With all due respect, all Christians don't even hold the same beliefs, and pretty much all believers see their god belief as different.
Yes, that's right. But I think you're confusing two things. It think it is correct to say that the belief in god is not scientific. It is not a scientific belief, and not one that is supported by scientific principles. But that's not the same as saying that science argues away from the existence of god, ultimately. It may argue away from certain conceptions of god (such as a god that makes the sun 'rise'), but on the ultimate question of existence or non-existence, it simply isn't any help. Which is why, I think, you have so many scientists who also believe god exists. I don't believe the statements you provided say anything about the non-existence of god. To try to take science into that area is to take it beyond what it is meant to do, and even what it is capable of doing. It's a misunderstanding, in my view, of what science is and what it does. Going, again, back to the hypothetical deist deity I mentioned above, there is nothing science can say about that notion of god except that we don't have evidence of it, which is exactly what a believer would expect.
I just want to let everyone know that I plan to respond to certain comments. But, for my own sanity and to avoid the trap of a heated discussion I will refrain from doing so until tomorrow. I would suggest the same to some of the other people here, it's easy to get wound up in insignificant details or petty squables. Giving a debate some pause and looking at it with fresh eyes a day later can really help keep a discussion sensible, fruitful and prevent it to turn into name calling. Also, I want to rep everyone for keeping this nice and polite, I am honestly impressed by the amount of respect, maturity and sincerity shown by both sides. Kudo's to you all! And let's try to keep it this way.
I wasn't raised in a heavy-on-god beliefs household. My parents took us to church on Easter and to vacation Bible school in the summer the same way I sent my son to science camp when he was young. Later on they gave us the choice to go to church or not, they didn't come with us. I went a few times, not many. And I seem to fit your definition of 'radical atheist' (which I find to be a false equivalency, BTW). I treat god beliefs the same way I treat other subjects in anthropology. I don't, however, apply a scientific double standard to the evidence. To some that looks like dogma. But it isn't any more dogmatic than saying the evidence overwhelmingly supports the theory of evolution. Evolution is an established fact for all intents and purposes, but technically every single scientific fact is tentative, despite how strong the evidence. The duel nature of 'fact' and 'never-proved' is a part of the scientific process. Again, I put my strongest statements in spoiler tags because I know it bothers people to read some atheist statements: Spoiler It's a fact the evidence overwhelmingly supports the conclusion, all gods are fictional human inventions. It's a fact there is no evidence humans ever interacted with real gods. This is not dogma, it's an evidence supported conclusion, always subject to new evidence being discovered, but with enough evidence, IMO, that it reaches the level of a scientific fact. I don't have a problem with other people who see the evidence as strong but falling short of 'fact'. It's no surprise people reject applying 'fact' to the conclusion gods are fictional beings. But what I say to that is, consider you may be applying a double standard to this evidence that you don't apply to say, the 'fact' large crustal plates on the surface of the Earth move.
No that is not so, despite all that, I do believe I have freedom granted since I have the possibility to commit sin. At the same time, yes, within the scope of my possibilities, God will always know what I'll do, since he provided them all (including the hands by which I write this comment). What I meant was that my faith goes or may go beyond your logic. Sure, you're right about the nature of faith from then on. About the enumeration of your demonstrations: except no.1, I am aware of all of them, mostly, but I do percept them in a different way, say, I was in state of complete atheism in my life. To counter-argument, I would say it's not only about logic, since as long as other variable, namely heart, does not come into play, you won't understand those enumerations even if you read whole Bible a thousand times. I disagree with no.1, simply because all morality and goodness comes from God as a source, so how could I be morally above him ? Yes, I do attribute all the beautiful things to God as wall as the less-attractive sides of nature and life. I do not cherry-pick. On the contrary, I have strived to percept/accept God's deeds in all their complexity, the more so that I believe Jesus died for me and that is to say by an awful cruel death. There are always two sides of the coin. Three of my relatives have died recently and I have come into contact with some real sick people. Still, that experience, though painful...was rewarding reciprocally. And, believe it or not--for many reasons--I am still glad to God for what happened. Yes, God wants us to trudge through the mud and fall flat on our faces and experience hardships, 'cos that process alone refines you into a better person. Yet he is not to be blamed for all the horrors, because man was given the freedom to sin, thus a lot of the atrocities were done by man, not God. The priest, is, mind you, dead. It was in the news, the information is official where I come from. And, yes, suffering is a part of the plan. You either go with it, or you don't. But the suffering has its sense, always. In that case he really can't choose to believe in God, but again, from my standpoint, he thinks he knows God does not exist. Hence all the hustle about chirstan-nonchristian disputes and even proselytizing (not mycase). The belief is that we all need God regardless of what you think or know you think or think you think. I am sure God gave that guy ways necessary for him to accept Him, even his testimonial might turn out somehow. That being said, I fundamentally disagree with the guy's claim that "God has abandoned you". Much rather it's his heart's outcry for God's presence, that is how I see it. There are many instances of war prisoners and political prisoners who survived only because of faith and the exact opposite belief.
What other conclusions can you draw from anthropological evidence about fictional beliefs that you have no trouble applying the evidence to? Can we safely say that Harry Potter's Hogwarts is fictional? Can we say the evidence supports the conclusion that stars are not places dead Egyptian Pharaohs reside therefore the pyramids and mummification practices were based on beliefs in fictional things? If you keep going, identifying myth after myth, fiction after fiction, is there a point anywhere you can imagine where you have enough information to draw a more general conclusion? And if not, how is it we can draw a more general conclusion from other accumulations of evidence?
That doesn't disprove anything. It simply shows that, as of now, science cannot be used to prove the existence of such an entity. A smarter athiest might say, well, "science doesn't need god, and therefore, for all practical purposes, god does not exist," but it's important to remember (and philosophers especially seem to have trouble grasping this), science as of now is a bunch of incomplete tools used to describe the natural world, that's all it is. There is no unified theory of everything yet. There are still questions, still contradictions, probably (hopefully) always will be.
agreed, I even can't write properly, participating in a discussion not held in my mother tongue, and so late at night is a full-fledged toil for the brain.
When something is defined, an alternative can be ruled out. Science has an explanation for stars, and therefore we can probably rule out that Egyptian belief. However, the notion of some entity beyond and outside the laws of nature is, by very definition, beyond the scope of science. Science cannot touch it because it is not an appropriate tool. We can use it to disprove or prove anything within the physical realm. That's it.
Yep. As I said above, you can rule out certain conception of god, but as to the question of god's ultimate existence, science is of no help. It simply isn't the sort of question that can be addressed by science. At least, not yet.
But we have an explanation for god beliefs, just as we have an explanation for stars, that's my point. People have made the beliefs up. We know they do.
Possible I missed a post. Do you mean that, we have an explanation for why people throughout history have believed in God, just as we can now physically describe a star? If so, that's not the same thing at all.
I don't believe the two things are comparable. We have scientific reasons that we believe are the reasons for people's belief in god. We may or may not be right about that, and it may not be absolute in any case. However, even if you could demonstrate with certainty such a basis for human belief in god, it still wouldn't constitute sufficient evidence to state with certainty that god does not exist. Whether humans manufacture deities because of their own psychology or biology or what have you is an entirely different question from whether such a being actually exists or not. We simply can't address the latter with science, and maybe we'll never be able to do it.
Ohh ok, so that's what she meant? We can explain why humans have acted a certain way? 1. That has nothing to do with God in a physical sense. 2. That sounds like a question best left to the soft sciences and maybe philosophy. What really matters are physics and math. The question then is, can absolutely everything be explained within those confines? If not, we must allow for the possibility of some higher existence.
We know what a god belief is, just as we know what a star is. Without worrying about proof or disproof, can you cite a single god belief supported by evidence that it is not a myth? Can you cite a hundred god beliefs with evidence they are myths? Spoiler If it were anything besides god beliefs, a conclusion drawn from overwhelming evidence for a conclusion, that was opposed by no evidence against the conclusion, it wouldn't cause a scientist to blink. If you just stop applying a double standard, there is a scientific conclusion to be found. If you follow the evidence that explains god beliefs and stop trying to fit the evidence to the conclusion, gods could exist, you can apply the scientific process to the evidence.
While your argument is valid, it relies on applying a double standard. Do you apply the same principle to invisible garage dragons or Harry Potter's Hogwarts?
I'm not religious, so I personally apply it in the same way. But it isn't exactly the same, even so. With something like Hogwarts or invisible dragons in garages (or anywhere else on earth), we'd expect to see a evidence of their existence if they truly did exist. At least, that would be my expectation. The problem with applying the same standard to god is that you might not, depending on the type of god you believe in. As I said above, if you look at the deist god I described you would expect to see exactly what we do see in in the universe. So, insofar as science is concerned, there's no more evidence for that sort of god than against. The same evidence is consistent with either view. I tend to require affirmative evidence to believe something. And if someone believes in something like the Mayan god of the sun, guiding the light across the heavens, I can say confidently that we know that's not how the sun works. I also don't think the evidence supports an all-good, all-powerful, interventionist god. But if someone says they think god exists and has no interaction with the universe, I think the only place you can come to, reasonably, is an impasse where you have to admit that the exact same evidence is consistent with either view.
You can't compare a god belief to a star. You can compare a star belief to a god belief. The things themselves, in this case, God, and stars, exist or don't exist regardless of what people believe, right? I might define a star as A, and you as B. If you can prove that the star is B, and that excludes A by definition, then you have disproved me. Such is the case with the pharaohs. Do you agree with me up to this point? If not, please explain. Now, the idea of a supernatural being, excludes nature by very definition. If we assume some sort of interaction between the supernatural and the natural at some point or in some manner, then we must suppose that everything cannot be explained by the natural, eg, the things science tries to explain. As of yet, there is no unified theory of everything. And, if we want to take things a step further, science is a man made tool, and may never be able to fully explain things anyway. While a concept, like, let's say the dead living in stars, can be challenged by simply explaining stars, God can only be challenged by explaining absolutely everything. This is why the general concept has withstood the test of time.
Kurzweil borrowed the cosmological term for his prediction of the future of humans and technology. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_kurzweil Yes, we are racing away from one kind of singularity, and into another...
I agree. Yes. Only if we have some evidence that the star cannot be both or different. It's theoretically possible proving something disproves something else. Your example has too many holes but I'll go with the theoretical for the sake of the discussion. A belief that spirits of dead people become stars would seem to be something that knowledge accumulated about stars rules out, yes. Sorry, it started off interesting but you simply reverted to the God of the Gaps argument and that fails on many levels.
Some people are starting to notice that the absence of evidence where one would expect evidence is indeed evidence of absence. Beyond that I'm patient. I can see you have not shifted the paradigm I have. It's all good to leave it at this point.
Yes, but as I noted in the deist case, evidence isn't expect, so where do you end up? Impasse. I don't expect anyone to shift anyone's views on something in almost any conversation on internet forums, and I've seen nothing in these forums to suggest they're any different. When it comes to religious subject matter, my expectation of someone's viewpoint changing is about zero
Back in the day, people believed if they danced, their crops would grow, because that's what their spiritual leaders told them. Then the bible was written, and people believed in heaven, hell, and the holy trinity, because that was what was written. Now, we have science. How many athiests out there have discovered photons themselves or split atoms or discovered gravity, or even re-derived the equations of motions or the energy of a photon, sequence genes, or even work in a lab as a researcher? It's these same people who swear by science, are so certain in its infallibility without even remotely comprehending most, if any, of the things I listed above, let alone any of the thousands of things I didn't. They've never met these people who have made these discoveries, yet they believe them. Scientists know, science is not a "thing," to be believed in blindly like the bible or a totem god. It's simply a method, that over the course of centuries has evolved into hundreds of tiny fields. There is no unified theory, no dogma like the religions before, yet, people who don't even know what a Lagrangian is swear by "science." It's amusing, really, how people always need "something" to cling to. Food for thought, I hope.
