I agree that it is religious people who should help and who should put their best foot forward - if their aim is to help us and to accept their religion, that is.
Disproving a Personal God with Science
- Thread starter spidergoat
- Start date
I agree that it is religious people who should help and who should put their best foot forward - if their aim is to help us and to accept their religion, that is.
and there's your problem.
that's not disproof.
That's merely a problem that cannot be addressed empirically.
Rubbish.
I have been saying that you are examining the issue as if god is a gumball machine.
IOW you are glossing over the study by not factoring in god as a personality guided by independence
For as long as you don't even theoretically factor in god as a personality in the issue, you are simply being half assed.
Kind of like going on a rant about analyzing the behavior of a sincere husband yet being clueless what a wife means.
IOW sincerity or indeed any of a host of qualities that arise from reciprocation involve looking at at least two individuals, not one.
It is in science. I can't say that god is absolutely disproved, but based on the lack of any support for the hypothesis, the hypothesis can be considered false.
Then you admit there is no empirical evidence for a personal god, which is all I wanted to show. On what basis do you assume that something as important as this alleged god who is influencing real things all over the place is impossible to detect? I say you accept that on faith, which is something religious people do to avoid any hard questions.
To say it's beyond testability is the same as saying it most likely does not exist. There are an infinite number of premises that one cannot test, which makes belief in god just as empirically justified as belief in a flying purple people eater. You should join the Church of FPPE, just stay away from the purple kool-aid.
No it is most definitely not science.
If you are equating a claim that cannot be tested empirically as false you are clearly stepping outside scientific discipline.
Much like questions of distance cannot be approached with a thermometer ... of course there are other tools for inquiry, such as a tape measure for example, which perform the task quite easily ...
I'm not sure you understand.
The "detection" occurs on god's terms.
Empirical "detection" is purely a question of the seer's capacities.
Kind of like an empirical investigation of (directly) detecting the president might be as simple as opening 20 doors in a building.
Since it has the added detail of the president being directly perceived on his terms, there is the minor detail of dealing with his 101 secretaries.
I say that you are failing to factor in god as a personality in all these queries of proof and investigation ... which of course is something atheist people do in order to avoid the obvious sore points in their critiques.
Complete rubbish.
A great many things we accept as real are things we have never personally tested or perceived.
More nonsense.
The basis of accepting god's existence is not made on the basis of it being beyond empirical investigation.
What do you think is the basis of accepting God's existence?
That is not fair.
The problem of testability occurs when people who are not part of a group try to verify notions and experiences of said group.
This problem occurs with any kind of group, not just religious ones.
Theists are at fault inasmuch as they try to get us to believe in God (or hold it against us if we don't) without accepting us into their fold.
essentially the same as the president's - it all works on his terms, not yours.
Okay.
Then why do you (and other theists) suggest that the process for choosing the right religion should be one like choosing a medical treatment or a car or spouse?
See, I could throw my hands up in the air, say
"God, if you're listening, I can't figure out which religion is the right one or which one to join. I have invested considerable time and other resources into figuring it out, but I cannot. Any choice I would make seems whimsical. I don't think one can choose the Absolute Truth; to "choose the Absolute Truth" seems to be a contradiction in terms. So from now on, I am going to mind my own business and not try to figure out which religion is the right one and which one to join. If it so pleases You, then do incline me to one particular religion or another or otherwise make Your will known."
- but how many theists would accept that?
"God, if you're listening, I can't figure out which religion is the right one or which one to join. I have invested considerable time and other resources into figuring it out, but I cannot. Any choice I would make seems whimsical. I don't think one can choose the Absolute Truth; to "choose the Absolute Truth" seems to be a contradiction in terms. So from now on, I am going to mind my own business and not try to figure out which religion is the right one and which one to join. If it so pleases You, then do incline me to one particular religion or another or otherwise make Your will known."
- but how many theists would accept that?
MindOverMatter earlier posted a link to Fr. Barron here.
Look what he says in his comments on Religious Drifters - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9YyOGz3XQ-w&feature=related
Esp. at 3.33 he criticizes the idea of choosing a religion; that choosing a religion is about one's ego finally being in command.
And then he talks about how in the Bible, it is God who does the choosing, God summons certain people. He says that "the voice of God is sovereign over our choices" and quotes Jesus - "It is not you who have chosen Me, it is I who have chosen you." He notes that this is the difference between biblical religion and the cultural religion of today.
If God is the one who chooses people, then why do theists proselytize?
Why do theists angrily hold it against people if they don't join their particular religion?
Why do theists present the whole situation as a matter of the individual having to choose the right religion somehow?
The argument could be made that proselytizing is conducive merely to "the cultural religion of today" - but it does not invoke a biblical religion.
Look what he says in his comments on Religious Drifters - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9YyOGz3XQ-w&feature=related
Esp. at 3.33 he criticizes the idea of choosing a religion; that choosing a religion is about one's ego finally being in command.
And then he talks about how in the Bible, it is God who does the choosing, God summons certain people. He says that "the voice of God is sovereign over our choices" and quotes Jesus - "It is not you who have chosen Me, it is I who have chosen you." He notes that this is the difference between biblical religion and the cultural religion of today.
If God is the one who chooses people, then why do theists proselytize?
Why do theists angrily hold it against people if they don't join their particular religion?
Why do theists present the whole situation as a matter of the individual having to choose the right religion somehow?
The argument could be made that proselytizing is conducive merely to "the cultural religion of today" - but it does not invoke a biblical religion.
Yazata
Valued Senior Member
I don't understand what a hundred posts about 'light' have to do with the subject line of this thread.
Nor do I have any idea how natural science can possibly disprove the existence of God.
The thread seems to basically be Spidergoat challenging those who believe in God to try to convince him that God exists. What that challenge has to do with science isn't exactly clear. Nor is it clear how somebody failing to convince Spidergoat of the existence something could become a disproof of the existence of that thing.
Perhaps the closest approach to a scientific disproof of God's existence might be to argue that science proves that all events in this physical universe are physical events, that they occur in accordance with physical law, and hence that all purported miraculous supernatural interventions are in fact natural events.
That might be difficult to accomplish in real life. There are many unexplained this-worldly events. The belief that all of them possess natural explanations and occurred in accordance with physical law, even if those explanations are currently unknown, is an expression of naturalistic faith. I share that faith myself, in fact, but I can't prove its truth and universal applicability. It's more of a heuristic principle than an established fact.
This is ignoring for the sake of argument the fact that many/most religious believers don't really think that miracles need to be violations of natural law. They might see the birth of a child as a miracle, without denying the biology involved.
But more fundamentally, the religious believer will point to the existence of being itself as evidence of his or her divine principle. God is supposed to be the source, the origin and the sustainer of reality. So all the complex internal details of natural law and cause-and-effect are kind of irrelevant from that perspective, since some account still needs to be given for why there are causality and natural law in the first place, instead of simply nothing.
Atheists can argue, and I would agree with them, that introducing a mythical God as the hypothetical explanation is just pushing the problem back a step and not really answering it. But the point that I'm making here is that a supernatural origin is just another speculation. Choosing between the alternatives is essentially a matter of choice at this point. We can't prove or disprove any of it.
Returning to God as light, it sounds like a Platonic analogy to me, deriving from the 'cave' anlogy in Plato's Republic, where he compared our experience of our earthly reality to somebody watching shadows reflected on the wall of a cave.
Later more religiously motivated Platonists turned that into kind of a theology, with the One as the original source of light, and God's energeia, his logos, his power flowing out of him like rays of light, both one with his luminous divine essence and separate, entering into our world and projecting flickering always-changing images of the eternal divine forms/ideas.
And both Christianity and Islam picked up on those ideas and incorporated them into their theologies. That's one of the big sources for Christology, the Christian theories of what Christ-as-logos is supposed to be.
Nor do I have any idea how natural science can possibly disprove the existence of God.
The thread seems to basically be Spidergoat challenging those who believe in God to try to convince him that God exists. What that challenge has to do with science isn't exactly clear. Nor is it clear how somebody failing to convince Spidergoat of the existence something could become a disproof of the existence of that thing.
Perhaps the closest approach to a scientific disproof of God's existence might be to argue that science proves that all events in this physical universe are physical events, that they occur in accordance with physical law, and hence that all purported miraculous supernatural interventions are in fact natural events.
That might be difficult to accomplish in real life. There are many unexplained this-worldly events. The belief that all of them possess natural explanations and occurred in accordance with physical law, even if those explanations are currently unknown, is an expression of naturalistic faith. I share that faith myself, in fact, but I can't prove its truth and universal applicability. It's more of a heuristic principle than an established fact.
This is ignoring for the sake of argument the fact that many/most religious believers don't really think that miracles need to be violations of natural law. They might see the birth of a child as a miracle, without denying the biology involved.
But more fundamentally, the religious believer will point to the existence of being itself as evidence of his or her divine principle. God is supposed to be the source, the origin and the sustainer of reality. So all the complex internal details of natural law and cause-and-effect are kind of irrelevant from that perspective, since some account still needs to be given for why there are causality and natural law in the first place, instead of simply nothing.
Atheists can argue, and I would agree with them, that introducing a mythical God as the hypothetical explanation is just pushing the problem back a step and not really answering it. But the point that I'm making here is that a supernatural origin is just another speculation. Choosing between the alternatives is essentially a matter of choice at this point. We can't prove or disprove any of it.
Returning to God as light, it sounds like a Platonic analogy to me, deriving from the 'cave' anlogy in Plato's Republic, where he compared our experience of our earthly reality to somebody watching shadows reflected on the wall of a cave.
Later more religiously motivated Platonists turned that into kind of a theology, with the One as the original source of light, and God's energeia, his logos, his power flowing out of him like rays of light, both one with his luminous divine essence and separate, entering into our world and projecting flickering always-changing images of the eternal divine forms/ideas.
And both Christianity and Islam picked up on those ideas and incorporated them into their theologies. That's one of the big sources for Christology, the Christian theories of what Christ-as-logos is supposed to be.
If you prefer to say that the hypothesis failed, I can accept that.
I could also say that anything you say was generated by the devil and automatically false, that has just as much rational support as saying a personal god is beyond scientific investigation.
The presence of his secretaries obfuscating our investigation is indirect proof of the president existing. Also, you are quite wrong in saying that empirical investigation depends on one's personal capacities. Empiricism is all about observations being observer independent.
What difference does that make?
So what? We can tentatively believe in things we haven't personally tested or perceived, but we do that out of practicality. It doesn't change the empirically testable nature of things that can be objectively observed.
But you seem to use that as an excuse constantly.
But there is support for the hypothesis. A lot of people believe they ecperience God. A lot of people believe in the existence of God.spidergoat said:
How is that not evidence?
Conversely, you fairly obviously want to believe any hypothesis is false, but you still don't have anything definitive. You haven't used science at all, what you have used is doubt.
Your use of doubt as a form of argument looks like an act of faith.
I do.Yazata said:
I thought it would be a good example of how science can't disprove the existence of a personal God.
An optometrist can prove the existence of a personal visual abberation, using external light, but science cannot prove that the subject being tested is seeing light from the optometrist's equipment. The person being tested tells the optometrist that they can see, or not.
Can you not see what the argument is?
But it's true. A lot of people do believe in the existence of God. That isn't a fallacy.
A lot of people believe they can tell their doctor something, the doctor doesn't need to examine them, just believe what they're saying. Some things patients tell their doctor can't be examined directly to get empirical evidence.
@arfa brane --
And we've told you, if god is photons then the entire bible is false as are Christianity and Judaism. Photons are just not capable of being the god that is described by the bible, they can't move a mountain, or make the sun stop in the sky. Photons are incapable of answering prayers or even thinking(which god is sort of described as doing). If Paul is right, and god is literally light, then the bible is wrong. Plain and simple.
You haven't kept up with your science have you? With the right equipment we can test whether or not their eyes are actually picking up light. Among other pieces of equipment capable of this, have you ever heard of an fMRI? If we shine light into the eye, preferably while the subject is unconscious, the visual cortex bit of the brain should activate and that would be visible on the fMRI. You should really try to keep up, especially if you want to argue a scientific basis for god.
You seem to be missing the point. The point isn't that a lot of people believing in something is a fallacy, the fallacy is asserting that something is "true" because a lot of people believe it or that their belief counts as evidence. A lot of people also believe that Israel was behind the 9/11 attacks, should we lend their hypothesis credence(and ignore all of the contrary evidence) simply because a lot of people believe it? Or what about that time not so long ago when everyone believed that the world was flat? That it was believed by a large number of people(everyone) didn't make it right and it never counted as evidence. Or perhaps the practice of trepanning? There was a time when everyone believed that illness was caused by demonic possession and that drilling holes in the skull would cure it, did the fact that large numbers of people(pretty much all of Europe and the Middle East at one point) mean that there was evidence that they were right? Hell no it didn't.
To put it simply, the number of people who believe a thing is irrelevant to it's truth value. A thing that is objectively true is true regardless of whether or not anyone believes it.
Red herring. Fallacy. Please try again.
And we've told you, if god is photons then the entire bible is false as are Christianity and Judaism. Photons are just not capable of being the god that is described by the bible, they can't move a mountain, or make the sun stop in the sky. Photons are incapable of answering prayers or even thinking(which god is sort of described as doing). If Paul is right, and god is literally light, then the bible is wrong. Plain and simple.
You haven't kept up with your science have you? With the right equipment we can test whether or not their eyes are actually picking up light. Among other pieces of equipment capable of this, have you ever heard of an fMRI? If we shine light into the eye, preferably while the subject is unconscious, the visual cortex bit of the brain should activate and that would be visible on the fMRI. You should really try to keep up, especially if you want to argue a scientific basis for god.
You seem to be missing the point. The point isn't that a lot of people believing in something is a fallacy, the fallacy is asserting that something is "true" because a lot of people believe it or that their belief counts as evidence. A lot of people also believe that Israel was behind the 9/11 attacks, should we lend their hypothesis credence(and ignore all of the contrary evidence) simply because a lot of people believe it? Or what about that time not so long ago when everyone believed that the world was flat? That it was believed by a large number of people(everyone) didn't make it right and it never counted as evidence. Or perhaps the practice of trepanning? There was a time when everyone believed that illness was caused by demonic possession and that drilling holes in the skull would cure it, did the fact that large numbers of people(pretty much all of Europe and the Middle East at one point) mean that there was evidence that they were right? Hell no it didn't.
To put it simply, the number of people who believe a thing is irrelevant to it's truth value. A thing that is objectively true is true regardless of whether or not anyone believes it.
Red herring. Fallacy. Please try again.
So what you mean to say here is, "if the Bible is talking about photons when it says God is light, then etc and etc".Arioch said:
What if it isn't talking about photons? What if it's talking about a phenomenon that has nothing to do with vision?
About that empirical evidence, doctor-patient wise. Can doctor detemine empirically if a patient is really experiencing pain, or just imagining pain? Would fMRI be able to detect this?
Bear in mind that a lot of people go to a doctor because they believe they are experiencing pain.
Please keep trying.
@arfa brane --
Photons are light, light is photons. Light is nothing but photons and photons are the smallest packets of light. To say anything else is simply incorrect, no matter how it's phrased.
You're putting the cart before the horse here. Light has nothing to do with vision, it would be the way that it is even if no one were here to see it, vision is a phenomenon based on light. Light does far more than just allow us to see, the photon is the carrier particle for the electromagnetic force, but it's still just photons.
Again, if god is photons then the bible is false as are Christianity and Judaism. This is the only possible conclusion to such a premise.
Oh you mean that red herring which has nothing to do with any of the topics at hand? Yeah, I'm not going to waste my time in indulging in this fallacy you seem so enamored with.
Theoretically yes it could if you introduced the proper controls. If you put the person under and stimulate the area where pain is supposed to originate the pain centers of the brain should light up. If they don't then the most parsimonious explanation would be that the patient was imagining it. But you don't even have to use an fMRI to do that, all you have to do is poke the area when the patient isn't paying attention(i.e. either distracted by the hot nurse or asleep), if they react then the pain is real, if they don't then it's not. Simple.
By the way, this bit was a fallacy called "moving the goalposts". I answered your original question in a satisfactory manner and you then changed the mark I had to meet(originally it was light, which I showed was possible, then you changed it to pain in the hopes that that would stump me) in order to answer your question. This is not the tactic of a person who is winning an argument, it's the tactic of the man who knows he's got nothing but is desperate to win anyways.
Look, I know that you're trying to come up with some truly difficult, knock-down questions which you think I can't answer(perhaps I should nominate you for Potholer54's QQOQQ award), but the simple fact of the matter is that you don't know enough to keep up with me on this topic. I've kept up with the science, you haven't, it really is just that simple.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but I haven't even started trying. Your arguments and your questions are child's play for me, I've seen them a hundred times before. You could at least try to come up with something new.
Photons are light, light is photons. Light is nothing but photons and photons are the smallest packets of light. To say anything else is simply incorrect, no matter how it's phrased.
You're putting the cart before the horse here. Light has nothing to do with vision, it would be the way that it is even if no one were here to see it, vision is a phenomenon based on light. Light does far more than just allow us to see, the photon is the carrier particle for the electromagnetic force, but it's still just photons.
Again, if god is photons then the bible is false as are Christianity and Judaism. This is the only possible conclusion to such a premise.
Oh you mean that red herring which has nothing to do with any of the topics at hand? Yeah, I'm not going to waste my time in indulging in this fallacy you seem so enamored with.
Theoretically yes it could if you introduced the proper controls. If you put the person under and stimulate the area where pain is supposed to originate the pain centers of the brain should light up. If they don't then the most parsimonious explanation would be that the patient was imagining it. But you don't even have to use an fMRI to do that, all you have to do is poke the area when the patient isn't paying attention(i.e. either distracted by the hot nurse or asleep), if they react then the pain is real, if they don't then it's not. Simple.
By the way, this bit was a fallacy called "moving the goalposts". I answered your original question in a satisfactory manner and you then changed the mark I had to meet(originally it was light, which I showed was possible, then you changed it to pain in the hopes that that would stump me) in order to answer your question. This is not the tactic of a person who is winning an argument, it's the tactic of the man who knows he's got nothing but is desperate to win anyways.
Look, I know that you're trying to come up with some truly difficult, knock-down questions which you think I can't answer(perhaps I should nominate you for Potholer54's QQOQQ award), but the simple fact of the matter is that you don't know enough to keep up with me on this topic. I've kept up with the science, you haven't, it really is just that simple.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but I haven't even started trying. Your arguments and your questions are child's play for me, I've seen them a hundred times before. You could at least try to come up with something new.
How is personal testimony not evidence? This observation would only be a first step towards further investigation, it is not proof of anything. Lots of people don't believe in God, is that evidence of the absence of God? Throughout history, people have believed all kinds of things. I have a naturalistic explanation, which is that people are conformists. As recently as 1960 in the supposedly secular state of Mississippi, it would have been impossible to publicly reject God without risking murder. The talk show radio personality Randi Rhodes related a story on her show that she was kicked out of some state in the South by a relatively respectful committee of KKK members, simply for being a Jew. The situation in the rest of the world, and especially historically, was even worse. So when you live in such a culture, and happen to have a consciousness changing experience, which we know is part of humanity, you will interpret that experience as confirmation of the culture in which you live.
I hardly have to add that people are subject to delusion, insanity, mass delusion, optical and sensory illusions.
All this has been addressed by the method of science, which is a way to circumvent human frailty and achieve relative confidence in certain models of reality.
I can't disprove all conceptions of God or Gods, but I can say that God was not required to create the universe, and almost certainly does not involve himself in changing it. I recognize that the idea of God can change a person's life, but that is not the same as evidence of God. Ideas are powerful, as is the mind. I have experienced such strange and magnificent things in my mind that they can scarcely be comprehended, all because of a particular arrangement of molecules in sufficient quantity to alter my brain chemistry. The brain can also alter it's own chemistry. We know that the pineal gland contains a powerful molecule called DMT, which is known to produce fantastic hallucinations. In light of these naturalistic explanations, the assertion that experiencing something in your mind represents the real becomes all the more unconvincing.
It's not up to me to be absolutely definitive, all I have to show is that your evidence is untrustworthy.