Why It's So Hard for Scientists to Believe in God | Francis Collins
- Status
B
BoyGenius
Guest
They can still believe in God, and not stop being scientists. Even on an ethical plane, if they are doing things that are wrong. They can be demonstrated on the moral natural law. For even a scientist knows ethics, morals, laws must be observed and obeyed, even for them to do their work. So they would need to apply the Golden Rule: Treat others as you would want to be treated yourself.
Hence, if their work is out of respect to the dignity of the human person, then morality still judges them for what they do. Whether they will end believing there’s a consequence of everlasting fire/hell or not. The basis of morality will judge them. Look at the scientists who helped Adolf HItler. They aren’t exactly judged as good people. But bad people.Their legacy and work gone.
So, a scientist can still believe in God, do what they do as long as it fits in the Golden Rule, wherefore morality and ethics apply. Unless they want their body, memory, image, and gravestone to be the place of ridicule when the time comes they pass away. Afterall, scientists most often want to leave a legacy behind them. Even knowing that and what will happen, and be after they will pass away. Knowing how they led their lives still plays an essential role how they perceive themselves and what they did. They too have a conscience and are an individual.The here/now still affects them on how they think of the then/after in the world.
Hence, if their work is out of respect to the dignity of the human person, then morality still judges them for what they do. Whether they will end believing there’s a consequence of everlasting fire/hell or not. The basis of morality will judge them. Look at the scientists who helped Adolf HItler. They aren’t exactly judged as good people. But bad people.Their legacy and work gone.
So, a scientist can still believe in God, do what they do as long as it fits in the Golden Rule, wherefore morality and ethics apply. Unless they want their body, memory, image, and gravestone to be the place of ridicule when the time comes they pass away. Afterall, scientists most often want to leave a legacy behind them. Even knowing that and what will happen, and be after they will pass away. Knowing how they led their lives still plays an essential role how they perceive themselves and what they did. They too have a conscience and are an individual.The here/now still affects them on how they think of the then/after in the world.
Last edited:
A
Aloysium
Guest
I didn’t find there to be any great answer. It’s actually rather common place, predictable and lacking in insight as to the nature of nature. The relationship one has with the natural world is quite different operating in a lab, with such instruments as spectrometers, compared to in the field. The chemical workings will obviously be worked out but as to the actual connection to the true reality of nature, I will place my bet with the tracker in the bush. Once you eliminate the foundation of what constitutes life, the unity of its existence as itself, what is left is a materialistic understanding which not only does away with the psychological, but distorts the data such that as the learned professor strongly suggests, the Darwinism becomes fact rather than a mere story which is superficial and counter-intuitive were it not for its being inculcated on the young from the time they have the capacity to grasp such things. Not impressed.
Last edited:
H
Hereiam
Guest
I’m not sure it is, and I am not so sure the lack of believe in God by scientists is a prevalent as people think.
I work in a scientific field, and although not a scientist, I am amazed by the faith of many scientists I have interfaced directly with.
I recall working on a project for development of the avian flu vaccine which used chicken eggs as a media for growing antibodies, and a world renowned PhD noting that given the incubation temperature for the process mirrored precisely the body temperature of a hen setting on her eggs to hatch them could not deny the fact that God had figured everything, including science, out.
I work in a scientific field, and although not a scientist, I am amazed by the faith of many scientists I have interfaced directly with.
I recall working on a project for development of the avian flu vaccine which used chicken eggs as a media for growing antibodies, and a world renowned PhD noting that given the incubation temperature for the process mirrored precisely the body temperature of a hen setting on her eggs to hatch them could not deny the fact that God had figured everything, including science, out.
K
KevinK
Guest
Without a precise definition of “God”, believing has little meaning. Which God? What are the attributes of God? Just a vague definition of a “supreme being” has little content or meaning.
G
GodSoughtMe
Guest
I saw a study a while back that looked at various majors and whether the students who chose them saw increased or decreased religiosity
kids who chose science majors were ALREADY not very religious and actually saw marginal increases. Kids in the humanities saw their religiosity go down.
Science does not tend to decrease religiosity at an individual level. Nor does it do so at a societal level, at least not historically.
kids who chose science majors were ALREADY not very religious and actually saw marginal increases. Kids in the humanities saw their religiosity go down.
Science does not tend to decrease religiosity at an individual level. Nor does it do so at a societal level, at least not historically.
I
IWantGod
Guest
I think the major issue here is the rise of scientism. A few well known scientists would have us believe that the scientific method is the proper and only way to knowledge and has in fact supplanted other methods of knowing to the extent that it is unreasonable to draw conclusions about objective reality outside of science. A lot of people have this mentality now and justify their absolute agnosticism about ultimate questions with the principles used by scientists. In other-words if science cannot tell us anything about God’s existence then it is unreasonable to believe in God or anything outside of the scientific method. To put it more bluntly, knowledge about the existence of God is just as unreliable as knowledge about the existence of unicorns, and therefore we should not believe in them if we are to maintain a rational approach to knowledge…
Last edited:
S
Spyridon
Guest
Francis Collins is an amazing man, a towering intellect of our times.
S
Spyridon
Guest
How insulting (and false)
This is what many people actually believe, however.
Neil deGrasse Tyson is the poster boy of scientism. Stephen Hawking is another scientism propagandist.
Hawking is great proof that smart people can say really dumb stuff - one of the most insanely idiotic, nonsensical monstrosities of an “argument” I’ve ever read was vomited from his mouth. He said:
“Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing.”
Literally sounds like a comment made by a 3rd grader.
Last edited:
I
IWantGod
Guest
True, but the atheist would say that how we feel about it is irrelevant and that maintaining scientism is the rational approach to objective knowledge.
Last edited:
S
Spyridon
Guest
How hypocritical, because now they are out of the realm of science and have moved into philosophy.
K
Kei
Guest
It’s likely because scientists tend to come from similar stats as those that tend to be atheists.
I
IWantGod
Guest
Looool. Yes, but his position as a scientist gives strength to the illusion that everything he is likely to say is reasonable even on matters of philosophy. Normal everyday people tend to be easily fooled by authority figures because they assume that they ought to know what they are talking about…
Last edited:
K
Kei
Guest
I think supreme being is a sufficient definition.
Why do you not?
Many people who believe in God may not understand the absolute depths of everything that God entails, and I would think that’s OK if it’s not wilful.
Why do you not?
Many people who believe in God may not understand the absolute depths of everything that God entails, and I would think that’s OK if it’s not wilful.
I
IWantGod
Guest
True. But most people won’t know any better. Can you feel the room getting smaller yet. Loool
E
Eric_Hyom
Guest
The creation of the universe is history, and you can’t change history. Either at least one God created the universe, or there is no creator god.
With all the order in the universe, I would say that the need for a god is at least 51 percent in favour. But you can’t have a 51 percent god, it is fully yes or no.
N
niceatheist
Guest
That’s taking his statement completely out of context, and not bothering to understand what Hawking is referring to. His essential notion (and it really isn’t his to begin with) is that the universe could simply be the collapse of a wave function, a sort of quantum beginning of the universe. It goes back to the old question “What if the sum of all energy in the universe is zero?” In other words, what if all the negatives and positives ultimately cancel out? At that point, the only thing responsible for the universe is a quantum fluctuation at the beginning, and after that the fundamental interactions (one of which is gravity) creating the universe we see.
That’s not to say that is the correct view, but it’s no worse than other ideas like a multiverse, or heck, even God. Since these entities or events are, for the time being at least, beyond our ability to detect or measure, it really comes down to creating mathematical models that may ultimately describe the origin of our universe… or not.
The problem, as always, is asserting that the causality we observe would apply to the beginning of the universe, or to the “before” the beginning (if that even makes sense). In the view of scientists like Hawking, there was no “before”, that such a concept is nonsensical, as in “asking what came before the beginning of the Universe is like asking what’s north of the North Pole”. Hawking is basically an advocate of a closed universe; there was no before, there is no multiverse, no sort of reality before the universe came into existence. In other words, a sort of spontaneous generation of the universe out of nothing.
So before you attack Hawking, it’s probably a good idea to familiarize yourself with what he’s saying, and not simply go by some pretty bad science journalism.
S
Spyridon
Guest
In other words, he espouses Biblical Creation.
Those two sentences describe the Catholic concept of Creation to a T, with the exception that by no sort of reality before you understand it to mean no physical, created reality.
G
goout
Guest
No small amount of irony there.Spyridon:
That’s taking his statement completely out of context, and not bothering to understand what Hawking is referring to.
Atheism in most cases, at least as propagated here and generally in modern culture, confines itself to addressing one big christian straw man, without understanding much about the real thing.
The modern atheist apologists are just plan ignorant of Christianity, just as ignorant as literalist fundamentalists. They are two sides of the same coin.
N
niceatheist
Guest
No, he explicitly rejects that.niceatheist:
In other words, he espouses Biblical Creation.
They don’t really though, do they, because in Hawking’s view there was no before, no externality of any kind. There’s no Prime Mover entity in such a model, there is literally nothing at all, just a self-caused universe. It looks to me to be the very antithesis of the Catholic view.
It happens to be my view too, simply because I feel it’s the simplest explanation (not that it is a simple explanation).
- Status