What are the conflicts between atheism and science?

[S.A.M.]

But at those times pretty much everyone was religious. So it's no big surprise that religious people established what had to be established.

I doubt there has been any increase in atheism as such. There have always been atheist schools of thought in the East, so its unlikely that the west was devoid of atheists. But thats beside the point. The point is that those who only believe in what can be proven are unlikely to waste their time in "delusions" about the unseen.

e.g.

The Pirahã have no concept of a supreme spirit or god[10] and they lost interest in Jesus when they discovered that Everett had never seen him. They require evidence for every claim you make. They aren't interested in things if they don't know the history behind them, if they haven't seen it done

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirahã_people

 

[Enmos]

I doubt there has been any increase in atheism as such. There have always been atheist schools of thought in the East, so its unlikely that the west was devoid of atheists. But thats beside the point.

But society was made up of religious people though. I think you'd have had a hard time getting accepted if you weren't religious.

The point is that those who only believe in what can be proven are unlikely to waste their time in "delusions" about the unseen.

e.g.

I think SciForums is proof to the contrary

 

[Mind Over Matter]

The most important one in my opinion is that the process of science is to accept a hypothesis until it is proved false. Atheism is just the opposite. It rejects God on the assumption that there is no evidence proving God exists.

Atheism = Absence of evidence
Science = Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence

I would take a different way at looking at the conflict between atheism and science. There are a lot of logical implications to atheism that make it incompatible with science. Take a look at Alvin Plantinga's work on naturalism vs. science.

 

[S.A.M.]

But society was made up of religious people though. I think you'd have had a hard time getting accepted if you weren't religious.

So you are saying that atheists had it bad because religion was the dominant meme? Has that changed?

I think SciForums is proof to the contrary

One might say there is no true Scotsman but you know where that takes you.

 

[Enmos]

So you are saying that atheists had it bad because religion was the dominant meme? Has that changed?

"Yes" to both questions

 

[Dywyddyr]

There are a lot of logical implications to atheism that make it incompatible with science.

So what?
Are there not incompatibilities between theism and science?

One more time:

Since atheism is neither a creed or a "discipline", or anything else how can there be a conflict?
Atheism is simply the lack of belief in god.
Atheists, however, are individuals and each and every one of those individuals may or may not hold beliefs that conflict with science.
You're asking a specious question.

Post #3.

 

[Jan Ardena]

Welcome to my ignore list Jan, you really aren't worth the time.

Please yourself.

jan.

 

[wynn]

So on this epistemological view, none of us can say that there's no possibility that "God" exists. Or that Thor, Zeus, Marduk, Cybele, the easter bunny or invisible pink unicorns can't possibly exist. Maybe the world really is run by a conspiracy directed by space-aliens. Maybe the voices that only schizophrenics hear really are whispering divine truths. But I think that we can be pretty confident that the probabilities are so low that it's rational for us not to believe in these kind of things.

Unless we know the whole scope of options, we can't calculate probability.

Since we do not know the whole scope of options as far as knowing God and related is concerned, we can't rightfully say "we can be pretty confident that the probabilities are so low that it's rational for us not to believe in these kind of things".

 

[wynn]

which alone is without origin or end.

How can anyone know that?

How does anyone know anything?

Usually, it is by reading a definition written somewhere or listening to one, and trusting the source.
The rest is experiential sensory knowledge.

(I don't mean to sound facile. I am just trying to explore this issue, as it troubles me a lot.)

What this sort of philosophizing leaves us with are a whole set of "big questions" that we currently can't answer, and quite possibly never will. We can't even be sure that the issues are being conceptualized correctly, and hence that our questions are being posed properly. In many cases they probably aren't.

So then the main question is how to deal with uncertainty and what role should religious beliefs have in one's life (regardless whether one is religious or not; one cannot know of something and be neutral to it).

It's a giant non-sequitur to ask big philosophical questions, then imagine that there's some single transcendental object that somehow embodies the unknown answer to all of them, and then to further imagine that the hypothetical answer-Being is in fact one of the deities of traditional religious mythology.

Why do you keep calling it "mythology"? That is like saying you already know better!

 

[spidergoat]

I believe the celestial teapot and flying pasta are also arguments put forward by atheists - the arguments for theism are not outlined in the same way. I don't think it is a coincidence that religion in many if not all, parts of the world has been the stimulation for both education and science. Even the Pastafarians have to admit that no Oxford or Harvard was established by an atheist.

Theism makes certain metaphysical assumptions, while religion per se does not. Religion can certainly stimulate all kinds of beneficial results in society, even atheist ones, so this has no bearing on whether the myths theism depends on are actually true. Are these institutions successful due to prayer? Or due to them pursuing worthy and secular goals, such as higher education?

 

[S.A.M.]

Are these institutions successful due to prayer? Or due to them pursuing worthy and secular goals, such as higher education?

Secular education is a very recent notion. From the medicine man to the gurukuls to the monasteries, education and medicine have both been the domain of the sacred; initiated as rituals and rites. It was only after the monks started accepting non-Christians in their schools or after the Abbasids separated the hospital from the medieval monastery that secular science came into society. Thats just a thousand years in 50,000 years of human history

Medieval medicine in Western Europe was composed of a mixture of existing ideas from antiquity, spiritual influences and what Claude Lévi-Strauss identifies as the "shamanistic complex" and "social consensus."[1] In this era, there was no tradition of scientific medicine, and observations went hand-in-hand with spiritual influences.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_medicine

It was the same in the east where magic and medicine were coexistent with religion and spirituality - in fact, still are, if you consider the perseverance of "traditional medicine" offered by gurus and fakirs.

 

[spidergoat]

Then by all rights science should take the place of religion, as it's far superior, having been proven it's hypotheses true beyond a reasonable doubt. All we need to do is incorporate some religious practices that don't depend on myth, like meditation, pharmaceutical sacraments, singing and dancing, group therapy and storytelling.

 

[S.A.M.]

Then by all rights science should take the place of religion, as it's far superior, having been proven it's hypotheses true beyond a reasonable doubt. All we need to do is incorporate some religious practices that don't depend on myth, like meditation, pharmaceutical sacraments, singing and dancing, group therapy and storytelling.

There is a very important reason why science cannot replace religion. It is the same reason why biology cannot replace philosophy even though the one has arisen from the other. They both answer very different questions.

 

[spidergoat]

I think biology (and physics) has already replaced philosophy. That's where the latest revelations about the nature of humanity and the universe are coming from.

 

[wynn]

I think biology (and physics) has already replaced philosophy. That's where the latest revelations about the nature of humanity and the universe are coming from.

Biological revelation my ass.
Thinking myself as nothing but a biochemical system really gives me a boost to get up in the morning, right.

 

[SciWriter]

God is a true goner. Complexity comes later, not first; nor could the basis of all ever have had a beginning, so, no creation, and no Creator. Impossible. 100% certainty. No Theities, no Deities, no Gods.

Third, but not needed, absence of evidence is evidence of absence for a Theity who is supposed to be everywhere, doing everything.

Stating a word, ‘God’ does not do anything, nor restating it as an answer to the self-contradictory problem of ‘God’, but is rather, physiological ‘neglect’, as seen in the posts as proof.


Jan,

No brain, no consciousness.

Anesthesia to the brain, no consciousness.

Brain gets tired, consciousness fades into sleep.


As for the pantheistic cosmos, a rose is still a rose the same by any other name, plus, ‘God’ would be limited and restricted in only being able to do what the universe could do.


Indeed, some scientists are believers in God, such as Francis Collins. Many aren’t, like Carl Sagan.

 

[Yazata]

Why do you keep calling it [traditional religious stories] "mythology"?

Because it's the proper term.

Myth

Narrative, usually traditional, in which events are described as deeds of gods, heroes or other superhuman beings; i.e. events in the realm of nature or history are attributed to causes not acceptable in current scientific or historical explanation. If all such attribution is false, myths are indeed, as popular usage has it, fictitious stories, unfounded explanations. However 'myth', an English word of relatively recent (19'th century) invention, is now a technical term of the human sciences, historiography, literary criticism, theology and Religionswissenschaft, with many shades of meaning. 'Mythology' is older, meaning (1) the body of popular lore in which the world-view and moral outlook of a group or tradition are embodied, or (2) the scientific pursuit of collecting and studying such matter.

-- from The Penguin Dictionary of Religions, John R. Hinnells, ed., 1984, p. 225

That is like saying you already know better!

My point was that it's a non-sequitur to simply equate whatever the answers to a set of "big" philosophical questions might ultimately turn out to be, with a particular character taken from one of the traditional stories.

 

[IceLight020]

Impossible. 100% certainty. No Theities, no Deities, no Gods.

That still doesn't get rid of the fact that

some scientists are believers in God

_______________________________________________

In other words... This is pretty rude.

 

[Jan Ardena]

Rav,

No matter what you're doing, or what you're thinking or feeling, we can measure the activity going on in the brain that is responsible for that. Hell, we can even decode images out of brain waves these days, and we're getting better at it all the time.

I'm very sorry Rav, but it fails to answer my quesion.
It only explains the processing ability of the brain.

Superpositions of possible states collapse into definite single states when we disturb the quantum world by performing a measurement. The process of measurement involves physical interference (such as bouncing photons off something). So in order to look (obtain information) at the quantum world we need to interact with it in a physical way.

When you say "interact with it in a physical way", do you mean we put on some gloves and handled them?
Or do you mean we merely observed (look) them, without actually touching them?
If it is the latter then the use of the term "physical' in your statement is quite misleading as there is no proof that states consciousness (awareness) is a physical process.
But, do the particles respond to our observing them?
The answer needn't be long and complicated, a simple yes or no would suffice.

Here's my two cents;

In a study reported in the February 26 issue of Nature (Vol. 391, pp. 871-874), researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science have now conducted a highly controlled experiment demonstrating how a beam of electrons is affected by the act of being observed. The experiment revealed that the greater the amount of "watching," the greater the observer's influence on what actually takes place.

Consciousness can't directly observe the quantum world, it can only later interpret information that we obtain in other ways.

Do you agree that particles are affected by observation?

Yours is, as has been pointed out at the beginning of this post.

Physical reality is made up of particles. Right?
What is consciousness?

You didn't respond to this:

How does the unphysical interface with the physical? Think of it as a chain of cause and effect. At some point an unphysical link needs to connect to a physical link. But such a connection can't be made unless the unphysical link is actually physical. Nothing can't connect to something, because nothing isn't anything. So again, compare God to nothing and tell us what's different.
You don't have to of course, as you're free to discuss (or not) anything you encounter here. But I'm still interested in hearing your thoughts.

I'll give it a try.

1In the beginning
God (supreme consciousness)
created (willfull observation of active particle field)
the heavens and the earth. (varying levels of consciousness to acomodate conditioned souls)

explanation;

Now the earth was formless and empty, (no observers individual souls)

darkness (no observers = no interaction = no processing = no knowledge = no understanding)

was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God (supreme consciousness) was hovering over the waters.

3And God said (sound vibration), “Let there be... (the vibratory frequency)

Hence interaction.

jan.

 

[Jan Ardena]

SciWriter,

Jan,

No brain, no consciousness.

Wrong. No brain = dead body.
Dead body exact opposite of live (conscious body)

Anesthesia to the brain, no consciousness.
Brain gets tired, consciousness fades into sleep..

Sleep = different state of consciousness.
If the body is alive, then we can assume it's not dead.
Life = consciousness
Death = no consciousness

As for the pantheistic cosmos, a rose is still a rose the same by any other name, plus, ‘God’ would be limited and restricted in only being able to do what the universe could do.

Universe = field of vibrating particles.
Can't do shit.

Indeed, some scientists are believers in God, such as Francis Collins. Many aren’t, like Carl Sagan.

Science bring light to the illusory physical reality.
Natural Sciences not a good guide for spirituality, you'd do
better if you seeked out philosophy or religion. Although those
genres are on the brink of being totally hijacked, by materialist worldview.

jan.