Why don't most higher up scientists believe in a God?

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PonderingJak said:
I’m speaking specifically about Steven Hawking and Neil Degrade Tyson. They are perceived as geniuses and are extremely smart in terms of science. I’m a high school freshman wanting to see if God exists or not, and this fact came up. And it really made me wonder. Space is incredibly big, and maybe is endless, but we’re stuck in the Milky Way with a very small sun (compared to other suns). That’s one scientist’s reason for being an atheist. He’s an astrologist and spent a lot of time studying the stars, and he noted that there are many things that could easily kill us if we were on a collision course, and there’d be no way to save anyone of that happened. Can anyone help answer my question? I got a little bit off track, but still want to know why people perceive as extremely smart are atheists and vehemently deny the existence of God
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They are atheists mainly because they have always been atheists. Their method of understanding the world is materialistic. And that is why they chose to do physics - to research matter, the investigate the laws by which the matter exists. I doubt they have ever been seeking God. And a person who does not seek God is unlikely to know God.
 
I think in the next 50-100 years, this will change, the more we learn and understand the quantum world, and how 2 things can be the same or be completely different at the same time, many if not all scientists and people in such fields will likely see the error that was popular thinking in the early 2000s.

Many people say a different dimension is created for each and every action, so if the box contained a dead cat, an entire world/ dimension exists where that is the outcome, likewise, if the cat is alive in the box, a separate world/ dimension would see this outcome, but its crazy to think how many dimensions there could be, given the sheer number of different possibilities on many different things in the world.
 
Also, try watching Ben Stein’s documentary, Expelled, also free on YouTube. It will give you another perspective. It’s also pretty entertaining.
 
mikekle said:
I think in the next 50-100 years, this will change, the more we learn and understand the quantum world, and how 2 things can be the same or be completely different at the same time, many if not all scientists and people in such fields will likely see the error that was popular thinking in the early 2000s.

Many people say a different dimension is created for each and every action, so if the box contained a dead cat, an entire world/ dimension exists where that is the outcome, likewise, if the cat is alive in the box, a separate world/ dimension would see this outcome, but its crazy to think how many dimensions there could be, given the sheer number of different possibilities on many different things in the world.
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I don’t quite see how a dead cat in a box would prove that God exists?
 
Mystical_Seeker said:
No competent physicist who has any knowledge of behaviors involved in quantum mechanics can honestly deny there are “spirit worlds” or at least dimensions we don’t know about which interact with us which is a bit of the same thing. Kind of cute they think the “number of dimensions” is 11, when I suspect it really isn’t a matter of counting dimensions or even degrees of freedom…
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Although the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics has been popular, there are other interpretations such as the ensemble interpretation which avoid many of the difficult to understand features in the Copenhagen interpretation.
 
Tomdstone said:
I think there will be a few people who will disagree that Islamic theology is a queen of the sciences.
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Indeed

But I never mentioned the word Islamic anywhere in my post. You filled in the blanks that in the first place never existed.
 
Sarcelle said:
Thomas Aquinas was the one who thought of sacred or dogmatic theology as queen of the sciences with philosophy as her handmaiden.
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Some Eastern Orthodox believe that there are teachings of scholasticism which are flawed.
 
“If there wasn’t Aristotle developed by St. Thomas Aquinas, we would never have modern science that we have today,” Bp. Williamson.

There are smart Catholics, both dead (in heaven) and alive. There are smarter reasons than just brains to believe in God, such as the dogma of heaven and hell. Pascal (I think?) said that it would be better to believe in God because at the end of our lives, there runs the chance that He is real, and if we refuse Him, we may just find ourselves up in a real hell. I think it was called “Pascal’s bargain,” or something like that.
 
eazyduzit said:
The reason they reject a creator has noting to do with science. It is because they don’t want to live under the MORAL constraints of the creator. (according to Thomas Huxley)
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I have to take issue with Huxley. I have known many upstanding moral people who claim to be atheists.
 
Rynard said:
“If there wasn’t Aristotle developed by St. Thomas Aquinas, we would never have modern science that we have today,” Bp. Williamson…
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Wasn’t Bp Williamson the one who denied the holocaust and was subsequently expelled from the SSPX?
 
Rynard said:
“If there wasn’t Aristotle developed by St. Thomas Aquinas, we would never have modern science that we have today,” Bp. Williamson.

There are smart Catholics, both dead (in heaven) and alive. There are smarter reasons than just brains to believe in God, such as the dogma of heaven and hell. Pascal (I think?) said that it would be better to believe in God because at the end of our lives, there runs the chance that He is real, and if we refuse Him, we may just find ourselves up in a real hell. I think it was called “Pascal’s bargain,” or something like that.
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Not really a very good reason to believe in God. 😉
 
PonderingJak said:
They are perceived as geniuses and are extremely smart in terms of science.
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Because of technology, our modern culture places far too much emphasis on the value of the scientist as thinker. Your question assumes this, but your question is also a category error. The existence of God is a philosophical question. Expertise in Science does not imply expertise in philosophy. Furthermore, scientists will be the first to tell you when a particular question is actually outside of their extremely specific field of expertise. Don’t forget that research scientists focus on a very small domain within their wider Ph.D. Everything outside such a domain is merely an opinion, and their opinion is not necessarily better or worse than anyone else’s insofar as their reasoning is concerned. Their status as scientist does not change the fact that they may be extremely unqualified to discuss the question in a truly academic manner. Twenty year old college students might be more qualified to discuss the topic.

What you ask is similar to asking, “Why can’t most physicists outline the economic and political factors that led to the fall of the Soviet Empire? Does that mean there are no reasons, and the Soviet Empire never fell?”

I would also add something else. A Ph.D. in a particular science (or any other field) in no way implies that said scientist is even a particularly great thinker. A hundred years ago, advanced education was incredibly difficult to achieve and only a select few were able to take advantage of it. A small percentage of the population even graduated from high school, and out of those who did, a very small amount were gifted enough to be asked to go on to university and graduate school. These days, Ph.D.s are a dime-a-dozen, and you can even earn one 7 years after graduating high school.

You’re at an age when a doctorate in a complicated field might really, REALLY impress you. When you get to college, you’ll see how erroneous that opinion can be.
 
Mystical_Seeker said:
No competent physicist who has any knowledge of behaviors involved in quantum mechanics can honestly deny there are “spirit worlds” or at least dimensions we don’t know about which interact with us which is a bit of the same thing. Kind of cute they think the “number of dimensions” is 11, when I suspect it really isn’t a matter of counting dimensions or even degrees of freedom.

So my claim is a scientist who is honest cannot deny there is “spooky stuff” like particle entanglement and the two slit experiment. And therefore there are things we can never know. Further, every time we approach limits of observation in any domain “small, large, etc” the universe just runs further away from us. When they can build a breathing, thinking and feeling, and reproducing human being from dirt then they will be more qualified to speak on matters we cannot observe.
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Quantum mechanics has broken the conventional perception of causality, but it is part of accepted physics today.

There was a similar situation when Newton introduced a force working over distances (gravity). That sounded like magic and most physicists at that time were sceptical. Today we have quantum entanglement, which felt ‘spooky’ to Einstein. He rejected it for that reason. Just recently quantum entanglement has been proven in the most rigorous tests ever done. It is part of accepted science. We cannot understand quantum mechanics with our limited brains, but that doesn’t make it supernatural.

Same will happen with ‘dark matter’. Perhaps it can be reduced to not yet discovered particles, or it will be defined as a new type of matter. But it will be part of the ‘natural world’.

Explaining consciousness and its connection to the physical brain is possibly the hardest nut to crack.

I personally don’t think that we will ever be able to ‘prove’ God through science, or anything supernatural for that matter.
 
JurisPrudens said:
They are atheists mainly because they have always been atheists. Their method of understanding the world is materialistic. And that is why they chose to do physics - to research matter, the investigate the laws by which the matter exists. I doubt they have ever been seeking God. And a person who does not seek God is unlikely to know God.
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I strongly disagree. There are plenty of deeply religious scientists. In their work as scientists they have to stick with naturalistic causes and explanations. They are using methodological naturalism (Alvin Plantinga calls it ‘provisional atheism’, but I don’t think this is fair).

Outside their work as scientists they are free to accept a supernatural realm, including a creator God who also sustains the universe at all time. God is the prime cause of everything which happens in the universe, but He works through ‘secondary causes’, the laws of nature.
 
mjs2001 said:
Also, try watching Ben Stein’s documentary, Expelled, also free on YouTube. It will give you another perspective. It’s also pretty entertaining.
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I don’t recommend putting any weight on Ben Stein’s documentary. He exploits the views of atheists who happen to be scientists. He distorts and misrepresents science. The quotes are often taken out of context. Some clips are included which were taken under false pretence, where the speaker comes over as saying something he doesn’t really mean.

As honest Christians, we don’t need to work with such dubious methods.
 
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