Does science prove gods existence?

[Jim_Baur]

The scientists of ancient Greece could recognize a being that structured the harmonious universe or Cosmos.

Heraclitus even used the word logos/reason or mind.

To say that Logos revealed Himself to Moses is faith.

It is that simple!

 

[triumphguy]

St. Augustine: Si comprehendis non est Deus

If you can understand it it is not God.

 

[Estevao]

I agree on the argument from irreducible complexity in biological design, which as a biochemist I reject – I am a die-hard evolutionist, except of course when it comes to the human soul which, as an immaterial entity, cannot arise by a material process like evolution but must be a special creation by God. However, I strongly disagree on the fine-tuning argument regarding the laws of nature themselves which, precisely only because their are so extraordinarily special, make evolution (physical, chemical, biological) possible in the first place. I know that Feser has argued along the lines of it being a God-of-the-Gaps argument, but I am afraid he has not quite understood the argument. I have written an extensive article on the fine-tuning argument,

home.earthlink.net/~almoritz/cosmological-arguments-god.htm

in which, in a systematic manner, I show that none of the naturalistic arguments work, and I also show why, contrary to the biological design argument, this cosmic design argument is not a God-of-the-Gaps argument (section 1.5). I do think that science speaks strongly in favor of the existence of God. I also argue in the article (section 2) why a naturalistic origin of the universe contradicts what we know about matter and energy from science, which also points to an immaterial God as creator.

I do agree with Feser and you on the merits of the classical philosophical arguments, and in fact I am a great fan of Feser’s writings on the topic.

Thanks AlMoritz. Yeah I should probably investigate the fine tuning a bit more before speaking about it.

 

[Al_Moritz]

Thanks AlMoritz. Yeah I should probably investigate the fine tuning a bit more before speaking about it.

You’re welcome, Estevao.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

Thanks AlMoritz. Yeah I should probably investigate the fine tuning a bit more before speaking about it.

Astronomer Hugh Ross is a good place to start. His book The Creator and the Cosmos has chapters 14 & 16 dealing with fine tuning both of the universe and our solar system. Very readable for the novice.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

You’re welcome, Estevao.

Al, since Catholic thought is dogmatic on all important matters, in what respects would you call yourself a freethinker and a skeptic?

 

[Al_Moritz]

Al, since Catholic thought is dogmatic on all important matters, in what respects would you call yourself a freethinker and a skeptic?

Charlemagne,

I am a freethinker in the sense that I think for myself unlike many atheists who may call themselves freethinkers but follow like sheep their thought leaders like Dawkins, Dennettt, Hawking etc. Also, how can naturalists call themselves ‘freethinker’ when effectively they deny freedom of thought because they perceive their mind to be identical with their brain in which everything is physically determined? That is just grossly silly. I on the other hand believe in actual freedom of thought.

Catholicism is dogmatic, but an encompassing worldview is not. I make my own synthesis of faith and science, being well informed in both. For example, I follow the evidence and assume an origin of life by natural causes (see my article), with natural causes of course not being ‘godless’ (an often made mistake by both believers and atheists), but being secondary causes working in their own way and sustained by the first cause, God, according to the laws of nature laid out by Him.

I am skeptical of both atheism and creationism, and following the evidence I am a die-hard evolutionist, except of course when it comes to the human soul which, as an immaterial entity, cannot arise by a material process like evolution, but must be a special creation by God. I am also skeptical in other matters, from politics to history to anything. I demand evidence, and I aspire to see the world not in black and white, but in grey as it were – nuanced that is.

 

[Cone]

Billions of people have grappled with logical proofs for the existence or nonexistence of God, many of them quite learned and highly intelligent. No one has it proved it either way. Open your heart and mind to the Holy Spirit. Don’t shut him out with fruitless quests for ontological proofs.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

Charlemagne,

I am a freethinker in the sense that I think for myself unlike many atheists who may call themselves freethinkers but follow like sheep their thought leaders like Dawkins, Dennettt, Hawking etc. Also, how can naturalists call themselves ‘freethinker’ when effectively they deny freedom of thought because they perceive their mind to be identical with their brain in which everything is physically determined? That is just grossly silly. I on the other hand believe in actual freedom of thought.

Catholicism is dogmatic, but an encompassing worldview is not. I make my own synthesis of faith and science, being well informed in both. For example, I follow the evidence and assume an origin of life by natural causes (see my article), with natural causes of course not being ‘godless’ (an often made mistake by both believers and atheists), but being secondary causes working in their own way and sustained by the first cause, God, according to the laws of nature laid out by Him.

I am skeptical of both atheism and creationism, and following the evidence I am a die-hard evolutionist, except of course when it comes to the human soul which, as an immaterial entity, cannot arise by a material process like evolution, but must be a special creation by God. I am also skeptical in other matters, from politics to history to anything. I demand evidence, and I aspire to see the world not in black and white, but in grey as it were – nuanced that is.

Well said. :clapping:

In an earlier post you said this:

“I agree on the argument from irreducible complexity in biological design, which as a biochemist I reject – I am a die-hard evolutionist, except of course when it comes to the human soul which, as an immaterial entity, cannot arise by a material process like evolution but must be a special creation by God.** However, I strongly disagree on the fine-tuning argument regarding the laws of nature themselves which, precisely only because their are so extraordinarily special, make evolution (physical, chemical, biological) possible in the first place.**”

Then above you say:

“I follow the evidence and assume an origin of life by natural causes, with natural causes of course not being ‘godless’ (an often made mistake by both believers and atheists), but being secondary causes working in their own way and sustained by the first cause, God, according to the laws of nature laid out by Him.”

So aren’t “the laws of nature laid out by him” the same as “fine tuning” from the moment of the Big Bang on?

 

[buffalo]

A few good proof videos here.

 

[Al_Moritz]

So aren’t “the laws of nature laid out by him” the same as “fine tuning” from the moment of the Big Bang on?

Precisely.

 

[Al_Moritz]

Al, since Catholic thought is dogmatic on all important matters, in what respects would you call yourself a freethinker and a skeptic?

By the way, of course I am not skeptical of the teachings of the Catholic Church, because I perceive them to come from God, despite the, sometimes miserable, human failings of its messengers.

To all the ‘skeptics’ out there who think they could never accept faith because there allegedly never is a good reason to suspend skepticism about anything: have you ever been skeptical of your own skepticism? No? Well, then you are not true skeptics.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

By the way, of course I am not skeptical of the teachings of the Catholic Church, because I perceive them to come from God, despite the, sometimes miserable, human failings of its messengers.

To all the ‘skeptics’ out there who think they could never accept faith because there allegedly never is a good reason to suspend skepticism about anything: have you ever been skeptical of your own skepticism? No? Well, then you are not true skeptics.

I suppose skeptics can be skeptical of their own thinking. That is why you find them everywhere looking to knock down religion as a way of reassuring themselves that their skepticism of themselves is not well founded.

 

[BrassAnkles]

To the OP: There are two phenomenon that point to the hand of God.

One is the Big Bang and how did all the matter of the universe get together in a uniform density and temperature violating all the current physics theories. This is ominous to say the least and is often minimized by atheists. Now we have string theory which can never be proven and as such is a joke for atheists to cling to.

Two is that evolution cannot have occurred on the level that it is promoted now. Plenty have books have been written about this topic but are conveniently dismissed by the atheist crowd. Nonetheless, the hurdles for evolution to ever be considered proven theory would have to resolve the ominous issue that the engine behind evolution is cell mutation, which is degenerative in nature. In other words information is either duplicated or lost in the mutation process. It is not possible to create complexity with this mechanism in place. Also, there are many complex biological systems that a probabilistically impossible given the evolution precept that any mutation be useful in order for it to be passed down.

Here is a website of a noted physicist that debunks string theory:

www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/

and here is a books that debunk evolution:

Not by Chance! Shattering the Modern Theory of Evolution

BTW, I am a graduate engineer and did research and statistical analysis so I am very familiar with the scientific method and science in general. I am currently a math and physics teacher.

 

[friardchips]

Help! I’m on the VERGE of losing my faith. I try to look for evidence through philosphy and science but only come up with more questions! The string theory for example, seems like it replaces god! Is it logical to believe god exists!? I’ve looked up EVERY SINGLE PAGE! Please help me!

‘Reason’ can take you on a journey to seeing God’s existence.

And seeing that this seems to be a last minute dash for hope, there is no one I would point in the direction of, instead of:

St. Augustine, and the book titled: ‘Confessions’.

He uses reason and this book is not too wordy or laborious. He will see you to where you need to be. Trust me on this one. It starts off with a bit about his life then goes into his higher reasoning. When in doubt, read ‘Confessions’.

God bless.

 

[Al_Moritz]

To the OP: There are two phenomenon that point to the hand of God.

One is the Big Bang and how did all the matter of the universe get together in a uniform density and temperature violating all the current physics theories. This is ominous to say the least and is often minimized by atheists. Now we have string theory which can never be proven and as such is a joke for atheists to cling to.

Two is that evolution cannot have occurred on the level that it is promoted now. Plenty have books have been written about this topic but are conveniently dismissed by the atheist crowd. Nonetheless, the hurdles for evolution to ever be considered proven theory would have to resolve the ominous issue that the engine behind evolution is cell mutation, which is degenerative in nature. In other words information is either duplicated or lost in the mutation process. It is not possible to create complexity with this mechanism in place. Also, there are many complex biological systems that a probabilistically impossible given the evolution precept that any mutation be useful in order for it to be passed down.

Here is a website of a noted physicist that debunks string theory:

www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/

and here is a books that debunk evolution:

Not by Chance! Shattering the Modern Theory of Evolution

BTW, I am a graduate engineer and did research and statistical analysis so I am very familiar with the scientific method and science in general. I am currently a math and physics teacher.

I agree with you on string theory and disagree on evolution. The website of Peter Woit that you link to is very good indeed.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

Help! I’m on the VERGE of losing my faith. I try to look for evidence through philosphy and science but only come up with more questions! The string theory for example, seems like it replaces god! Is it logical to believe god exists!? I’ve looked up EVERY SINGLE PAGE! Please help me!

This website may help you as it shows how science increasingly is consistent with religious belief.

y-jesus.com/more/science-christianity-compatible/?gclid=CNjx2YjeqbwCFUpk7AodJQUAuA

 

[Lion_IRC]

Science cannot prove the existence of God.

It is all about Faith.

I disagree. I dont think its ALL about Faith.

Scientific evidence derives from the senses just as the disciple Thomas used his senses.

Scientists have eyes and ears just the same as everyone else.
They observe events and report their findings. We can either believe them or not.

If a scientist reports something such as water on Mars, does that “prove” there is water on Mars? Or do I need to personally visit Mars and see for myself?

What if 100 scientists all agree that the climate is changing? Does that make it more true than if only 5 scientists agree?

Similarly, if 100 people all report seeing a miracle or experiencing something Holy, spiritual, supernatural, divine, can a few atheist/skeptics claim that those sensory experiences never happened?

 

[Al_Moritz]

Science cannot prove the existence of God.

It is all about Faith.

No, it is not all about faith.

I was raised Catholic but would have lost my faith if reason would not constantly lead me towards God.

Because faith is reasonable I am able to embrace it. The theistic worldview is by far the most plausible for me, naturalism stands no chance. The attraction of the naturalistic worldview is that it is simple, its downfall is that it is not just simple, but simplistic.

 

[BrassAnkles]

I agree with you on string theory and disagree on evolution. The website of Peter Woit that you link to is very good indeed.

Another huger hurdle to evolution is the fact that getting from the “last universal ancestor”, which was a prokaryote to a eukarote is not an easy tasks given the latter’s susceptibility to horizontal gene transfer as it has no nucleus.

Here is an study whose goal was to understand the nature of the last universal ancestor. It discusses the ominous issue with horizontal gene transfer that would the current model of evolution impossible from a probability standpoint.

“Problematic genes could be removed from the analysis though a fundamental
problem remains [15••]: any site that was free to
evolve over the whole period at, say, 0.5% change per every
million years will become saturated with 20–40 changes per
site. Detecting phylogenetic signal above noise for deep
divergences is thus difficult, making many proteins unsuitable
for such phylogenetic studies [15••]. Other factors
worsen recovery: rate differences between lineages; long
branch attraction; horizontal transfer; unrecognised gene
duplications; changes in nucleotide frequency; and changes
in functional constraints [13,15••,16••].”

google.com.do/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=7&ved=0CFUQFjAG&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.researchgate.net%2Fpublication%2F222455838_The_nature_of_the_last_universal_common_ancestor%2Ffile%2F32bfe50ca30ba7e15b.pdf&ei=7KAfVOXQFJG1ggSy1IHwAw&usg=AFQjCNEO65WJufxlaQeEkJGTgwS0Sj5fbg&sig2=FSVRsT8Ho7Y6xleJgtbaGQ

All in all what I have pointed out are huge hurdles that have not been addressed with the same rigor that is applied to others areas of science. This is not logical to say the least. I would appreciate your comments .