Is love demonstrable through repeatable models?
For creation to happen, something had to have no beginning, or something did not come from anything. Both these scenarios require magic to explain them, science cannot do it. God is the only logical explanation.
You are right, you don’t know.
So first cause problem - ok it’s universe creating pixies. They self annihilate to create universes. Logically consistent for this question. How did you rule those out?
Perfect example of my definition of “faith” as I see religious using the term: “The excuse people use to belief something when they don’t have a justified reason to.”
Ok, I accept your point that science does not have an answer for a first cause. I know scientists will keep looking, and one day they may conclude that God is the best answer.Eric_Hyom:
So first cause problem - ok it’s universe creating pixies. They self annihilate to create universes. Logically consistent for this question. How did you rule those out?
.
We all die, and God has the power to raise us up to a greater good life after death. Jesus died for all of us including Ananias and Sapphira.
So if it hasn’t been determined yet, why go further than “We don’t know”? Why create the monolithic religion around an idea people wish it may be instead of just withholding judgment until evidence points either way? If the punishment or reward is as serious as your deity presents, why is the evidence unsupportive either way? May people feel justified that the evidence is soo bad that the idea of deity is no different than inventing one.
How complex does something have to be before it shows intelligence behind it? We have discovered natural means for how complexity builds upon itself and can actually falsify and test that claim. It hasn’t been broken yet by anyone. Once it does, then we’ll chuck it out and look at a more accurate model with that new information. How can you look at a natural process and see supernatural markers when we can not study what the supernatural does. For example, how could you tell from results A without supernatural involvement and results B with supernatural involvement other than just asserting it to be the case. Also complexity is a subjective description. What is complex to you that would indicate outside agency may not indicate that to someone one else that understands more about how natural causes build on each other. It’s like saying that dropping a ball to demonstrate gravity is described by methodological naturalists as just gravity, but the religious are claiming its gravity and the hand of a deity. It works without the need of adding the hand of a deity. There is no indication that appears to point to more than just natural causes to indicate anything more than just natural causes.
As much as I’d like to see this happen it is very unlikely as science and its purpose is to examine the natural world and nothing more. People that oppose religion, like Richard Dawkins, may try to pretend that one could extract some moral understanding of the world through the examination of nature but they always fail and always will; as they will always fail in trying to disprove God’s existence via scientific inquiry and miserably at that. I agree with your second point, in fact I agree with all of what you say, but the purpose of science is not to develop such an answer. That would only result in a resurgence of religious inquiries akin to those in prior centuries and you will have to deal with other Christian traditions and other religions like Judaism, Islam and others, all claiming that their idea of God is the accurate one. That would, likely, only bring about extremism unlike anything we’ve seen so far. Many in the scientific community already believe in God, they are not all atheists, and it may or may not drive them in their work but it will never be addressed as a cause when they present their findings.Russell_SA:
Ok, I accept your point that science does not have an answer for a first cause. I know scientists will keep looking, and one day they may conclude that God is the best answer.Eric_Hyom:
So first cause problem - ok it’s universe creating pixies. They self annihilate to create universes. Logically consistent for this question. How did you rule those out?
.
Evolution could only happen if it is guided by God, the complexity of life is beyond the realms of nature alone.
I understand that religion needs to separate out what science can and can not do, but that is not the case at all. Science is not acknowledging an alternate realm of existence and saying, nope, we don’t want to look at that. To present that narrative is just lying to your audience. Science looks at what we can investigate in reality. If we can investigate another realm, then it will. Science is not making a choice to stay in the natural only, it is making a choice to study what can be studied, once we have the tools to study it. That is it’s purpose. To understand reality. If the supernatural is part of reality, then science will study it. Stop this lying narrative. It’s just insulting and being willfully ignorant because you are just spewing what the pulpits are telling you, not what the science community is telling you. The information is there, but you are not being truthful and properly relaying what the science community has said on this matter. To properly study something in reality, you have to first come to logical conclusions of where to look. Such as Einstein’s mathematical model of gravity waves. Then you come up with ways to determine that to be the case. Currently the religious model is still at that the logical stage. There is no way to demonstrate this claim is true or false since we do not have tools to determine if people are having telepathic conversations with an entity, how to determine what are supernatural markers left over when it supposedly interacts in our reality, or basically how to determine if the supernatural claim is any different than just a fictional assertion. Science can only investigate what manifests in our reality in a detectable way. Otherwise your religion is no different than any other made up myth or legend.
No I do object because you did not acknowledge my point that reality includes what we currently call the natural world and anything to be discovered in the future. That includes other realms and spectral beings as well. It is not only going to just stay in the physical realm if it can discover a way to investigate beyond that realm. Because that is the proper way to justify your conclusions by what you can justify instead of just assert is true. By your presentation, the supernatural will always be magical to you and the people that actually study the supernatural, if it exists and when we can, those people will understand it’s processes and it will not be magic anymore, but a known process and modeled. That is how we advance our understanding of reality and better our lives by bottling the lightning bolts while the religious continue to attribute it to zeus and never learn how it actually works.
So just take thought and reason and bin it is what you are saying here. “he can not be found by the analytical approach.” that is logic and reason. that is how you come to your tentative first cause arguments, and all the rest of the apologetics
So prey on the desperate when they will take any out to recover, even if its a snake oil salesman. That is the income of every televangelist and huckster as they fly around on their jets, pinching their flabby little cheeks saying, “I’ve gotten away with it again.” Your deity needs to be seen to everyone, including the people that don’t need his magical powers.
Argument from ignorance - how do you know the universe isn’t self creating forever? It’s the special case that your deity is. The first cause mover. That’s all the first cause argument points to is a necessary starting point. You call it a deity, I’ll call it anything at all, so I’ll go with a self making universe or universe creating pixies that self annihilate to create universes. Just say we don’t know. That’s the honest answer and knowing our lists of “we don’t know” shows us where we need to spend our time continuing to explore and fund research.
Irrelevant to the truth claims religion makes. Also its been around longer than the enlightenment period where that movement was about teaching people how to think instead of what to think. Also, there is no such thing as atheism. There is the label atheist. An atheist a person’s single response to a single question. “Are you convinced that the supernatural exists based on someone else’s bad reasons and the bad evidence in reality?” No, no we are not. Just like a jury member who is not convinced the defendant is guilty of the crime. Can you tell me what that jury member’s world view is? their political view? their level of education? their biasness? their leaders? their tenants? anything at all about them? No, no you can not. There is no, Not-Guilty-ism world view just like there is no Atheism world view. There are world views that tend to have more atheists in them, like secular humanism and skeptics, but you can still be religious and be part of those world views as well.
Through pain of exile of the family for leaving the religion or being born gay.
Yeah, science has a track record of forcing religion to move its goal post of supernatural evidence time and time again. There’s not a single instant of that in reverse.
Because you live in a bubble where you’ve not experienced nonreligious cultures having these same experiences of the luminous and transcendence.
You do know that the church was a political power as strong as the national government was right and kept that power through fear, intimidation, violence, forced conversion at gun point, burnings, etc.
No, there is just reality. Demonstrate the supernatural is anything different than just your assertion and wishful belief that it exists.
You’re being disingenuous. Does science have the competence – or the tools! – to study anything that is not empirically measurable?
I come from a multicultural family with Christians, Jews, Muslims and non-believers like yourself. You are being too presumptuous. Perhaps it is you that is living in a bubble of your own design. I presume that you come from a Christian background, your parents grandparents, etc., let me ask you a question. How can secular repressive atheists like you talk about respecting other cultures when you can’t even respect your own heritage? Seems kind of masochistic if you ask me, uprooting yourself and all. Anyway, I’ll digress.J_the_Centrist:
Because you live in a bubble where you’ve not experienced nonreligious cultures having these same experiences of the luminous and transcendence.
You do know that the church was a political power as strong as the national government was right and kept that power through fear, intimidation, violence, forced conversion at gun point, burnings, etc.
No, there is just reality. Demonstrate the supernatural is anything different than just your assertion and wishful belief that it exists.
Yes science has the same tools that the religious have because all the evidence to the supernatural is just pointing at a mystery and saying, “Look that was supernatural!” or claiming mental telepathy with a deity. Anyone can do that. You’re right, science does not have the tools to determine if someone is making something up, or do we? Well there was a study when scanning people’s brains and asking them to consider what they would do in a situation verses what someone else would do. Different areas of the brain would light up when considering the self verses someone else’s point of view. But when asked what their deity would do, the area of the brain identified for self reflection would activate. That is actual evidence that the religious consider their deity to be just themselves. That is actual measurable information. All you have is pointing and stamping your feet.
I did not postulate that and no fair minded reader would agree with you here. I presented that science studies reality. So if we can demonstrate a realm outside of a physical universe, then science will study that as well, once we can demonstrate it is there at all and that we have the tools to investigate it. The reason that science doesn’t bother with the supernatural is the exact same reason it doesn’t bother with chi energies, or healing crystals, or anything else that has been actually demonstrated and documented to be nothing more than cultural wishful practices.