Is There Any Room For God In Modern Science?

I have been wondering for some time, Is there any room for God in modern science?

I have perused the internet on the topic. And there are some modern scientist who are quite adamant that modern science and God cannot peacefully coexist.

On the other hand, I am pretty open-minded (perhaps more so than most secular people). And I still believe in God, though not much else. I don't, for example, believe in an afterlife. But it just seems to me, there is so much complexity, and (dare I say it) purpose, I see in the world, that I think, Surely there must be a God (personal, and otherwise).

There also are people on the internet that take on the label "Deist", who believe (much as the Deist of the 18th Century) that God can be proven naturally. I don't know if they have much support in the general scientific community. But they are out there.

What do the rest of you believe?

 

Yes, of course. Science is and scientists are very diverse. There is room for anything.

I believe we (including scientists) don't have to agree on everything (well, I don't believe that, it seems really the case)

 

You can't prove the existence of scientists...

 

You'll have to be specific by what you mean when you say "is there room for god in modern science".

Science deals in data, hypotheses, models, etc.

Is there room for a scientific study of the literary and social phenomenon of god worship in human civilizations? sure, anthropology, religious studies. We can certainly catalogue the myriad gods which have ruled over societies and then drifted into the history books. We might even find some patterns, some laws or tendencies regarding how humans do such worshipping and believing.

If you mean something different, try and be specific.

Charles Darwin had people with your leanings to contend with when he published The Origin of Species. The common belief was that creation was a top-down phenomenon; that is, something infinitely complex at the top of the life chain trickled down lesser creations below. What he discovered in the natural world was that it was possible, and indeed more logical, to think of it as a bottom-up phenomenon; simple things, through chance, great periods of time, and natural selective pressures, will produce more complex things.

Think of how all the simple eukaryotes in your body, all the mindless protein machinery and organic chemistry, constitute the entirety of "you". This we know for a fact. The top-down view is lacking evidence. The bottom up view has the entire biosphere as evidence, as well as other phenomena such as planetary formation in solar systems (just need a central mass, and lots of dust swirling about, to create a whole solar system).

 

Yes god is a legitimate field of investigation as an anthropology both cultural and biologic.

For example if we are the result of a mindless, (?,) protein shake there is something in that commodity that becomes I am motivated and impassioned by a guiding principle.

 

How does the tangible translate into the abstract? How does inanimate matter become a living consciousness, some kind of bottom up mechanism?

Just as likely as we can definitely observe, the abstract becomes tangible, top down.

Now as biological creature it is conception, an attraction intangible until contact, sexual urge, and continues a feedback loop of absorption, reflection, and polarity.

Top down or bottom up is not the process we see.

We see redundancy.

 

I would not say mindless protein shake, I would say potentially mindful protein shake. I hold a view similar to panpsychism, derived from some observation and simple logic.

1) we appear to be composed of many smaller "Mindless" subsystems

2) those subsystems produce a greater system which has Mind

3) Mind therefore is always somehow potential, or latent, or maybe even present, within the initial subsystems.

Going down a sliding scale of complexity, with a human on one end, and a quark on the other, it's merely a matter of taste where one draws the line of what is conscious and what is not . . .

It's easy to imagine dogs being self-aware. Ditto for dolphins, chimps, cats, etc. Bit more difficult for a mouse, a squirrel, but still doable. Go down to an ant, a worm, a bee, we begin straining our concept of consciousness. Further still down to amoeba, algae, we begin to feel that we are entering the domain of "automatons"; perhaps a few hold outs here. Further still to single celled organisms, viruses, proteins . . . few people would maintain intuitively that these are conscious. But this is merely a behavior of intuition, we aren't actually working with any data in this question. There's no reason WHY mitochondria are not self-aware, all we can say is that it is highly unlikely it is anything like human self-awareness, but that same principal applies to those just shy of us, such as chimps, and even neurologically damaged humans.

So until we get more data on this matter I see no reason to draw an arbitrary line anywhere, and assume that Mind is an emergent property of the entire universe. Going back to that scale, perhaps humans are not on the maximal end of it; perhaps we are but neurons in a universal mind.

 

So that I comprehend the proportions of this logic what is "mindless?"

I suggest there are are no appearances absent mind.

 

Combination of subsystems does not indicate mindless but communicative, or structurally related.

 

what about entropy?
entropy kinda blows the whole "bottom-up" phenomena to some degree, don't you think?
there is something working to keep shit together because what we observe is that systems when not acted on by an outside force, decay into simpler and simpler forms.
so on one hand we scientifically observe this thing called evolution, the progress from simpler to more complex, yet in every other facet of nature we observe the exact opposite, why?

how come the Dawinians never account for entropy and why we don't see it in evolution????????

Life is the oddball phenomena here.
Life is the thing that works in opposition to entropy.

So in the study of life itself, the question/problem of a "God" or driving impetus behind evolution has to be addressed.

 

consciousness and self awareness are two completely different things
I intuitively and logically consider any life form to be "aware" as awareness of one's environment seems to be part and parcel of life, but self awareness is not.

From all the science done to date, the property of self awareness is unique to the critters with a highly developed frontal cortex, whereas anything alive is conscious.

 

Conception straddles the abstract as well as the biological with equal aplomb and transcends the material.

 

Well, glad you mentioned some of us are Deist, and I guess I am, as well. Meaning: I believe in a Supreme Being or Entity, I suppose a source of Creation of this Universe. But, I think as far as Religion goes, all organized Religious beliefs are, essentially, believing in the same 'God' that created everything. No matter how they paint it, the differences, everyone is climbing the same mountain, just in different ways.

As for Science - well, Science depends on FACT - PROOF - things like that, so big, unanswered questions go unanswered and the idea of a God can only be speculative regarding true Science. As well, Creationism. So, of course there is room as long as it is prefaced with 'speculative theory' and not fact. Cause no one knows for sure. Faith is a belief - based on what a person believes is truth. But, no hard-evidence can make it so. Science is tested theories and they are true or not true. So, sure, there is room for any belief, but only in the 'theory' section of Science. Einstein's Theory of Relativity was more or less a proven one, and dinosaur bones have been found, so where PROOF is, so goes Science. So, a theory, a hypothesis, then tests to Prove Hypothesis - and if it is true, then Science approves and accepts it as Scientific FACT. Otherwise, it remains a theory, an untested hypothesis. But, yes, it can be mentioned as such. Evolution has some things going for it in the form of bones, remains, data time-testing-dating, and the 'change' in the Earth, humans, and all living things. Interesting topic.

 

In truth the only thing science actually does is extrapolate the probability of a phenomena happening based on past observations.
There are no true hard facts, so to speak, just differing degrees of probability for the occurrence of differing phenomena.

 

I call the whole thing vibration and luminosity. We are energetic.

So these differing degrees of probability, what makes them vary by a predictable degree?

 

I'm compelled to draw a line and suggest there is a wide canyon between what we almost collectively see as a god and the man-made institution of religion. And when religion is placed upon the dart board it is usually the biblical followers before all else. I personally don't see much value-added differences between the faiths of the planet. I see that they can all be perverted by greedy assholes pretending to be faithful. On it's face "the bible" (as if there is only 1) catches so much crap because it's filled with ambiguities that don't fit modern times and even contradictions (ok, so do the other faiths). The "King James" bible is a compilation of an entire library with some material merged, edited, shortened and of course slanted to afford the most control possible to church elders. The fact that it is named after a king SHOULD be a clue that its publication was driven by an agenda, a very human agenda.

With that in mind, I would say that trying to reconcile "the bible" with science is a fool's errand. It's also pointless to "prove" a bunch of ancient humans were dreadfully wrong about some things. Look at how many times they were right. In fairness, I'm the same way about astrologers and SOME psychics. When invoking Einstein I prefer to quote him saying "God does not play dice with the universe". I personally don't agree with Albert. I think the whole universe is an eternal confluence of rolls at an endless craps table.

As for science, I'm afraid more are proven wrong than correct. That's the nature of the beast. Edison experimented with hundreds of filaments before finally arriving at a commercially-viable electric light bulb. Freud was horrifically wrong about the "benefits" of cocaine. Ultimately I don't see where god is an issue with science. Science can disprove elements of religion, but it can't disprove God.

 

As someone who was trained as a physicist at MIT, I would say, no, God is a superstition and has no place in modern science. And I say that even after all the LSD and mushroom trips I've taken and my Buddhist training.

 

Well what you are saying is the god does not equal a particular world model of the way things are, a formula in two parts that includes whatever the hell your idea of god is. Has nothing to do with scientific investigation or does not address the question on a scientific basis. You say even after consuming psychedelics and practicing buddhism as though you were checking for verity with your subjective state and that serves ultimately or least compliments, to convince you. As someone trained as a physicist it seems you would be more about investigating processes than evaluating thought systems. If you were trained a theologian you might well have different thoughts about it. That which we invoke has that effect.

 

God should stay separate from Science. I don't think we should force an exception for something that we have no means to study scientifically. We would essentially be contradicting the methods and rules of science. Even if they remain separate, that does not mean that individuals cannot both ascribe to science and maintain religious beliefs.

 

We don't live in a closed system and we have the Sun.


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