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Consider: If you seek "scientific proof of God's existence and power", what would you need as that proof. And if your proof is fulfilled then would you believe it anyway?. I do not mean proof of religion. I mean proof of "God" in the sense of a SINGLE entity responsible for the creation of the known universe. I am not saying "God" exists one way or another. Just posed this to "people of 'science'" (of which I consider myself to be) to see how they think about it.


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Depends on where one has grown up: for most white people (Arabs included), God is a harsh father-like person who likes to play sadistic games with people, like
A: the prohibition to eat from one particular tree, resulting in Man being expelled from the paradise of Eden.
B: building the Babylonian tower causes God to create different languages to sabotage the mentioned construction project.
C: flooding the earth, thereby murdering all life on earth, except for skipper Noah and his crew.

Not to mention the last big screwup of the Cristian God: letting his son be tortured to death, culminating in crucifixion, justified by the notion that this way all the sins of mankind be washed away.

If this mismanagement would have been performed by a normal guy, he would be imprisoned.
It is this kind of inconsequent measuring with two different measures that is really damaging to young children when they are raised cristian.

So if a God like that should be found, take him to court and let him account for all the harm He did!


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It is obvious that you do not understand the concept of God.Learn new religions and probably you will find some of your answers.
Do not mix the Science and Religion. It serves no practical purpose.
Science allows you to master the art of knowing the cause and effectand Even after knowing so much can you tell me where the next such event of disaster will take place. Forget about the 'why' part of it.
Some answers you are asking for is not available with the science also.
We have just begun our journey into the tomorrow.
How long we will walk together who knows?
I hope then we will get some of the answers.
If you are really interested in solving those religious riddles then I would request you to seek a guidance from a religious master.(preferably Buddha)
For other things we are here.

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Well said, Hugo.
It's not a god I would like to know.

dkv - Hugo was talking specifically about the Christian god, as worshipped by biblical literalists in the US.

It's hard to say what evidence of God's existence I would find compelling. I can imagine limitless dramatic things God could do to demonstrate his/her existence. I can say that I have never encountered any evidence at all of God's existence, despite 30-odd of examining nature as carefully as I know how. I don't think that "proves" there is no God. Science isn't about "proof" anyway. The most reasonable theory to hold is the simplest one that explains the evidence. That's Occam's razor. Occam leads me, tentatively, to work with the theory that the universe has no intelligent being at the wheel.

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DKV, I see your point. Science perhaps can not explain God. I guess what I was really trying to ask the question for those who would believe in God only if they had "scientific proof". Not for those who have faith alone.
Great replies folks! I love this website


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You are wrong. You aren't even debatable. Science and religion are orthogonal.

Science is empiricism - mathematical modeling of observation constrained by real world correspondence. Science must be predictive and verifiable. A theory cannot be proven, only validated by prediction vs. observation. A theory that makes a bad prediction is falsified - wrong and dead. One blooper and out.

Quote:
Consider: If you seek "scientific proof of God's existence and power", what would you need as that proof.
That is a statement of profound ignorance. By definition, religion cannot be proven. If it were proven faith would be destroyed and it would no longer be religion.

Religion is faith - irrational (by definition!) belief that exists independent of observation.

1) That which supports religion supports religion.

2) That which ignores religion supports religion.

3) That which contradicts religion supports religion - test of faith; act of the Devil.

4) Anybody who criticizes is thereby proven unfit to judge, or is an agent of the Devil.

All they want is your money. Toss in self-serving exercise of political power and impression of unending travail as proof of of God's love - test of faith! Proof of the Devil.

The divide is irreconcilable. Science is the discovery of knowledge and its employment to change the world for the better. Religion has one uniform, ultimate sin: Knowledge! Faith demands denial of reality. Faith falters when suffering is relieved.

Science puts you in jumbo jets. Faith puts you onto your bloody knees. Make a choice. How many dead babies do you want to bury? (not uphill of your drinking wells, ditto latrines, unless you are particularly eager for more tests of faith.)

There is an anthill outside my home. Every Thursday the ants gather to worship me. They all chew off the end of one of their legs to show their sincerity. They know that if they truly please me I will give them a giant Tim Horton's donut and they will never be hungry again. I hose them full blast to smash the nuisance into mud and ruin. They always return.

Test of faith.


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Such unnecessary vitriol, slamming the questioner without bothering to provide the simple answer to the simple question asked. For shame.

To answer your question, I can be satisfied in a couple of ways.

The easiest would be to posit that God does NOT exist, reason what kinds of things would logically and necessarily follow from that, and then demonstrate that only one of those things is contradicted by observed and reliable data. This would thereby disprove the nonexistence of God, and thus God must exist.

The hardest would be to somehow get me to directly observe God by means of one of my physical senses, in a meaningful way.

Any other kind of proof would work so long as it is (1) based on objective evidence, that can be observed by others, (2) accurately explains the observed data, (3) contains no leaps of logic or unsupported conclusions, (4) can be tested by experiment, and (5) reliably predicts future observations.


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I did not say "prove religion" I said proof of God. That is not one and the same. Thank you Yet another Crank


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"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." - A C Clarke.

There is no amount of evidence that can prove or disprove the existence of a deity. None. God is outside the scope of what science can study.

The Dark Ages never yielded to the Golden Age of Scientific Discovery until we learned to separate what was knowable (in the sense of being physically confirmed) from what was unknowable.

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You are wrong. You aren't even debatable. Science and religion are orthogonal.
REP: True
===========================
Science is empiricism - mathematical modeling of observation constrained by real world correspondence.
REP: Not true.Science as a whole does not depend upon Maths.It uses Maths where ever required and it tries to reduce reality to a possible Matehmatical Model. Model need not be accurate.
Model tries to explain what is observed and makes some sensible prediction. Sometimes it succeeds exceptionally and sometimes it fails miserably.
======================================
Science must be predictive and verifiable.
REP: Prediction today is driven by probability.
The concept verifications are subjected to the assumptions of statistics(which is maths) and the defined event space. There are ways to deduce results without using probability or statistics.
==================================
A theory cannot be proven, only validated by prediction vs. observation. A theory that makes a bad prediction is falsified - wrong and dead.
One blooper and out.
REP: A wrong theory is still in use. No one tries to derive the exact solution to a problem.
For various reasons it is not possible to solve a real life problem with enough entropy with enough precision using exact Maths.Abstraction is central to the working of this world.And then you have n body problems.
======================================
quote:
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Consider: If you seek "scientific proof of God's existence and power", what would you need as that proof.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
That is a statement of profound ignorance. By definition, religion cannot be proven. If it were proven faith would be destroyed and it would no longer be religion.
REP: Religion can not be proven to anyone else but yourself. It is your belief and it can be a positive belief.Better than the faith in Hydrogen Bomb.
==================================
Religion is faith - irrational (by definition!) belief that exists independent of observation.
1) That which supports religion supports religion.
REP: This applies to every field as the base assumptions of a subject can not be verified by some other domain.
===================================
2) That which ignores religion supports religion.
REP: Unfortunately many today do not understand it and such a support is not religious.
But it happens every where.
==========================================
3) That which contradicts religion supports religion - test of faith; act of the Devil.
REP: Contradiction is allowed in Science.
Otherwise how can Matter and Wave co-exist.
Either you define same reality using the harcoded physicality or using the wave but not both.
=========================================
4) Anybody who criticizes is thereby proven unfit to judge, or is an agent of the Devil.
REP: Criticize after you have understood what is meant by God. Seek advice from other religions as well.
==================================
All they want is your money. Toss in self-serving exercise of political power and impression of unending travail as proof of of God's love - test of faith! Proof of the Devil.
REP:Yes it is politically sensitive but so is the bomb.
====================================
The divide is irreconcilable. Science is the discovery of knowledge and its employment to change the world for the better. Religion has one uniform, ultimate sin: Knowledge!
REP: Not true. It has its own book of Knowledge.
The Sceince(as we know) can not claim to be sole owner of it otherwise we would not have evolved into human beings.
=======================================
Faith demands denial of reality. Faith falters when suffering is relieved.
REP: Not true. There are religions which believe in both. Hinduism enforces reality without denying God.
======================================
Science puts you in jumbo jets. Faith puts you onto your bloody knees. Make a choice. How many dead babies do you want to bury? (not uphill of your drinking wells, ditto latrines, unless you are particularly eager for more tests of faith.)
REP: Faith helps you after you die.
=============================================
There is an anthill outside my home. Every Thursday the ants gather to worship me. They all chew off the end of one of their legs to show their sincerity. They know that if they truly please me I will give them a giant Tim Horton's donut and they will never be hungry again. I hose them full blast to smash the nuisance into mud and ruin. They always return.
REP: You feed or they eat.But they must exist.
It is simple.
======================================
Test of faith.
REP: True.

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True, God can neither be proved to exist or not! It?s folly to even discus the existence of God, because all the attributes we, or religion impose upon Him/ She, has to be wrong.
The reason for this is if God exists, understanding what God is, or the mind of God is beyond we poor mortals. If God doesn?t exist why talk of God. The Cosmos is either contingent or not contingent. However, I must confess the topic is fun.

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God is not beyond an individual's comprehension.
There are ways and means to acheive it.

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dkv
You can IF you think St Anslem?s Ontological Argument proves the existence of God. However, I do not mean by faith, but absolute proof. With all respect to you, I don?t believe you can, if so please tell me how.
Your friend in discussion Gemini T.

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Some special brownies and lots of people think they have special insights into the almighty. There may be something to it, but it's not scientific.

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As I said it is not part of the Scientific Discussion.The concept is as alien as Maths and also as relevant as Maths.
Concept of God has been applied repeatedly in the past and even today it affects millions across the globe.
Getting rid of it is impossible and accepting it without understanding is dangerous.
I have no proof. I leave it your curiosity.
Research and find out what does it mean.
Do not confine yourself to xyz religion.
None of them expresses what they are trying to express.
Do not expect miracles.It doesnt happen or may be it does ..
i dont know.

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[QUOTE]Originally posted by MrMung:
[qb] The replies seem to be : The scientific method can not be applied to answer the existence of God. An agnostic says "there can be no proof of the existence of God, but does not deny the possibility of God's existence; an atheist "concludes that God does not exist". Perhaps this is the wrong forum for these kinds of questions. But is "seeing a UFO" or "believing in intelligent alien life" the same as "believing in God"? I do not know.


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UFOs and intelligent alien life - to the extent they are not mystical or supernatural phenomena - are susceptible to the scientific method, at least putatively.

UFOs exist. You see something in the sky. You don't know what it is, therefore it is a UFO.

The possibility of intelligent alien life is distinct from UFOs. The Drake equation is - to my mind - just a back of the envelop type of computation. Rather, the equation is probably valid as a model, but the inputs are just guesses. So maybe it's like a Fermi problem - but still a string of wild guesses.

The existence of intelligent aliens is separate from the question of UFOs. The existence of aliens is separate from whether they might ever have visited the Earth.

While I consider the idea that aliens have visited the earth silly without some compelling evidence to the contrary, I don't think all claims for unlikely phenomena are equally unlikely.

If Bigfoot and Loch Ness were not hoaxes, they wouldn't require science to be rewritten. These are very unlikely, but not utterly ridiculous. Well, at least they are not AS ridiculous as, say, alien visitors - which are an order of magnitude more unlikely. Even more unlikely than that would be something like ESP or remote viewing.

To summarize: there are a lot of absurd ideas, but not all absurd ideas are equally absurd.

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Forgot to summarize the actual point:

Even though Bigfoot, UFOs, alien visitors, and ESP are absurd notions with imaginary research supporting them, they are not beyond actual scientific study. Bigfoot is a scientifically analyzable concept, as is the evidence for it. It may be hoax, but we can examine even faked evidence.

Same for the other absurd ideas. OTOH, God is beyond scientific research. It's the epitome of supernaturalism. Science does nature. It doesn't acknowledge supernature, let alone dispute within it.

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Science does nature!!??
I thought we use Science to describe Nature.
We assume Nature is comprehensible using the binary communication.
BTW,What is Science?

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