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

Hi oni, I gave support for my position in Message 50I don't believe in hype.Do you have some factual evidence concerning the origin of the universe that I don't have? Sorry but you do not understand. According to your posts you think it is foolishness. You seek evidence. But as CS told you that would eliminate the need for faith. Faith does not require evidence if it does it is not faith.God Bless,

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"John 5:39 (KJS) Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me."

I don’t believe theists abandon principles of objective evidence-based thinking, or apply them differently depending on whether they’re studying the natural world or studying the spiritual world. To theists, and I suppose to everyone else too, objective evidence-based thinking isn’t the only valid kind of thinking. Even some scientists and mathematicians hail the roles of intuition and imagination in the discovery process.Even more to your point, to rational theists, faith is a type of evidence.

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Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. (Heb 11:1)

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This is obviously not the same concept of evidence held by most (all?) scientists and atheists. Are they just fanciful words? I don’t think so. Evidence of the quantum world has always existed; it has always been right before human eyes. So why was it only a century ago that the quantum world was discovered? Because only a century ago did we start to develop the “eyes” to “see” it. Is there evidence of the things not seen in the quantum realm? Are not laser beams, superconductors, and transistors evidence of things not seen?Faith is evidence for people who understand that physical reality is not the only reality. The quantum world is populated with objects that don’t have a physical reality, and yet there’s evidence of their existence. Scientists are still trying to fit them into a physical paradigm, but some realize that non-physical dimensions of reality may be necessary to account for quantum objects. I’m not a Tao Physicist. I’m pointing out how the requirement of "objective evidence based thinking" (assumed to mean "empirical evidence") alone may be insufficient for the goal of science.Edited by JungEinstein, : Added qualifier, (assumed to mean "empirical evidence"), to last sentence.Edited by JungEinstein, : Made quotations more explicit.

I think you missed my point. Current cosmological models (aka factual evidence) limits us to the moments after the BB. The factual unknown is what occured before that. You apply a faith based known which is your belief that God created the universe, BB, expantion etc, etc. I did not say that science had the answers,(yet), specifically I said that those are the factual unknowns, you however, said that it is a known to you, but it is faith based so it's not a factual known. Sure, but the quote you choose says nothing along those lines. Scriptures, im presuming, is what you hold as evidence correct? I simply stated that we understand the subjective interpretation that religious followers, (all religious followers), place on thier scriptures, but it is objectively verified evidence that becomes factual, not the subjective interpretations alone.Also, it is a personal subjective interpretation because as Catholic Sci said, his understanding of science does not in anyway interfere with his religious beliefs, yours does, yet you both read from the same book, how does that happen? Subjective interpretations of the literature perhaps? Fully understood. I agree that it is faith based, I've never disputed that. But so is tarot card reading, or John Edwards talking to the dead, and that type of faith is fine if thats what satisfies you personally, but if it is to be taken as fact it needs to be objectively verified. Agreed.--OniEdited by onifre, : No reason given.

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"All great truths begin as blasphemies""I smoke pot. If this bothers anyone, I suggest you look around at the world in which we live and shut your mouth."--Bill Hicks"I never knew there was another option other than to question everything"--Noam Chomsky

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To theists, and I suppose to everyone else too, objective evidence-based thinking isn’t the only valid kind of thinking. Even some scientists and mathematicians hail the roles of intuition and imagination in the discovery process.

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And in both cases intuition and imagination only aid the evidence-based and logical methods of discovering the truth. So your assertion here is really off the point.

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Even more to your point, to rational theists, faith is a type of evidence.

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I would say that that statement is self-contradictory. On what rational basis could faith be considered evidence ?

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Evidence of the quantum world has always existed; it has always been right before human eyes. So why was it only a century ago that the quantum world was discovered? Because only a century ago did we start to develop the “eyes” to “see” it. Is there evidence of the things not seen in the quantum realm? Are not laser beams, superconductors, and transistors evidence of things not seen?

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If you could show an example of someone who discovered the quantum world through faith, before the evidence became available to our eyes you would maybe have a point. However there seems to be no faith involved in the discovery - only instruments that augment our sense to the point where the evidence becomes apparent.

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Faith is evidence for people who understand that physical reality is not the only reality. The quantum world is populated with objects that don’t have a physical reality, and yet there’s evidence of their existence. Scientists are still trying to fit them into a physical paradigm, but some realize that non-physical dimensions of reality may be necessary to account for quantum objects. I’m not a Tao Physicist. I’m pointing out how the requirement of "objective evidence based thinking" (assumed to mean "empirical evidence") alone may be insufficient for the goal of science.

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I don't think that there is any truth to this at all. At most you could point to theoretical entities that have yet to be detected, but it is only through evidence that we will decide that the theory invoking them is correct. Evidence is still the scientific basis for discovering truth.So where is the rational basis for considering "faith" to be "evidence" ?

Well that could be the case, although i don't put much hope into it. The good thing about EvC is that discussions here touch all fileds of science - biology, chemistry, physcis, history, medicine, psychology, mathematics and most importantly IMO - imagination, creative thinking and rationale.
Now you talk about "natural processes" like the solar eclipse and the primitive men with their human bodies which carried hundreds of trillions of chemical reactions per second tens of thousand years ago. You are touching a painful spot in my mind, i can't seem to able to go around and avoid the "true randomness" issue to see if a solar eclipse is trully a natural process or a part of something grander, that we are not able to perceive. So here we go again:A natural process wil be a natural process(un-directed by a creator) if the whole universe could go into a different direction if we made an exact copy of it. Do you believe, given the exact same conditions down to the last elementary partcile, the universe would head in a different direction than the universe we are living in?If it does, then true randomness exists and hence natural processes would truly be nothing but natural processes. But if the universe goes the same way, it would mean those natural processes were quite inevitable, pre-determined and fixed(it'd be your guess by who or what).I believe this is the most fundamental question that needs to be discussed here on EvC so we can see if true randomness exists and what something labelled as "natural processes" would truly constitute. So what do the others think(this question is not easy to answer, I believe it will split the scientific community like nothing else)?Would an exact same copy of the universe(down to the last elimentary particle) head in a different direction than the original universe we live in?

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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

how about its exsistance ...? i mean you are talking about yourself ... it shapes peoples livesNow i am going to take care here to seperate "faith" from "faith in......"so , if faith has a given cause , then it is evidence for that cause .... faith is the responce ...just like fear , hate , love , confusion , disbelief , stress, trust,.......now fear of being eating alive , while your swiming in shark infested waters is rational ......fear of being eating by killer penguins , while visisting the zoo is , possible ,less rational ...but what about fear of being eating by space aliens , while driveng along a deserted backroad ...?? .. we have no evidence of aliens , or that they eat people , or that they can travel across space ..but they may exsist .... how unrational is that fear ... or faith in some thing that no one has yet produced evidence for ...might not the fact that the faith exsists be the first pointer to the cause of the faith ..??

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so , if faith has a given cause , then it is evidence for that cause .... faith is the responce ...

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That would depend on the relationship between faith and its cause, and whether it is such that the belief held on faith is likely true.Those who wish to claim that faith IS evidence would need to establish that that is the case.

The one thing i admit i admire most about christianity is the structure of churches and the grand feeling of peace and calm inside them. It does give you a very weird feeling of disconnection with the outside world and reality.
Sadly, I am unable to find anything even remotely related to reality, life and science in the ancient books. They say most religions started by their leaders taking psychedelic plants, psychedelic mushrooms, etc. I am very excited but afraid to try LSD or DMC, i met people who claim that LSD's reality is as real as our reality. I know i'll one day step across the line and push my mind to the limit and see what it's capable of. Here is what consultant psychiatrist, Ben Sessa has to say about LSD experience and reality:"I suppose the most simple and incredible fact about LSD is also the one that is hardest to believe: that what it reveals to you is not, as is popularly supposed, a hallucination, but an awe- inspiring glimpse of reality. Other drugs distort, but LSD gives you a reality far beyond words, or visual representation, or language.

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It is quite the reverse of seeing something that isn't there. LSD disables some chemical filter in the brain that, in order to keep the world manageable, limits the amount of reality you can experience with your senses. An LSD trip allows "reality" - and if you have never questioned what that is, you would after taking LSD - to flood in untrammelled. The result may be terrifying and it may be wonderful, but it will be more "real" than anything you experience in everyday life.

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LSD shows you that ordinary life is the hallucination. Or to put it another way, ordinary life is like listening to a record with fluff on the needle, and LSD removes the fluff."http://findarticles.com/...i_qn4159/is_20060115/ai_n16007181Here is what wikipedia says about LSD:Spiritual"LSD is considered an entheogen because it can catalyze intense spiritual experiences where users feel they have come into contact with a greater spiritual or cosmic order. Some users report insights into the way the mind works, and some experience long-lasting changes in their life perspective. Some users consider LSD a religious sacrament, or a powerful tool for access to the divine. Dr. Stanislav Grof has written that religious and mystical experiences observed during LSD sessions appear to be phenomenologically indistinguishable from similar descriptions in the sacred scriptures of the great religions of the world and the secret mystical texts of ancient civilizations."Lysergic acid diethylamide - WikipediaIMO, god is something close to a dj that plays with the energy fields in the quantum world that produce our sensation of reality(the so called mind of god). Even String Theory suggests the universe is composed of strings vibrating in strange harmony that produce elementary particles. So in that sense, I'll one day probably change the soundtrack with that of LSD.I see order and harmony throughout the universe, so if i had to summerise in one word what reality and life is it'd be - Music.Edited by Agobot, : No reason given.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

yes , i am in full agreement with what you have say ... ...and , i would agree that finding that the cause of the faith .. is the hard bit ... but doing hard things some time pays off ..

If faith is to be counted as evidence we can't rely on going into each individual case. We would have to establish that it was generally true that there was some relationship between faith and its cause that meant that beliefs taken on faith were very likely to be true.Yet nobody arguing that faith should be taken as a "way of knowing" seems to even try. Instead we get Bible quotes, as if that settled the issue.

This can be (loosely) translated into the following syllogism:P1: Faith is caused by God;
P2: Some people have faith;
C: Therefore, God exists.If P1 and P2 are true then the conclusion is also true. But it is not at all clear that P1 is true. For all I know, fear, ignorance and certain mushrooms are all very good candidates for the cause of faith. What I am saying is that the cause of faith is not a given. The syllogism then becomes:P1: Faith is caused by X;
P2: Some people have faith;
C: Therefore, X exists.Thus, we are none the wiser about the nature of X. That faith has a cause says absolutely nothing about the nature of the cause, which is what you nevertheless seem to imply. In other words: of course faith has a cause, but I don't think it is the cause that you would like it to be.

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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." - Charles Darwin.

I do understand that this is what you and other theists think they know. This is exactly what I meant when I implied that many theists cannot cope with ignorance and have a need for answers regadless of whether any valid answers actually exist or not. It seems to me that theists would much rather have an answer that cannot be demonstrated to be valid or reliable than simply and honestly state that some things are extremely difficult to find out or even have no meanigful answer available.You are kind of proving my point..............

I have had this discussion numerous times with various of the more thinking theists on this site.The objections to this boil down to a number of things but I'll briefly raise two of them.1) If two opposing and mutually exclusive "facts" are derived from faith based subjective "knowledge" alone then both are equally evidenced. However both cannot be equally true. Thus faith based "knowledge" is demonstrated to be inherently unreliable. Unreliable to the point of useless in fact.2) If we accept your faith as evidence then we must also accept anything else anyone else has equal faith in as being equally evidenced. The guy who thinks that the invisible immaterail pixies that live inside his bedroom wall need him to skatebopard around the equator of the Earth naked in order to save humanity from the wrath of the mighty Varg is as equally evidenced as is your particular faith based conclusion. As long as the poor fellow in question believes his delusion as strongly as you believe yours. If faith alone is all that is required for a conclusion to be considered evidenced then there is no end to the insanity that must also be considered evidenced.If evidence is that which allows us to differentiate between truth and falsehood then faith is no sort of evidence at all.

You go even further too, and reject the existance of anything supernatural.I was convinced the supernatural exists before considering which man made concepts were consistant with my observations. Huh? What do you mean comes from? How did the religious texts get the idea of god if the idea of god had to come from the religious texts? Es imposíble! And then he goes on about how if Jesus had been electrocuted, would we all be wearing little electric chairs around our necks? "It makes you realize that everything you've learned is, in fact, learned and not necessarily true."That includes your rejection of the supernatural.But "these experiences" have not been confused with what is claimed by the organized religions. "These experiences" led to the realization that there's more to the universe than the natural. And it really was like a realization.Philosophical naturalism precludes religious belief because religious belief relies on the existance of the supernatural. Realizing that the supernatural does indeed exist then allows for the exploration of the religious beliefs as possible truths. I don't, really. I tried to help myself to no avail so I asked Jesus for help and it worked immediately. In the end, I do have to have faith that it was Jesus. Can you think of any other reason why people reject scientific facts? I cannot. A shame. Well, I had other experiences first that convinced me that the supernatural exists. And I didn't immediately apply a label to it. I did go: "what the fuck is it?" Throught the exploration of various possibilities, I came up with ideas that fit both my common sense and my experiences.The Jesus thing was much later. Oh ok, then I did use common sense. I'm a scientist who happens to be a christian, not a christian who happens to be a scientist, if you know what I mean. Yup, that makes sense. My common sense says that god does exist.The first step is realizing that philisophical naturalism doesn't see everything. I don't hold the OT to a very high regard. You trust the people who tell you not to trust the people who put the NT together? What about the people that tell you not to trust the people who tell you not to trust the people who put the NT together? Honestly, I don't think we need to get into the Bible to much for this discussion.

To know the ultimate truths of our world. Investigate, guess, test and conclude. And when you have non-empirical reasons to think they do exists? If something that was inherantly non-empirical existed, relying on empirical evidence would never find it. There are methods but as you say, they are not reliable. However, I think we can get to the point where they are not all equally valid. We have to realize that non-empirical conclusions could very easily be wrong, but not necessarily that they must be wrong. Not empirically, no. Perfect sense? Then yeah, go for it.But I think you have to weigh the absurdity with how right it feels and that its a personal decision. Well yeah.... Abraham almost killed his own son! You think it made "perfect sense" to him?