Why It's So Hard for Scientists to Believe in God | Francis Collins

[FollowChrist34]

However, given our fallen nature, it should not be surprising that even an absolute undeniable proof of God would be met with resistance in much the same way that Christians resist science when they think it does not favor their resolve.

This is an excellent point. Remember, many rejected Christ in person. I have often thought you could actually meet Christ, some sort of mystical yet real experience and the next day return to your ways - get mad at someone tailgating you, fear death, illness. Perhaps the real issue is not whether or not God exists but whether or not an individual accepts or rejects Him and the material universe as he created it, the terms/limits set for existence/salvation. It is very difficult to overcome fallen nature and accept God’s will as opposed to our human will. The failing of materialism is based in pride not in any sort of incapacity to perceive or experience life (or God) beyond the known material realm.

 

[IWantGod]

Why has this post been flagged?

 

[goout]

goout:

niceatheist:

It’s no more irrational than inserting an extra uncaused entity as the cause of the universe

Do I detect the admission that reason alone is inadequate to answer all the “big” questions?

I don’t know what kinds of atheists you’ve dealt with, but I’m going to flat out state that I do not believe my atheism to be founded on science. I believe it is rational, and defensible, to the limit that talking about the origins of the universe can be sensibly talked about, but in no way do I believe a lack of belief in God can be supported scientifically. Science is basically “methodological naturalism”, not “philosophical naturalism”.

I know there are atheists for which the accusation of scientism can validly be laid, but I do not feel myself to be one of them. So yes, when we’re talking about an epoch which is beyond our ability to probe, and may forever be beyond our ability to probe, all the philosophy and reasoning won’t be enough. Where I suppose we may differ is I don’t propose to insert any extra entity in the mix and am willing to just simply say “I don’t know, but I don’t see how God is necessary.”

I could be wrong. I’m willing to accept that as a possibility. I have no idea how anyone would demonstrate I was wrong, any more than I can imagine any way in which I could imagine demonstrating they were wrong.

Ok. That’s not atheism, that’s agnosticism.
Small point, but for the sake of clear discussion…

 

[niceatheist]

niceatheist:

If it isn’t physical, it isn’t in science’s realm, and I think it’s reasonable at that point for someone who is an atheist to state that there’s no reason to believe the non-physical exists.

Not on the basis of science it isn’t. Metaphysical naturalism is a philosophical point of view. No scientific theory will ever prove your position, and if metaphysical naturalism is a rationally defensible position in the first place you don’t need the authority of science to prove it.

All you have done is taken a possible scientific hypothesis and distorted it in to a metaphysical argument while at the same time claiming that your conclusion is consistent with the epistemological principles of science, and on that basis alone the argument has failed.

I think you miss my point. I’m not trying to “prove” my position at all. There’s no proving my position, and certainly science won’t do it. It’s not about proof, it’s about having a defensible position. It may be wrong, but at least it’s defensible.

 

[niceatheist]

Ok. That’s not atheism, that’s agnosticism.
Small point, but for the sake of clear discussion…

Agnosticism is more along the lines of “the existence of God is unknowable”. I prefer to think of myself as a weak atheist, in that I don’t accept the existence of God, but simply because no one has demonstrated to my satisfaction that God is necessary. It may be a bit reductive, but essentially my view is that if the Universe required a cause, I will go with the most parsimonious explanation; which is that it caused itself.

It’s probably a bit of an abuse of Occam’s Razor, but essentially by throwing an uncaused Prime Mover into the mix, an extra entity is being added, so I choose to take that attribute, which we could call “causes the Universe to be”, and shifts it from the alleged Prime Mover and makes it an attribute of the Universe itself. Otherwise, now I’ve just pushed the question back. So the Universe requires a cause, but the Prime Mover doesn’t? Why should I accept that at all?

And, to some extent, I feel the same about multiverse theories. Sure, two branes colliding might be an explanation for where our Universe came from, but then we’re stuck with the question, where did those branes come from?

Maybe it really is turtles all the way down. And that’s the fundamental problem. Humans simply are not capable of dealing with concepts like infinity or actual outright nothingness. Our brains don’t natively solve those problems, which is why we have had to develop mathematical tools to make up for our own understandable cognitive shortcomings.

 

[Russell_SA]

The reason as I see it as to why scientists find it hard to use the supernatural as an explanation is that there is no evidence at all for the supernatural in our reality to reference. We have not model or tool to determine if event A had supernatural involvement or not. Since that is currently the case, supernatural involvement at this point is indistinguishable from not being involved at all. So we are not justified in using it as an explanation for anything at all. To qualify the supernatural as a reason, the following must be established first:
1: demonstration that the supernatural exists
2: demonstration of how the supernatural can and can not interact with this reality
3: markers of the supernatural in this reality. Hate to point this out, but not knowing the reason for an event that took place does not mean we can accept the supernatural as a reason.
Why do I have to supply this example, but I feel like I have to: in a reality where people have not researched fire, someone finds a burnt piece of wood. Are they justified in claiming that the supernatural burnt that wood? No, there is a natural explanation that they have yet to discover for that called fire.
That is why scientists do not bugger around with the supernatural at all. Every single time we learned something new for the cause of something, it was never in the history of the world been verified to be caused by the supernatural. It was just a gap in our understanding of the natural. That scoreboard is what we go by. Fire leaves markers behind like burnt wood. What are the markers left behind that link to the supernatural?

 

[Russell_SA]

I don’t seem to have a problem understanding infinity. PI and a Circle is a good reference point.

 

[niceatheist]

I don’t seem to have a problem understanding infinity. PI and a Circle is a good reference point.

But those are only certain kinds of infinity (assuming the pi sequence is truly infinite, probably another one of those unknowables). A circle still has a defined shape and diameter even if it doesn’t strictly have a natural end point. You might be closer to it if you could imagine a closed manifold; finite in size, but without any defined boundary, then you might be closer to the mark on what the Universe probably is. There is no “outside”, and yet the universe is not infinite, and in that vein, the universe may not be infinite in time (ie. have existed forever) and yet properly never have had any proper starting point.

 

[IWantGod]

The reason as I see it as to why scientists find it hard to use the supernatural as an explanation is that there is no evidence at all for the supernatural in our reality to reference. We have not model or tool to determine if event A had supernatural involvement or not. Since that is currently the case, supernatural involvement at this point is indistinguishable from not being involved at all. So we are not justified in using it as an explanation for anything at all. To qualify the supernatural as a reason, the following must be established first:

The scientific method is used to measure physical reality. Of course it cannot measure the immeasurable. You give a good reason for why concepts like God are not accepted in science, but you haven’t given a good reason why a scientist does not believe in God. Methodological naturalism is not suppose to determine our metaphysical beliefs as that would be circular. If you are treating science as the only epistemological standard for knowing anything, then you are no longer doing science but rather you are espousing a philosophical belief. It’s called scientism.

 

[IWantGod]

To qualify the supernatural as a reason, the following must be established first:

1: demonstration that the supernatural exists

2: demonstration of how the supernatural can and can not interact with this reality

3: markers of the supernatural in this reality. Hate to point this out, but not knowing the reason for an event that

You mean in order for the supernatural to qualify as a scientific hypothesis these things must be satisfied?.

There will never be a scientific hypothesis for God, because science is not equipped for the Job.

That’s why the very best theistic philosophers give metaphysical arguments for the existence of God and leave science to do science.

 

[Russell_SA]

To me that is all infinite is, something without a defined end point. You’ll have to tell me more about how something can have a finite size and not have a defined boundary and can still be labeled as infinite. To me, currently, something with a restricted boundary is by definition not infinite. We may not have discovered the boundary yet, but we do not believe it is an infinite boundary. Such as counting to 10 but we can only discover 1-8 so far. Seems we are just talking about the definition of terms of the abstract though and those conversations are just fun for practicing logic.

 

[Russell_SA]

Many scientists hold a personal belief in a a deity, however, they know, they can not defend that claim for being part of reality since we are all guilty it seems of keeping two sets of books. That’s why we use Science as the process of removing our biases, our wish for things to be the way we want so we don’t have to be wrong. Science is just the best philosophical process for justified belief about reality. What ever tools we use to run that experiment for the question being addressed is what the scientists will use. Science looks at reality and all things that are detectable in reality. Science can not detect the undetectable, not the immeasurable. You can only measure what manifests in reality in some detectable way. The immeasurable is indistinguishable from the nonexistent. That is the reason scientists do not apply the concept of the supernatural as part of any explanation for anything in the lab. There is no way to determine the difference between A+B=C and A+B+supernatural=C. If you can not detect the supernatural in any way, how are you justified in concluding that it is part of reality? How can you demonstrate the difference between the imagined idea of the supernatural and the supernatural actually being part of reality? Such as Einstein logically concluded, through the tools of mathematics, that gravity waves should exist. However, we did not believe they were actually part of reality, even though his model of reality appeared to be unbreakable. All it did was tell us to start looking for gravity waves. Then we started looking for ways to falsify his claim of reality by running experiments. They never returned anything since the equipment to detect them were not precises enough and the experiments were not exact enough. Not until 2015, when we actually detected them, were we justified in implementing them as part of reality. See you can be logically correct and still factually wrong since our logic is based on our current understanding of reality. Once reality shows us new information about it, we have to update our mathematical/logical models of it. But the more we run the experiments and they do not break someone’s claim about reality, it will reinforce that current belief in that model of reality is actually accurate. Example: Theory of Evolution or Theory of Gravity. The religious are making a claim about reality that is unfalsifiable and can not be demonstrated to be true at all. Example: you make a logical claim about reality. Now after running the test to falsify that claim, the tests indicate your conclusion was wrong. Which one are you going to go with for justified belief about reality? The test results or your logic? I’ll take the test results because the snake oil sales man is still logically correct to the religious people.

 

[IWantGod]

Science is just the best philosophical process for justified belief about reality.

Wrong. The Scientific method is the best way to discover and measure physical causes. That’s all. Science is not metaphysics.

 

[Russell_SA]

Know what they call alternative medicine that’s been demonstrated to work after research and testing…medicine.
Know what they call the conclusions of sudo-science that has been demonstrated to actually be a correct model of reality…scientific model.
Know what they call metaphysics that has actually been demonstrated to be part of reality…reality.

You can not define something into existence. Existence is necessarily detectable. Otherwise peter pan exists as well.

 

[IWantGod]

Wrong. Metaphysics is not an alternative to science. They are two different methods dealing with two different aspects of reality.

 

[Russell_SA]

Scientific community placates the religious by distinguishing physical reality and the religious’ reality. I don’t. It’s just reality and unjustified belief. Want to justify your beliefs about your claims of reality, then demonstrate your claim is true, not just an assertion you hope is true. Ideas presented without evidence of it being part of reality are always dismissed as being part of reality. Keep shouting this out to people walking by, stamp your feet for not taking you seriously, still won’t stop us from walking on by. Any deity should understand that coming across as no different than not existing at all should not hold people accountable for not believing it exists.

 

[IWantGod]

Scientific community placates the religious by distinguishing physical reality and the religious’ reality

Science was not designed to do any such thing. Science was deigned to study physical processes. It’s got nothing to do with supplanting religion. Science only exists in the first place because Christians believed in a natural order; science naturally arises out of that belief. This idea that a bunch of materialistic atheists came along and shook Christianity to it’s knees is a delusion. There is only two things that the top tier theist rejects 1. metaphysical naturalism and 2. Scientism.

 

[Russell_SA]

Are you implying that only christianity is responsible for the existence science? You do know there is whole other cultures out there that are not religious that have contributed to science and its processes right? Science does not belong to any group. It’s just the current best philosophical process of modeling reality. It’s open to everyone of every culture. Currently the best model of the supernatural is an empty sack. It reproduces the same results of the supernatural in the most consistent manner.

 

[IWantGod]

Want to justify your beliefs about your claims of reality, then demonstrate your claim is true, not just an assertion you hope is true.

You don’t need the scientific method to justify all beliefs about the nature of reality. That is scientism.
You can know something is true if you can prove that it is logically necessary to the act of reality itself. If you can show that something is logically necessary, you don’t need science to justify it.

 

[IWantGod]

Are you implying that only christianity is responsible for the existence science? You do know there is whole other cultures out there that are not religious that have contributed to science and its processes right?

I am not saying that other cultures have not contributed, but you would be mistaken to believe that Christianity doesn’t play a major role in the success of the scientific method. Atheists don’t have a monopoly on it. And this whole idea of science versus Christianity is delusional at best.