Does Science Support Atheism?

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It is often asked whether modern science supports religion. I’d like to know just the opposite:

Does science supports atheism? If so, on what basis?
 
It is often asked whether modern science supports religion. I’d like to know just the opposite:

Does science supports atheism? If so, on what basis?
I would say yes…science and atheism are like two peas in a pod trying to (“prove”) that God simply does not exist. Strangely though; I have found that the vast amount of mass argumentative energies used to make their hypothetical suppositions trying to convince themselves and the world that God does not exist only proves the opposite that God in reality does exist.

Check out: arn.org/blogs/index.php/literature/2007/07/23/does_science_promote_atheism

atheism.about.com/od/atheismscienceevolution/Myths_About_Atheism_Science_Evolution.htm
 
It is often asked whether modern science supports religion. I’d like to know just the opposite:

Does science supports atheism? If so, on what basis?
Atheism supports science. Science just got caught in the cross-fire. I don’t think scientists want to discredit religion-- at least, not at first; scientists just wanted to find out more about our lives and our planet and beyond. Unfortunately, as science moved forward, religion was left behind out of fear.

Remember: There was a time when science was labeled as a form of witchcraft.

Ironically Yours, Blade and Blood
 
Good question Charlemagne. I would say that science does not support metaphysical atheism. Science embraces methodological atheism, in other words, the scientist does not invoke God to explain the outcome of experiments. This does nothing to support the proposition that “No God exists”, which is a metaphysical claim. I would say science is compatible with atheism (as it is with theism), but does not support it.
 
Yes, the percent of scientists who are atheists is, I believe, much higher than the percent of atheists in the population at large.

I’d like to clarify my opening question a little.

Are there any ways that the different scientific disciplines imply, or even offer, direct evidence against the existence of God?
 
Science embraces methodological atheism…
Actually, mainstream scientists have chosen to embrace methodological atheism. They rule out the truth before they even look at the evidence - which is why everything they know is wrong. You mess with the bull you get the horns! And they’ll find that out soon enough…
 
Good question Charlemagne. I would say that science does not support metaphysical atheism. Science embraces methodological atheism, in other words, the scientist does not invoke God to explain the outcome of experiments. This does nothing to support the proposition that “No God exists”, which is a metaphysical claim. I would say science is compatible with atheism (as it is with theism), but does not support it.
AndyT_81;

Welcome to CAF. Also, very good observation. 👍

jd
 
Good question Charlemagne. I would say that science does not support metaphysical atheism. Science embraces methodological atheism, in other words, the scientist does not invoke God to explain the outcome of experiments. This does nothing to support the proposition that “No God exists”, which is a metaphysical claim. I would say science is compatible with atheism (as it is with theism), but does not support it.
i think that it depends on the scientist and how they are using their science. They can either invoke God or not, the only difference is that by invoking God and doing things for God they are searching for the truth. Atheist on the other hand do not invoke God and instead they look for the outcome that pleases themselves. As a non scientist I see this as part of the reason that science seems to be in trouble. Of course I am sure that any scientists out there probably have a better idea of how to answer this question…
 
Yes, the percent of scientists who are atheists is, I believe, much higher than the percent of atheists in the population at large.

I’d like to clarify my opening question a little.

Are there any ways that the different scientific disciplines imply, or even offer, direct evidence against the existence of God?
As the warden said to Paul Newman, in Cool Hand Luke, “What we have here is failure to communicate.” The language of science is a language designed for communication of scientific data and the “description of structural regularities”, as Ludwig Wittgenstein once said. The language of science makes the description of almost everything that is meta-science impossible to describe in its native form. It is a foreign language where religion is concerned.

Of course, most of scientific literature is consists of abysmally poor (English), but, strikingly concise juxtapositioning of words and phrases. Things that should not be so hard to read and understand become extraordinarily difficult. The next time you read a science article, really take a good look at how it uses the language to less than sublimely subject the reader to a coercive bias. Scientists have had to learn the art of self-enriching-tech-talk, or lose their paychecks, not to mention that you rarely hear anything at all from religious scientists.

Why don’t you hear from religious scientists? Because it would lead to the downfall of their standing in the science community. While a few have risked it, the adamantly secular wing of science has put the fear of death into the religious scientist. Outing the religious scientist is like what Cuban children, during the 60’s and 70’s, did to their parents. They were “turned in” by their own children for any talk overheard that sounded even the least anti-Castro.

Science has no choice, if scientists want to keep on earning money. For the religious, this may be a losing battle for a long time.

jd
 
Thanks for the welcom jd 🙂

Hi maslibertad,
i think that it depends on the scientist and how they are using their science. They can either invoke God or not, the only difference is that by invoking God and doing things for God they are searching for the truth. Atheist on the other hand do not invoke God and instead they look for the outcome that pleases themselves. As a non scientist I see this as part of the reason that science seems to be in trouble. Of course I am sure that any scientists out there probably have a better idea of how to answer this question…
Scientists can use the results of their experiments to support belief in God, but they can’t use God as a hypothesis in any consistent way to describe their results (well most of them anyway). The reason for this is that God is a person who certainly does not respond to experiments in a deterministic way that can undergo the statistical rigour that most science requires. In saying this, I think that God should be the prevalent “hypothesis” (I don’t really like using that word when referring to God) with regards to certain cosmological data (i.e. fine tuning) and the like.
 
You would think that if the percent of atheists among scientists is higher than the percent among the population at large, and if there were any scientific evidence for atheism, it would have been trotted out by now. In fact, we get no such reaction. Even Einstein repudiates the idea as follows:

“I’m not an atheist, and I don’t think I can call myself a pantheist. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the language in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn’t know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God. We see the universe marvelously arranged and obeying certain laws but only dimly understand these laws. Our limited minds grasp the mysterious force that moves the constellations.” Albert Einstein in Max Jammer’s Einstein and Religion."
 
Blade and Blood

Remember: There was a time when science was labeled as a form of witchcraft.

Yes, and now it’s many atheist scientists who think of religion as witchcraft, as was noted above by another poster.
 
I don’t think many atheists are weighing in on this. And isn’t that interesting?
 
I don’t think many atheists are weighing in on this.
The meat and potatoes of Christianity is to believe alleged events called miracles, purported stories that defy predictable, reproducible, understandable behavior.

Science on the other hand relies on observation and then makes predictions, performs experiments, collects data, makes new predictions, performs more experiments, collects more data, etc.

So at their cores, yes they are opposites.
 
crowonsnow

What I hear you saying is that religion is stupid and science is brilliant.

That’s not much of a comment on the question posed in this thread.

"That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God. We see the universe marvelously arranged and obeying certain laws but only dimly understand these laws. Our limited minds grasp the mysterious force that moves the constellations.” Albert Einstein
 
Most Leading Scientists still reject God:

stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/news/file002.html

I find it odd that any study would find that science does not affect scientists. Do they just wake up one day and think, You know. I’ve just decided to not believe in God. For no particular reason. ?

In a Western media culture that is amoral and immoral and, in some cases, unapologetically anti-God and anti-Christian, it seems that scientists who go home at the end of the day and turn on their TVs are getting a lot of subtle and not so subtle encouragement to abandon religion.

Peace,
Ed
 
science is religions best friend.

why would i say that?
  1. because the vast majority of "science’ espoused by the run of the mill atheist is simply misunderstood conjecture, like string theory, various interpretations of QM, etc. its discovery channel science. easily refuted, leaving the atheist with doubt. doubt is good it means we might be right.
  2. various physical laws kill atheisms core arguments against cause, i.e. SLOT kills eternal matter, cyclic universes etc.
  3. it affirms causality in known and accepted physics, and allows a reductionist view to assert the logical necessity of a non-physical first cause.
  4. i just enjoy whupping folks with the stick they brought to the fight! 😃
ive found a rationalist approach to the theist/non-theist struggle using basic scientific principles under the reductionist world view to be athiestic kryptonite.

it makes them squirm in ontological circles, make claims that they cant support and still be scientifically/ or logically sound. it forces them to dance to our tune.

science supports us, we simply have to be willing to use it. or thats at least my opinion.
 
Actually, mainstream scientists have chosen to embrace methodological atheism.
Someone’s had a little fun with your trust in them. Scientists depend on methodological naturalism for their work, a practice that while it cannot verify God, neither can it deny him. Because it is neutral with respect to God, this means that scientists can also be theists, as many of them are.

The truth matters. It should matter enough to you to find out why some fundamentalists would lie to you about it.
 
It is often asked whether modern science supports religion. I’d like to know just the opposite:

Does science supports atheism? If so, on what basis?

IMHO, science supports neither. Science is an instrument for understanding the world; not a religion or any other world-view. It’s value-free. Values & POVs come from people, not from the instruments they use. Which is is why gunmen, & not their AK 47s, are tried for murder - even though it is the AK 47 that does the damage that blows the brains of the person on the receiving end out of his skull. Science can be used for brain surgery - or for gassing millions of Jews. It is morally neutral. After all, the chemistry the produced Zyklon-B for gassing Jews wasn’t a specially Nazi chemistry - it was a chemistry which relied on the same chemical properties, reactions, etc., as any chemistry used for benign purposes: there is no Nazi chemistry, Communist geology, Catholic continental drift, Baptist hydrodynamics, & the rest of it. The beliefs of these & other people don’t arise from scientific study - they are like sets, or environments, within which the scientific stuff is interpreted. If one had to be (say) Anglican to be a scientist, non-Anglicans, however talented in scientific matters, would be excluded. But because the scientific data, & the intepretation of them, are not identical, scientific study can be an ecumenical enterprise: precisely because it does not impose any world-view, people of very varied world-views can take part in it on equal terms, withourt having to sacrifice their own convictions about the significance or purpose of the world.​

 
Blade and Blood

Remember: There was a time when science was labeled as a form of witchcraft.

Yes, and now it’s many atheist scientists who think of religion as witchcraft, as was noted above by another poster.
Not quite. It’s more like superstition and myth.

Ironically Yours. ❤️
 
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