Can science refute the "god hypothesis" beyond all reasonable doubt?

All options are still on the table IMO. However i need to see proof that true randomness exists and hence the random mutations that brought our existence, before i can consider seriously atheism. But proving that randomness exists will likely come with the eventual Theory of Everything, so it might take quite a while.

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"Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind""I am a deeply religious nonbeliever - This is a somewhat new kind of religion"-Albert Einstein

But what kind of god are we talking about? What if god is aliens, why wouldn't science be able to study their existence and the methods used for planting life(alien origin of life can hardly be a religion IMHO). I am speaking merely hypothetically, I am not giving more weight to this scenario than the others.

I believe in evolution, I was talking about mutations in terms of certain peculiar human traits - like the emergence of speech. The lowering of the larinx in homo sapiens that allowed them to produce more sounds and hence transfer more information among the species of the population, be more knowledgeable and thus develop better understanding of the world(through information/knowledge exchange). This is impossible to reproduce in a laboratory and a proof that true randomness exists will remove any doubts about why only one species developed high intelligence and others did not. We'd just say - it was random, see here is the evidence that randomness exists. And the case will be closed forever for all theists.Edited by Agobot, : No reason given.

I'd think that if they planted life here 4 billion years ago, they'd know more answers than we do about god(if there is god). I just can't think like them and answer your question because i naturally don't possess the knowledge I think they'd possess(if they exist). The Why question may quite well be eternal. Maybe they are asking the same thing, i'd not be surprised. But deep inside me Natural Processes just don't sound right(on top of other things), it seems like a cop out of the uncomfortable questions of our existence. It seems you are asking if we'd ever be able to read the mind of god. Why not? There are so many scientists after him(really trying to destroy the idea of him) and we are just getting started to barely understand the world we live in.

What if they are random most of the time, and only at certain times they become directed. Or what if the creator is trying to hide its presence from us orchestrating evolution in an apprehensible manner? IMO the only way to avoid this possibility is by proving that true randomness exists, and hence we'd no longer have doubts that what we perceive as chaos can actually be 'orchestrated' order that we don't comprehend and mistake for chaos.

Yes, scientific findings can be misinterpreted by laypeople. Some posit that evolution means there is no god, some others claim the singularity means there is god, others think if the Bible is wrong then God does not exist. Interpretation is how humans twist the facts to suit their beliefs.
Science is the only way to the creator, if there is one. Too bad i am not very fond of his character and his way of managing the world, it's almost frightening if there is creator and he holds the views that are visible from the reality of our existence. We know too little to make a definite choice Creator-Natural Processes. Both hardcore atheism and religious fundamentalism at this level of scientific knowledge are childish, IMO.Edited by Agobot, : No reason given.

A theory of everything is needed to prove and explain how randomness would work in a world like ours - composed of a quantum and classical worlds. So far we can only guess if determinism and hard determinism are true and valid, and what you percieve as randomness is or is not the only available state/choice there is(whether there is a creator or not). A seemingly random event can be an inevitability when all the forces of nature dictate the only available outcome of what you perceive as randomness(even if there is no God). Nature could ruin randomness as well and then the implications of this could be interpreted in multiple ways, but we'd be going pretty far offtopic in a very deep subject.Edited by Agobot, : No reason given.

Agreed. More towards theism, less towards atheism, and very far from religions. I try to keep an open mind, things are not always as skin deep and simple as they seem at first sight.

They are? What if a creator devised an equation that governs how the universe works and the outcomes of "randomness"? Would that be random? But we need to show that true randomness exists, and by that I mean complete unpredictability of the outcomes. Whatever the conditions and level of our knowledge, that'd be almost true randomness. This would come with the theory of everything that will limit the possibility of there being a creator even more, so we can be slightly more confident about randomness. It's an interesting and deep tpoic, if you want me to participate in such a debate open a new thread.

If you are talking about my past, let's just say i drifted from atheism to agnostocism to a religion of science. A religion of science would be my understanding and recognition of sometimes hidden and sometimes very explicit order in the universe(which could be a misinterpreted science, but there is no way to know, we still know too little about our existence). Certain issues lie at the core of my belief(i hope they don't derail your thread too much). First issue - life arose in the quantum world, there was no classical world prior to life's emergence. In fact, for at least 2.5 billion years, life existed only in the quantum world, the living bacteria(prokaryote and eukaryote) did not have senses to recognise the classical world. They appear to have "lived" for so long in a quantum world of energies. Then comes the question, how does energy know how to combine to produce energy-replicating energies? Do elementary particles have a mind of their own? How did the first RNA molecule form out of thousands of atoms to carry information needed for self-replication of energies in a quantum world? By chance? It can be random(if true randomness exists) but why is it happening? What are the laws that are governing this process and making this possible? Our current understanding of nature would lead me to believe it's supernatural. But somewhere here my god can turn into a set of laws that we just don't know yet and i have no problem with that. I am just not contend with the "There is no reason why things are the way they are". I believe eventually we will know the why, whether it's god, aliens or a set of laws that are crucially important for the existence of the universe, but we are still not aware of them.
Then you have many more uncomfortable questions - how does altruism(the sacrifice of oneself for others) work quantum mechanically? How does intelligence work quantum mechanically? How does conscioness work quantum mechanically?Is there a limit to what science can explain? Very possibly. But in that case, what on earth makes anyone think religion can do any better than science? My views are following science, I don't think i could ever believe in the ancient books. If science ever proves there is no creator, so be it, but currently there is no scientific paper, book or magazine that states there is no creator. The scientific community is divided whether a creator is needed(most don't believe in a god that answers prayers), funny thing is that the director of the Human Genome Project, Francis Collins shares my beliefs(it appears Einstein claims the same with his - "Coincidence is how God remains anonymous"):"Among Collins’s most controversial beliefs is that of “theistic evolution”, which claims natural selection is the tool that God chose to create man. In his version of the theory, he argues that man will not evolve further."

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“I see God’s hand at work through the mechanism of evolution. If God chose to create human beings in his image and decided that the mechanism of evolution was an elegant way to accomplish that goal, who are we to say that is not the way,” he says.“One of the great tragedies of our time is this impression that has been created that science and religion have to be at war."

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“When you make a breakthrough it is a moment of scientific exhilaration because you have been on this search and seem to have found it,” he said. “But it is also a moment where I at least feel closeness to the creator in the sense of having now perceived something that no human knew before but God knew all along. When you have for the first time in front of you this 3.1 billion-letter instruction book that conveys all kinds of information and all kinds of mystery about humankind, you can’t survey that going through page after page without a sense of awe. I can’t help but look at those pages and have a vague sense that this is giving me a glimpse of God’s mind.”I've found God, says man who cracked the genome:The Times & The Sunday TimesFrancis Collins can of course be wrong, we still lack the information to make a fundamentally true statement - there is or is not a creator. I've chosen to be a scientific beliver, if it's possible at all, science will reveal why energy fields arranged the way they did after the Big Bang to promote existence and life(if it's not completely by chance and if chance exists to anyone but to those who don't have information beforehand about the event at hand). Edited by Agobot, : No reason given.Edited by Agobot, : No reason given.Edited by Agobot, : No reason given.

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"Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind""I am a deeply religious nonbeliever - This is a somewhat new kind of religion"-Albert Einstein

Just want to add something - while Straggler was writing his post, his body ran several hundred trillions of processes and operations per second in an amazing sync throughout his body. Each of his 100 000 000 000 000 cells carried out various vital metabolism tasks(taking in chemical energy from molecules, coverting it, etc.), replication tasks, cell division tasks, etc. So silently and unconsciously, while we are at rest, the machine of your human body is working for you at 300 trillions of operations/ctivities per second. I will not go to the quantum level and claim how many synchronous interactions there are in your body per second between the atoms as it will approach infinity, but shouldn't we be thankful to the trilllions of trillions of atoms, randomness and survival of the fittest principle for devising such a wonderful machine for us to enjoy life? Edited by Agobot, : No reason given.

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"Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind""I am a deeply religious nonbeliever - This is a somewhat new kind of religion"-Albert Einstein

"God is hiding" is somewhat rude", I'd say "god wants to remain anonymous".
What if god is not what the bible says about him(omni-benevolent, forgiving creature, bla bla bla...)? What if every single event in the universe was pre-determined for billions of years ahead. Would you want to know that someone/something will choose you wife, will shape your child and generally lead your whole life instead of you? Would you want to know this? I don't, I prefer to have an illusion of free will and that i control my life(that is, if there is a creator, i am speaking hypothetically just to suggest an answer your question why god would want to remain anonymous). If god is not omni-powerful, true randomness would not exist, so if everything is created by a higher intelligence and is governed by mathematics, every event must be pre-determined.

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"Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind""I am a deeply religious nonbeliever - This is a somewhat new kind of religion"-Albert Einstein

Hi Straggler,I'd like to know what leads you believe this. Do you think science implies there is no creator? Was abiogenesis proven? Would the forces behind the idea of abiogenesis be explained and understood? Does science already know what forces lie behind the emergence of the singularity? Did the Evolution theory explain why there is a pre-programmed death in each cell of our bodies, when natural selection favours replication and hence a longer eternal life would bring more chances of replication and better survival rates? Did science explain what lies beneath what is labelled as "Emergent properties" or do atheist just try to wipe off the uncomfortable questions under the carpet and pretend they don't exist? Does science know all the answers yet?
I always thought we knw too little to make such an interpretation( a clear twisting of scientific facts and findings IMO). Does the theory of evolution imply there is no creator? If yes, why? Does the self-functioning of the whole universe imply there is no creator? I always thought the creator hypothesis was part of all the hypothesises for the origin of the universe. Did science already disprove god( i am not talking about the god from the bible, quran or torah, they are certainly more or less disproven)?
Why is it that most atheists would not question their belief in atheism? If you were riding a Boeng 747 jet and you did not see the pilot or the designer of the plane, would you believe there was no pilot or designer if you saw certain misleading clues suggesting that the plane was self-constructing and self-piloting(abiogenesis of airsraft, eternal Boing 747, multiple/infinite Boing 747's)? Would you at least not think that there is a possibility that there could be a designer of the plane?Edited by Agobot, : No reason given.Edited by Agobot, : No reason given.Edited by Agobot, : No reason given.

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"Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind""I am a deeply religious nonbeliever - This is a somewhat new kind of religion"-Albert Einstein

Hi onifre,I'd be interested to know how you'd rate the possibility that there could be a creator in percentage 0 to 100%? As the the OP states, did science and your interpretation of it refute the creator hypothesis beyond all reasonable doubt?

You were right when you said i didn't come out as a theist in my opinions on EvC. I misunderstood deism to mean something else, so if i had to go again about my position on EvC, it will be closer to deism than anything else.Edit: Is there a definite clear difference between deism and theism?Edited by Agobot, : No reason given.