Does Science Support Atheism?

[edwest2]

Scientism? All I’ve said about science is that science is about basing beliefs on evidence and reason. Pretty much everyone likes to think that they have good reasons to believe what they believe these days. How is that scientism?

The Catholic Church teaches that by natural (i.e. non-religious) reason, man can detect God in nature. Today, as if by some new, new knowledge, a common thought is that we, meaning human beings in general, have decided that men are just slightly more complicated snowflakes, biological devices that came into being through natural (i.e. no first cause) processes. That our ultimate ancestor was a rock and maybe a liquid.

The fault in that logic is that all things that live and die have a first cause. But that cannot be thought about since it might disclose a creating agent. What Catholics recognize in truth is God.

Peace,
Ed

 

[Charlemagne_II]

Leela
*
So you are saying that science by its very exclusive methodology (post # 85) is a proof that God does not exist?*

I asked you this question several posts ago, but you have not answered yet. Are you uncomfortable with the question? Maybe you should be?

Science’s methodology, if it is the only methodology, precludes the arrival at truth through poetry, music, and art, because none of these methodologies is verifiable as to the truth arrived at. So are we not to have faith in the arts any more than we have faith in God as an ultimate truth? Scientism, which others have rightly assigned to your way of thing (you cannot escape the label after post # 85), is a myopic view of the way the brain thinks. Scientism wrongly and selfishly claims bragging rights for itself as the only avenue to truth.

Fortunately, we have the testimony of many great scientists through history that science
can bow to a higher Truth that pervades the entire universe through the Intellect and Will of a higher power that even Einstein could acknowledge, much to the chagrin of atheists everywhere.

Even the arts pay their debt of thanks to the Creator. No one can deny this in the power of sacred music to move most of us (atheists excepted) to tears.

 

[Leela]

You have been repeatedly and unashamedly dishonest on this forum. This is an example of your flagrant dishonesty where you present someone else’s argument as your own. It’s not Christian to confirm you in your sin.

I don’t claim to have invented any new arguments in any of my posts or tried to take credit for anything. I suppose if your positions could stand up to any of the arguments I make, you would engage them instead of making personal attacks. In other words, your attempts to discredit me just serve to show the weakness of your own arguments.

This is Scientism. Your posts promote scientism, you simply object to having that fact pointed out.

I don’t subscribe to scientism.

You can keep saying “this is scientism” all you want, but you haven’t made an argument that anything I’ve said fits your definition of what scientism is, and you haven’t explained why scientism is a bad thing. You’ve just tried to pin a label on me, which amounts to name-calling. Other than “sticks and stones”, about all I can say is that your form of so-called debate should not be permitted in this forum.

 

[1holycatholic]

I don’t claim to have invented any new arguments in any of my posts or tried to take credit for anything. I suppose if your positions could stand up to any of the arguments I make, you would engage them instead of making personal attacks. In other words, your attempts to discredit me just serve to show the weakness of your own arguments.

You presented someone else’s arguments word for word as your own. You are lying.

I don’t subscribe to scientism.

You can keep saying “this is scientism” all you want, but you haven’t made an argument that anything I’ve said fits your definition of what scientism is, and you haven’t explained why scientism is a bad thing. You’ve just tried to pin a label on me, which amounts to name-calling. Other than “sticks and stones”, about all I can say is that your form of so-called debate should not be permitted in this forum.

Rubbish. Charlemagne II lists a specific post in this thread where you tout the false view of science known as scientism.

 

[Leela]

So you are saying that science by its very exclusive methodology (post # 85) is a proof that God does not exist?*

I asked you this question several posts ago, but you have not answered yet. Are you uncomfortable with the question? Maybe you should be?

I’m not uncomfortable with your questions. It is your Catholic brother in faith who has been maligning me instead of debating that has kept mr from getting to your post.

I defined science in the broadest way possible in my entry to this thread as our best attempts to distinguish what we have good reason to believe and what we wishe were true. I don’t think of science itself as a particular methodology though methodologies that serve well have emerged in certain areas of inquiry like the double-blind controlled randomized experiment for establishing cause and effect realtionships between variables such as testing the efficacy of new drugs.

I don’t think that any scientist thinks that science has or can disprove the existence of God or gods (or unicorns).

Science’s methodology, if it is the only methodology, precludes the arrival at truth through poetry, music, and art, because none of these methodologies is verifiable as to the truth arrived at. So are we not to have faith in the arts any more than we have faith in God as an ultimate truth?

I don’t know what sort of truths can be learned through writing poetry or creating art or music. These aren’t sc ientific endeavors which I have defined as having to do with determining what is good to believe. There are other worthy activities beyond trying to form good beliefs, and art. music, and poetry are among them. I can’t imagine what it could mean to ask about having faith in music or art since these are not beliefs. God, on the pother hand, is either good to believe in or not. That is why science and religion will always but heads but art and music will coexist peacefully with science. (Actually, science is an art. It’s all art.)

Again, I don’t see science as a particular methodology. Part of science is to find methods for establishing that we have good reasons for our beliefs. But appropriate methods will depend on what sort of things we are studying. Double blind randomized experiments, for example, have nothing to do with evolutionary theory and obviously nothing to do with poetry.

Scientism, which others have rightly assigned to your way of thing (you cannot escape the label after post # 85), is a myopic view of the way the brain thinks. Scientism wrongly and selfishly claims bragging rights for itself as the only avenue to truth.

Scientism is the view that a particular methodology is the only way to arrive at truth. It is a self-defeating philosphy since its own view can not be established as true through its particular method. I don’t view scientific methodology as prescriptive but rather as descriptive of the sorts of ways we’ve found for making good arguments for our beliefs.

Fortunately, we have the testimony of many great scientists through history that science
can bow to a higher Truth that pervades the entire universe through the Intellect and Will of a higher power that even instein could acknowledge, much to the chagrin of atheists everywhere.

Sorry. I can’t make any sense of Truth as existing as an essence. True is a word we use to describe statements that are good to believe. I can’t imagine Truth having any meaning independent of the statements that we say are true.

Even the arts pay their debt of thanks to the Creator. No one can deny this in the power of sacred music to move most of us (atheists excepted) to tears.

Atheists and theists can both be profoundly moved by the same music.

Best,
Leela

 

[Leela]

You presented someone else’s arguments word for word as your own. You are lying.

Are you having a bad day?

It was never my intention to present anyone’s work as my own. I don’t claim to have any original ideas.

Rubbish. Charlemagne II lists a specific post in this thread where you tout the false view of science known as scientism.

I don’t subscribe to scientism. You can keep calling me that all you want, but it won’t make it true.

What I can’t figure out is why you feel that you’ve made an argument or made a point by labelling what you think my position is. Why don’t you tell me what is wrong with what I said in post #85 instead of just calling it scientism?

Best,
Leela

 

[Charlemagne_II]

Leela

Atheists and theists can both be profoundly moved by the same music.**

Then why can’t I get my atheist friends interested in sacred music? Are they afraid to confront the truths addressed in sacred art?

It’s just baffling that you do not see post # 85 in its entirety as the typical argument for scientism.

Also, your exclusion of the arts as an approach to truth makes you even more an obvious afficionado of scientism.

 

[1holycatholic]

Are you having a bad day?

It was never my intention to present anyone’s work as my own.

forums.catholic-questions.org/showpost.php?p=4363006&postcount=54Hi Petey,

I think the First Cause argument has a lot of problems. Either everything has a cause, or there’s something that doesn’t. The first-cause argument collapses into this hole whichever tack we take. If everything has a cause, then God does, too, and there is no first cause. And if something doesn’t have a cause, it may as well be the universe itself rather than God.

…]

Best,
Leela

“Either everything has a cause, or there’s something that doesn’t,” he writes. “The first-cause argument collapses into this hole whichever tack we take. If everything has a cause, then God does, too, and there is no first cause. And if something doesn’t have a cause, it may as well be the physical world.”

Are you John Allen Paulos?

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[Nebogipfel]

Hi Nebogipfel

How do you expect to find any using the scientific method? First, the scientific method takes the position of methodological atheism, so even if real evidence did arise it would be considered an anomaly, an outlier in the data, to be rejected.

Absolutely not. The scientific method is “atheistic” in the sense that it makes no assumptions about the existance or otherwise of a divine agency. That is what the word athiestic actually means.

Put it another way, it does not make a positive a priori that no such agency exists - it simply does not make any assumption at all. And any scientist who rejects data purely on the basis that they do not like the implications of that data is being a lousy scientist. Lousy scientists do exist, of course.

Secondly, the scientific method requires repeatable experimentation, problem is, God is a person who has sovereignty over us (i.e. is not subservient to our pokes and prods) and therefore is inherently unpredictable from our perspective.

Apart from the fact that this is a circular argument - why should the fact that God is a “person” mean that when God acts such as to affect the physical world, such actions are immune to scientific study? I am a person - my effects on the world are not beyond scientific scrutiny.

If you’re going to say that “God moves in mysterious ways which we cannot hope to understand”, I put it to you that that is a non-explanation.

Therefore, the scientific method is such that it cannot provide the footprints in the flour for things like miracles and the like.

A miracle implies a physical effect: a bottle that previously contained only water now contains wine; A person who was ill is now healthy; The Sun bounces around in space such that one particular crowd of people sees it “dance” (but no one else notices anything).

Anything which has a physical effect is open to being “poked and prodded” via scientific investigation. The only kind of miracle which could not be investigated by science is one that has no physical effect at all - which would be a rather weedy kind of miracle.

It can provide data which suggests God through philosophical reflection however (i.e. things like the fine-tuning of the universe), but it is a loss to address things like miracles which are inherently unpredictable, because they are caused by a person.

I think it will come as a surprise to anthropologists, that “people” are somehow immune to scientific study.

The fine tuning argument proves only that if things had been different, things would be different. I thought only wacky protestant creationists set any store by the fine tuning argument these days.

Therefore, to claim that a method of inquiry which is inherently setup to reject evidence of God, which when applied gives no evidence of God, as to somehow be positive proof for atheism, is misguided.

Except that the method is not inherently set up to reject evidence of God. It merely fails to find any evidence of God. From which I draw my conclusions that there probably is no God, almost certainly not in the Judeo-Christian sense, and nearly almost as certainly not in the deist sense either.

There is no scientific evidence to positively disprove the existence of microscopic purple koala bears on the ninth planet of Sirius A. Does that mean that I must arrange my life so as to cater for the not-conclusively-disproved possibility that microscopic purple koala bears exist on the ninth planet of Sirius A?

It is the absence of the evidence that supports the God hypothesis which leads to the conclusion of atheism; absence of evidence is indeed evidence of absence.

Of course, you can always argue that evidence of God can be obtained by means other than scientific investigation. But that’s a different discussion.

It would be like saying “I don’t believe there are fish less than 2 inches wide in this lake, because I haven’t caught any” when you are tossing in a net which has a mesh size greater than 2 inches!

The “net” of the scientific method can - in principle - catch anything that has an effect on the physical world.

 

[Nebogipfel]

Nibogipfel

Would you care to summarize in a paragraph or two the best argument Sagan raises in The Demon Haunted World that includes scientific evidence to support atheism?

That is the subject of this thread.

I believe I have already done that.

 

[Nebogipfel]

But, all that is is mere pantheism, with a hint of agnostic “I don’t know” thrown in for good measure. It’s cute, but, serves no eschatological purpose.

jd

I’m not suggesting Dawkins is a closet dualist, although perhaps I used the word spiritual without due care and attention. I meant that scientific investigation touches on the deep questions of who and what we are, where we came from, and where we might be going. I think most people regard these topics as “spiritual” (although, of course, “most people” can be wrong to do so… )

But also “spiritual” in the sense of “inspiring”; The natural world is a gobsmackingly amazing thing. Dawkins is not blind to that; Sagan hardly wrote a word which didn’t reflect it.

I would be so bold as to assert Einstein was mistaken to say that a purely atheist and materialist view of the natural world robs it of its beauty.

 

[1holycatholic]

Absolutely not. The scientific method is “atheistic” in the sense that it makes no assumptions about the existance or otherwise of a divine agency. That is what the word athiestic actually means.

Put it another way, it does not make a positive a priori that no such agency exists - it simply does not make any assumption at all. And any scientist who rejects data purely on the basis that they do not like the implications of that data is being a lousy scientist. Lousy scientists do exist, of course.

That’s not true.

 

[Nebogipfel]

That’s not true.

Sorry, I mean it makes no assumptions at all about the existence or otherwise of a deity. It does assume that the world works in a way which is at least at a gross level predictable. Given that the scientific method undeniably works, that is not such a great or unreasonable assumption. In my view.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

Nebogipfil

*Absolutely not. The scientific method is “atheistic” in the sense that it makes no assumptions about the existance or otherwise of a divine agency. That is what the word athiestic actually means.

Put it another way, it does not make a positive a priori that no such agency exists - it simply does not make any assumption at all.*

On the contrary, atheism is the belief that there is no god. Look it up in your dictionary.

Agnostic is the way to describe the person who makes no assumptions either way.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

I would be so bold as to assert Einstein was mistaken to say that a purely atheist and materialist view of the natural world robs it of its beauty.

Well, you wouldn’t be the first nor the last atheist to disagree with Einstein.

 

[Leela]

forums.catholic-questions.org/showpost.php?p=4363006&postcount=54Hi Petey,

I think the First Cause argument has a lot of problems. Either everything has a cause, or there’s something that doesn’t. The first-cause argument collapses into this hole whichever tack we take. If everything has a cause, then God does, too, and there is no first cause. And if something doesn’t have a cause, it may as well be the universe itself rather than God.

Are you John Allen Paulos?

No. Does this idea become more or less true depending on who says it? I think he makes a great point. Though I don’t think it has anything to do with this thread. You should post this in the current “first cause” thread.

 

[Leela]

Leela

Atheists and theists can both be profoundly moved by the same music.**

Then why can’t I get my atheist friends interested in sacred music? Are they afraid to confront the truths addressed in sacred art?

What truths?

It’s just baffling that you do not see post # 85 in its entirety as the typical argument for scientism.

Also, your exclusion of the arts as an approach to truth makes you even more an obvious afficionado of scientism.

I don’t so much exclude art from inquiry as note that truth is a particular sort of aesthetic that has to do with sentences that make assertions. Visual arts and music have nothing to do with this aesthetic of sentences and science does, but they are all art–aesthetic creations of the human mind.

Best,
Leela

 

[Leela]

Nebogipfil

*Absolutely not. The scientific method is “atheistic” in the sense that it makes no assumptions about the existance or otherwise of a divine agency. That is what the word athiestic actually means.

Put it another way, it does not make a positive a priori that no such agency exists - it simply does not make any assumption at all.*

On the contrary, atheism is the belief that there is no god. Look it up in your dictionary.

Agnostic is the way to describe the person who makes no assumptions either way.

Agnosticism is the philosophical position that certain things can’t be known. Agnosticism is not a strictly religious term. One can be agnostic about whether we will ever know who shot JFK, for example. To be agnostic about God is to make the claim that one cannot know whether or not there is a God. (There is also a colloquial use of agnosticism as not knowing whether or not gods exist.) I can’t see how anyone could ever know that we can’t know, so I would never call myself an agnostic. I don’t think that gods exist. I don’t believe in God, so I am an atheist if you feel the need to label me, but I would never claim that I have any knowledge about whether or not gods exist. I just have my reasoned doubts and beliefs that I try to justify, make coherent with my other beliefs and doubts, and revise in light of new evidence and arguments.

Best,
Leela

 

[PJM]

Does Science Support Atheism?{/QUOTE]

Let’s look at the “Big bang theory”…

Where did the STUFF that went BANG! come from?

Now let’s look at Evolution:

SomeTHING can only be what it is

SomeTHING can’t be what it is not

SomeTHING can’t share what it does not have

SomeTHING can only share what it (THING) has

So humanity clearly is made up of THINGS that are “MATTER” (material THINGS)

So what about our MINDS, INTELLECT, MEMORY, FREEWILL, and what annimates everything, that which we call our SOUL?!

Quantify your mind for me. (No not you BRAIN, your mind). How long, wide, deep, high is it. How much does it weigh? What color is it! Can you show it to me? No, not demonistrate that you have one; can you show it to me?

These THINGS are SPIRIT. So what is the origin of our SPIRITUAL NATURE? That my friend is waht we call God!

So the answer is a resounding NO!

Love and prayers,

 

[1holycatholic]

No. Does this idea become more or less true depending on who says it? I think he makes a great point. Though I don’t think it has anything to do with this thread. You should post this in the current “first cause” thread.

He fails to make a point because he doesn’t understand the argument of efficient causality. Your presenting Paulo’s work as your own not only demonstrates your fundamental lack of knowledge of the subject, but your willingness to engage in dishonest activities in order to further your agenda.

Honesty is relevant to the discussion. You have said so (unless you plagiarized this too):

Science does not support atheism, which is not a philosophy but just the abence of a particular belief, it is just that more and more people have sought evidence in support of their beliefs and found that faith, belief that is not based on evidence, is not actually a virtue. They have adopted the virtue of intellectual honesty and rejected faith as a way of knowing.