Science can't destroy Religion

[Charlemagne_II]

Touchstone

Well, if you don’t see the superstition of atheism, you don’t see it.

You see that all these laws of the universe that made us come into being just happened by some kind of magical chance. That sounds very much like superstition to me. A dark one, to be sure, but still a belief with no rational foundation other than the one you prefer to believe … that a thing cannot exist unless you can prove it to exist by a scientific method … as if somebody would have to show God through the end of a telescope before you could be brought to imagine that He exists.

 

[atheistgirl]

Atheism is a superstition. There is no proof for it. That is by definition what a superstition is … a belief with no proof whatever. The only people who are atheists are the people who are rebelling, for any one or more of a thousand reasons, against the the probability or even the possibility of God.

That’s interesting.

Personally, I’ve never rebelled against the probability or possibility of there being a Deity.

My atheism, and my position on all this, is that there simply is not any credible evidence for believing in a Deity of any kind.

I can say honestly there may well be a God and this God may well be the God of Christianity, but could just be the God of Islam, or Mormons, or whoever, I don’t know. I don’t deny this possibility nor do I rebel against it.

There’s just nothing I see, read, hear on any level, or internally or externally experience in any way that makes me think this Deity exists.

And I could be totally wrong.

But until something credible happens to make me think otherwise, I don’t think I am.

It’s not a position of rebellion, it’s a neutral position open to the possibility of such a Deity existing, contingent on proof.

But no such proofs have ever been given.

Sarah x

 

[Lochias]

That’s interesting.

Personally, I’ve never rebelled against the probability or possibility of there being a Deity.

My atheism, and my position on all this, is that there simply is not any credible evidence for believing in a Deity of any kind.

I can say honestly there may well be a God and this God may well be the God of Christianity, but could just be the God of Islam, or Mormons, or whoever, I don’t know. I don’t deny this possibility nor do I rebel against it.

There’s just nothing I see, read, hear on any level, or internally or externally experience in any way that makes me think this Deity exists.

And I could be totally wrong.
**
But until something credible happens to make me think otherwise, I don’t think I am.**

It’s not a position of rebellion, it’s a neutral position open to the possibility of such a Deity existing, contingent on proof.

But no such proofs have ever been given.

Sarah x

The entirety of the universe happening and continuing to run as it does, despite the mathematical probability of it being caused by an accident being virtually non-existent, isn’t credible enough for you?

 

[ASimon]

The entirety of the universe happening and continuing to run as it does, despite the mathematical probability of it being caused by an accident being virtually non-existent, isn’t credible enough for you?

If a Universe were caused by accident, I would fully expect it to behave the way ours does.

 

[Lochias]

If a Universe were caused by accident, I would fully expect it to behave the way ours does.

When you get around to creating a Universe, let me know how that hypothesis goes.

 

[ASimon]

When you get around to creating a Universe, let me know how that hypothesis goes.

Don’t need to create one. I already live in one - one where planets (and their lifeforms) are routinely wiped out by comets and meteors, or exploding stars, or galaxies colliding. If not that, then the perils of living on their own planet, with chaotic seismology and weather patterns. Which might not be so bad if those lifeforms weren’t so imperfectly evolved, but they are. And leaving aside the fact that we’re on a one-way course to eventual heat-death, leaving the Universe cold, black, and empty.

Seriously, if there’s a Creator behind all this, it’s no wonder he’s been laying low all this time. If we knew he was there, he might have to take credit for this mess.

 

[Lochias]

Don’t need to create one. I already live in one - one where planets (and their lifeforms) are routinely wiped out by comets and meteors, or exploding stars, or galaxies colliding. If not that, then the perils of living on their own planet, with chaotic seismology and weather patterns. Which might not be so bad if those lifeforms weren’t so imperfectly evolved, but they are. And leaving aside the fact that we’re on a one-way course to eventual heat-death, leaving the Universe cold, black, and empty.

Seriously, if there’s a Creator behind all this, it’s no wonder he’s been laying low all this time. If we knew he was there, he might have to take credit for this mess.

So, for you, it all boils down to an fear or hatred of death? Why do you think we, or anything else living, have the right to exist forever?

 

[ASimon]

So, for you, it all boils down to an fear or hatred of death? Why do you think we, or anything else living, have the right to exist forever?

I don’t. I think our lives are what they are, and we should accept it. It’s the believer that fears and hates death, which is why they cling to notions like Eternal Life. Or, when they consider the Universe, with all its innumerable flaws, have the nerve to use terms like “Intelligent Design,” or “Fine-Tuning” to describe it.

Our Universe behaves exactly like you would expect one to behave, if it had happened by accident.

 

[DeepBlueSea]

Seriously, if there’s a Creator behind all this, it’s no wonder he’s been laying low all this time. If we knew he was there, he might have to take credit for this mess.

There are more mess created by human. Just look at the front page of today’s Financial Times. I have yet to see anything as far reaching as the LIBOR manipulation mess.

 

[tonyrey]

Our Universe behaves exactly like you would expect one to behave, if it had happened by accident.

An accident is not a credible basis for order, value, purpose, meaning or a rational existence. We would expect an accidental universe to be chaotic, valueless, purposeless, meaningless, unpredictable, unintelligible and - above all - irrational…

 

[Lochias]

I don’t. I think our lives are what they are, and we should accept it. It’s the believer that fears and hates death, which is why they cling to notions like Eternal Life. Or, when they consider the Universe, with all its innumerable flaws, have the nerve to use terms like “Intelligent Design,” or “Fine-Tuning” to describe it.

Our Universe behaves exactly like you would expect one to behave, if it had happened by accident.

…uh, nope. I certainly accept the notion of death, as it’s just a change, and our life here is but the twinkling of an eye, beautiful though it is. The idea of death is a gentle one to me.

All I can say is, I’ll be praying for you. I don’t see any flaws in the Universe, 'cause I’m nobody to judge, barely being able to cook a box of Rice-a-Roni without burning it.

God Bless.

 

[inocente]

Nicolaus Copernicus Heliocentric Theory of the Solar System
“The universe has been wrought for us by a supremely good and orderly Creator.”

Johannes Kepler Kepler’s Laws of Planetary Motions
“[May] God who is most admirable in his works … deign to grant us the grace to bring to light and illuminate the profundity of his wisdom in the visible (and accordingly intelligible) creation of this world.”

Galileo Galilei Laws of Dynamics
“The Holy Bible and the phenomenon of nature proceed alike from the divine Word.”

Isaac Newton Laws of Thermodynamics, Optics, etc.
“This most beautiful system [the universe] could only proceed from the dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being.” Isaac Newton

“After 9/11, we realized that all these silly culture wars, and arguing about rock lyrics… who cares? You know, we, for some reason, remembered what our real problems are.” - Frank Rich

“I always wanted to be a hairdresser.” - David Beckham

“A day without sunshine is like, you know, night.” - Steve Martin

 

[inocente]

There cannot be any scientific method without the metaphysics of science. A scientific worldview is just a subtype of naturalism, one that goes further than just affirming a naturalist ontology, and affirms scientific epistemology as the basis of knowledge. It’s not “methodological”, constrained as that term indicates to experimental science, but philosophical, applied to all of our thinking and interpretation.

I think you and Al may be over-complicating this. It’s easier to make a distinction based on attitude.

Suppose we know someone with leukemia, and suddenly for no discernable reason the disease remits and they are cured.

What we might call a superstitious reaction is to cry out that it’s a miracle, praise God, and be awe struck by the power of the Lord’s hand.

What we might call a scientific reaction is after giving thanks to God for this mercy, systematically find other cases and try to find a common factor – genes, diet, were they prayed for, were they Christians, whatever.

Obviously the scientific reaction can potentially cure others while the superstitious never will, but the modern myth, regularly idolized by a surprising large number of people on CAF, is that religious cannot be scientific, that religious can only be superstitious, and the more so the better.

 

[inocente]

There are more mess created by human. Just look at the front page of today’s Financial Times. I have yet to see anything as far reaching as the LIBOR manipulation mess.

What? The Holocaust was a sideshow?

 

[Al_Moritz]

Touchstone

It is one thing to speak of the “godless, naturalist principles of science” as an epistemology that excludes God from its immediate activities, but quite another thing to assume that science itself is fundamentally atheistic or godless because it precludes the existence of God. Science can never do this, though individual scientists, whose intellects and imaginations have been narrowed by the bias of naturalism, will leap to that logically unfounded conclusion.

Preccisely. Well put.

Atheism is a superstition. There is no proof for it. That is by definition what a superstition is … a belief with no proof whatever. The only people who are atheists are the people who are rebelling, for any one or more of a thousand reasons, against the the probability or even the possibility of God.

I would not call atheism a superstition. After all, I might be an atheist by now for reasons a few years back that I then judged as rational – they were, but they were based on an incomplete picture of reality. Only philosophical knowledge held me back at the time, including, among many other things, the philosophical distinction that you just pointed out.

 

[Al_Moritz]

Science is a metaphysical discipline. You cannot do science without engaging in scientific metaphysics. There is no connection between experiences and extra-mental reality without the metaphysical axiom that connects them, that stipulates, without justification, but just as a naked, enabling axiom that our experience DOES reflect extra-mental reality.

There cannot be any scientific method without the metaphysics of science. A scientific worldview is just a subtype of naturalism, one that goes further than just affirming a naturalist ontology, and affirms scientific epistemology as the basis of knowledge. It’s not “methodological”, constrained as that term indicates to experimental science, but philosophical, applied to all of our thinking and interpretation.

Philosophical naturalism a wider set that contains scientific worldviews. Scientific wordviews are just a special case of naturalism that specifically embraces scientific epistemology. Methodological naturalism is just the means of constraining naturalist ontology to the practice of science – we don’t except “God” as an agent in a scientific theory, even if the scientists doing the work are Christians, because scientific practice does NOT make the overarching metaphysical commitments that one with a scientific worldview does. They only embrace, as a matter of necessity, that experience evinces reality, that our senses reflect the extra-mental world.

A philosophical embrace of scientific principles, as opposed to a practical (methodological) embrace produces a worldview governed by those principles, and they form the interpretative grid for all of one’s experiences. Methodological naturalism doesn’t apply at that scope, which is why a scientist can be a Christian – he only applies the godless, naturalist principles of science at a practical level, and reserves his interpretation of wider philosophical and metaphysical questions for his theistic superstitions.

-TS

Touchstone,

Your post continues to show your philosophical confusion on the matter. For one thing, there are no “godless principles of science”. Yes, they are naturalist, but for any believing scientist, including the first scientists who invented the scientific method in the first place, natural causes are not godless, but secondary causes through which God as primary cause lets His creation unfold. This is classical philosophy and theology from many centuries before the scientific revolution, but I don’t expect you to be informed about such rational subtleties – after all, religion and theistic philosophy is just “irrational superstition” to you.

I have made my case, and anyone, except you, who has closely followed my arguments and who knows both about science and philosophy, will logically agree with my arguments. I am finished discussing this matter with you. If you intend to continue to believe in the concept of a non-existing “scientific worldview” I cannot stop you from being irrational on this matter.

Your replies have only confirmed what I have observed over and over again through the years: Atheists tend to be philosophically confused and uninformed. That confusion may not always be the underlying reason why they became atheists (though sometimes it appears to be), but it certainly facilitates the transition to atheism.

Several years ago I might have become an atheist myself, had not my knowledge of philosophy and the analytical thinking associated with it held me back at that point (and that then gave me breathing space me to thoroughly inform myself about issues like the fine-tuning of the laws of nature and the Argument from Reason, issues that I knew next to nothing about at the time). No need for me to brag about the philosophical knowledge that I had then, though – I had acquired it under fortunate circumstances that were not based on my own merits. I got “lucky”, I guess. Otherwise I might very well be on your side now.

 

[Al_Moritz]

Happy Fourth of July, everyone!

(For all in America and Rwanda, at least.)

 

[Charlemagne_II]

I do believe superstition can work both ways. I think it is **more **superstitious to believe that the laws of the universe mindlessly formed themselves to be capable of producing us, than it is superstitious to believe that that these laws were intelligently created with the view toward producing a lawful universe that could not only produce us, but could make us able to understand the very laws that produced us.

There are simply too many wheels within wheels to convince me that we are all minor accidents emanating from the major accident called the Big Bang.

 

[Al_Moritz]

I do believe superstition can work both ways. I think it is **more **superstitious to believe that the laws of the universe mindlessly formed themselves to be capable of producing us, than it is superstitious to believe that that these laws were intelligently created with the view toward producing a lawful universe that could not only produce us, but could make us able to understand the very laws that produced us.

There are simply too many wheels within wheels to convince me that we are all minor accidents emanating from the major accident called the Big Bang.

In priniciple I agree with you, but I would replace “more superstitious” with “less rational”.

The crucial mistake is that atheists often automatically assume that believers in God are “superstitious” because they believe in “magic”. Some do, but in the case of most believers, including you and me, nothing could be further from the truth, as Edward Feser points out in his excellent article:

edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2011/10/magic-versus-metaphysics.html

He also makes a good case that is is actually atheism that believes in “magic”, based on his considerations in the article. I would agree.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

Al

Right. The universe on its own suddenly and accidentally came into being with Higgs Boson particle ready to go!

Abracadabra!