Is There Any Room For God In Modern Science?

I have a phone number. It was given to me. I know it works because i used it. Same with beatitude There is no science without the scientist.

 

So, i've been thinking about abstraction, and hierarchical structures (and structures of ideas and the classification of things). The idea of God may be looked at as an abstraction, by making God a distinct object that can be referenced by the name God and therefore encapsulating in it the attributes of God which is to say, this one object contains everything that there is, and all information thereof.

Such abstract objects and hierarchical structures are useful, but that is not to say that every object ought to belong to part of some higher level of a hierarchy or be incorporated into some abstract type of entity. Usually things are incorporated into such structures for ease of use and the containment of complexity, but it's generally only useful when you are observing it from an even higher level in the hierarchy looking down upon it (and there are several instances of such types of abstract entities). Think about it.

 

What the oldest representation of God represents is also debatable. It seems like most religions make a distinction. I'm not sure at what point it became that way, but man does not think of himself as in harmony with God, in general. Instead we're usually trying to become better people because God is upset with us in one way or another.

 

I'm thinking about it, but it makes my head hurt. All words are abstractions. Where does that get us?

 

Everything may be abstract from everything else, or at least something else. The abstraction never ends!

 

Well when I look at where the idea I was bad came from it turns out to be a matter of early childhood education.

 

Through the process of abstraction, a programmer hides all but the relevant data about an object in order to reduce complexity and increase efficiency.

 

You have to make some leeway for "I was bad" though, don't you? Or do you think kids do bad stuff entirely because they are experiencing a disunity with God from their upbringing?

Or do you just think that everything should be permitted?

 

I think that punishment is a bad idea. Redirection is fine. I don't think there is a disunity from god in the beginning.

 

I don't think punishment for error is a good idea, redirection is fine.

 

punishing bad behavior or error rarely gets the intended result. reward for good behavior is much more effective.

 

Interesting question.

While I'm certainly no angel, I definitely do believe in the existence of God, his son Jesus, as well as heaven and hell. I've experienced too many miracles, blessings, and positive things in my life to think otherwise. Many atheist scientists who dedicated their lives to debunking the Bible have wound up believers in the process.

 

And yet it is so very common. I think it is actually traumatic but you can't see the trauma ocurring because it happens before you even learn to speak. In many ways neurosis is part of our programming.

 

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It occurred to me that there is room for God in science just because God is a scientific assumption. It's an assumption you make in order to get a desired result, the result being some experience of God. I think it is a reasonable assumption to assume that believing in God will help you experience God. So why wouldn't it be allowed, scientifically, for someone to try and have faith in order to see if there was a God? Is it out of the realms of science to try and see if something imagined is actually there? Because if it is, no one would have ever discovered the Higgs Field.

And if someone has reasonable faith in God, doesn't that prove God exists? Because you can't have reasonable faith in someone that does not exist, can you?

 

But the problem is the definition of what a god really is and what the implications of that actually are. Once we begin to strictly quantify these things they cease to be godly properties and simply properties of nature.

 

So you're saying there is no way to have a clear enough conception of God in the first place to believe in it, and that all of the people who say they do are deluding themselves and, effectually, lying?

But couldn't you then argue that you were only trying to believe in the loosest conception of God possible? And wouldn't that be reasonable? To try and broadly conceive of God in hopes that you are conceiving broadly enough?

Even if God spoke to you, it still would remain unclear what he was. Even if he spoke to you in human form, or maybe especially if he spoke to you in human form, it would be unclear what he was. But would that mean God doesn't exist any more than it would mean you or I don't exist, since you could never really tell if someone was God in human form?

 

You are making a lot of reasoning errors and I'm going to walk through them with you so you see how incorrect ways of thinking can lead to erroneous conclusions; it's important that we use the right tools (ways of thinking) for the job (thinking thoughts that have a basis in reality) so that our tools aren't used to ultimately waste our time and hurt us.

Ok, now replace "god" with "leprechaun". It occured to me that there is room for Leprechaun in science just because Leprechauns are a scientific assumption. They are an assumption you make in order to get a desired result, the result being some experience of Leprechauns.

There's nothing whatsoever scientific about this. Assumptions are not something that is very welcome in science; you can have tentative assumptions when perusing various models to explain phenomena, but it's important to realize those tentative assumptions have giant red flags on them that scream "I AM AN UNPROVEN ASSUMPTION WITH NO EVIDENCE TO SUPPORT ME".

Assuming that God exists, in order to generate "an experience of god", thereby proving that God exists, is circular. The "experience" in question is immediately highly suspect.

Imagine a prosecutor arguing at your murder trial, in which you are actually innocent: "Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I'd like you to please be scientific with me here, and assume that the defendant is in fact guilty, because then we will achieve the desired result, that is, an experience of having seen the defendant to be guilty. Thank you your honor, no further questions".

Can you imagine being sentenced to death after this speech? How would you feel? What would you say in your defense? Would you appeal for a mistrial, or does this reasoning sound very tight to you?

Why? From where do you get this assumption? What has reason got to do with it? Are you perhaps conflating the general category "God" with a very specific kind of god, that is, a judao-christian god, who relies on belief and faith? Because this kind of theological relationship between humans, belief, and god (wherein god is manifest in those humans who have belief in said god) is actually a very specific artifact of a very specific cluster of middle east religions.

There are literally thousands of gods in history who couldn't care less whether or not you believe in them; they are concerned with other matters.

Let's look at another side of this; thinking as a skeptical scientist, a skeptical psychologist, cultural anthropologist, sociologist, etc, What kind of natural explanation could we think of as to why people who believe in god tend to have experiences of god? That is, can you think of ANYTHING that could make this the case without actually invoking the actual existence of a god?

This doesn't make sense; you don't have faith in order to see if there is a god; you have faith that there is a god. Period. Faith is not a questioning stance . . . faith is the end of questioning. Faith is deciding.

Look closely at faith, and you will see that it is pretending to know something you don't know. That's really it. It's dressed up in all kinds of rhetorical flourish, but at bottom, faith is a stance towards knowledge, it is saying "I will believe proposition X because I want to". There is no evidence being considered; if there were evidence being considered, this would not be faith, it would just be considering the evidence objectively.

Right, but things like the Higgs Field, and Quarks, and Black Holes, were imagined to exist because empirical evidence strongly pointed to them existing and mathematics not only had room for them but even suggested they should exist.

These are not analogous to god existing. It's important to use our imaginations, but it's also important that we follow clues, and not our emotions. We might really, really, really want there to be 5,000 ton diamond buried in our backyard, but without any evidence suggesting that it's there, spending resources to tear your backyard inside out would be viewed by any sane person as not only a total waste of time, but probably symptomatic of a mental troubling.

This sounds almost like the ontological argument; "If God is the greatest thing ever, then god must exist, because to not exist is not the greatest thing ever, but to exist is, therefore God exists".

First, what is "reasonable faith"? There is just faith. You either decide to "have faith" in something (pretend that you know that it's so, when you really don't) or you don't. There is no grey area unfortunately; as soon as you start basing your beliefs on evidence, you have left the realm of faith, and are analyzing the situation empirically (you might of course be doing a very poor job of this if you don't know how to do this).

You can have faith in lots of things that don't exist; think of all the millions and millions of grown men and women who have had faith in the thousands and thousands of gods of antiquity; all the prayers to Isis, all the Mayan gods, Ba'al, Zeus . . . all of them. All prayed to for matters big and small; from praying for a good day at market to praying that a child not be taken by the plague. These were real people, with real minds and hearts, who had real faith in things that don't exist.

Think of the Heaven's Gate cult, a few dozen people who had faith that upon castrating themselves with scissors and swallowing poison, they would be transported to an alien spaceship trailing in the tail of the comet Hale Bopp.

Do you think they are sipping margaritas now?

You can keep pushing back the goalposts for the definition of God (he's already lost his gender, his face, his voice, his temper, what else?) but with each step towards obscurity and mystery you loose a small piece of meaning for the concept you are arguing for. Eventually you argue for a kind of "god" that is not really any kind of anything at all; he is exactly that which cannot be defined. This might work for you, but then ask yourself how this squares with all the other ideas you have about god in your head?

 

It's really not the same thing at all. There's no reason to think that assuming leprechauns exist will aid in a leprechaun communicating with you. Because a leprechaun is not omniscient; it has no knowledge of what you do and do not believe. Unless you tell everyone you believe in leprechauns and there happens to be a leprechaun lurking nearby.

The things about comparing God to leprechauns and Santa is that we know the parameters of these mythical beings in order to know whether they can or can't exist. You can't just reduce them to being the same creature as God, or you're just talking about God.

But this case is different, isn't it? Like, say there were three people in a darkened room, and two people knew of each other but not the third, and they were told it was possible a third person was in the room before entering. Wouldn't it be reasonable to assume that person exists enough to call out to him/her?

You're making an erroneous analogy. There is no reason to suggest that believing in a person's guilt will reveal that person's guilt. Guilt would be analogous to God in your example, not the defendant.

It's not an assumption. If someone told me, "Well, I believe in God because I want to experience God," I would say, "Well that sounds reasonable." It seems to me that if you had a deep interest in God, it might follow that you believed in it.

No, only a God who is omniscient, which I think is a prerequisite of anything that claims to be God. So in other words a God who is aware if you believe in it or not. If this God really doesn't like interfering in people's lives, it might choose to only respond to those who really believe in it. At least that is a scientific hypothesis.

So I can't possibly have faith because my intention would be to experience God directly? That's just not true. A person can have faith with the intention of experiencing God. You might call them deluded, but it would still be their intention.

Right, but perhaps you can't have empirical evidence of God without first believing God exists.

I would say there is reasonable and unreasonable faith. Obviously people have faith in things that are true and people have faith in things that aren't true. Wouldn't you say faith in science is better than religious faith?

My question is if you say you have faith in someone, doesn't that person have to exist in order for your faith to be reasonable? So if you have reasonable faith in someone, mustn't that entity exist?

And if faith is a part of determining they exist, and they have no other parameters that make it so they can't possibly exist, then if someone wants to know more about them through faith, I think that might be scientific.

I just go with the standard definition of God: omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent.

 

Okay, so suppose we go looking for an omniscient leprechaun. We would then be more likely to find it because it would know we were looking and decide to communicate with us? None have broken silence thus far though, so that's a good reason to believe they don't exist, even omniscient leprechauns.

So what about this god thing?