Are skepticism and Belief in God mutually exclusive?

williamgrogan

For example, how does an individual or society decide upon what it accepts as ethical behaviour?

This is very topical if you read the front page of the Irish Times today.

The bishops and apparently our Teashirt, Bertie, believe that acceptable ethical behaviour is what the Roman Catholic Church currently teaches based on its belief in god and their interpretation of "his book" the bible. If God doesn’t exist and the bible is a book written by ignorant men thousands of years ago then this is definitely not an acceptable position to hold and more to the point nor is it a position to force the Irish nation to hold.

I would point out that the people who burned Giordano Bruno to death at the stake (see http://www.punkerslut.com/articles/giordanobrunowasburned.html for an interesting essay) for arguing the Copernican position on the solar system, who put Galileo under house arrest for life, who condemned Darwin, who in Ireland in recent times opposed health care for poor pregnant women, contraception and divorce and who covered up the rape and sexual abuse of thousands of children and the most important point to realise is that they claim that they are the same today because their beliefs are based on a universal truth that is the same as it has been since Jesus’ time, are hardly the correct people to lecture anyone on ethics & morality. Its actually laughable.

The only attribute I can see applying to the Catholic Church is that you know where you stand with them, they are always wrong.

I would argue that as a rationalist I can “decide” much better on ethics with the aid of science and reason than all the philosophers and religious people who ever lived, including the ones that contributors to this thread love to quote. The sum total of their entire output amounts to zilch.

I do not need God. It’s just as well, as there is no god.

There is no “realm of science”, all knowledge, opinions and belief can be tested by science. Anyone who calls himself a Skeptic and thinks otherwise has still not thought the matter through fully.

All our opinions have been coloured by brainwashing as children, the enormous power of religious organisations in politics and education and the legacy of thousands of years of muddled and unscientific thinking.

Science itself cannot “decide” anything. However, The Scientific Method is a vastly more powerful tool for understanding than any other method including philosophy and religion.

As I have said before, there is no such thing as “an unanswerable question”, just questions that have not yet been answered.

williamgrogan

Why we now know there is no God

All life now on Earth is known to have evolved from previous species. We now know to a very high degree of certainty that man evolved from the common ancestor of all primates. We know we split from our nearest “monkey ancestors” about 8 million years ago. Since then the human brain has evolved into the complex entity it is today. We know that most if not all of our abilities and traits are a product of natural selection & the battle for survival of our genes; intelligence, altruism, inquisitiveness, inventiveness, adaptability, planning, language, dishonesty, love, hate, etc. Our brain is part of nature, part of evolution as is what goes on inside it.

The traits that we evolved also made us wonder why things are they way they are. This is not a “spiritual thing”, it is a by-product of evolution. It wasn’t planned by anyone. Our initial ignorant guesses resulted in religion. God is an invention of man, not of cats or dogs or monkeys or trees, man. God was invented many thousands of years ago and in many different cultures. God only became a “theory” billions of years after life first appeared on Earth. There is a very clear and well understood “history of religion”, we can see how it evolved. We can see the affect of historical events on the current religious beliefs of people throughout the world.

All the many religions and the answers they sought to provide, that have existed in the past, the religions that they evolved into and the religions that exist today disagree with each other on virtually ever point imaginable.

The musings and navel gazing of philosophers, many of whom were religious is an irrelevancy. In this thread and in many discussions on god, the thoughts of long dead philosophers are regularly trotted out and used to “argue from authority”. If you try and decide reality based on the linguistic gymnastics of philosophers you can never decide anything. Philosophy is no more valid than religion. Thinking philosophically, it is not possible to disprove to 100% certainty that the universe was created last Tuesday complete with quasars that are 10,000,000,000 light years away, the red shifted light in transit from them, the fossils, our memories and as one scientist said, “complete with holes in my socks”. However, the universe was not created last Tuesday and trying to prove it was is nonsense.

In the last few hundred years we have discovered The Scientific Method and this has steadily undermined the religious viewpoint. The only practical working mechanism that man has ever discovered to help understand reality that actually works is science. And boy does it work!

Through Science we have discovered and proved most of the underlying laws of nature. We now know quite accurately what has been the history of the universe since its beginning in time. We know when it began to an accuracy of 90%+. Each year that passes the level of accuracy improves. We now know how the planets formed and how the elements making up the planets formed. We know how and why the various types of stars formed and where the material that made up the stars came from. We know how life evolved and are getting closer to understanding how it began on Earth, we will soon know.

Since the Scientific Method began to be used some four hundreds years ago, the Theory of God has been under relentless assault. In these four hundred years we have learned much more than we did in the entire previous history of man.

The Theory of God is generally stated as the reason things are; the origin of life forms on Earth, the creation of Man, the creation of the world, the light, the planets and the suns, the reason we are moral, all our traits, the reason we live and do what we do. Sin, repentance & redemption are a creation of god. Religion claimed god can make it rain, create plagues, destroy the believer’s enemies and cure illnesses. Because a thinking being cannot easily accept a final death and obliteration, god was invented with the gift of bestowing everlasting life. Man was different to the animals so we had to have souls and the animals did not.

But all these assertions have been and are continuously being totally disproved. The knowledge that science has revealed has shown many times that there are nothing but contradictions in religious beliefs.

As I said above we know pretty accurately how the universe began and has evolved to what it is today and this completely contradicts the majority of religious “truths”. We know life evolved and this obviates the need for god to have created mankind. Plagues and illnesses were once “mysteries”, now they are fully understood. We know why it rains and why it doesn’t. We know that volcanoes are not the revenge of gods. The “sins” that men commit are not because they are evil or even that evil exists, they are caused by genetic traits, environment and often poverty and ignorance. The majority of car thieves come from seriously disadvantaged backgrounds, they are not evil, and they are not sinning, so even the concept of sin is nonsense. The majority of prisoners are illiterate.

Not a single scientific discovery has led to any evidence of any description that there is a god. Not a single example of magic. There is no evidence of souls, miraculous healing or an afterlife. Nothing whatsoever claimed by religion in thousands of years has been found to be correct and most of what they have thought is now accepted as being wrong, even by the religious themselves. If religion was related to a just god would it have produced the litany of terrible acts that it has? Would they have been so wrong so often?

The proof that god does not exist is the totality of all scientifically published work. An enormous amount of evidence and proof, far more than any educated rational person needs to dismiss god and all his works as what it is, superstition.

A Skeptic believing in god cannot be sceptical; it’s not relevant what the articles of any society say. If a Skeptic can believe in god or in religion then a Skeptic can believe in anything, including that we were all created last Tuesday complete with this thread.

Myksyk

You're losing the run of yourself wg. Your arguments may have some bearing on whether man-made religion has any validity but they are most definitely not a proof that god does not exist. Unless that is, you have some actual empirical proof of what happened at the instant of creation of the universe, which of course you do not.

All your knowledge is about what happened after that. I agree with the gist of that and its implications for religion, personal gods etc but this is an entirely different question than that of ultimate origins ... the how and why of the creation of the universe.

"The proof that god does not exist is the totality of all scientifically published work."

This strikes me as a surprisingly naive argument, again aimed more appropriately at claims about personal god and religion. But if I say ...

'I am a deist, I believe there was a creator who made the universe and left it to its own devices, never again to interfere, letting whatever happened happen without interference or explicit design'

... then I'm afraid none of what you say is a convincing argument against this position. In fact I challenge you to come up with one single piece of scientific research which tells us anything about the exact moment of creation.

Your statement 'there is no god' is allowing yourself latitude you do not afford others. It is exactly the same as saying 'there is a god' because both statements lack ANY empirical proof. You can't have your cake and eat it. You BELIEVE that god doesn't exist but you do not know. That is the only viable position to take. You're an agnostic like most of us ... if you were being honest.

williamgrogan

The question we are debating is, “Are skepticism and Belief in God mutually exclusive?”

The Big Bang God that Myksyk describes cannot have been around except for the last 30 years as before that it was not accepted that the universe was started in a Big Bang. As far as I know there is not a single religion based on the Big Bang God, i.e. a God that kick-started the Big Bang but hasn’t done anything since. (Aside: Such a god is totally irrelevant to mankind as chaos theory would rule out man as a foreseen outcome of the Big Bang.)

As I said, over the last 400 years Science has disproved more and more of what was once described as god or what god did and was responsible for. However, at any time in the last few hundred years Myksyk and his ancestors could have said, “that’s all very fine but what keeps the Earth from flying away from the Sun, it must be God?” or “there is no possible way that complex life came into existence by accident, God must have created man?” or “what started the universe?” or “how would love come to be without God?” or “how can you have morality without God?” [Answer to previous 2 q’s: evolution of human traits.] In a real sense the idea of a god has been pushed further and further away from human existence. From being a “personal god” he now is relegated to kicking off the big bang. But only because we are discussing this at this point in time. In the future God will be pushed back further. This is not agnosticism. It is not Agnostic to say “I cannot yet explain everything but do not believe that the currently unanswered questions indicate a god.” It would be dishonest of me to say that I was an Agnostic.

When I was in my late teens and argued about god with friends they claimed that as we didn’t know whether the universe was always there or started at some time that god must be responsible. I had great pleasure in showing them Time magazine’s from cover in about 1973 which stated that the Big Bang theory was now accepted, partly as a result of the discovery of the Microwave Background Radiation. In other words I lived through a fall of another brick in the God edifice. To have lived through them all you would need to be several hundred years old.

As we debate this in 2003, Science has not explained what happened “before” the big bang or whether that is even a meaningful question. They will. Before they can they will need to better understand time and to solve and expand a few more theories such quantum and string theory.

The fact the proponents of the god theory have seen their god relentlessly pared away over the last 400 years would strongly indicate that this will continue.

If in a few years time the why & how of the Big Bang will be explained. Will that satisfy Myksyk that God doesn’t exist or will he then claim god was responsible for whatever “precedes” the Big Bang?

Of course the answer to that question may preclude a cause. If it was a Quantum Event then it may have had no cause and that’s that.

Some people have suggested that Science cannot answer this question because you cannot investigate what is outside the universe created by the big bang in the same way that there are things Science cannot investigate. But that’s not true, they cannot prove that statement and anyway, the answer will disprove that argument.

From reading Myksyk’s reply I get the impression that he agrees with me that one cannot believe in the god that those who believe in god actually believe in and be a Skeptic. The God disproved by Science is actually the God that religious people believe in.

Should we now rephrase the question as, “Are Skepticism and belief in the Big Bang God exclusive?”, accepting that the current question is answered by “Yes” if by God you mean God as understood by members of all existing religions.

Myksyk

Jeez wg, you gotta shorten your posts!!!! Just a couple of points. Deism has a longer history than you think. It designates a largely British 17th century movement of religious thought emphasizing natural religion as opposed to 'revealed religion', which sought to establish reasonable grounds for the existence of god.

I agree with your position but not your way of defending it which uses the invalid and unscientific argument 'we WILL know one day so just believe me'. This isn't science, it is faith in science. If you believe this, fine; but at least admit that for the moment it is a belief, not a fact.

I also thought from previous threads that we were talking about both deism and theism. If you assumed that we were only talking about a 'religious' god as opposed to what you refer to as a 'big bang' god, then that was an unwaranted assumption on your part. Utter annihialation of the religious position is not a proof of the non-existence of god, merely that if he does exist he's not particularly interested in us.

By the way, I don't believe in god one way or the other but my questions in this discussion are fundamentally about the reasonableness and rational soundeness of the arguments being made. If I believe completely in a position but have no definitive empirical proof then i must admit that my position is one of belief, even if just for the moment. Embracing unscientific positions (e.g. suggesting that 'science will one day know' is the same as 'science knows') in order to defend a scientific position is not reasonable.

williamgrogan

Myksyk says that deism has a long history but The Big Bang is now known to have started the universe along with space and time, not God. Furthermore the Big Bang created all the matter and energy in space and that too was once the providence of god. God didn’t start the universe or what’s in the universe, the Big Bang did.

Therefore deism as it was defined in the past is wrong. If you redefine it in the light of current scientific knowledge then it becomes the Big Bang God.

One must ask why people keep looking for a new redefined god. When the god that was believed in for thousands of years was looking doubtful after the age of science, people kept redefining him so that he could exist in the gaps left by science. As I have said before, when someone believes in the personal god, thinks about it and decides that he no longer believes in it but then moves onto the Big Bang God he still hasn’t finished his evaluation of the question.

I think it is very important to examine the god question in terms of history. The belief in God/s has evolved. Today a few people may believe in the Big Bang God. I am merely saying that this definition of God of the Gaps will have to be redefined again when the Big Bang is more fully understood.

You don’t have to believe me, I didn’t ask for your belief, I simply said that when science more fully explains the Big Bang that the current Big Bang God Theory is back in trouble again. I know I have to wait.

I asked a specific question at the end of my previous post. Are we now accepting that a Skeptic cannot be a believer in god as believed in by the vast majority of the religious and moving on to the question whether a Skeptic can believe that the Big Bang was caused/initiated by God?

In summary, I presume that the reason this question was put in the first place is to do with the “articles of association” of the Irish Skeptics. I am pretty sure that the question “Is Skepticism anti-religious” refers not to this esoteric, philosophical Big Bang God but the god that most potential Irish members believe in.

Sorry about the long posts but it takes me at least 20 times longer to write them than for you to read them.

Myksyk

..."Furthermore the Big Bang created all the matter and energy in space ... God didn’t start the universe or what’s in the universe, the Big Bang did."


Wg ... I'm not sure if you're saying this tongue in cheek or not... but in case you're being serious I should point out that the Big Bang did not start the universe ... the big bang is what happened when the universe started ... it is meant as a simple description of what happened not the cause of what happened!!!

The cause remains a complete mystery. It may not always be a mystery but it is a mystery NOW. Any thing you say about it will not change that fact unless you are currently in receipt of a mathematical proof that you aim to ambush us with at the end of this thread!!:D

Myksyk

BTW .. this looks like becoming the wg/myksyk thread ... please join in as we're getting boring!!!:D

Calibos

I always switch off when people start talking booleans states and null values etc which is also what happended in the Faith thread on humanities a few months ago Nah only joking I didn't switch off! I've been reading both your posts with interest.

I reckon my position is somewhere in between both off you. While I don't consider myself a deist because as I mentioned earlier I am atheistic with regard to a personal God/God of history/God of any current religion and don't exactly believe/choose to worship the Big Bang creator God either....but I think its impossible to ever know for sure seeing as we can never know or comprehend what existed if thats even the right word before the universe, so in respect to the big bang God I am agnostic.

With regard to the reason I started the thread....I hadn't read the skeptics societies position on Religion. I just wondered if everyone felt the same as me that they are mutually exclusive. After some excellent posts here by your good selves I have refined my position to be that I believe Skeptiscism and a belief in a personal God or the God of any past or resent religion mutually exclusive while Skeptiscism and a belief in the posibility of a big bang God is not.

sextusempiricus

Originally posted by Myksyk


The cause remains a complete mystery. It may not always be a mystery but it is a mystery NOW. Any thing you say about it will not change that fact unless you are currently in receipt of a mathematical proof that you aim to ambush us with at the end of this thread!!:D

I wonder if you are right here. Of course I agree with you that the cause of the universe is a complete mystery. It always will be a mystery. You are more equivocal on this point. As the pre-Socratic philosopher Protagorus claimed, 'Man is the measure of all things.' From this it follows that human nature although it allows us incredible insights into the working of the Universe will never allow us to have a 'God-like' knowledge of the cause of everything. We are human and as I've stated before this means that we share 60 % of our genes with the fruit fly! Indeed the more scientific solutions to problems we discover the more questions we subsequently have to answer. In other words our ignorance increases with scientific advances. I see no reason to see an end to this process.
Perhaps human beings have an innate desire to have complete answers: living with ignorance of the answers to the 'big questions' of life can be difficult. Such a desire leads no doubt to some seeking the answer in a religion. Personally I'm not one of them. WG is obviously someone who hopes science holds all the answers.
Some of the greatest scientists have been religious e.g. Michael Faraday. Whether we are religious or not we can all be sceptical about some claims. I hope that this forum and the Irish Skeptic's Society will help encourage a more scientific atitude to answering our problems. That's important whatever our various beliefs. Who knows perhaps even those beliefs may change with the development of a more sceptical frame of mind. As E.M.Forster wrote "Only Connect."

Myksyk

Quote from sextusempiricus: "Whether we are religious or not we can all be sceptical about some claims. I hope that this forum and the Irish Skeptic's Society will help encourage a more scientific atitude to answering our problems. That's important whatever our various beliefs. Who knows perhaps even those beliefs may change with the development of a more sceptical frame of mind. "

This reflects my thoughts in an earlier post. Promoting science and critical thinking are the aims of the society ... not a demand for instant conversion to a materialist and scientific point of view. If we only accept those of similar bent then the society becomes pointless in terms of its educational aspirations. To re-post a little of my earlier post relevant to this point:

"Embracing skepticism means a willingness to critically analyse and question all ideas and practices and a desire to develop critical thinking skills. It does not necessarily mean the wholesale and immediate abandonment of one's belief and opinions. Nor, by the way, does it mean the immediate acceptance of a scientific/naturalistic view of the world. It may or may not lead too this positon but that is not a foregone conclusion. So while skepticism forms part of the bedrock of science it is not the exclusive intellectual property of science.

Skepticism usually brings people through a long process of examination of cherished views and beliefs. This process may take years or perhaps a lifetime and does not have a definitive end point which marks the person out as having achieved 'skepticism'. As Susan Rama pointed out to James Randi and Michael Shermer in a letter to 'SKEPTIC' recently, people who are willing to drop long-held beliefs without deep critical analysis are hardly the type of people we want championing the skeptical cause.

Presumably therefore one can curently hold many 'unscientific' beliefs and still be appropriately described as skeptical. This would suggest that belief in God and skepticism are not mutually exclusive at any given time in this process of examination."

sextusempiricus

I agree wholeheartedly. Must log off now to continue enjoying Christmas.

williamgrogan

….Skeptiscism and a belief in the possibility of a big bang God is not exclusive

I think that if this is what we are now debating then we are at the stage of counting how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. [Aside: I found it amusing that Dr Connell, the ex-Archbishop of Dublin got his PhD by producing a paper on Guardian Angels.]

Being Skeptical means being sceptical about everything.

We know that the Big Bang started the universe not god. Did god then only cause the big bang?

No one can say that he did because there is no evidence, need or reason that he did. As a theory it also fails the Occam’s Razor test as it begs the question, “Who made god?” Even religious people don’t believe that this is what god is all about. Is it only Skeptics that believe in this Big Bang god?

Therefore the logical thing is to say that he didn’t. Why believe in something that has no evidence or reason? What is the reason to believe it? I do agree that until we know what caused the big bang that we cannot say what caused it and by default cannot say what didn’t cause it. I cannot say that a turtle didn’t cause the Big Bang but I have never heard anyone say that a turtle did or that believing that a turtle did cause the big bang is a reasonable position to hold. If there is no more reason to believe a turtle caused the big bang than god then believing that god did is illogical and an unsustainable position.

Via Quantum Mechanics there is a glimpse of a perfectly satisfactory conclusion to this regression as the sum total of the mass and energy in the universe may be zero and therefore it is possible to have something from nothing even something as big as the universe. There is no such finality with the god theory. I personally think that we must understand time to really understand the question, “what caused the Big Bang?”

I have often said that we must look at people’s beliefs from a historical perspective. The ONLY reason anyone would put forward the notion that god caused the big bang is because of other religions belief in god. In other words someone who says that they believe god caused the big bang borrowed that concept from religions who themselves don’t believe in that cut-back god.

I think that the clause saying that you can join the Irish Skeptics even if religious should be dropped. It shouldn’t be a requirement one way or the other. I do agree that anyone who is interested in Skepticism as a positive thing can join and that could include those believing in things that most Skeptics would not believe in. I think discussing these “superstitious” things with Skeptics would probably convince most thinking people that they are wrong and help change their minds.

“If you cannot change your mind then you don’t have a mind to change.”

Of course I agree with you that the cause of the universe is a complete mystery. It always will be a mystery.

I don’t think it’s a complete mystery. There is work being done on what might have caused the big bang and I have no reason to doubt that progress will be made, it always has been before. Unless sextusempiricus is claiming he can predict the future then saying “it will always be a mystery” is not meaningful.

Michael Faraday, who died over 100 years ago, believed in a literal interpretation of the bible. Only a vanishingly small number of scientists would subscribe to that theory today. Quoting the beliefs of people long dead is pointless as we are judging them from the perspective of what we know. You cannot say what position Faraday would hold if he was alive today and knew what we know. Would he refute evolution? I doubt it.

DadaKopf

Science itself cannot “decide” anything. However, The Scientific Method is a vastly more powerful tool for understanding than any other method including philosophy and religion.

I dunno, philosophy has done a pretty good job debunking scientism. The "scientific method" (i.e. hypothetical deduction/induction) only gives rise to a certain kind of knowledge but doesn't prove anything since all "scientific proofs", as Popper found, are only as good as the next person who disproves those proofs. Wittgenstein found that all "philosophical problems" (read: scientific problems) are linguistic problems once they move beyond the realm of empirical study; Foucault showed how scientific knowledge is actually a process of rarefaction of knowledge which really only makes rules about what can and can't be thought about and Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer spent their lives (successfully, I think) debunking the Enlightenment myth of positivism, revealing "objective scientific knowledge" as an elite political project.

Where does this leave science? Nowhere other than hubristic blindness.

Now, I don't deny science offers useful tools for exploring our world, but it's an incomplete vision which must be supplemented by other areas of knowledge such as politics, social studies, aesthetics.

I don't know anything about mathematics but Kurt Goedel also springs to mind, along with Rudolph Carnap, who not only showed that mathematical and linguistic propositions are necessarily incomplete but also that one should look to a system's metalanguage to determine answers to problems - answers which will, once again, be incomplete. The same can be said about science and, since I'm interested in it, International Relations. As I see it, there are different ways to approach the same phenomena and those approaches aren't all necessarily incompatible, especially since no one has ever established an irrefutable foundation of all knowledge.

So, I think anyone who claims that science can answer everything should take a very careful look at the history of science. You'll then find evidence for the vast limitations of scientific method, particularly the way it reveals little more, possibly even less, that it claims to given its own logical and practical inconsistencies and contradictions.

DadaKopf

PS: I would be skeptical about all claims to knowledge.

williamgrogan

Where does this leave science? Nowhere other than hubristic blindness

I think most people would rather fly in a scientifically designed & proven aeroplane than a philosophically imagined aeroplane not to mention an aeroplane designed by experts in International Relations.

If I needed a heart bypass I would prefer to be operated on by a doctor using scientific principals than a philosopher who can easily proof that there is no such thing as illness or a heart for that matter.

As I’m off to the races for the next two days I will reply to DadaKopf when I return, that’s if the person returning is really the same person that left. What do I really mean by “left”? Can we really know whether we are anywhere or is it all an illusion?

Popper, Wittgenstein, Foucault, Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Goedel and Rudolph Carnap, is this a name dropping record?

Tip for the 2:15 Chep. Saturday Bindaree.

DadaKopf

Wow, check out the arrogant cynicism. Nice response. I'll remember never to invite you to dinner.

I think most people would rather fly in a scientifically designed & proven aeroplane than a philosophically imagined aeroplane

If you cared to read my post properly, you'd have noticed I said: "[scientific problems] are linguistic problems once they move beyond the realm of empirical study [my emphasis]". I'm not denying the ability of empirically based scientific method to be able to predict natural occurences on the basis of causation. I'm questioning science's ability to, firstly, deal with qualitative phenomena and its inability to "disprove the existence of God" given those and other methodological limitations/contradictions, particularly the concepts "proof" and "truth".

Your response is, so far, trite and hardly any kind of fair-minded response. If you have one at all.

Popper, Wittgenstein, Foucault, Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Goedel and Rudolph Carnap, is this a name dropping record?

Call it what you like, I was simply attempting to give you a flavour of the weight of thought behind what I was saying. Surely there's nothing wrong with backing up everything one says?

As I’m off to the races for the next two days I will reply to DadaKopf when I return, that’s if the person returning is really the same person that left. What do I really mean by “left”? Can we really know whether we are anywhere or is it all an illusion?

C'mon. Grow up.

sextusempiricus

Originally posted by DadaKopf
PS: I would be skeptical about all claims to knowledge.

This is certainly what the ancient sceptics thought but how do you know this?

DadaKopf

I'd rather claim to know nothing than be saturated in unthinking dogma.

sextusempiricus

"I don’t think it’s a complete mystery. There is work being done on what might have caused the big bang and I have no reason to doubt that progress will be made, it always has been before. Unless sextusempiricus is claiming he can predict the future then saying “it will always be a mystery” is not meaningful." QUOTE FROM williamgrogan.


I still feel that the attempt to explain the cause of our Universe is likely to throw up a whole lot more questions that need explaining. To aspire to having a total explanation is to hope for God-like knowledge. We can never achieve such knowledge for although scientific progress is likely to astound us with its future discoveries we are in the end humans not God. I hope WG excuses me for not defining 'God'. It's a term I find as empty as himself.

I'm sure he would agree with Hermann Bondi who has stated that, "Science is by its nature inexhaustible. Whenever new technologies become available for experiment and observation, the possibility, indeed probability exists that something previously not dreamt of is discovered." He does go on to say that,"...our most successful theories in physics are those that leave room for the UNKNOWN, while confining this room sufficiently to make the theory empirically disprovable.....To exclude the unkown wholly as a 'unified field theory' or a 'world equation' purports to do is pointless and of no scientific significance." I accept this too.

"Michael Faraday, who died over 100 years ago, believed in a literal interpretation of the bible. Only a vanishingly small number of scientists would subscribe to that theory today. Quoting the beliefs of people long dead is pointless as we are judging them from the perspective of what we know. You cannot say what position Faraday would hold if he was alive today and knew what we know. Would he refute evolution? I doubt it." QUOTE FROM williamgrogan

Perhaps WG is right but I merely wished to claim that a great critical mind might never-the-less find emotional comfort in a sect that demanded of its members a firm belief in salvation and which taught "modesty, abhorrence of ostentation or showing off, and commitment to unobtrusive charitable work..." ('Science: a history 1543-2001' by John Gribbin, 2002, p413). Who knows intellectual modesty might not be a bad thing in a scientist whatever influenced its genesis.

ecksor

If wg can't admit the validity or value of the philosophers' arguments here then I think he's not really investigating this issue in a manner that befits a sceptic.

I gave a definition of what the nature of god could be before I would recognise such a thing as god. I can't define exactly what god is that created the universe (and I don't know why he thinks I can since I suspect that such a thing doesn't exist). I recall that I already specifically said that I couldn't do that. However, he used a lack of definition as an excuse to dodge the challange. If I take a stab in the dark on a definition and I miss, and williamgrogan can disprove that particular case, that doesn't disprove all cases. After all, I probably have missed. Similarly with his leap of reducing a belief in god to categorised religions. Since, williamgrogan disputes the validity of philosophy, then I think he'll have to study some elementary mathematics to appreciate this. On the other hand if, as he claims, he can't be expected to disprove something that the person presenting doesn't believe in, then I don't think it's unreasonable that he clarify his position on whether he thinks that a god such as I defined definitely does not exist.

ecksor

Originally posted by Myksyk
"The proof that god does not exist is the totality of all scientifically published work."

This strikes me as a surprisingly naive argument, again aimed more appropriately at claims about personal god and religion. But if I say ...

This, combined with the previous assertions about what we 'know', make me think that the opinions are a reflection of a different belief system, according to a different philosophy, where the high priests call themselves 'cosmologists' and 'theoretical physicists'.

I really think it's a terrible pity that people forget that theoretical physics was once 'natural philosophy'.

Capt'n Midnight

Originally posted by ecksor
I really think it's a terrible pity that people forget that theoretical physics was once 'natural philosophy'.

Metaphysics hasn't been the same since some of the lads stopped spending half the night talking about the nature of the universe and started using atom smashers and getting numerical data on it...

I'll say it again belief in God and Horoscopes or ghosts should be mutually exclusive.. Most people can have many mutually exclusive belief systems runing in parallel without noticing the contradictions. It's a handy survival mechanism. ye olde Suspension of Disbelief. (though looking at who we have for politicians.)

Many people (most?) have no problem in trusting science and technology for the physical world and to religon for the non-physical one.

Is someone who does not eat meat but wears leather a vegetarian ?

GuanYin

I'm really amazed at how some of the posters here can consider themselves "scientists" with the amount of inaccurate toss posted, especially with respect to DNA, genetics (and the role of genes) and especially evolution.

On topic, I think that anyone who believes that we have it within our power to understand the universe or to prove/disprove the existance of things that live outside our own understanding, really doesn't have a grasp of what science is.

A good scientist will always look for ways to disprove his own theory. To prod and probe and test to see if there are flaws in his own beliefs and convictions. Only then should he put it forward. To argue a point based soley on your own "beliefs" and interpretations without subjecting them to scrutiny is surely an act more befitting to
religion than science, yet it seems to be something that most posters here are doing.
This is really counterproductive to making any sort of a valid point.

Another thing I have noticed in this thread is the amount of times religion and "religious institutions" have been interchanged. Religion is surely faith in a belief system. These are not tangible things, they cannot oppress countries or children, "religious institutions" can, but surely these acts are the basis of man and the interpretation of the belief system. Not the system itself.

And this is where the ability for science to prove/disprove the existance of god falls flat. Any attempt is based on the interpretation of the individual coducting the test. On their interpretation of what god is. How can you prove or disprove something that you cannot adequately define. For some people God is a big beared man watching over us and dictating the unravelling of life. To other people God is simply something beyond our comprehension that plays a role in the universe that we can't quite pinpoint. Again there are probably an infinite number of definitions between and beyond these two. Which one would you try to elucidate?

The sum total of scientific publications do nothing to prove or disprove god and they aren't ever trying to. They are making an effort to understand their own little areas of the universe so we can all have a better picture of where we are. The fact that this is all very much a work in progress shows how much we don't know, how much we don't understand. DNA isn't half as important as we believed 3 years ago. Sugars have more of a role in what makes us what we are than anyone imagined. The dictum is constantly changing. Religious institutions often make the mistake of wrongly interpretting religion and using it for their own purposes, don't be foolish in makingthe same mistake with science.

sextusempiricus

I'd agree with most of what Syke has written and return to what, I think, Davros mentioned early on and Myksyk has repeated: namely that the question of God's existence is a matter of faith. This is or should be a private matter for individuals. Dubious claims such as the efficacy of aromatherapy, homeopathy etc. should be challenged as they openly undermine the scientific enterprise of the last 400 years i.e the growth of our knowledge (and increased awareness of our ignorance) based on the scientific method of bold conjecture controlled by severe criticism. Sceptics, theists or atheists, can surely all agree with this aim.

Of course if a statement by a theist has empirical content then it is a tempting target for the sceptic. As an example read Francis Galton's 'Statistical Inquiries into the Efficacy of Prayer', published by the 'Fortnightly Review' of 1st August, 1872. Find extracts at

http://www.abelard.org/galton/galton.htm#prayer[/COLOR]

williamgrogan

I've been trying to decide for the last few days what word best sums up philosophy and I have decided that it is "bull****".

Far too many people on this thread quote long dead philosophers who discovered nothing of interest and obviously think that it has or can contribute something to the study of nature. It hasn't and it cannot.

Philosophy has one major drawback which makes it virtually useless, it is not scientific.

There is little difference between philosophy and religion, navel gazing, economics, scrabble, guessing, tea leaf reading, waffle, b******t, bluffing, ad infinitum……..

PS

My tip won at 10/1. Am I psychic?

Capt'n Midnight

Originally posted by williamgrogan
Philosophy has one major drawback which makes it virtually useless, it is not scientific.

Just because something is not scientific does not make it useless - remember your existance can be proved because you think. Then there is the whole study of ethics. And just because something is not of interest to you does not make it of no interest whatsoever.

My tip won at 10/1. Am I psychic?

Statistically No.

DadaKopf

Originally posted by williamgrogan
I've been trying to decide for the last few days what word best sums up philosophy and I have decided that it is "bull****".

That's interesting. Well, William, if that *is* your real name, why don't you try harder, practise what you preach, tell us what you consider philosophy to be and support your viewpoint with rationally considered reasons for your view. So far you've offered nothing but mindless invective. Hardly the attitude of a committed scientist like yourself?

Far too many people on this thread quote long dead philosophers who discovered nothing of interest and obviously think that it has or can contribute something to the study of nature. It hasn't and it cannot.

Philosophy has one major drawback which makes it virtually useless, it is not scientific.

That's interesting. Philosophy gave rise to science, logic is one of the five branches of philosophy of which mathematics and language are subsets, philosophy of mind is a major component of cognitive science, philosophy has given rise to areas of study in the social sciences, the list goes on. And, as someone already said, philosophy was the first natural science.

I think with such a sweeping statement like that, you really should define "of interest"; define "contribution"; define "nature". Otherwise we can only assume you don't know what you're talking about. But I know you won't bother, because you either think you're too good for all that, or you haven't thought about it.

Why do you constantly avoid anything sensible anyone has to say in criticism of your position?

ecksor

Originally posted by DadaKopf
Why do you constantly avoid anything sensible anyone has to say in criticism of your position?

Because he can't offer a reasonable response? [edited stupid typo]

Or if he can it's quite clear that even if he has fully justified the opinions to himself, he's not inclined to justify them to others in a way that will represent the sceptical point of view in a competent way. If he wishes to believe that his critics on this thread are less enlightened than he is, then that is his right.

GuanYin

Originally posted by williamgrogan
I've been trying to decide for the last few days what word best sums up philosophy and I have decided that it is "bull****".

I find it hard to believe that anyone wishing to be versed in the sciences would so openly dismiss anything, not least of all a discipline that has paved the way for so many of the scientific achievments we hold today.

Many fields of science have not changed much from the initial seeds planted by those long dead philosophers you so openly scorn. It was they who first set stall in mapping the human anatomy and seeing how the body and life work, it was they who devised the early math that we use so readily today, in short it was their curiosity that started the fields of science we (or at least I) work in today.

Originally posted by williamgrogan
Far too many people on this thread quote long dead philosophers who discovered nothing of interest and obviously think that it has or can contribute something to the study of nature. It hasn't and it cannot.

For every 1 scientist who discovered something of interest to the greater population there have been at least a million that haven't. However, if they succeed in spurring other scientists on then their contribution has been immence. The same applies to "long dead philosophers" many had no real "greater cause" other than personal curiosity in their work, but from that they inspired many disciplines and hence many great scientists. Even thos ethat encourage scientist to work to debunk them offer more than those who are closed minded and snug in their own self belief (which alot of scientists are).

Originally posted by williamgrogan

Philosophy has one major drawback which makes it virtually useless, it is not scientific.

I think you will find many of the great philosophers were very scientific in their approach. Some were merely gifted engineers, some were lunatics. If you say philosophy is unscientific you imply that all those who practice it are likewise. This is clearly not the case. Archimedes is always a good example. Claimed as a philosopher, definitely not a scientist, but you could hardly brand him unscientific or a tea leaf reader or bluffer.

Originally posted by williamgrogan
There is little difference between philosophy and religion, navel gazing, economics, scrabble, guessing, tea leaf reading, waffle, b******t, bluffing, ad infinitum……..

I think you have a grave misconception about what philosophy involves, it has changed alot in the past few thousand years but even today philosophy has made contributions as diverse as bioethics and quantum physics. Hardly the work of a bunch of wasters. Not so long ago I saw James Watson speak on the matter and he lauded teh contribution of philosophy.