if scientists accept God in science, is science destroyed?

I'm not getting a clear picture of the intent of this thread, but I'm interested in the general topic area, so I'll just wing it for this first reply.Science studies the natural world. If we can detect it with our senses, either directly or indirectly with our instruments, then it can be studied by science.Science neither accepts nor rejects God. It's just that science has no evidence from the natural world of God, so science cannot say anything about God's possible presence in the natural world.--Percy

Okay, I see better now the direction you wanted to take this thread. Let me try again.I see two ways to approach your question. One is if we keep the definition of science we have today. Science only accepts the existence of things for which there is evidence, so if science accepted the existence of God it could only be because science had discovered evidence of God. In this scenario science's ability to provide answers about the natural world would be unaffected.The other way to approach your question is if we modify the definition of science to include the assumption that God exists. In the absence of natural evidence of God's existence this would be rather queer, but this is how many creationists think science should be defined, and the Discovery Institute has made making this change to science one of their explicit long-term goals.The degree to which this would affect scientific inquiry would depend upon how widely this definition became accepted. If it became broadly accepted then it would destroy scientific inquiry across all fields of science. Instead of the steady stream of new science we now see every year, research institutions would see their output reduced to that of, say, Liberty University, which is to say none.If you doubt this, just ask yourself how many scientific advances have come out of conservative Christian colleges over the last hundred years? Can you name even one?So yes, including God without evidence would destroy science.And it isn't just God that would destroy science if accepted without evidence. Anytime researchers go off the rails (temporarily, one hopes) and let their research follow a trail unsupported by evidence, they fail to generate new science. Science advances by paying the strictest possible attention to real-world evidence. Any deviation from this course, however slight, greatly increases the possibility of failure.--Percy

Nothing is "proven by the logic of science." Science examines the evidence, and hopefully if people think logically and rationally about the evidence they'll reach valid conclusions about the real world.So if you instead say, "God in science, if supported by real-world evidence, would not hinder science," then I agree because that is, in essence, what I already said in my first point.--Percy

Now you're making an inherently religious claim. What possible advantage could bowing toward Mecca three times daily in observance of God bring to science? Or to anything, for that matter, like gardening or cooking?Science is focused on the study of evidence from the real world. If there is real world evidence of God, then science can study it, if not then it can't. The goal of science is figuring out how the real world works.Since science is focused on evidence that actually exists, why don't you start by suggesting something concrete about God that science could observe. For example, tell us where would we should look for evidence of God in Newtonian physics.--Percy

You said you wanted science to include "observance of God" - if you don't understand that that's an inherently religious claim then that's not my problem.--Percy

What do you think "observance of God" means. It isn't like it's ambiguous.If your argument requires special definitions for common words like "God" and "observance," then any conclusions it reaches are only valid for those special definitions and wouldn't have any application to the creation/evolution debate where when creationists say "Observance of God" they mean praying to the Christian God. Nothing is ever proven in science. What you should really conclude with is, "Assuming that science has uncovered real-world evidence of God."Science is based upon evidence from the real world. Science cannot study anything for which there is no real-world evidence, and it certainly cannot incorporate things with no evidence into the scientific canon.Cavediver's a cosmologist - I'd be surprised if he showed any interest in playing these kinds of word definition games with you.--Percy

Since you're offering a different definition of God than creationists use, what makes you think your argument has any relevancy to the creation/evolution debate?When you're typing into the reply box, if you look to your left you'll see the help link for dBCodes. Click on it and you'll see how to do quotes.--Percy

Tesla, you're can't have meaningful discussions if you insist on using your own personal definitions. This isn't a creationist definition of science, and even if you did accurately cite a creationist definition of science, it would still be wrong because creationists want science to bypass the evidence requirement and a priori include God as an underlying axiom. Is this missing a comma after the "no", or are you trying to agree with me? In any event, science doesn't seek proof, it seeks evidence. And science doesn't include or exclude anything in particular, it merely studies anything it can find evidence for. God isn't excluded from science, and invisible pink dragons on Alpha Centauri aren't excluded from science, but neither has any supporting evidence that science can study. You can assert all you like, but unless you can produce real-world evidence of God then God isn't something that science can study. To assert otherwise is the opposite of logic.You're saying creationists say science is this, then give a definition creationists wouldn't accept. Then you're saying science says science is that, then give a definition scientists wouldn't accept. What's the point?There's also a [qs] form of the quote, which it what I'm using. "qs" stands for "quote shaded".--Percy

Tesla, in each message you're using your own definitions of things like science and God. There's really very little point to formulating arguments based on definitions only you accept. No, it isn't. Proofs are the province of mathematics, not science. Science develops theories from evidence, and theories are always considered tentative, no matter the volume of supporting evidence. Theories are never proved.The scientific principle of tentativity is one of the reasons creationists need to modify the definition of science before they can include God, because as science is currently defined any theory of God would have to be tentative, and conservative Christians do not believe their God's existence is tentative.I'm also Admin, by the way, and I see the same misunderstandings about science in your recent God in science thread proposal. It would probably make more sense to work out this definitional issue here before you tried making further improvements to the thread proposal.--Percy

Tesla, just correcting a few things... In science, law is just a synonym for theory. Some theories are called theories, some are called laws. Usually the term law becomes applied to theories that can be mathematically expressed relatively simply. Laws, just like theories, are tentative.About not being able to create or destroy energy, it all depends upon how you define energy. If you define energy as distinct from matter, then you can actually create energy from matter and vice-versa. Einstein's E=mc² equation defines the relationship.Even if you instead define matter as a form of energy, the way you stated the law still isn't true, because quantum theory allows conservation laws like these to be broken for extremely short periods of time. This is a relatively recent realization, and it is an example of why it is a bad idea to think of theories as timeless truths, because future evidence could always force modifications or even rejection. I doubt that anyone but you sees the logic in this. Just continually repeating how logical you are doesn't make you logical. This is wrong, too, as we know from thermodynamics and just everyday experience. Once again you're making the mistake of postulating a phenomenon (God) for which there is no evidence. Our scientific understanding of why something instead of nothing is extremely limited at present. All I can say about your statement, namely that existence has been eternal, is one of the possibilities, but the evidence is too insufficient by far to reach any conclusions. As I pointed out before, this statement is incorrect because energy can be created and destroyed for short time periods, and of course the theory is tentative, like all scientific theories. I don't believe this expresses anything meaningful.Even if you completely reject the accepted definition of science, it would still be a good idea to acquire a proper understanding of it so you can criticize it for things it actually says, instead of for things you erroneously think it says.--Percy

Assuming you're still talking about the topic of this thread, this isn't a scientific statement because there is no evidence for God from the natural world.Tesla, you're just repeating the same assertions over and over again without providing any evidence to support them. Learn what science actually is before you argue about how it should change. Uh, yes, of course, that's what I just explained in my previous message.Let's see, let me check my list of scientific theories here and see how many are not tentative. Omigosh! Would you believe it! There's not a single untentative scientific theory! Wow! Who woulda thought!--Percy