Science “Proves” Gods existence

[Leibniz]

“If we knew nothing about the universe except that the Catholic God created it, what sort of expectations would we have about that universe?”

I don’t think this is a coherent question to ask, because the Catholic God is necessarily the God of human history, a history that includes group consequences for the entire race of mankind due to the sin of Adam and Eve. (Frank J. Sheed has the best explanation that I have come across on how such apparently unfair group punishment could be optimal, in his book “Theology and Sanity.”)

“No one is ever willing to hang their theology on a prediction of the universe that may turn out to be incorrect. Instead they simply resort to saying: “see how the universe is, that’s exactly what God would have done.” Unfortunately, that leaves nothing for science to confirm or deny.”

Well I think I just did with my prediction earlier in this thread about why I think attempts at creating artificial machine intelligence/self-awareness will always fail.

The most difficult things for Christians to account for are: (1) the apparent absence of God such that you cannot experimentally verify His presence or intervention anywhere; and (2) the apparently physical basis for human consciousness.

If every time you line up physical molecules in a particular way, a conscious self-aware being is the result, then it becomes difficult to believe in a God that breathes spirit into man, rather than believing that “spirit” or consciousness is just some ambient part of the cosmic background that exists everywhere, which is what Buddhists believe.

 

[Earth_WandererI]

I was a devout, dedicated, hardcore atheist for forty years. My oldest son who is autistic was asking me about the Big Bang Theory (he was 9). I read multiple books on the theory including many by Dr. Stephen Hawkings… The final book I read had a small statement near the end of the book. It referred to a statement by a French Priest Fr. Lemaitre (part of the team that worked on the theory). He wanted The Vatican to except the theory. The argument he used was “it points to a moment of creation.” That is when the the light bulb came on. Basic scientific fact, you cant get something from nothing. So how then did the universe start if not for God? Of course The Vatican accepted the theory.

 

[JapaneseKappa]

Not necessarily. Just because the universe is a lot bigger than the tiny space life occupies does not mean that life is unimportant. A man might make a huge safe with walls twenty feet think all for the sake of one tiny diamond which is only one centimeter in diameter. Does that mean the safe is more important to him than than the diamond, just because it is bigger? No, of course not. In fact, the contrary is true. size does not equal importance.

A big safe is more secure. A big universe serves no purpose. God could have created just the solar system. He could have created just the milky way. Either of those would have allowed life to be perfectly happy. What property of God would you invoke to predict a big universe?

God did make a perfect world, probably something of the kind you just described, only better. In fact, instructions on how to behave were as simple as ever: “Don’t eat the fruit from that tree in the center of the garden.” and the thought of any other evil, such as killing, did not even enter man’s mind. Unfortunately, WE are the ones who messed it up. God made the world perfect, WE are the ones who brought, death and suffering and killing, and disease, and all that stuff into the world, because humans did not want to behave in that one tiny commandment. What makes you think people would behave if only Almighty God gave them clear, unambiguous, instructions? We have wills of our own, and many human wills don’t want peace and harmony.

Imagine we lived in a world where children never got diseases. Would you say to me: “See, children never get diseases, that is evidence God does not exist!” I think you would not make that argument. You would argue that:
“See, children never get diseases, and that is certainly not evidence God does not exist!”

However we are here in this universe and you are saying to me:
“See, children do get diseases, and that is certainly not evidence God does not exist!”

So this means God is just as likely in a world without childhood diseases as he is in a world with them. That means the existence of God makes no prediction about childhood disease. We can repeat this analysis for any prediction:

Would the absence of evil be evidence against God?
Would the a perfectly clear and scientifically novel holy book be evidence against God?

And so, you are quite right, it is always possible to wriggle out of any prediction that turns out to be wrong. But we are left with a God theory that makes no predictions about the world at all.

 

[JapaneseKappa]

“If we knew nothing about the universe except that the Catholic God created it, what sort of expectations would we have about that universe?”

I don’t think this is a coherent question to ask, because the Catholic God is necessarily the God of human history, a history that includes group consequences for the entire race of mankind due to the sin of Adam and Eve. (Frank J. Sheed has the best explanation that I have come across on how such apparently unfair group punishment could be optimal, in his book “Theology and Sanity.”)

I agree, I also think the Catholic God is an invention of history. However what you are saying is that despite a long history of claimed interactions with God, we don’t actually know any general rules regarding how God operates.

Well I think I just did with my prediction earlier in this thread about why I think attempts at creating artificial machine intelligence/self-awareness will always fail.

Then I suppose we will wait and see. People have been willing to put their money where there mouth is on this question before:
longbets.org/1/

I suspect, though, that if we ever do invent an artificial intelligence (e.g. one that can pass the turing test,) it will turn out not be a “true” -]scottsman/-] artificial intelligence.

 

[Leibniz]

I suppose it depends on what you mean by “general rules.”

 

[JapaneseKappa]

I suppose it depends on what you mean by “general rules.”

Any structure that describes how God behaves.

 

[thenobes]

Any structure that describes how God behaves.

Liebnitz in fact elucidated in post #39 a series of logical steps whereby the behavior of God is deduced from the existence of the universe.

This can be the outlines of the structure you desire.

After that, your arguments seem to be from a moral direction. That is, you hold God to a moral standard for which you really have no basis to hold yourself if there is no God. Why should God be held to your moral judgements?

To wit, a moral system implies a system of acts considered “good” and “bad”. However, without a lawgiver, you are the one who chooses this value system.

But on what basis do you choose this system? There is by necessity a meta-system of values which control what values you choose (else the value controlling the choice is in the set chosen and you have a circular set of values.)

But how is that meta set chosen? By a meta-meta set. And that set by a meta-meta-meta-set. And so on to infinity. Which implies you would have no knowledge of a first set of principles.

On the other hand, maybe you don’t have a meta-set. In that case you are choosing your morality arbitrarily, since it is based on no other principles.

That is why there must be a God if morality exists.

And if you try to argue from a moral position that God does not exist, you are contradicting yourself, because without God there is no real moral position.

peace
steve

 

[Leibniz]

I’m not sure what you been by a structure either, but I do know that both “structure” and “general rules” seem to indicate that you are interested in the operation of God’s law.

We know from faith is that there is such a thing as God’s law, and we are taught many general principles of how God’s law operates. For example: that God does not show favoritism; that God exalts the humble and punishes the proud; that God rewards based on the love we should to our neighbors, which is one of the best ways to love God Himself; that God has thrown the human race out into a world ruled by Satan as exiles, and that we are being tested and will be judged; etc.

Now I hesitate to say that our knowledge of these things means that we have knowledge of God’s general rules, because I don’t want to presume that we know the details of how God’s law operates. God’s justice has a way of always surprising us.

I also hesitate to say that we can discover a general moral structure to it all, because that seems to imply a Kantian approach such that we can reduce morality and God’s law to an objective, self-contained science with well-defined operations. We can’t do that, but rather must be led by the Holy Spirit and the law written on our hearts as conscience, and these are always clouded by the effects of Original Sin, which clouds our minds and tends to introduce subjective error into all our calculations.

All of which is just a long-winded way of saying that God’s law (i.e., the structure of the rules by which He chooses to operate and dispense His justice) is not something reducible to scientific inquiry by the natural light of human reason. It is something we know by the Holy Spirit and by faith.

The existence of God, however, is something we believe is knowable by the natural light of human reason, as was stated by Vatican I. Honestly, I’ve never been exactly sure what was meant by this statement, because “God” can have different definitions, and the “natural light of human reason” is a concept I’ve never understood, since all human reason is derived from God anyway. But whatever the Church intended by that statement at Vatican I, I trust that they were correct about it.

 

[Ignatius]

I am looking for some info on how science “Proves” Gods existence. I have a relative that is trying to convince us that science disproves Gods existence. I have seen it around before but forget where the info is. Thanks in advance.

Ask them to show you this evidence.

 

[Mystophilus]

but their conclusions are only virtually contained within Chapter 13. Chapter 37 deals with “God is Good”, with the following chapter demonstrating that God is subsistent Goodness itself. Following this the Doctor deals with God is intelligence, and the nature of knowledge in God, after knowledge comes the Divine Will, culminating in the Divine Activity in Book 2.

Chapter 13 shouldn’t be read alone; but in the context of the entire book.

The problem is that the issue which appears in ch. 13 is an assumption, and the entire argument is consequential, which means that earlier assumptions affect later conclusions. Thus the Idealism inflects the rest of the sequence: in regard to sentience, it does show up in ch. 44, in parts 2, 5, 6, and 8 (whereas 3, 4, and 7 are just flawed by the lack of comprehension of ‘mechanical’ forces like gravity or magnetism).

His argument is a good argument for how a theist should believe God to be, but not such a good one for why an atheist or agnostic should believe God to be: it still depends upon faith.

 

[Estevao]

The project of science itself, presupposing that the universe is rationally intelligible, points toward a mind behind the physical universe. This is a point John Lennox has made many times, in his book “God’s Undertaker” and in his debate with Peter Singer. The atheist materialist seems to say that we derive rationality from irrationality.

 

[JapaneseKappa]

Liebnitz in fact elucidated in post #39 a series of logical steps whereby the behavior of God is deduced from the existence of the universe.

“See how the world is, that’s exactly what God would have done.” That is not a claim science can test.

This can be the outlines of the structure you desire.

After that, your arguments seem to be from a moral direction. That is, you hold God to a moral standard for which you really have no basis to hold yourself if there is no God. Why should God be held to your moral judgements?

To wit, a moral system implies a system of acts considered “good” and “bad”. However, without a lawgiver, you are the one who chooses this value system.

But on what basis do you choose this system? There is by necessity a meta-system of values which control what values you choose (else the value controlling the choice is in the set chosen and you have a circular set of values.)

But how is that meta set chosen? By a meta-meta set. And that set by a meta-meta-meta-set. And so on to infinity. Which implies you would have no knowledge of a first set of principles.

On the other hand, maybe you don’t have a meta-set. In that case you are choosing your morality arbitrarily, since it is based on no other principles.

That is why there must be a God if morality exists.

And if you try to argue from a moral position that God does not exist, you are contradicting yourself, because without God there is no real moral position.

peace
steve

God doesn’t have to play by my rules. I’m not the one who thinks I can talk to God or know what he wants from his creation. I am asking you to make a prediction about the universe based on your understanding of God.

For example: “Assuming that God exists, I predict the mass of an electron to be 5x10^-31 kg.”
For example: “Assuming that God exists, I predict we have a perfectly clear set of behavioral expectations.”

However, I think you will find that you cannot make any such predictions. You might say something like:
“Assuming that God exists, I predict morality would be absolute.”

Which is cute, but meaningless. There is no way to test whether morality is absolute or arbitrary unless you also postulate something like “immorality is punished by God in our lifetime.” If you don’t postulate that, then the only difference between “moral” and “immoral” actions are that “God wants you to do one and not the other.” In that case, the prediction isn’t actually about our universe because the prediction reduces to:
“If I assume that God exists, he will want us to do some things and not others.”

But that is somewhat tautological because the Catholic God is by definition a morality-giver.

 

[Leibniz]

Kappa, the whole idea of being able to work from a knowledge of the Catholic conception of God to predictions about the created universe are silly, because we Catholics admit that we don’t know the mind of God that well. If you take it as a given that the created universe is in a fallen state and used as a testing ground to judge the souls of men, then how in the world would we as humans be adequately equipped to determine what God’s testing ground for us entailed in its entirety? The universe is incredibly complex, and even more complex is the mind of God. We can know neither, and we cannot safely make assumptions about how God is testing us.

Men have come to knowledge of God through evidence witnessed and attested to in history. You can chose to believe these things, or not believe them. There are philosophical arguments that Vatican I asserts can prove the existence of God, but the only way to come to a better understanding of God Himself is through the experience of faith. We all have reasons for faith from our own subjective experiences, but you cannot run laboratory experiments for these. You can only go by your own experience and judgment about whether the world makes more sense when viewed through one set of axioms, or whether it makes more sense when viewed through another set of axioms. If the world is more intelligible when viewed through the lens of the Catholic faith than when viewed through any other set of assumptions, then we are seeing the world through the lens of that faith.

 

[JapaneseKappa]

The universe is incredibly complex, and even more complex is the mind of God. We can know neither, and we cannot safely make assumptions about how God is testing us.

“We cannot know the mind of God.” This lack of any predictive ability is exactly why the “God Theory” cannot be proved scientifically, as the thread title requests.

We all have reasons for faith from our own subjective experiences, but you cannot run laboratory experiments for these. You can only go by your own experience and judgment about whether the world makes more sense when viewed through one set of axioms, or whether it makes more sense when viewed through another set of axioms. If the world is more intelligible when viewed through the lens of the Catholic faith than when viewed through any other set of assumptions, then we are seeing the world through the lens of that faith.

Indeed, there are no tests, so the answer to the topic of this post is “There can be no scientific proof of God so long as we can’t define God well enough to make any predictions.”

 

[thenobes]

“We cannot know the mind of God.” This lack of any predictive ability is exactly why the “God Theory” cannot be proved scientifically, as the thread title requests.

Indeed, there are no tests, so the answer to the topic of this post is “There can be no scientific proof of God so long as we can’t define God well enough to make any predictions.”

What bothered me was that some of the questions you used in order to say theycannot be used to prove or disprove God, are not based in the material realm, but are rather based in the supernatural.

Science measures physical phenomena, not metaphysical as is, for instance, free will.

That being said, it is difficult to scientifically prove the existence of the metaphysical. The only way to prove it is with metaphysical, logical arguments, which are above scientific arguments.

peace
steve

 

[dmar198]

“We cannot know the mind of God.” This lack of any predictive ability is exactly why the “God Theory” cannot be proved scientifically, as the thread title requests.

That does not follow. We cannot know the mind of any person. That doesn’t mean we can’t use science to prove that people exist. Likewise, although we cannot know the mind of God, that doesn’t mean we can’t use science to prove that God exists.

Indeed, there are no tests, so the answer to the topic of this post is “There can be no scientific proof of God so long as we can’t define God well enough to make any predictions.”

We can “define” God as a personal, omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent and benevolent Creator of the universe, although I don’t think it’s quite correct to say that those descriptions “define” God. Using these descriptions as if they were definitions, we can use science to back up God’s existence.

An example would be using science to examine physical reality and draw conclusions about its properties and its essential nature. After drawing conclusions about physical reality, we can use logic to show that physical reality couldn’t have the properties or essential nature it has unless God exists according to the definition we started out with. By this method, I think we can successfully use science to back up the existence of God.

Alternatively, we could reformulate deductive arguments for the existence of God as predictive statements and verify them using science. I think the cosmological argument would be the easiest candidate for reformulation as a scientifically verifiable prediction because the only thing it would require science to prove is that physical reality exists at all. Something like: if God exists, I predict that physical reality will exist.

That’s an inadequate reformulation, but I think a successful one could be managed.

 

[JapaneseKappa]

That does not follow. We cannot know the mind of any person. That doesn’t mean we can’t use science to prove that people exist. Likewise, although we cannot know the mind of God, that doesn’t mean we can’t use science to prove that God exists. We can “define” God as a personal, omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent and benevolent Creator of the universe, although I don’t think it’s quite correct to say that those descriptions “define” God. Using these descriptions as if they were definitions, we can use science to back up God’s existence.

Very well, make a prediction about the physical world based on that model of God.

Alternatively, we could reformulate deductive arguments for the existence of God as predictive statements and verify them using science. I think the cosmological argument would be the easiest candidate for reformulation as a scientifically verifiable prediction because the only thing it would require science to prove is that physical reality exists at all. Something like: if God exists, I predict that physical reality will exist.

Indeed, but cosmologists also predict that physical reality will exist if God does not exist. So we must look at other predictions to differentiate between the theories.

 

[dmar198]

Indeed, but cosmologists also predict that physical reality will exist if God does not exist. So we must look at other predictions to differentiate between the theories.

I think St. Thomas Aquinas definitively proved that it is logically impossible for physical reality to exist without God in the Summa Contra Gentiles Book 1 and in the Summa Theologica Part 1. Do you think there are any problems with his arguments?

 

[JapaneseKappa]

I think St. Thomas Aquinas definitively proved that it is logically impossible for physical reality to exist without God in the Summa Contra Gentiles Book 1 and in the Summa Theologica Part 1. Do you think there are any problems with his arguments?

In the context of this discussion: they are not scientific. Someone could claim to have an armchair-logic proof of an eternal supernatural walrus that, by definition, can not interact with the physical world. Scientists would not care if the logic was sound or not because the thing that is alleged to exist is by definition irrelevant to their attempts to create models of the physical world.

 

[Aloysium]

It isn’t science itself that proves the existence of God. Its scope is far too limited.
It is what science reveals of creation: its beauty, immensity, and complexity, its very existence and the remarkable reality that it contains oneself, that leads one to God.
It is self-evident; so if someone can’t and especially if they don’t want to get it, there can be no proof.