Sciences vs. Religion

[Pendragon]

"Science is there is provide answers on what is already here... Science has never discovered anything that wasn't here and just waiting to be discovered. Sometimes they have used the raw materials to create new things, but it is discovering how to manipulate what is already here."

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/implication

I could return the favor and give you a definition that would be suitable, but arrogance just isn't me.

OK. If Science can discover things that are not here or created with raw materials that are already here, then the people who run the paranormal sights are perfectly justified in claiming they have discovered ghosts through EVPs and blurry photographs. It's the same difference.

When science cloned a sheep, the genetic makeup of a sheep was already there. Science took what was there and successfully made a copy from the original. Unfortunately, age of the sheep remained standard to the original, causing the clone to age rapidly. With the discovery of splitting the atom, the raw materials were here. They had to be refined and enriched by scientific means, but nothing was made that the raw materials were not already here.

Even if you believe in chance evolution, the big bang, etc. the materials used in scientific discoveries were here already. Science takes what is and works with it doing research and experimentation to make something new. Plastic. Computer chips. X-ray machines. Hybrid vegetables. WMDs. Biodiesel fuel. They discover fossils and ancient cities to learn about the past. Whether God created the originals or chance the end result doesn't change.

Gravity would work just as well without Newton. But we might not understand how it works without him. Without Einstein's Theory of Relativity life would go on as always. But the discovery unlocked mysteries. If Carter had never found King Tut the Egyptian Pharaoh would still have lived. But the discovery helped understand ancient Egypt. If the Rosetta stone had never been found, hieroglyphics would still exist but without the stone who knows if we would ever be able to read them? Just think mon ami.

God Bless

Pendragon

[AuntShecky]

I could return the favor and give you a definition that would be suitable, but arrogance just isn't me.

OK. If Science can discover things that are not here or created with raw materials that are already here, then the people who run the paranormal sights are perfectly justified in claiming they have discovered ghosts through EVPs and blurry photographs. It's the same difference.

When science cloned a sheep, the genetic makeup of a sheep was already there. Science took what was there and successfully made a copy from the original. Unfortunately, age of the sheep remained standard to the original, causing the clone to age rapidly. With the discovery of splitting the atom, the raw materials were here. They had to be refined and enriched by scientific means, but nothing was made that the raw materials were not already here.

Even if you believe in chance evolution, the big bang, etc. the materials used in scientific discoveries were here already. Science takes what is and works with it doing research and experimentation to make something new. Plastic. Computer chips. X-ray machines. Hybrid vegetables. WMDs. Biodiesel fuel. They discover fossils and ancient cities to learn about the past. Whether God created the originals or chance the end result doesn't change.

Gravity would work just as well without Newton. But we might not understand how it works without him. Without Einstein's Theory of Relativity life would go on as always. But the discovery unlocked mysteries. If Carter had never found King Tut the Egyptian Pharaoh would still have lived. But the discovery helped understand ancient Egypt. If the Rosetta stone had never been found, hieroglyphics would still exist but without the stone who knows if we would ever be able to read them? Just think mon ami.

God Bless

Pendragon

I agree with every word you've said right there^, dear Pen.

But allow me to throw another point in here, if I may, although in full awareness that somebody will shoot it down.

In earlier times, people believed that rotten and maggot-infested meat was the result of spontaneous generation rather than cause by colonies of bacteria and egg-laying flies. Before Leeuwenhoek (1632-1723) invented the microscope, there had been no evidence of microorganisms, including the ones which caused disease. Microbes existed before humans had the technology to "prove" their existence.

Empirical evidence, therefore, can only be realized with the technology with which to perceive it. As your post explains, in ancient times, natural phenomena existed outside the realm of human knowledge. According to that logic, one can have the opinion that there is --at present-- no empirical envidence of the existence of God or the inherent "truth" of religion, BUT the lack of evidence does not necessarily mean that neither exists.

"Faith is the substance of things hoped for; the evidence of things unseen." (St. Paul's Epistle to the Hebrews, 11: 1.)

God bless you too, Pen!

[russellb]

It seems to me that both the 'God hypothesis' (and one may, say, accept Dawkin's framing of this in the God Delusion-he is not an 'igtheist') and the atheist hypothesis are competing philosophical models that are both consistent with the phenomenal world. Now it is said that the burden of proof is on the theist because she is making a positive claim. But to bring science into it, is there a burden of proof on the atheist to explain how science is in fact possible? Newton would not have believed that science and religion were in conflict he would have said i think that the latter explains the rational and 'certainly ordered universe that science in fact describes. I believe that cosmologists think that the laws of physics might have been radically different right at the start of the universe (the fact that the the universe has a beginning is a plus for theists and Anthony Flew talks about the idea of the Big Bang being implicated in his switch from atheism to 'deism'). It seems to me that atheists might have to postulate an 'ultimate' that offers no explanation for a law based universe, so called 'lawless laws,' and that nor do theories of 'multiverse' really get away from the problem of an inexplicable 'ultimate'. 'God' is not an empirical concept but i think that the 'God hypothesis' is a rational way of making sense of the empirical world...

[MorpheusSandman]

It seems to me that both the 'God hypothesis' (and one may, say, accept Dawkin's framing of this in the God Delusion-he is not an 'igtheist') and the atheist hypothesis are competing philosophical models that are both consistent with the phenomenal world.

The challenge isn't in creating "models that are consistent with the phenomenal world," the challenge is in creating models that make predictions about the phenomenal world we otherwise couldn't make unless the hypothesis were true. Phlogiston and combustion are both "consistent" with the phenomenon of fire, but only one of these allows us to predict under what circumstances fire will and won't happen. In this respect, The God hypothesis is not really a useful model as it makes no predictions. It just, phlogiston-like, plugs in "God" as the cause behind every known phenomena until we discover its true cause. It's the classic God of the gaps.

But to bring science into it, is there a burden of proof on the atheist to explain how science is in fact possible?

I assume by "explaining how science is possible" you mean the classic origins/first cause argument, of how the universe got to be like it was in a way we could study it through science. In a sense, science does have a "burden" to explain, but no more/less than it has a burden to explain anything else about reality. The important point to make, though, is that science's current inability to explain ultimate origins is not an argument for God, any more than the inability to explain fire until combustion was an argument for phlogiston.

'God' is not an empirical concept but i think that the 'God hypothesis' is a rational way of making sense of the empirical world...

It's an anthropomorphic way of making sense of the world, and anthropomorphic way that has been proven wrong as it pertains to local phenomena (fire, storms, sunrise/sunset, etc.) so many times I have no idea why people persist in thinking that it won't be equally wrong in explaining the ultimate origins. We have so many reasons for NOT thinking God is behind ultimate origins, not least amongst them is the inexplicable notion of how a consciousness could operate sans-spacetime, much less how such a high-level organized being like "God" could exist without being comprised of much simpler parts like everything else we see in the universe (including us: molecules to atoms to particles). Such aspects of God are as inexplicable as ultimate origins, and it makes infinitely more sense to postulate the universe came to be simply through a simple and eternal quantum field (which we at least know exists) than proposing that this complex conscious being, which we can't explain, created the quantum field and everything else. It's simply Occam's Razor. God may seem simple, but that's because words and our anthropomorphism hides the complexity; just how general relativity seems complicated to us (because it's such an un-human concept) yet is a quite, quite simple formula.

[AuntShecky]

It's an anthropomorphic way of making sense of the world, and anthropomorphic way that has been proven wrong as it pertains to local phenomena (fire, storms, sunrise/sunset, etc.) so many times I have no idea why people persist in thinking that it won't be equally wrong in explaining the ultimate origins.

But how is science NOT "an anthropomorphic way of making sense of the world"? Last time I checked, most scientists were undeniably human.

We have so many reasons for NOT thinking God is behind ultimate origins, not least amongst them is the inexplicable notion of how a consciousness could operate sans-spacetime, much less how such a high-level organized being like "God" could exist without being comprised of much simpler parts like everything else we see in the universe (including us: molecules to atoms to particles).

That statement presupposes that the essence of God is pure matter. Could He (or She) not be pure energy, i.e. "spirit"? If that is the case, the particles-atoms-molecules criteria simply do not apply.

Such aspects of God are as inexplicable as ultimate origins,

Why can't we accept that such aspects of God are "inexplicable"? Cf. the closing chapters of the Book of Job--"Where were you when I made the world?" Perhaps human knowledge has not yet evolved to the point at which we can understand everything; certainly our technology hasn't developed a reliable mechanism for detecting spiritual phenomena. This is similar to the fact that no humans knew of the existence of microorganisms before the invention of the microscope.

and it makes infinitely more sense to postulate the universe came to be simply through a simple and eternal quantum field (which we at least know exists)

Except this assertion disregards cause and effect, a proven reality of the universe, which holds true for everything from gravity through evolution. To deny the existence of something simply because we have not yet gathered evidence and thus declare that it does not exist smacks somewhat of intellectual arrogance.

All of us, including yours fooly, should probably acquire a little humility.

[MorpheusSandman]

But how is science NOT "an anthropomorphic way of making sense of the world"? Last time I checked, most scientists were undeniably human.

I think you misunderstand what anthropomorphism means; it means attributing human thoughts/emotions/wills behind decidedly inhuman phenomena. You're probably familiar with a version of this in literature known as the pathetic fallacy, where writers see emotions behind events in nature that are really just projections of their own emotions. So, for early man to see lightning as a sign that there was an angry God hurling lightning bolts at them was to anthropomorphize nature, to see a human will/consciousness behind things that have none. From our best current scientific understanding, the universe likely arose from the random events of quantum mechanics, a fluctuating sustaining itself long enough to expand into spacetime and matter. This is a decidedly non-human account of origins, as opposed to a creator willing everything into existence.

That statement presupposes that the essence of God is pure matter. Could He (or She) not be pure energy, i.e. "spirit"? If that is the case, the particles-atoms-molecules criteria simply do not apply.

Before one should even entertain this notion, would it not be necessary to prove that there even IS such a thing as "pure energy" or "spirit?" The closest thing we've gotten to pure energy is, again, quantum fields; but these fields are not conscious, they don't make choices or will things, they just endlessly fluctuate in a probability space. So where's the evidence that, one, spirits even exist and, two, that they go around creating universes? Is this not just needlessly complicating matters? Like supposing that fire works by combustion AND by phlogiston?

Why can't we accept that such aspects of God are "inexplicable"?

Why should we accept that God even exists when we can't explain anything about him? Why even propose his possible existence at all? You do realize that this line of thinking pretty much opens the flood gates for making the argument for ANY possible beings, from other cultures' gods, to polytheism, to unicorns to dragons to fairies to whatever?

Except this assertion disregards cause and effect, a proven reality of the universe, which holds true for everything from gravity through evolution.

Causation is only applicable within the bounds of matter and spacetime. In quantum fields, matter (particles) pops in and out of existence at apparent random and their existence is usually too brief for gravity to have any effect (it's important to understand the interdependent relationship between matter, gravity, and spacetime). So in such a context causation can be violated because the means by which we understand causation are absent. Such a context is also essentially "timeless" since "time" itself is just a reference point for observing material events within space. So once you reach such a starting place, I don't know why either it's not sufficient on its own to explain origins, or why you'd need God. It's also worth reading this on the matter: http://lesswrong.com/lw/it/semantic_stopsigns/

To deny the existence of something simply because we have not yet gathered evidence and thus declare that it does not exist smacks somewhat of intellectual arrogance.

All of us, including yours fooly, should probably acquire a little humility.

FWIW, I don't "deny the existence of God" so much as I assert "there's absolutely no reason, scientifically or logically, to entertain the notion God exists, and a great many reasons not to." This certainly doesn't mean that God definitively doesn't exist, but the only arguments one can make for God's existence could be equally made for the existence of any mythical/physical being, and God can't be used to adequately explain anything we don't know. As for humility, I think a certain kind of humility is good, but not the kind that uses a professed humility to believe or disbelieve whatever it wants to. Another good article on the subject: http://lesswrong.com/lw/gq/the_proper_use_of_humility/

[AuntShecky]

RE: anthropomorphism. Yes, going over the top with personification is indeed the Pathetic Fallacy in poetry, but in religious beliefs, the human mind cannot think in purely abstract terms. For instance, try to conjure up a mental picture of "loneliness." You can't. The only thing you can do is think of some poor schlub looking all forlorn as he sits alone in a darkened room, or some similar scenario attempting to depict social isolation.

Before man developed instruments to measure and ultimately explain the weather, mythology with all its anthromorphic tendencies provided a way to fill in the gap. Given what little earlier civilizations had to work with, postulating an angry bearded guy hurling down thunderbolts was the best they could come up with at the time. Give the Greeks credit for their inventiveness and the Romans for knowing how to steal a useful notion when they saw it. This isn't an indictment of either civilization's intelligence but rather an acknowledgment that they did use the brains they were born with, albeit with a limited scientific vocabulary.

Again, man had no choice but to explain the inexplicable in human terms, that's what I meant by anthropomorphism (human-centered, changing the non-human into human form.) Physical scientists are in many ways more articulate than those in the so-called "soft sciences," who often use abstract jargon. This is because when explaining their stuff to dumb-cluck laymen such as yours fooly, these scientists use simple, everyday, concrete terms -- comparing their data to soccer balls (as Prof. Higgs does in his first chapter in his book about the God Particle) or the life-nurturing swamp beneath the miasmic air of the young earth as "primordial soup."

would it not be necessary to prove that there even IS such a thing as "pure energy" or "spirit?" The closest thing we've gotten to pure energy is, again, quantum fields; but these fields are not conscious, they don't make choices or will things, they just endlessly fluctuate in a probability space. So where's the evidence that, one, spirits even exist and, two, that they go around creating universes?

You can't really blame us for suspecting that beyond the strictly material realm, something strange is going on. The Uncertainty Principle may indicate that the workings of the universe are subject to pure chance; however the chances can be manipulated! Without insinuating in any way that non-human phenomena have minds of their own, I find it "awesome" in the true sense of the word that the very act of observing can affect the observed reality:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observer_effect_(physics)

We don't have any evidence yet that energy has anything akin to consciousness. On the other hand, photons seem so capricious that we in our anthropomorphic way would almost describe as coy or playful:

from Google Nov 5, 2012 ... While scientists know light can act like both a wave and a particle, they've . . . revealed light to act either like a particle, or a wave, but never the two at once. . . called photons. . . So far, both aspects of light's nature haven't been observed at the same time.

Why should we accept that God even exists when we can't explain anything about him? Why even propose his possible existence at all?

Because molecules, atoms, nucleii, protons, electrons, neutrons,particles all existed before mankind had the capacity even to imagine them. DNA was "imagined" before it was eventually found. The mistake is to declare outright that "X" doesn't, shouldn't, couldn't possibly exist and thus decide never to look for "it."

You do realize that this line of thinking pretty much opens the flood gates for making the argument for ANY possible beings, from other cultures' gods, to polytheism, to unicorns to dragons to fairies to whatever?

I think of these mythological beings, rich in imagery and folklore as they are, as primitive attempts to explain the inexplicable (as well as a way of experimenting with and flexing the imaginative, intuitive, and affective parts of the human brain.) The myths, like modern religon, provided a backdrop to cope with the uncertainties, and let's face it, the utter miseries of human existence. Rather than a belief in a deity opening up the floodgates to centaurs and dragons et al, I think that mythology was an early glimmering of man's sense of something missing in his interior life. Maybe the floodgates opened the other way: primitive beliefs did not lead a straight line to a belief in the Judeo-Christian God, but I suggest that they might have been proto-beliefs, similar to the way that Edison's thousand failed experiments eventually led to the working model of the incandescent bulb.

Causation is only applicable within the bounds of matter and spacetime. In quantum fields, matter (particles) pops in and out of existence at apparent random and their existence is usually too brief for gravity to have any effect (it's important to understand the interdependent relationship between matter, gravity, and spacetime). So in such a context causation can be violated because the means by which we understand causation are absent. Such a context is also essentially "timeless" since "time" itself is just a reference point for observing material events within space. So once you reach such a starting place, I don't know why either it's not sufficient on its own to explain origins, or why you'd need God. It's also worth reading this on the matter: http://lesswrong.com/lw/it/semantic_stopsigns/

Recently Stephen J. Hawking disdains the concept of cause and effect in the creation of the universe, but his most famous book, A Brief History of Time asserts, if I'm not mistaken, that time and space and everything in it began at the Big Bang. (And incidentally, even though my puny little bit of gray matter is like a dust particle next to Hawking's cerebrum, I do find it odd that he allows for the existence for extraterrestrials but not the Big ET upstairs.)

For Einstein, time itself is not merely a "reference point for observing material events within space," it is a dimension, just as much as the other familiar three dimensions. I guess Al was just kidding when he said that "God doesn't play dice with the Universe." If it's not God who's not playing dice, then who isn't it? Er...

FWIW, I don't "deny the existence of God" so much as I assert "there's absolutely no reason, scientifically or logically, to entertain the notion God exists, and a great many reasons not to." This certainly doesn't mean that God definitively doesn't exist, but the only arguments one can make for God's existence could be equally made for the existence of any mythical/physical being, and God can't be used to adequately explain anything we don't know. As for humility, I think a certain kind of humility is good, but not the kind that uses a professed humility to believe or disbelieve whatever it wants to. Another good article on the subject: http://lesswrong.com/lw/gq/the_proper_use_of_humility/

Oh, I realize that this is your position and I truly respect you for it. I do think you have sufficient humility in asserting that you don't have all the answers. Yours fooly hasn't any answers, either. And I'll confess to you that in my ever-increasing humble opinion I think that the A/A faction (Atheists and Agnostics, not Alcholics Anonymous) has a point in condemning institutional religion for causing so many wars and misery over the millennia. They are also correct in fighting against the extreme, almost inhumane positions of fundamentalists on some social issues, countering the faith-based climate change deniers, as well as mocking the wacko concepts of Creationists (museums with cavemen hobnobbing with dinosaurs and so forth.)

Before I close this reply, I'd better get to the point I wanted to make when I first clicking on this thread today, and that is to recommend a remarkable novel published almost thirty years ago. The book is Roger's Version by John Updike, and its central theme is the very question we LitNutters have been debating on this very thread.

Updike's novel presents a scenario in which the wide abyss between science and religion begins to converge when a young graduate student approaches Roger, the protagonist/narrator, who is a theology professor at a New England college. The grad student believes that he can prove the existence of God with a computer. This is an Updike novel, don't forget, so there's plenty of illicit and taboo sex, (possible) betrayal, social criticism with the character of Roger's niece, a victim of poverty and (collaterally) racism. But what about the grad student? Does he make the discovery of the ages, or can he only get so far before. . .or when he approaches Zero Hour, does he lose his nerve? Keep in mind the title -- Roger's Version -- he is an unreliable narrator, his may or may not be an accurate depiction of the events (much like the pre-canonical books of the Bible.)

Many versions. In His Kingdom there are many mansions. In the debate between science and religion, many viewpoints, which someday may indeed converge in a meeting of the minds.

Auntie

[MorpheusSandman]

...the human mind cannot think in purely abstract terms... Before man developed instruments to measure and ultimately explain the weather, mythology with all its anthromorphic tendencies provided a way to fill in the gap... This isn't an indictment of either civilization's intelligence... Again, man had no choice but to explain the inexplicable in human terms...

Perhaps the mind can't think in PURELY abstract forms, but it can understand how abstractions inform what they see. As you say, anthropomorphism was way of explaining the "gaps" in our knowledge back then, but it's equally used now. If people don't/can't understand origins via quantum fields, they propose conscious creator Gods; it's the same principle, and if people were wrong THEN, what makes you think they aren't wrong now? In fact, man has been absolutely consistently wrong in proposing conscious agents as the causes behind natural phenomena that you'd think it would be most logical to assume there aren't any.

Of course it's not an indictment against earlier civilizations' intelligence, but it is indicative of one of the many reality-distorted biases that human brains are born with that prevent us from understanding how reality actually works. Our intuitions can be very useful things, but they can also lead us astray. In fact, most great scientific discoveries happened in spite of our intuitions rather than because of them. As long as people understand that the reality of objects moving according to the abstract principles of gravity is what's really going on, rather than some God blowing them about, that's all that's important.

You can't really blame us for suspecting that beyond the strictly material realm, something strange is going on. The Uncertainty Principle may indicate that the workings of the universe are subject to pure chance...

I don't blame people for having the biases they were born with through billions of years of evolution, but I do blame them for holding on to those biases, refusing to let go, even after they've been proven wrong so consistently. There is a whole area of study in neuroscience today built around understanding these biases and how they cause us to misconstrue/misinterpret reality, and while one doesn't have to become an expert in the field, at least recognizing that such things exists and making an effort to avoid such pitfalls would be positive, as oppose to this silly clinging to intuitions and the innate "rightness" of whatever our brains cook up.

As for the Uncertainty Principle (TUP from now on), this is actually something I know quite a bit about, and it's not mysterious in the least, once you understand it. Rather, it's just another example of us being victims of our own innate intuitions about what reality is/how it function. I wrote a basic introduction to the issues here. Although in that intro I only present the "facts," my opinion is that the Many Worlds interpretation is most likely correct and makes sense out of all the "mysteries" of QM. It certainly doesn't provide any evidence for conscious energy or supernatural/extra-material beings/entities/existence.

Because molecules, atoms, nucleii, protons, electrons, neutrons,particles all existed before mankind had the capacity even to imagine them. DNA was "imagined" before it was eventually found. The mistake is to declare outright that "X" doesn't, shouldn't, couldn't possibly exist and thus decide never to look for "it."[/COLOR]

Obviously I wouldn't deny that things exist that we don't yet have the power to discover them, as was the case with many of the things you listed. But of all the things we've discovered, the vast majority we didn't imagine BEFORE they were found, and even of those we did imagine beforehand (like atoms), nobody had the gall to proclaim exactly what they were and how they behaved before we discovered them. It's one thing to speculate that maybe the matter we see is made up of smaller components, and quite another to proclaim that these smaller components are a certain way. That's my issue with most God concepts; it isn't in the "maybe there's some greater intelligence out there or beyond all this," it's all of the specific conceptions of what God is, what he wants, what he did/does that ends up being the foundation of religions. I see nothing wrong with the initial speculation, nor the notion of just keeping an open mind to the potential of finding such a being, but this obsession with there being one, of finding one, of reading all science as if there WAS one (ala Creationism) is going far beyond those bounds.

I think that mythology was an early glimmering of man's sense of something missing in his interior life.

Indeed. I very much like Blake and Stevens thoughts on religion, in how it was how man embodied his inner life, stretching out towards social ideals and even science. Blake, despite his atheism, saw Jesus as "God" because he was both a man and storyteller, and, for Blake, man's ability to create was the only real "God" worth worshiping, and Jesus symbolized that quality for him. In that sense, religion and mythology can represent a society's culture better than anything else because it encompasses so much, but, as Stevens said in Notes Towards a Supreme Fiction, "It must change," because man and societies change; yet many are preoccupied with desperately grasping onto the aspects of regions that are corpses (its science, much of its history and morality).

For Einstein, time itself is not merely a "reference point for observing material events within space," it is a dimension, just as much as the other familiar three dimensions. I guess Al was just kidding when he said that "God doesn't play dice with the Universe." If it's not God who's not playing dice, then who isn't it? Er...

I don't think there's really a contradiction since a "reference point" can be a "dimension." As for "God not playing dice," Einstein was actually referring to the apparent indeterminism of Quantum Physics. Einstein's God was not the personal Judeo-Christian God, though, but rather represented the order and harmony of the universe (given that, one can understand his distaste for Copenhagen's interpretation of QM). That said, Einstein was on the wrong path towards disproving quantum indeterminism, as Bohm definitively showed. I've often wondered what he would've thought of Everett...

And I'll confess to you that in my ever-increasing humble opinion I think that the A/A faction (Atheists and Agnostics, not Alcholics Anonymous) has a point in condemning institutional religion for causing so many wars and misery over the millennia. They are also correct in fighting against the extreme, almost inhumane positions of fundamentalists on some social issues, countering the faith-based climate change deniers, as well as mocking the wacko concepts of Creationists (museums with cavemen hobnobbing with dinosaurs and so forth.)

As long as we agree on this, then the rest is less important. If God doesn't exist, then, to me, someone believing he does is a relatively minor error compared to those that both believe he does and then use this fictional God to justify all kinds of atrocities. Of course, as Stalin et al. show, any idealism, even those not religious, can be just as horrific.

Before I close this reply, I'd better get to the point I wanted to make when I first clicking on this thread today, and that is to recommend a remarkable novel published almost thirty years ago. The book is Roger's Version by John Updike, and its central theme is the very question we LitNutters have been debating on this very thread.

Thanks for the rec. It's been a while since I've actually read a novel (been immersed in poetry the last several years), but I'll definitely make it a point to read that soon.

[Pendragon]

So what is the difference between purely theoretical physics and a belief in something equally difficult to prove such as the existence of God? I will tell you. It is the starting principle. If one denies that God could possibly create the universe, then all people who believe that He did are labeled superstitious and/or ignorant. If one does not accept the starting point of purely theoretical physics, i.e. a reoccurring theme in science know as "maybe" or "possibly" then God become reality to those people. Neither can prove beyond a reasonable doubt that they are right. Assuming science has all the answers is foolish, for they will admit that there are things they cannot explain. Assuming religion has all the answers is equally foolish because we don't have an answer that will stand a reasonable doubt. "To thine own self be true." said Shakespeare. "Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind." Romans 14:5 Stand on what you believe or you have no beliefs to stand on. God Bless, Pen

[MorpheusSandman]

Pen, the difference is that in all science, theoretical physics or otherwise, various "maybes" and "possblys" are worked towards some empirical testing, subject to falsification, and without such nobody inside or outside of science accepts them as facts, proof, or anything else. Obviously there's much in modern theoretical physics that remains untestable given the current state of technology, yet science is not resting on its theoretical laurels; it's invented things like the Super Hadron Collider, and working towards inventing quantum computing, to make such testing possible. Yet, until then, we can at least analyze the various theories and see how well they fit the facts, what problems they create, what assumptions they make, how simple they are, etc. So one can critique them even without being able to currently test them.

On the other hand, religion isn't and never has been subject to such a process. People claim things about God, get a lot of people to believe it, and that's that. No testing, no falsification, not even any attempts at such things (and the few attempts that are made are failures; like intercessory prayer studies, or the hunt for Noah's ark). Like I said to Auntie, it's one thing to speculate that maybe there's an omnipotent, omniscient creator/intelligence out there, but quite another to insist there is and, what's more, to insist that any Holy Book is THE word of that being in which all true morality, history, and science has been recorded. While both science and religion may start from the same place of speculation, of maybes and possiblys, they certainly don't proceed in remotely the same fashion.

Again, I wouldn't deny that God could not possibly create the universe, but I do maintain that, firstly, there's no good evidence God exists and, secondly, there's no good evidence that an intelligence created the universe. One can propose an infinite amount of hypotheses for how everything got here, but even without being able to definitively rule out/prove any of them, we can certainly say that some are far more likely than others given the current state of evidence and factoring in things like Occam's Razor, rationalism, and the history behind such potential answers. Likewise, I (nor no atheist I know) claims that science has all the answers, but at least science tends to be more honest in what it does and doesn't know; and when it comes to what we don't know it has proven far more reliable for figuring it out than religion or any other institution for that matter.

You say that "If one denies that God could possibly create the universe, then all people who believe that He did are labeled superstitious and/or ignorant," but let me ask you this: of all the people that believe God created the universe, how many of them know the first thing about quantum fields? I'm guessing a vanishingly small amount, probably less than 1%. Even as Auntie stated, Gods have ALWAYS been used to fill the gaps in our knowledge, and such gaps are, essentially, our ignorance. I mean, one can't study God and get any closer to an idea of how the universe actually came about; on the other hand, the study of quantum fields can (and has) given us a very good idea of how our universe could've come about from those fields alone. Such "maybes" and "possiblys" couldn't have even existed were it not for the study of science, the extrapolation of what's known into realm of what's possible given what's known. Religion doesn't really work this way, at all. It neither extrapolates from what's known to what's unknown, nor does it speculate on what's unknown and move towards finding a means to test it.

[Iain Sparrow]

So what is the difference between purely theoretical physics and a belief in something equally difficult to prove such as the existence of God? I will tell you. It is the starting principle. If one denies that God could possibly create the universe, then all people who believe that He did are labeled superstitious and/or ignorant. If one does not accept the starting point of purely theoretical physics, i.e. a reoccurring theme in science know as "maybe" or "possibly" then God become reality to those people. Neither can prove beyond a reasonable doubt that they are right. Assuming science has all the answers is foolish, for they will admit that there are things they cannot explain. Assuming religion has all the answers is equally foolish because we don't have an answer that will stand a reasonable doubt. "To thine own self be true." said Shakespeare. "Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind." Romans 14:5 Stand on what you believe or you have no beliefs to stand on. God Bless, Pen

And then there is a third option, don't commit to a belief at all. Why would you stand on what you believe just for the sake of pride or some other emotion?

[YesNo]

I've started reading Alvin Plantinga's Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion & Naturalism.

He's a Christian philosopher and his theme is that "there is superficial conflict but deep concord between science and religion, and superficial concord but deep conflict between science and naturalism."

Naturalism is a subset of atheism.

So far what he mentions agrees with what I have thought regarding science vs religion: it is really an issue between science vs atheism (or naturalism). What I am looking for is how a philosopher goes about arguing his position.

[Iain Sparrow]

I've started reading Alvin Plantinga's Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion & Naturalism.

He's a Christian philosopher and his theme is that "there is superficial conflict but deep concord between science and religion, and superficial concord but deep conflict between science and naturalism."

Naturalism is a subset of atheism.

So far what he mentions agrees with what I have thought regarding science vs religion: it is really an issue between science vs atheism (or naturalism). What I am looking for is how a philosopher goes about arguing his position.

Of the three, Science is the only objective party. By all rights it should care not what direction it goes nor be allied with either Religion or Naturalism. My own thoughts on the subject are that Science & Religion are not compatible disciplines... unless of course there is a God.

And sorry to disappoint, we atheists are not at odds and certainly not conflicted with most Science. We are however, probably not going to take christian apologists like Alvin Plantinga very seriously.

[MorpheusSandman]

I've started reading Alvin Plantinga... He's a Christian philosopher and his theme is that "there is superficial conflict but deep concord between science and religion, and superficial concord but deep conflict between science and naturalism." ...it is really an issue between science vs atheism (or naturalism).

This is nonsense, of course. There is a deep discord in the methods by which both science and religion goes about forming beliefs, that I detailed in my post to Pen above. I'd love for you find any place in Platinga's book where he addresses this. I think when many think of the "conflict" between science and religion they tend to think of the conclusions formed by both, eg science's evolution VS religion's creationism. Such things may be "superficial" in that Christians are free to adopt evolution and read Genesis as an allegory. Yet, the biggest conflict I see is NOT in what conclusions either reach, but HOW they reached these conclusions to begin with. Science SHOULD be equated with the scientific method, and NOT with what the scientific method discovers about reality. If you think about this in terms of the Scientific method VS the religious method, then I think you find the really unresolvable conflict.

The notion that naturalism is just a "subset of atheism" and has nothing to do with science is equally preposterous. Naturalism's popularity owes everything to science discovering natural explanations behind phenomena people had previously attributed to the supernatural. While naturalism is obviously atheistic, the order of events does not go like this: atheism -> naturalism, but rather like this: science -> naturalism -> atheism. The discoveries of science leads to naturalism, which leads to atheism.

[Pendragon]

And yet what has science ever discovered that wasn't already here or the means to make it were already here? The number of things discovered by accident rather than design are legion.

Accepting God doesn't mean I intend to be ignorant of science. The laws of nature and physics are there whether or not one believes in God or science. When I worked in a cabinet factory and would ticket the loads to go to the next department the principle of inertia was an everyday battle. When I fell from a roof as a boy, gravity made sure to bust a leg. Said leg has medical screws in it, no dancing around a fire or whatever.

I do have problems with purely theoretical physics which as Morpheus states cannot be tested by current methods still being generally accepted as fact. The day could come when God could be detected but not by science today. I accept God as fact, also accepting that I cannot prove He exists. Science uses experiments and repetition to discover things of which they cannot necessarily provide proof. Sometimes the discovery of some tiny cell, particle, or bacteria is so minute as to be unable to be photographed or a sample cannot be saved as proof. Now mind you I don't say they do not exist, I say proof is hard to provide, and sometimes we must take the word of the scientists doing the experiments that this was discovered or that this happened.

Science lets us know the hows and whys of our planet to serve humanity with ever increasing harnessing of the earths resources already here.