“Room for both science and god” only works if you’re not referring to the Christian god as portrayed in the bible, as he has been defined with specific, disprovable characteristics.
To be fair, banning shrimp was a very good idea at the time. Do you think it’s a good plan to be eating the shrimp when you are a desert people and the invention of portable refrigeration is still a few thousand years away?
Very logical. Wonder why he hasn’t stopped by to reverse the ban since the invention of refrigeration, or at least clarify the rule as just meaning to keep people safe?
“Hey guys, thanks for all the likes and subscribes over the years. Good to see you! Just wanted to give a shout-out to my man Leviticus. We knew, back in the day, that y’all weren’t ready for the whole “microbe” thing, so we wanted to just kinda steer folks away from stuff that could hurt them. But man, you guys have been busy since then! You figured all this shit out! I’m proud of you, I really am. Or at least I would be if I was allowed, am I right?”
crowd laughs
“So yeah, now that it’s mostly safe to eat that stuff, go right ahead. Watch out for buffets though… if they can afford to feed your uncle Charlie for five shekels they have to be cutting corners somewhere. Anyways, I gotta go so I will talk to you later. Be safe! Love, peace, and all that jazz!”
crowd cheers
“Oh, one more thing. If you could stop killing one another in my name that’d be great. It’s super un-cool. But hey, free will and all. I won’t stop you. Until next time!”
I’ll always go to bat for the idea that religion was a necessary evil. In the past, prior to telecommunications and concepts like a social democracy, you needed some way to keep the members of your primitive tribe alive and loyal to each other.
The problem is that now we no longer need it, and it’s been consistently twisted into a weapon by those who crave power over anything else.
If someone claims a godlike entity exists, they better come with godlike evidence. Not the ramblings of potential schizophrenic shepherds from 2,000 years ago.
That doesn’t mean you should believe that there’s a god. It just means there scientifically could be a god. That is what Einstein said on the matter. He was a pretty smart guy, and rather unbiased in his opinion.
Your hypothesis is that there is no god. I just provided you with two unexplainable events. According to the laws of physics, that matter could not have been created from nothing, nor could have it have generated motion from nothing. Until you can find more evidence, your hypothesis is unsupported.
Who knows? Maybe the JWST will prove there was no creator. I’m scientific. I’ll accept a logical explanation as soon as we have one. Until then, I maintain the position that there there is equal possibility of existence and non-existence of a creator.
While I agree with the general sentiment of your comment, I refuse to believe in anything without empirical evidence of such. These are gaps in our current understanding of our reality. History has shown, there is a logical explanation for just about everything. Nothing… ever… literally… EVER… has pointed toward the existence of such a god…ever.
That’s fair. I’m not arguing that there is a god. I’m only saying that there could be a god. I respect your choice to remain in disbelief of existence. I just hope you also see how science can prove the possibility of existence.
god has been attributed to everything that science had no explanation for at the time. Earthquakes, weather events, cosmological events, etc. Now… the general theory has been relegated to one of the very few things that we don’t understand with near certainty. While I agree it’s not exactly a small gap, but I would argue, in the scale of all of science, microscopic is being generous.
My creator? I didn’t say I believe in god, nor did I suggest omnipotence. I simply said there’s a possibility of the existence of a creator based on what science currently understands.
My apologies, i assumed you were a believer of one faith or another. You know. On account that you’re all over this post defending it.
While you are correct to say that in a formal argument, there is no more (or less,) evidence for either position, we are in a not-formal setting.
Further it’s is entirely reasonable to say that the absolute lack of tangible evidence that such a being exists- despite billions of people looking for such a being today, suggests such a being does not exist.
That is, it is reasonable to say that the lack of evidence is, itself, evidence that a thing does not exist. It is not absolute proof- the universe doesn’t work that away- but it is evidence of non-existence.
In all fairness, my initial comment was that there’s room for both god and science, but rejecting scientific evidence in favor of god was willful ignorance. A commenter challenged my “room for god” point, so we had a debate.
As someone who is very scientific in my understanding of the world around me, I take offense to people leveraging science against the intangible. Can I use a logic proof to defeat the claim that god is both all powerful and all good? Absofuckinlutely, but logic isn’t science. Logic is used to create a hypothesis, and then we repeatedly test said hypothesis under controlled conditions.
Science has not provided sufficient explanation or evidence supporting a creation without interference. I will defend the scientific room for a creator, regardless of my personal opinion, until we have a better understanding of creation. Who knows what we’ll learn from the JWST in the next decade. It’s already reshaped so many theories.
Stephen Hawkings had an interesting perspective regarding the creation of our universe. When people ponder our universe’s creation, they ask questions like “what caused the big bang?” or “what caused the universe to exist?”. Hawkings would have responded with the sentiment that these kind of questions were pointless. When one asks such a question regarding cause/effect, this presupposes the existence of a timeline. Cause and effect explanations have no merit without time; therefore to ask what caused the creation of the universe is silly, because time did not exist which means the notion of cause/effect would not have existed either.
Nevertheless, I think a lot of the folks commenting here have a problematic understanding of science, which is resulting in them agreeing with the toxic meme. Science and Religion don’t compete because they are fundamentally different in the way they approach understanding the universe. Religions relies on “truths” whereas science relies on “models”. There are no scientific facts or truths, there are only models that can accurately predict things we observe.
For example, the atomic model (atoms, +ions, - ions) can accurately predict a lot of different phenomena in our universe (electrical phenomena, chemical reactions, thermal phenomena, etc). Nevertheless, no good scientist should confidently tell you that atoms actually exist in reality. The atom is a model that functions well in explaining our universe, but that doesn’t mean it is “The Correct Model”.
Well said. Also, science is best used addressing repeatable phenomena. Determining the mechanics of a singular event is very challenging, even with observations. Science can not be used in speculation. What they’re using is logic, which is inherently flawed and the reason we use the scientific method.
lack of evidence is, itself, evidence that a thing does not exist.
That’s not correct. However if we continually fail to find any evidence for its existence or any way it interacts or effects our reality, we can safely act as though it does not exist since it won’t change things at all. There could be a divine being out there, but until we have evidence that it interacts with our reality in some way, we can put it aside and go on with our lives.
It does not change the truth of whether it actually exists somewhere or not.
Lets use a different example. Clinical drug trials.
By your logic, we can never know if drugs are in fact safe, because we can’t prove they’ll never have ill effects. Can’t prove a negative, after all. Which is logically incorrect. We can prove their safe by running clinical drug trials in controlled settings. You know how all that goes. You give rats or whatever drugs and see if they die. if they don’t you see if they tolerate it well. when they do, you give it to humans, eventually, and see if they die, and if they tolerate it well.
You do this enough and you can say the drug is in fact safe. The absence of evidence that the drugs are harmful, is evidence that they are not harmful.
This is true because, presumably, it’s extremely well and extensively studied. Rational people will look at the studies and agree: the drugs are reasonably safe to use under those guidelines.
the existence of god has been studied extensively. It follows then, the lack of tangible evidence is itself evidence of absence.
Not a theist, so I’m not defending the potential existence of “my god”.
Lack of evidence, however, doesn’t always mean something doesn’t exist or hasn’t happened. If John killed Jake and destroyed or hid the evidence, and based on that wasn’t found guilty, that doesn’t mean that he didn’t do it. It simply means no substantial evidence has been found to prove it (yet).
If you want to take your example further, it’s quite possible to find out years or decades later that drug is in fact harmful, it just took time for the side-effects to show, or rather we simply didn’t have the right technology to come to that conclusion earlier. (Though far less likely for this scenario to happen with modern science.)
Also, the existence of science or established set of natural laws, and absence of supernatural does not rule out existence of an uninvolved or uncaring creator.
By your logic, we can never know if drugs are in fact safe, because we can’t prove they’ll never have ill effects. Can’t prove a negative, after all.
Yes, that’s exactly right. You can not prove that a drug is completely safe under all conditions because it’s impossible to test it under all conditions.
You do this enough and you can say the drug is in fact safe
“Safe” in this case does not mean a guarantee. You can say that the drug is safe enough for use. You can’t guarantee 100% safety, but you can say that the benefits greatly outweigh the risks. Vaccines are safe because the good they do overwhelms the dangers. However it dies not guarantee no side effects.
“Agnostic” describes whether or not one believes something can be known for certain.
Most atheists are agnostic atheists, as it’s intellectually dishonest to say that you know for certain that gods don’t exist.
Although when referring to a specifically defined god, like the Christian god Yahweh, it’s very possible to be certain he doesn’t exist, as he’s clearly defined in the bible and does not match the evidence of empirical reality.
I completely agree. I define myself as an agnostic omnitheist. I do not know if there is, or is not, a god, therefore I believe any and all paths could potentially lead to god, or to nothing at all.
That’s the fundamental basis of my initial claim that there is room for god and science. There is scientific room for a creator. What created the matter, and set it into motion, to cause the Big Bang? I’m not claiming said creator possesses omnipotence or omnipresence, simply saying that there is sufficient evidence to believe in interference at the beginnings of creation.
Science isn’t simply logic. A theory or hypothesis is based on logic, and then those theories are tested, and the evidence is examined. Science is best suited for repeatable phenomena.
To say that interference-based creation is impossible is not scientific, it’s simply arrogant.
Then yes, there is absolutely room for god as a general concept and science. If science finds a way to measure whatever god is, it will no longer be considered supernatural.
None of what I posted claimed to prove or disprove anything. You keep saying there’s room. Of course there is. We’ve made room. It just remains *conspicuously empty.
Right. I initially was speaking in support of your meme. I said that rejecting scientific evidence in favor of god was willful ignorance. The debate came into play when Speculater challenged my assertion that the existence of god was possible. You and I are on the same page though.
It is, quite literally, physically impossible to completely disprove that a god exists. Just like it’s physically impossible to disprove that space outside of the observable universe is actually made up of infinite tiny rainbow unicorns.
How would you disprove something you can’t interact with?
The JWST can observe information from ~13B years ago due to the limited speed of light. It’s not impossible to suggest we could find evidence of the beginnings of existence with optics.
I never said we couldn’t. But even if we found the cause of the existence of everything (assuming there was one), and it wasn’t god, its still impossible to rule out that God just set all of that into motion. The likelihood gets smaller and smaller, and god’s influence gets smaller and smaller, but its physically impossible to actually disprove it. There will always be a smaller hole for a creator-being to crawl into. Which is why “nobody has disproved god” is a meaningless sentence.
Proving god exists would only benefit those who are attempting to convince others of the existence of god. I’m only defending the possibility of existence against gnostic atheists that claim to be citing science is the “burden of proof” argument. I believe the stance of a true scientist is that of an agnostic atheist. All possible explanations remain available until more evidence is discovered.
I mean, I agree completely. I’m an agnostic atheist myself. I believe it is highly unlikely a god exists, but outright claiming absolutely no gods exist is a positive claim that also requires evidence if you wish to convince others. It’s not a stance I’m willing to take.
That said, I’m very willing to make the positive claim that certain gods do not exist. The christian god, for example, at least as described in the bible, is so logically inconsistent that I am willing to take a hard atheist stance on its existence and say outright I believe it does not exist.
I’m not even remotely religious, but I can think of multiple ways to reconcile science and religion.
For example, if God created the universe and all of its physical rules, and He gave us reason, what could be more religious than trying to fully explore His creation?
Or from a slightly different angle, so much of the fundamental levels of physics seem to operate based on probabilities, who’s to say an omniscient being couldn’t poke a probability here and there, fully knowing what the cascading effect will be?
For example, if God created the universe and all of its physical rules, and He gave us reason, what could be more religious than trying to fully explore His creation?
That is, in fact, pretty much the world view that gave us the scientific method in the first place, and from which sprang most of scientific progress until the early 20th century.
Science hasn’t explained everything. There’s room for both science and god.
However, disregarding scientific evidence in favor of god is simply willful ignorance.
I mean… whenever he’s ready.
“Room for both science and god” only works if you’re not referring to the Christian god as portrayed in the bible, as he has been defined with specific, disprovable characteristics.
To be fair, banning shrimp was a very good idea at the time. Do you think it’s a good plan to be eating the shrimp when you are a desert people and the invention of portable refrigeration is still a few thousand years away?
Very logical. Wonder why he hasn’t stopped by to reverse the ban since the invention of refrigeration, or at least clarify the rule as just meaning to keep people safe?
“Hey guys, thanks for all the likes and subscribes over the years. Good to see you! Just wanted to give a shout-out to my man Leviticus. We knew, back in the day, that y’all weren’t ready for the whole “microbe” thing, so we wanted to just kinda steer folks away from stuff that could hurt them. But man, you guys have been busy since then! You figured all this shit out! I’m proud of you, I really am. Or at least I would be if I was allowed, am I right?”
crowd laughs
“So yeah, now that it’s mostly safe to eat that stuff, go right ahead. Watch out for buffets though… if they can afford to feed your uncle Charlie for five shekels they have to be cutting corners somewhere. Anyways, I gotta go so I will talk to you later. Be safe! Love, peace, and all that jazz!”
crowd cheers
“Oh, one more thing. If you could stop killing one another in my name that’d be great. It’s super un-cool. But hey, free will and all. I won’t stop you. Until next time!”
fanfare over credit roll
Hahaha. Well done 😝
I’ll always go to bat for the idea that religion was a necessary evil. In the past, prior to telecommunications and concepts like a social democracy, you needed some way to keep the members of your primitive tribe alive and loyal to each other.
The problem is that now we no longer need it, and it’s been consistently twisted into a weapon by those who crave power over anything else.
Removed by mod
That’s not how the burden of proof works my guy.
If someone claims a godlike entity exists, they better come with godlike evidence. Not the ramblings of potential schizophrenic shepherds from 2,000 years ago.
Removed by mod
It’s like you filled in those tiny gaps in our knowledge with the possibility of a god. It’s like a god… of… those gaps.
That doesn’t mean you should believe that there’s a god. It just means there scientifically could be a god. That is what Einstein said on the matter. He was a pretty smart guy, and rather unbiased in his opinion.
Your hypothesis is that there is no god. I just provided you with two unexplainable events. According to the laws of physics, that matter could not have been created from nothing, nor could have it have generated motion from nothing. Until you can find more evidence, your hypothesis is unsupported.
Who knows? Maybe the JWST will prove there was no creator. I’m scientific. I’ll accept a logical explanation as soon as we have one. Until then, I maintain the position that there there is equal possibility of existence and non-existence of a creator.
While I agree with the general sentiment of your comment, I refuse to believe in anything without empirical evidence of such. These are gaps in our current understanding of our reality. History has shown, there is a logical explanation for just about everything. Nothing… ever… literally… EVER… has pointed toward the existence of such a god…ever.
That’s fair. I’m not arguing that there is a god. I’m only saying that there could be a god. I respect your choice to remain in disbelief of existence. I just hope you also see how science can prove the possibility of existence.
Science has yet to explain why it happened, or what if anything came before. Those are not “tiny gaps”
Tiny gaps are subjective. Sure.
god has been attributed to everything that science had no explanation for at the time. Earthquakes, weather events, cosmological events, etc. Now… the general theory has been relegated to one of the very few things that we don’t understand with near certainty. While I agree it’s not exactly a small gap, but I would argue, in the scale of all of science, microscopic is being generous.
All of current science. We won’t know what we don’t know until we know everything.
We still burn dinosaur juice that is slowly suffocating us, we poison our fresh water and turn our oceans into plastic hellscapes.
How far in our evolution and understanding do you think we are?
When your creator shows up and apologizes for all the bullshit he caused by being an asshole, I’ll apologize for calling him an asshole.
Until then, there is no evidence such a being exists, and if he did, he’s a fucking asshole.
My creator? I didn’t say I believe in god, nor did I suggest omnipotence. I simply said there’s a possibility of the existence of a creator based on what science currently understands.
My apologies, i assumed you were a believer of one faith or another. You know. On account that you’re all over this post defending it.
While you are correct to say that in a formal argument, there is no more (or less,) evidence for either position, we are in a not-formal setting.
Further it’s is entirely reasonable to say that the absolute lack of tangible evidence that such a being exists- despite billions of people looking for such a being today, suggests such a being does not exist.
That is, it is reasonable to say that the lack of evidence is, itself, evidence that a thing does not exist. It is not absolute proof- the universe doesn’t work that away- but it is evidence of non-existence.
100% disagree.
In all fairness, my initial comment was that there’s room for both god and science, but rejecting scientific evidence in favor of god was willful ignorance. A commenter challenged my “room for god” point, so we had a debate.
As someone who is very scientific in my understanding of the world around me, I take offense to people leveraging science against the intangible. Can I use a logic proof to defeat the claim that god is both all powerful and all good? Absofuckinlutely, but logic isn’t science. Logic is used to create a hypothesis, and then we repeatedly test said hypothesis under controlled conditions.
Science has not provided sufficient explanation or evidence supporting a creation without interference. I will defend the scientific room for a creator, regardless of my personal opinion, until we have a better understanding of creation. Who knows what we’ll learn from the JWST in the next decade. It’s already reshaped so many theories.
Stephen Hawkings had an interesting perspective regarding the creation of our universe. When people ponder our universe’s creation, they ask questions like “what caused the big bang?” or “what caused the universe to exist?”. Hawkings would have responded with the sentiment that these kind of questions were pointless. When one asks such a question regarding cause/effect, this presupposes the existence of a timeline. Cause and effect explanations have no merit without time; therefore to ask what caused the creation of the universe is silly, because time did not exist which means the notion of cause/effect would not have existed either.
Nevertheless, I think a lot of the folks commenting here have a problematic understanding of science, which is resulting in them agreeing with the toxic meme. Science and Religion don’t compete because they are fundamentally different in the way they approach understanding the universe. Religions relies on “truths” whereas science relies on “models”. There are no scientific facts or truths, there are only models that can accurately predict things we observe.
For example, the atomic model (atoms, +ions, - ions) can accurately predict a lot of different phenomena in our universe (electrical phenomena, chemical reactions, thermal phenomena, etc). Nevertheless, no good scientist should confidently tell you that atoms actually exist in reality. The atom is a model that functions well in explaining our universe, but that doesn’t mean it is “The Correct Model”.
Well said. Also, science is best used addressing repeatable phenomena. Determining the mechanics of a singular event is very challenging, even with observations. Science can not be used in speculation. What they’re using is logic, which is inherently flawed and the reason we use the scientific method.
That’s not correct. However if we continually fail to find any evidence for its existence or any way it interacts or effects our reality, we can safely act as though it does not exist since it won’t change things at all. There could be a divine being out there, but until we have evidence that it interacts with our reality in some way, we can put it aside and go on with our lives.
It does not change the truth of whether it actually exists somewhere or not.
This is amusing.
Lets use a different example. Clinical drug trials.
By your logic, we can never know if drugs are in fact safe, because we can’t prove they’ll never have ill effects. Can’t prove a negative, after all. Which is logically incorrect. We can prove their safe by running clinical drug trials in controlled settings. You know how all that goes. You give rats or whatever drugs and see if they die. if they don’t you see if they tolerate it well. when they do, you give it to humans, eventually, and see if they die, and if they tolerate it well.
You do this enough and you can say the drug is in fact safe. The absence of evidence that the drugs are harmful, is evidence that they are not harmful.
This is true because, presumably, it’s extremely well and extensively studied. Rational people will look at the studies and agree: the drugs are reasonably safe to use under those guidelines.
the existence of god has been studied extensively. It follows then, the lack of tangible evidence is itself evidence of absence.
Not a theist, so I’m not defending the potential existence of “my god”.
Lack of evidence, however, doesn’t always mean something doesn’t exist or hasn’t happened. If John killed Jake and destroyed or hid the evidence, and based on that wasn’t found guilty, that doesn’t mean that he didn’t do it. It simply means no substantial evidence has been found to prove it (yet).
If you want to take your example further, it’s quite possible to find out years or decades later that drug is in fact harmful, it just took time for the side-effects to show, or rather we simply didn’t have the right technology to come to that conclusion earlier. (Though far less likely for this scenario to happen with modern science.)
Also, the existence of science or established set of natural laws, and absence of supernatural does not rule out existence of an uninvolved or uncaring creator.
Yes, that’s exactly right. You can not prove that a drug is completely safe under all conditions because it’s impossible to test it under all conditions.
“Safe” in this case does not mean a guarantee. You can say that the drug is safe enough for use. You can’t guarantee 100% safety, but you can say that the benefits greatly outweigh the risks. Vaccines are safe because the good they do overwhelms the dangers. However it dies not guarantee no side effects.
“Agnostic” describes whether or not one believes something can be known for certain.
Most atheists are agnostic atheists, as it’s intellectually dishonest to say that you know for certain that gods don’t exist.
Although when referring to a specifically defined god, like the Christian god Yahweh, it’s very possible to be certain he doesn’t exist, as he’s clearly defined in the bible and does not match the evidence of empirical reality.
I completely agree. I define myself as an agnostic omnitheist. I do not know if there is, or is not, a god, therefore I believe any and all paths could potentially lead to god, or to nothing at all.
That’s the fundamental basis of my initial claim that there is room for god and science. There is scientific room for a creator. What created the matter, and set it into motion, to cause the Big Bang? I’m not claiming said creator possesses omnipotence or omnipresence, simply saying that there is sufficient evidence to believe in interference at the beginnings of creation.
Science isn’t simply logic. A theory or hypothesis is based on logic, and then those theories are tested, and the evidence is examined. Science is best suited for repeatable phenomena.
To say that interference-based creation is impossible is not scientific, it’s simply arrogant.
Then yes, there is absolutely room for god as a general concept and science. If science finds a way to measure whatever god is, it will no longer be considered supernatural.
None of what I posted claimed to prove or disprove anything. You keep saying there’s room. Of course there is. We’ve made room. It just remains *conspicuously empty.
Right. I initially was speaking in support of your meme. I said that rejecting scientific evidence in favor of god was willful ignorance. The debate came into play when Speculater challenged my assertion that the existence of god was possible. You and I are on the same page though.
It is, quite literally, physically impossible to completely disprove that a god exists. Just like it’s physically impossible to disprove that space outside of the observable universe is actually made up of infinite tiny rainbow unicorns.
How would you disprove something you can’t interact with?
The JWST can observe information from ~13B years ago due to the limited speed of light. It’s not impossible to suggest we could find evidence of the beginnings of existence with optics.
I never said we couldn’t. But even if we found the cause of the existence of everything (assuming there was one), and it wasn’t god, its still impossible to rule out that God just set all of that into motion. The likelihood gets smaller and smaller, and god’s influence gets smaller and smaller, but its physically impossible to actually disprove it. There will always be a smaller hole for a creator-being to crawl into. Which is why “nobody has disproved god” is a meaningless sentence.
Proving god exists would only benefit those who are attempting to convince others of the existence of god. I’m only defending the possibility of existence against gnostic atheists that claim to be citing science is the “burden of proof” argument. I believe the stance of a true scientist is that of an agnostic atheist. All possible explanations remain available until more evidence is discovered.
I mean, I agree completely. I’m an agnostic atheist myself. I believe it is highly unlikely a god exists, but outright claiming absolutely no gods exist is a positive claim that also requires evidence if you wish to convince others. It’s not a stance I’m willing to take.
That said, I’m very willing to make the positive claim that certain gods do not exist. The christian god, for example, at least as described in the bible, is so logically inconsistent that I am willing to take a hard atheist stance on its existence and say outright I believe it does not exist.
Sure. A logic proof can discredit the claim that god is both all powerful and all good.
I’m not even remotely religious, but I can think of multiple ways to reconcile science and religion.
For example, if God created the universe and all of its physical rules, and He gave us reason, what could be more religious than trying to fully explore His creation?
Or from a slightly different angle, so much of the fundamental levels of physics seem to operate based on probabilities, who’s to say an omniscient being couldn’t poke a probability here and there, fully knowing what the cascading effect will be?
That is, in fact, pretty much the world view that gave us the scientific method in the first place, and from which sprang most of scientific progress until the early 20th century.
Gentlemen, I give you the god of the gaps.
Or the god of the science-minded.