Independently repeatable evidence that God interacts with our world

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

Of course you are right - applying empirical measurement - Jesus was a complete failure - after all they nailed Him to a Cross.

However science can not account for what happened after that...

I think sociology and psychology can probably do an adequate job - but what, exactly, did you have in mind that science cannot account for?

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

Really - Psychology can prove the resurrection didn't happen ???

Of course not - but if your argument is simply that the large numbers of believers in the resurrection means that it really happened, the same argument applies to the miraculous beliefs of other religions that are believed by large numbers of people.

I'm sure your argument isn't that naive, so perhaps you'd like to expand on it?

 

[Carl Emerson]

I think sociology and psychology can probably do an adequate job - but what, exactly, did you have in mind that science cannot account for?

Many things - a heavy curtain in the temple being ripped from top to bottom. - Many deceased rising from their graves and seen walking in the streets. - No body in a sealed and guarded tomb. Paul the murderer being struck blind, humbled and defending the very folk he persecuted after encountering their messiah.

Of course you will have possible explanations but that wont prove anything.

 

[Ophiolite]

Many things - a heavy curtain in the temple being ripped from top to bottom. - Many deceased rising from their graves and seen walking in the streets. - No body in a sealed and guarded tomb. Paul the murderer being struck blind, humbled and defending the very folk he persecuted after encountering their messiah.

Of course you will have possible explanations but that wont prove anything.

Since I don't even trust my own 'eye witness' observations, you can imagine I am underwhelmed by second, third, or fourth hand anecdotal 'evidence'. When there are numerous conventional explanations for reported events it requires an unusual mental adaptability to accept extreme and singular interpretations.

I suppose that's where faith comes into play. I don't think science needs to pay much heed to matters that are accepted only on faith. And those who rely upon faith might be best to avoid science.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

Many things - a heavy curtain in the temple being ripped from top to bottom. - Many deceased rising from their graves and seen walking in the streets. - No body in a sealed and guarded tomb. Paul the murderer being struck blind, humbled and defending the very folk he persecuted after encountering their messiah.

Just tall stories - all religions have them, it's tradition that goes back long before Christianity. Next?

Of course you will have possible explanations but that wont prove anything.

I don't have to prove anything - the burden of proof for exotic claims is on the claimant.

 

[stevevw]

Christianity gives meaning to life. I don't care what other religions say. I also don't care what science has to say. Science can only observe what is there and make guesses as to why. The most brilliant can get it wrong. Einstein rejected quantum theory.

I have the utmost respect for Jordan Peterson. He has a great ability to skewer irrational false narratives such as white privilege and male domination. However, even he falls for the trap of science's inability to do more than observe. He stated, correctly, that people are happier when they are helping to improve the lives of others. This is, of course, very much a part of Christianity. He also went on to say that it was something that people evolved with to make for better societies. Rubbish. If this evolved then it is hard wired and would be normal and natural for everyone. It's pretty obvious that tribalism, self preservation, self interest and selfishness in general are just as much part of the human condition.

Jordan Peterson knows the Bible well. Yet he comes to a "scientific" conclusion. This is not surprising considering his profession. But his conclusion is incorrect. And his answer to the problem is correct, but only if his conclusion is correct. If his original premise was correct then there would be no problem to address. The Bible addresses the human condition and explains why and gives the solution. And people generally don't want to know.

Science can tell us what. It cannot tell us why. Science cannot prove or disprove the reality of God. And when God came to earth in the form of man, He was rejected by most. God states that the creation is sufficient evidence for His existence. It was enough for me.

I think Jordan Peterson takes a wide view of human behavior through theology and science especially psychology. One of the profound things he mentioned was that existence and reality isn't about " Matter" as in the observable physical world but rather "what matters" which is something that cannot be measured in physical terms.

His experience and knowledge about human behavior brings him to Christ. What I like about him is that he is not afraid to tell it like it is and use all possible influences on what is the truth about human existence and how we behave with others. In being open and thinking through how we can obtain truth and fulfill our potential he reasoned his way to Christianity because he sees this as the only way humans can get along and be truly free.

 

[SkyWriting]

Hello,

I hope I posted on the right place. English is my second language please excuse my grammar mistakes.

I am genuinely curious if there is any independently repeatable evidence that God interacts with our world, I would prefer an article published in a well estabilished journal. I mostly looking for sciences like: physics, biology, chemistry etc and not sciences like philosophy.
I am curious and wanted to ask you guys, it looked like a good place to ask. This is just a friendly request and no offense meant.

Thank you in advance,
Kind Regards,
Curious about this

This "new member" does not respond to posts at all.

 

[chilehed]

I am genuinely curious if there is any independently repeatable evidence that God interacts with our world.

You sound as if you think that the search for God is like a physics experiment. But God is not an inanimate object, and if he revealed himself to you so directly that you were forced to accept his reality then you wouldn't survive the trauma.

 

[SkyWriting]

You sound as if you think that the search for God is like a physics experiment. But God is not an inanimate object.

An animate object then?

 

[Hans Blaster]

You sound as if you think that the search for God is like a physics experiment. But God is not an inanimate object, and if he revealed himself to you so directly that you were forced to accept his reality then you wouldn't survive the trauma.

Why shouldn't we? (Can't everything be a physics experiment? That would be cool.)

Let's send a beam of protons at where God is claimed to be and see if anything happens...

 

[SelfSim]

His experience and knowledge about human behavior brings him to Christ.

Really?
Why didn't it bring to the obvious one?
Ie: 'His experience and knowledge about human behavior brings him back to humans .. and the various ways human minds work??????

Seems he has a huge blind spot there!

 

[stevevw]

Really?
Why didn't it bring to the obvious one?
Ie: 'His experience and knowledge about human behavior brings him back to humans .. and the various ways human minds work??????

Seems he has a huge blind spot there!

Actually he is probably more aware and knowledgeable about human minds and behavior than most being a clinical psychologist and well read on politics, sociology and history of humans.

That's the point his vast understanding about the human mind and how humans behave through years of practice in helping people by his reasoning is that something beyond the physical workings of the mind is required to fulfill human potential and bring true peace and fulfillment.

He sees that this is something transcendent and happens to think Christianity is the closest to meeting this. He has come to this conclusion through his knowledge of how humans behave through the ages and how societies are affected by human behavior.

 

[SelfSim]

Actually he is probably more aware and knowledgeable about human minds and behavior than most being a clinical psychologist and well read on politics, sociology and history of humans.

That's the point his vast understanding about the human mind and how humans behave through years of practice in helping people by his reasoning is that something beyond the physical workings of the mind is required to fulfill human potential and bring true peace and fulfillment.

He sees that this is something transcendent and happens to think Christianity is the closest to meeting this. He has come to this conclusion through his knowledge of how humans behave through the ages and how societies are affected by human behavior.

So the question remains .. why has he overlooked/abandoned altogether, the abundant objective evidence of the human mind exploring its own perceptions and then assigning those perceptions with its own meanings?

 

[stevevw]

So the question remains .. why has he overlooked/abandoned altogether, the abundant objective evidence of the human mind exploring its own perceptions and then assigning those perceptions with its own meanings?

I am not sure what you mean. What is your point.

 

[SelfSim]

I am not sure what you mean. What is your point.

The point is that his conclusion betrays what you claim is a 'vast understanding', (ie:
'his vast understanding about the human mind and how humans behave through years of practice in helping people'), where his conclusion is: 'that something beyond the physical workings of the mind is required to fulfill human potential and bring true peace and fulfillment'.

Either he doesn't have any such 'vast understanding', or his lead up to his conclusion was aimed at justifying his own purely subjective belief.

 

[Estrid]

You sound as if you think that the search for God is like a physics experiment. But God is not an inanimate object, and if he revealed himself to you so directly that you were forced to accept his reality then you wouldn't survive the trauma.

Riiight. God isnt smart enough to tone it down sufficiently.

 

[Mountainmike]

Why shouldn't we? (Can't everything be a physics experiment? That would be cool.)

Let's send a beam of protons at where God is claimed to be and see if anything happens...

Leaving facetious aside , there are three questions your post begs.
1/ The presumption that you can observe or detect all that exists. Why do you assume so? According to evolutionists, senses develop only as far as is needed to achieve survival. Some cave fish cannot see. That does not invalidate the existence of the roof of the cave they cannot detect, or the people they will never encounter.

2/ That you are detecting the thing itself, whereas in reality you detect the interaction of the thing with universe. What it "is" , and the projection of its interactions with the universe into your sensor space is not the same thing at all. What it "is" is unknowable. What it is observed to do is what science models.

3/ That beings (even people) respond in predictable ways to a stimulus - which is the causality/ repeatability that physics assumes in order to model. Never work with animals! so performing artists say! they do unpredictable things. Some prefer to hide. People have consciousness which leads to experience. We all have it, we know it exists, but It is not easy to force into the methods of physics.

The scientific model makes a lot of assumptions in order to make progress. But they are assumptions whose validity is unprovable and at best doubtful. In essence it restricts itself to things that can be repeated or do repeat naturally which is only a subset of observable reality, and it has nothing to say about the unobservable.

 

[Hans Blaster]

Leaving facetious aside ,

But that's the best part.

there are three questions your post begs.
1/ The presumption that you can observe or detect all that exists. Why do you assume so? According to evolutionists, senses develop only as far as is needed to achieve survival. Some cave fish cannot see. That does not invalidate the existence of the roof of the cave they cannot detect, or the people they will never encounter.

Cave fish don't also have silicon strip detectors to detect things outside their natural sensory limits.

I haven't *presumed" that all can be detected. But, I have assumed that we should at least try. Perhaps this deity is impervious to proton beams and cannot be detected in this fashion. Perhaps it could be with another method. Perhaps it is not real.

2/ That you are detecting the thing itself, whereas in reality you detect the interaction of the thing with universe. What it "is" , and the projection of its interactions with the universe into your sensor space is not the same thing at all. What it "is" is unknowable. What it is observed to do is what science models.

Of course we only detect interactions. That is how everything we know of is detected. It is also how we know that everything that interacts in any meaningful way with the matter we are made of has been detected.

3/ That beings (even people) respond in predictable ways to a stimulus - which is the causality/ repeatability that physics assumes in order to model. Never work with animals! so performing artists say! they do unpredictable things. Some prefer to hide. People have consciousness which leads to experience. We all have it, we know it exists, but It is not easy to force into the methods of physics.

Such an experiment (the Divine proton-beam Experiment, or DPBE) would detect only interactions of the protons with this god. It is a physics experiment, not a psychology experiment.

The scientific model makes a lot of assumptions in order to make progress. But they are assumptions whose validity is unprovable and at best doubtful. In essence it restricts itself to things that can be repeated or do repeat naturally which is only a subset of observable reality, and it has nothing to say about the unobservable.

Science only really makes one presumptive claim -- naturalness. Science is the study of natural phenomena by natural causes in the natural world. Though obviously not complete, those explanations are so effective that many of us see no reason to inject any non-natural cause or thing into our understanding of the world.

 

[Mountainmike]

Such an experiment (the Divine proton-beam Experiment, or DPBE) would detect only interactions of the protons with this god.

It’s a useless experiment. You have no reason to believe that such interaction exists.

It’s a bit like using ganzfeld experiments on twins for testing twin telepathy , then concluding because the experiment fails, that twin telepathy doesn’t exist. But You cannot constrain the universe to act as you want it to. It does what it does.

On the other hand there is some evidence that one twin can detect a trauma in the other ( like cold water shocks) using polygraph. But the sad thing is science won’t touch it. Science declares it woo woo because there are no papers, so nobody researches it, and as a result there are no papers, so it is therefore called woo woo. One of sciences bits of circular reasoning, or actually bias against things which offend the paradigm of consciousness as a chemical reaction.

Science only really makes one presumptive claim -- naturalness..

Natural is what is observed to happen. It does not assign a cause. It models what happens and consequences of it. If it is observed it is natural. By which definition abiogenesis is supernatural. It’s never been observed. Only plausibility arguments exists for why it might have done.

I have used before the analogy of an aircraft landing.

You cannot tell whether a pilot landed it, the aircraft landed itself on autopilot, or whether it was designed by a pilot programming his knowledge into the autopilot.

You only have the observed behaviour, not the cause in a fundamental sense, or the reason it exists.

Science is the first to say of inexplicable experience, that they are only anecdotal so cannot be repeated and is therefore deemed suspect. I’ve seen it said on these threads many times. Experience clearly is subject to some false rationalisation. That doesn’t mean all inexplicable experience is false of course. It just makes the job sorting wheat from chaff harder.

Yet there are plenty of documented inexplicable experiences, I have commented on elsewhere. Eg the inexplicable OBE of one of his patients who experienced what she cannot have witnessed, that got Greyson interested as a medic in the subject. Science is stuck. Only if such experiences are under control on demand of the patient can it move forward with it. Consciousness is a problem for science to analyze because it is experiential.

science does a fine job of using repeatable patterns in observations to help assist our lives. But beyond those patterns is a universe science can say little about.

 

[chilehed]

Riiight. God isnt smart enough to tone it down sufficiently.

You greatly underestimate God, and greatly overestimate yourself.