That’s just a more complicated way of saying he doesn’t exist, since being part of the physical universe is the very definition of existing.
You’re continuing to delude yourself with the misapprehension that I for some reason reject all those things (evolution, quantum theory, relativity, etc). I embrace them as much as you do. So I have all the beauty of your universe plus more.
That may be your own definition, but it’s not in any dictionary I’ve ever seen.
Which is an admission that Stoneburg is right and that there’s no room for God in the laws of physics. And is an “explanation” that would only apply to a god that never, ever interacts with or observes the universe in any way (because then the laws would apply), and rules out souls and afterlives to boot. It’s just a totally undefined, unknowable…thing that exists beyond the universe and has no contact with or relevance to anything.
In other words, it redefines “God” so far that it no longer resembles the being people want to believe in so badly. And of course, it’s the sort of “God” that only gets talked about in discussions like these; it’s not the “God” that people actually follow, it’s a straw man. It’s not really God in any meaningful sense.
My belief is that God created the laws of physics. And no, it’s not God’s habit to break them, though he may. Souls, whatever they are, and the afterlife, are also outside the scope of physics. I can see why that’s hard to believe, but not why it’s hard to understand.
When you say “there’s no room for God in the laws of physics” I agree with you. Physics is not a tool equipped to deal with God.
If you’re not experiencing cognitive dissonance, you’re failing to understand one of them. My guess would be the science part.
Really? And how many dictionaries have you looked up the word “exist” in? Personally I’ve never looked it up, it kind of surprises me that you’ve not only done so but apparantly more than once.
Okay, I just looked it up on two online dictionaries before I responded to your post, so forgive the hyperbole. But neither definition included the notion of being part of the physical universe.
No one has yet shown me a contradiction between them. And there are plenty of religious astronomers, physicists, biologists and the like who would say the same.
So what you’re saying is that you’ve created an unfalsifiable god, then gone on a message board and asked for “him” to be falsified. Seems kind of a pointless excercise.
It would be, if that’s what had happened. But (1) I didn’t create him; this is all perfectly orthodox theology and (2) I didn’t ask for God to be falsified; I was refuting the OP’s position that Evangelicals – of which I am not one by most definitions – are necessarily ignorant about science or other scholarly topics.
Interesting.
Since this argument obviously holds wieght for you, or you wouldn’t use it, my question would be:
Is a scientist more likely, less likely, or as likely to believe in a god than someone with lower education?
Basically, what is the correlation between knowledge of science and belief in magic.
It’s not “hard to understand”, it’s just nonsense. Your strawman God can’t even look into the universe without breaking the laws of physics. And souls would require interaction with the universe, specifically with us in order to work, so the laws of physics would apply.
When you say “there’s no room for God in the laws of physics” I agree with you. Physics is not a tool equipped to deal with God.
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Because God is fictional; science can’t explain Sauron either. What you are doing is trying to pretend that being wrong is the same as being profound and mysterious.
Theist biologists are nearly unknown. And the more competent a physicist or astronomer is the less likely they are to be a theist.
Ignoring the reference to magic and focusing on belief in God, there are a number of studies. You can see a bunch of results in this Wikipedia article. Results vary depending on the poll, but in general the rate of belief among scientists is lower than in the general public. But not negligible by any means:
The sources for these quotes and the cites for the studies are listed in the wikipedia article.
Actually I don’t think the OP was that specific, but I can give you my specific position:
I don’t think Evangelicals are necessarily more ignorant that non-Evangelicals on science. I’m sure there are Evangelicals that are pretty knowledgable on science, just as there are atheists who are pretty ignorant of science. I think they are on average though.
I for example am an atheist, but I am probable more knowledgable on religion than most Evangelicals.
In fact, I had a discussion about religion with an Evangelical leader (former head of the Christian Democratic Party here) a while back. I was quoting some scripture or other and she reflected how typical it was that atheists know more about religion than the average religious person do.
I’d like to thank you for pointing out that increasing knowledge of science actually leads to decreasing belief in god. As far as I am concerned that’s QED.
I don’t know if you are ignorant or lying.
Joan Roughgarden
Martin Nowak
Denis Alexander
Francis Collins
Kenneth R. Miller
R. J. Berry
Those are just some leading biologists (or geneticists or related fields) who have specifically published on the topic of biology and faith. I couldn’t begin to try to identify all prominent biologists who are privately religious but have not written about it.
I don’t have time to go over the same exercise for physicists or astronomers, but that list can be compiled too. If you think you can’t with intellectual integrity embrace both science and religion, you probaby don’t understand one of them.
You’re mistaking correlation for causation. At least one of the studies speculates that students from non-religious households may be steered into scientific careers more than students from religious households, who more often to into fields like medicine (hence the higher numbers for doctors). Whether that’s true or not, the fact that scientists are less religious than non-scientists doesn’t prove anything about why that is the case.
Edit: leaving for the evening now, so I won’t be able to respond anymore until tomorrow.
Just by reading your last argument I can see that you’ve accepted my point. Your argument reads like this:
No it doesn’t say that!
And even if it does say that it doesn’t prove anything!
Now if you actually thought it didn’t say that (ie: that there i no correlation), you wouldn’t need to follow with the even weaker argument that it doesn’t matter even if it does. If you really thought it didn’t matter, you would only have had to use that argument. But since you realise that both arguments are so shaky, you stick them together and hope they make for a stable one when put together. They don’t.
Religion is inversely correlated to education. The less educated you are, the more likely you are to be religious (and more religious). This is true for both nations and individuals. The more people think and learn, the less likely they are to stay religious. Which is why religious people like to burn books and home school their children. And is why Martin Luther said that ¨"reason is the devil’s whore".
Then why do you believe in God? What method of acquiring knowledge are you using that leads you to believe a God exists? If it’s not science or rational reasoning, then what is it?
WRT biologists this is blatantly untrue. And gauging the competence of a physicist or astronomer on the basis of his or her theism is purely a subjective judgement on your part…one that you may not be qualified to make. I spent years working at a biological research facility, operated by a reputable state university, and can attest that the majority of scientists I worked directly with, came to know well, were theists or outright believers. At one facility e.g., out of a staff of eight research leads, there were two mormons, a muslim, a copt, a UU, and one who regularly attended a congregational church. Most were fairly secular, there were no evangelicals or fundamentalists of any stripe. But a majority were believers.
Having been around quite a few scientists over the years, most of them recognize the inherent limits of their respective fields (at least with regard to biologists, I know very few astronomers, maybe they’re different). A number of scientists are in fact agnostic, with a healthy dose of skepticism but there don’t seem to be all that many avowed athiests. It seems to me that a scientist is in a particularly good position to maintain an open mind and recognize the possibility of powers beyond the realm of the physical.
SS
I just realized that I may have violated a GD rule by implying above that DT may be lying; and if so I apologize for that barb.
That’s absurd, and you’re avoiding the substance of my post. The simple fact is that causation has not been proved. I don’t think that’s a weak point at all, and if you respect the scientific method as much as you claim you should acknowledge it.
You’re making a lot of unsupported assertions. That first sentence may be true (though you haven’t demonstrated it). The rest of it, I suspect, is your intuition.
Personal experience. That, of course, is no reason for anyone else to believe as I do, and I would never argue that you should believe something based on my own personal experiential testimony. But my own experience has convinced me that what I’ve learned through other sources (church, theological study, the Bible) is borne out in my own life. That’s not scientific data nor do I present it as such.
If I do find an area where scientific fact conflicts with my faith, I re-evaluate my faith. For example, twenty-five years ago (as a teenager) I was pretty confident in Creationism. As I learned more about science, geology, evolution, etc I realized that I had been wrong and now have no qualms about evolution at all.
Speaking as a lifelong atheist, I have to agree that Skammer is spot on about a supernatural god being scientifically unfalsifiable.
If you posit an entity that is not subject to the laws of physics, then the laws of physics can’t be used to test the existence or attributes of that entity.
You are certainly free to believe, like me, that supernatural entities don’t exist. But by definition, you can’t use the laws of nature to logically prove that supernatural entities don’t exist, no matter how silly you consider them.
The position that the principles of rational materialism are eternally immutable, universal, and inviolable—and consequently, that they preclude the existence of any kind of supernatural being—is an axiom, not a demonstrated fact. (We have no scientific evidence of any kind suggesting that that axiom is false, of course, but that’s not the same thing as proving that it’s true.)