God should be kept out of scientific Questions

[Soulewolf]

I don’t believe that God is a scientific question, and neither do I believe that the question of why there is something rather than nothing is a scientific Question either. Therefore I think that science and God should stay out of each others way.

You cannot prove Gods existence with science, and science cannot in principle determine whether its reasonable or not to believe in God.

The attempts to bring intelligent design in to the science classroom is really not good, and it makes us look desperate.

Anybody want to challenge my position?

Yeah i’ll give it a go.

My spirituality is, at its innermost nature, based in the idea that spiritual answers will never contradict cold hard fact. Much of this has shown itself to be true through many ideas found in quantum physics such as entanglement (that idea combined with the idea of the big bang means that everything is one) and wave functions combined with Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle hints at the idea that divinity is part of the innermost nature of existence.

Taking it a step further, if you think of thought patterns as equations, and god as a variable in these equations, i believe much more can be “understood” instead of just “known” when you include the god variable in your equations.

I believe that through studying the universe, one can understand more about divinity and expand your relationship with whatever divinity you may have.

 

[grannymh]

I’ve never been able to determine how purpose, the fourth cause, can be completely incorporated into any science (using the word “science” in a very limited way). I certainly haven’t found a way in which it can be quantified. Such techniques and methods may someday be developed, but they don’t seem to exist yet.

The fourth cause does inform science, and is very useful as a part of scientific work. But the fourth cause cannot yet, in any way I’ve been able to imagine, be demonstrated scientifically.

It seems that, for design to be formally quantifiable, purpose must be formally quantifiable, or at least identifiable through some systematic method, and complexity must be formally quantifiable (at minimum in those cases where purpose isn’t), and the interplay between them must be able to be described mathematically. This hasn’t been done yet, and I’m not sure if it will ever be done. But it’s possible.

Are you using quantify as in logic? “'To limit the variables of (a proposition) by prefixing an operator such as all or some.” (American Heritage College Dictionary)

If I were a curious biologist, the first question I would ask is – what is the purpose of this particular living organism. I suppose there would be lots of purposes for non-human organisms. But only one purpose for the human species. This would be demonstrated by the scientific recognition of the material/non-material human nature.

Ah, one says. The non-material cannot be put under a natural science microscope. True. But that does not exclude the reality of the non-material which can be known by the tools of reason, self reflection, logical evaluation, and analytical thought.

If I were to quantify the purpose of the human species, I would say that all human beings have the same basic purpose.

But what do I know about science? Not much.

Blessings,
granny

Human nature is peerless.

 

[Paul_Rimmer]

Are you using quantify as in logic? “'To limit the variables of (a proposition) by prefixing an operator such as all or some.” (American Heritage College Dictionary)

This is not what I mean by “quantifiable” (or “quantitative”). I mean “able to put into number-relations”. For example, gravitational force is a measurable quantity, and is related to other measurable quantities, mass and distance.

I admit that much of science is not quantitative. My question is whether intelligent design has a quantitative component, for example, a determination of the probability of a thing having been designed. If not, then what systematic method do we use to determine the presence of design? I’m not sure whether such a method can be invented, but maybe someday a system will be developed that will give good answer to this question, and hopefully it will involve measurable quantities. If this happens, intelligent design will become a genuine part of any science that can incorporate it. Mostly, though, I have many questions about intelligent design; I don’t understand its arguments very well yet.

If I were a curious biologist, the first question I would ask is – what is the purpose of this particular living organism. I suppose there would be lots of purposes for non-human organisms. But only one purpose for the human species. This would be demonstrated by the scientific recognition of the material/non-material human nature.

It is interesting how different people approach new things. I would wonder about mechanism first. What is this animal? How is it different from other animals? Why does it have these differences? How does it survive? Why is it the way it is and not another way? How does it reproduce? What does it do? In what ways is it related to me, and in what ways is it different from me? For some organisms, I’d even wonder how we know that it’s really living, and what criteria we apply to determine that.

Because of my background, I’d also wonder about origins. Where did this particular organism come from? Is there a first organism of its type, and if so, what was before that organism? How did it come to be? For me, unqualified purpose would be one of the things I would not explore first, because I don’t know how to determine it. It seems more like a philosophy question to me.

But what do I know about science? Not much.

Probably about as much as I know about philosophy.

Blessings to you, too.

Paul

 

[Prophesy]

. Let me get this straight. Somebody used the empirical method in order to prove the existence of an object they presumed to be measuring!!!

Are we talking about science or philosophy here?

There is the story of some responding to the claim that the material world doesn’t exist by kicking a rock off a cliff. Like I said, it’s not sufficient for me. Another example is a man who tried to prove the existence of a chair by stating this:

“Premise: This is my hand”
places hand on chair
"Conclusion: There is a chair here.

I am simply acknowledging that there have been attempts (with lackluster results).

It is the same question. The questions raised by the empirical sciences are contextually and necessarily different from philosophical questions about God.

For instance the question of whether or not God should be kept out of scientific questions, is not itself a scientific question. Its a philosophical question about Gods relationship to science.

I remain at my standpoint that there is a difference between these two questions.

-Prophecy

 

[traillius]

God should be kept out of raw data perhaps, because that is pure science. Any conclusions drawn about ultimate cause transcend raw data, and therefore fall under the realm of philosophy. But This would lead to discussing a banned topic.

 

[Los_Angeles]

LOL. I am still waiting for someone to show how God is **included **in scientific questions.

If anything I have said is against the Catholic Church, let it be anathema.

 

[reggieM]

LOL. I am still waiting for someone to show how God is **included **in scientific questions.

God is included in everything through His creative power – His intellect and will have created and presently sustain everything that has been created.

So, God is inseparable from science. Most scientists do not recognize this and act as if it is not true. But, by the datum of faith, we know they are wrong.

We can take it a step farther and point out that science itself cannot be separated from philosophy, since science is subordinate to philosophy and relies on philosophical assumptions and conclusions.

The scientific method is a philosophical construct. The decision to strictly employ methodological naturalism, is a philosophical decision. In fact, naturalism itself is a philosophical, not scientific, concept.

One could adopt a philosophy that placed all scientific work within the context of theology, for example. Certain cultures could, conceivably do that.

I attended Catholic schools and I remember professors teaching us to admire the work of God in various scientific results. We also prayed before each class and were taught that science had the purpose of serving God’s will and illustrating truths about God’s creation.

Of course, for Catholic scientists, God’s law will prevent them from pursuing certain activities also. This is something more than what mere secular ethics will provide.

So, as has been repeated many times on this thread - God cannot be separated from science. We might pretend that God is not involved, but why embrace that kind of illusion?

We should pray that God is involved in all of our work and study. This is true even in doing auto mechanical work, or fine art, or academic research, or working in a factory.

When a machine breaks down, we don’t stand around doing nothing, hoping for a miracle – but we should pray and perhaps seek some insight and learning about God in everything we do.

 

[buffalo]

LOL. I am still waiting for someone to show how God is **included **in scientific questions.

If anything I have said is against the Catholic Church, let it be anathema.

If truth is included then God is included. Duh.

 

[FidesSpesCarita]

LOL. I am still waiting for someone to show how God is **included **in scientific questions.

If anything I have said is against the Catholic Church, let it be anathema.

Science (as is being discussed here) is involved in the pursuit of two distinct types of knowledge: “Of what is a thing made?” and “What is the purpose of these parts which make up this thing?”

When attempting to understand the red blood cell, for instance, one must first learn what PARTS make up the cell. Then one can begin to understand the purpose each part serves and how it fits into the greater whole of the cell. Then that cell can be incorporated into the understanding of the whole human body.

It is this understanding of the FORM and PURPOSE of each bit that leads to an inclusion of God. It is like trying to understand anything which has been designed, like ancient greek mechanical computers. When they are first found, there is no understanding of what they do, what they were for, or how they were built. First you start by taking them apart and understanding what parts make up the whole. Then you can begin to understand what they do. Then you can understand what they were for. This leads to an understanding of the man who created that machine. His wants, needs, desires, etc. In the beginning, the creator is a secondary issue to the item being studied. But as knowledge of the item increases, so does knowledge of the Creator. There can be no separation of the item and the creator without a loss of the understanding of function. If you studied a watch with no knowledge of its purpose and no desire to know its purpose, you might eventually be able to build your own watch from top to bottom, but what would be the good in building something utterly useless to you? Now, if you tried to learn who created it and why, THAT would be knowledge absolutely worth knowing.

FSC

 

[Tuno]

Ken Wilbur’s A brief History of Everything introduced me to a very useful concept: holons, that is whole things made of parts which they transcend and which are themselves parts of a greater whole. E.g. in the range of items we are able to observe, particles make atoms–but atoms transcend particles in their nature. Molecules are made of atoms, but transcend atoms in their nature, etc., etc.* So it is unlikely that we will ever get a picture of the whole by looking at parts. We can’t necessarily predict the attributes of a molecule from its composite atoms even if chemistry is as advanced as it is today; there are still surprises. And this is why we make quantum leaps when we understand systems of holons. Such a leap occurred when we switched from say, a geocentric understanding of astronomy to a heliocentric understanding, and then moved from that to Hubble’s discovery that some of the stars were galaxies, etc. etc.

At present most religions are “ahead” of science in that they attribute Creation to God. But science is “ahead” of religion in figuring out the practical particulars of how things fit together and work. So when we are considering God, we are looking at the Source of All and getting smaller, so it is easy to see how everything is included, though we don’t necessarily “get” all the connections. But when we are looking at Creation through science we are proceeding from parts to the Whole, as it were. But we have seen that the whole/Whole, or greater systems transcend their “parts.”

So it would be a lot to ask of science, with its strict methodology, to account for or include the Whole as it is looking at parts. That is not it’s job, even if the lookers account for the existence of the parts by attributing those to God. Some won’t do that because short of inspiration and grace they are stuck in attributing Wholeness to the workings of parts. They have a kind of myopia specific to not finding the Whole in parts, as well they can’t.

Now there are some who correctly attribute the existence of parts to God who want science to start at the Whole and do their work from there. Unfortunately, as far as I can see, this causes a kind of blindness to the actual wonder of Creation. By claiming design, they put God too far out of the picture and make things too simplistic. This allows “the God of the gaps” argument to feed as voraciously as the “parts don’t reveal God” brand of atheism feeds those of us with Faith.

I feel that since larger systems include and transcend their parts, design is yet an insufficient answer, while Creation is not, though because we are looking at its parts we cannot see the whole. But I think that the Whole is far more wondrous than design off the top allows, for to me it comes of as actually mechanistic and materialistic.

So I feel that while we can attribute manifestation to God we cannot simply say “this is so because God made it that way.” I think that that sells Deity short both as worship or adoration and as science. And if we have the gift of Faith, then that is a point of gratitude, and perhaps not our job, except by example, to attempt instill it in sincere people who are yet unprepared for such reception. Maybe some of us are in kindergarten and some in other levels of education and we might ask if it is useful to get upset with first graders because they aren’t doing trigonometry and are still playing with blocks.

*Thus complexity and inclusivity yield fewer members of each ascending set of holons till there is the Whole, their Source.

 

[buffalo]

Ken Wilbur’s A brief History of Everything introduced me to a very useful concept: holons, that is whole things made of parts which they transcend and which are themselves parts of a greater whole. E.g. in the range of items we are able to observe, particles make atoms–but atoms transcend particles in their nature. Molecules are made of atoms, but transcend atoms in their nature, etc., etc.* So it is unlikely that we will ever get a picture of the whole by looking at parts. We can’t necessarily predict the attributes of a molecule from its composite atoms even if chemistry is as advanced as it is today; there are still surprises. And this is why we make quantum leaps when we understand systems of holons. Such a leap occurred when we switched from say, a geocentric understanding of astronomy to a heliocentric understanding, and then moved from that to Hubble’s discovery that some of the stars were galaxies, etc. etc.

At present most religions are “ahead” of science in that they attribute Creation to God. But science is “ahead” of religion in figuring out the practical particulars of how things fit together and work. So when we are considering God, we are looking at the Source of All and getting smaller, so it is easy to see how everything is included, though we don’t necessarily “get” all the connections. But when we are looking at Creation through science we are proceeding from parts to the Whole, as it were. But we have seen that the whole/Whole, or greater systems transcend their “parts.”

So it would be a lot to ask of science, with its strict methodology, to account for or include the Whole as it is looking at parts. That is not it’s job, even if the lookers account for the existence of the parts by attributing those to God. Some won’t do that because short of inspiration and grace they are stuck in attributing Wholeness to the workings of parts. They have a kind of myopia specific to not finding the Whole in parts, as well they can’t.

Now there are some who correctly attribute the existence of parts to God who want science to start at the Whole and do their work from there. Unfortunately, as far as I can see, this causes a kind of blindness to the actual wonder of Creation. By claiming design, they put God too far out of the picture and make things too simplistic. This allows “the God of the gaps” argument to feed as voraciously as the “parts don’t reveal God” brand of atheism feeds those of us with Faith.

I feel that since larger systems include and transcend their parts, design is yet an insufficient answer, while Creation is not, though because we are looking at its parts we cannot see the whole. But I think that the Whole is far more wondrous than design off the top allows for it what to me comes of as the materialism of “special creation.”

So I feel that while we can attribute manifestation to God we cannot simply say “this is so because God made it that way.” I think that that sells Deity short both as worship or adoration and as science. And if we have the gift of Faith, then that is a point of gratitude, and perhaps not our job, except by example, to attempt instill it in sincere people who are yet unprepared for such reception. Maybe some of us are in kindergarten and some in other levels of education and we might ask if it is useful to get upset with first graders because they aren’t doing trigonometry and are still playing with blocks.

*Thus complexity and inclusivity yield fewer members of each ascending set of holons till there is the Whole, their Source.

I pretty much like your post.

See where God is located?

http://forums.catholic-questions.org/picture.php?albumid=639&pictureid=7084

 

[Moonstruck888]

Just a point - if you are a chess piece and all you can know are chess pieces how can you differentiate design? I think that is a reason it is so hard.

Chess pieces have no reticular consciousness. They can’t know anything.

How can you differentiate Humanoid life from design?

A designer would never put the sewage outlet right in the middle of the entertainment suite.

A designer would not have the air intake valve attached to the same orifice as the fuel intake feed, causing several hundred of his creations to choke to death in the USA and Europe, not to mention everywhere else, every year.

A designer would not have primitive forelimbs used to attach a prehensile hand that serves no purpose now that his creation has stopped living in trees thousands of model revisions ago.

Another issue worth thinking about. Designers use blueprints and draughtsmen to draw up schematics that are then passed onto an engineer who builds the design to spec. Human beings who want to make babies simply throw some bananas up a close and then wait for nine months. No design work is done, a biological process is initiated.

 

[Moonstruck888]

Yes, all language is designed. Languages transmit ideas. They use symbols, codes, maps and instructions.

DNA is not a language unless you employ the vaguest possible definition of language. DNA does not employ symbols, DNA does not dish out instructions. DNA does not send out codes.

DNA simply obeys the laws of Chemistry. Biological life is an emergent property of those laws.

 

[buffalo]

Chess pieces have no reticular consciousness. They can’t know anything.

How can you differentiate Humanoid life from design?

A designer would never put the sewage outlet right in the middle of the entertainment suite.

A designer would not have the air intake valve attached to the same orifice as the fuel intake feed, causing several hundred of his creations to choke to death in the USA and Europe, not to mention everywhere else, every year.

A designer would not have primitive forelimbs used to attach a prehensile hand that serves no purpose now that his creation has stopped living in trees thousands of model revisions ago.

Another issue worth thinking about. Designers use blueprints and draughtsmen to draw up schematics that are then passed onto an engineer who builds the design to spec. Human beings who want to make babies simply throw some bananas up a close and then wait for nine months. No design work is done, a biological process is initiated.

The bad design argument does not negate design. When detecting design we do not filter for bad or good. Design is present or it is not.

To evaluate whether a design is good or bad is the success rate of the design, its purpose and the total context of which the design has to work including likely conditions.

Your job is to design from scratch a better human. Let me know when you have a working prototype.

 

[buffalo]

DNA is not a language unless you employ the vaguest possible definition of language. DNA does not employ symbols, DNA does not dish out instructions. DNA does not send out codes.

DNA simply obeys the laws of Chemistry. Biological life is an emergent property of those laws.

Oh yes it does.

Let’s look at it:

                   **DNA Language**                     
                                                           **Human Language**                     
                                                                       Nucleotide                     
                                     Character                     
                                                                       Codon                     
                                     Letter                     
                                                                       Gene                     
                                     Word                     
                                                                       Operon                     
                                     Sentence                     
                                                                       Regulon                     
                                     Paragraph

 

[Moonstruck888]

Oh yes it does.

Let’s look at it:

                   **DNA Language**                     
                                                           **Human Language**                     
                                                                       Nucleotide                     
                                     Character                     
                                                                       Codon                     
                                     Letter                     
                                                                       Gene                     
                                     Word                     
                                                                       Operon                     
                                     Sentence                     
                                                                       Regulon                     
                                     Paragraph

This is so utterly preposterous I’m absolutely speechless right now.

How in hell do you figure that an operon is in any way analogous to a sentence?

That’s like saying the fuel pump in a car is analogous to a bottle of Coca Cola. There is absolutely no correlation here.

You’re going to have to do a lot better than this. Why do you consider an operon to be a sentence? If anything it’s more analogous to a mechanism for a key that’s used to control an on/off switch.

 

[Tuno]

@ Buffalo, re: “See where God is located?”

Since God is said to be “Omnipresent,” might it be more useful to say “See where the circles are relative to God and each other?” And I again why some of the inner circles are tangent rather than overlapping.

 

[buffalo]

@ Buffalo, re: “See where God is located?”

Since God is said to be “Omnipresent,” might it be more useful to say “See where the circles are relative to God and each other?” And I again why some of the inner circles are tangent rather than overlapping.

Look at the illustration as to what informs what. (information) The vector that informs Revelation is God. That informs faith. Science informs reason. All of which is informed by God.

God is outside the largest circle because He is God. He will always know more than humans could ever know. Adam thought He could know what God knows but Revelation tells us right from the get go that cannot be. The area labeled as IDvolution is the area where faith and reason cannot be opposed.

Why are some tangent? Faith and reason clearly overlap to some degree. Perhaps in the future the area of overlap will grow. Revelation and faith do not overlap nor do science and reason. The information flows one way.

Do we see faith inform Revelation? No. Do we see reason inform science? No. The information is driven in one direction till they meet at IDvolution.

 

[buffalo]

Linguistic Features of Noncoding DNA Sequences

 

[Tuno]

Look at the illustration as to what informs what. (information) The vector that informs Revelation is God. That informs faith. Science informs reason. All of which is informed by God.

God is outside the largest circle because He is God. He will always know more than humans could ever know. Adam thought He could know what God knows but Revelation tells us right from the get go that cannot be. The area labeled as IDvolution is the area where faith and reason cannot be opposed.

Why are some tangent? Faith and reason clearly overlap to some degree. Perhaps in the future the area of overlap will grow. Revelation and faith do not overlap nor do science and reason. The information flows one way.

Do we see faith inform Revelation? No. Do we see reason inform science? No. The information is driven in one direction till they meet at IDvolution.

Well, I see what you are getting at, I think. Yet I have to wonder if mathematicians and scientists will agree with you that they do not use reason, unless you are proposing a kind of syllogism outside of the scope of science as commonly understood. They might have similar doubts about the overlap of faith and reason, though people of faith reason from their particular premises. It is the diversity in those premisses that would cause such questioning. Given that the laws of Nature operate similarly on everyone despite one’s religion or lack of it, I trust that somehow you can account for those discrepancies?

As for revelation and faith, your circles are not labeled as to which revelation and which faith. Had I landed her from outer space, I could plug any religion in those and be assured that any one of them would have definitive proof in their own context that they are the one and only. And despite claims of history, to someone without a time machine or a particular preference for Christianity, they would be equally valid if not true in their claims. The truth of any one of them would be indeterminate even if the revelation they purported was fact, due to the intermediary necessity of faith. What say you?