate human brain). As computer's computation power rapidly approaching human brain, it is just a matter of time that even non-programmers will know that it is impossible to make those fast calculators to be self aware. What makes us humans is not computation power, it is something else, that is not of the physical word (else the whole world will be per-determined, as everything can be calculated).

 

[cloudyday2]

This is the part of our differences and it is my conclusion that humans brain can't be simulated that lead me to believe there must be God.

If you read the articles carefully, you will see the first 2, almost (or over 10 years old), went pretty much no where, and one of the project is pretty honest ("Rather than providing new insight into the organ the project’s main goal was to test the limits of simulation technology and the capabilities of the K computer.")

The third one, Google's attempt to simulate a mouse brain, is just a new attempt of the previous ones. Just go learn some simple computer language, or study some training algorithms or nero-networks, you will realize that there is no way we can code self awareness, the best we can do is fake them (i.e. checkout tuning test).

You will keep hearing people trying to do this (there were science books back in 1980s that talking about using if-then-else statements to simulate human brain). As computer's computation power rapidly approaching human brain, it is just a matter of time that even non-programmers will know that it is impossible to make those fast calculators to be self aware. What makes us humans is not computation power, it is something else, that is not of the physical word (else the whole world will be per-determined, as everything can be calculated).

I was a software engineer for about 10 years, so I know that part of it.

So for you, consciousness is the key? We need a good definition of consciousness, before we can say much.

First, write a program that takes historical data and invents objects, actors, goals, etc. to fit that data. I think that is part of what brains do. This brain will invent a "self" to fit the data associated with the body containing that brain. I think that is consciousness. The data that doesn't fit the brain's predictions will seem to be the result of "free will". (That's my first stab at the problem without having thought too much on it. )

Nothing there is beyond the reach of computers IMO. I don't see a problem.