# Can science disprove God? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [November 7, 2013, 3:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-science-disprove-god/673301 "2013-11-07T03:01:56Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 25
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2013, 11:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-science-disprove-god/673301/481 "2013-11-14T23:55:48Z")
> [@reef\_shark](#): > > I cited the Law of Non-Contradiction. Is it possible for that not to exist? One more time: A “Law” is not a creation of an element of nature/science/ mathematics that did not exist before. It is the _recognition and naming_ of what already exists. If it is later discovered that we didn’t understand something as well as we thought we did the “law” gets renamed and restated, _but at NO time does any aspect of the universe change just because we change our thinking._ ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2013, 11:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-science-disprove-god/673301/482 "2013-11-14T23:57:56Z")
> [@reef\_shark](#): > > I cited the Law of Non-Contradiction. Is it possible for that not to exist? What the hell do _you_ think? How do you think the universe would operate if it wasn’t true? ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2013, 12:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-science-disprove-god/673301/483 "2013-11-15T00:06:51Z")
> [@reef\_shark](#): > > I cited the Law of Non-Contradiction. Is it possible for that not to exist? That’s what I’m asking you. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2013, 12:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-science-disprove-god/673301/484 "2013-11-15T00:10:07Z")
> [@reef\_shark](#): > > So you admit that logic did not emerge with humans, it was around before us. Where do you think it came from? Where would you say integers came from? ---
**Author:** ![reef\_shark](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bbe5ce/32.png) [@reef\_shark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/reef_shark)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2013, 12:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-science-disprove-god/673301/485 "2013-11-15T00:12:59Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > What the hell do _you_ think? How do you think the universe would operate if it wasn’t true? The universe would not operate as we know it to without the laws of logic, physics, chemistry, and a number of unchanging constants. These are unchanging, immaterial, and universal laws that cannot be explained by the idea of the big bang. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2013, 12:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-science-disprove-god/673301/486 "2013-11-15T00:19:58Z")
> [@reef\_shark](#): > > The universe would not operate as we know it to without the laws of logic, physics, chemistry, and a number of unchanging constants. These are unchanging, immaterial, and universal laws that cannot be explained by the idea of the big bang. So you say…and then you go make a bigger mess of things by introducing the concept of a universe that has no logic in it until a “god” that lives “outside space and time” jumps in to fix things. How she/he/it manages to fix things when there is no logic to work with is beyond me, but I do have a specific question to ask about this oh-so-silly concept: How could a non-logical universe exist in the first place? ---
**Author:** ![FinnAgain](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/finnagain/32/12500_2.png) [@FinnAgain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FinnAgain)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2013, 12:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-science-disprove-god/673301/487 "2013-11-15T00:46:01Z")
> [@reef\_shark](#): > > The universe would not operate as we know it to without the laws of logic, physics, chemistry, and a number of unchanging constants. These are unchanging, immaterial, and universal laws that cannot be explained by the idea of the big bang. Inflation simply describes the expansion of our singularity into spacetime (and there are some models of Inflation that do away with the singularity entirely). But yes, M Theory predicts a multiverse with varying constants in each 'verse. Hawking has argued that all you need for the creation of a universe is a force like gravity and quantum mechanics. If you need something to have ‘always existed’ in order for our universe to exist, why not be parsimonious and assume that it’s the laws of physics? ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2013, 1:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-science-disprove-god/673301/488 "2013-11-15T01:26:43Z")
> [@reef\_shark](#): > > The universe would not operate as we know it to without the laws of logic, physics, chemistry, and a number of unchanging constants. These are unchanging, immaterial, and universal laws that cannot be explained by the idea of the big bang. Certainly they can; in fact a number of explanations have been proposed including several variations on Inflation. For example, if there are many Big Bangs producing many universe then the reason that our universe looks fine tuned for life is easily explained; if it wasn’t, then we wouldn’t be here to notice. It’s also uncertain just how “unchanging” or even universal the “constants” are (they may vary on a large enough cosmological scale), and they certainly aren’t “immaterial”. ---
**Author:** ![FinnAgain](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/finnagain/32/12500_2.png) [@FinnAgain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FinnAgain)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2013, 2:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-science-disprove-god/673301/489 "2013-11-15T02:01:33Z")
[Speaking of unchanging constants…](http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1981ApJ...248..813V) ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2013, 3:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-science-disprove-god/673301/490 "2013-11-15T03:11:54Z")
> [@Mangetout](#): > > Where would you say integers came from? I love this question! There are so many different (philosophical!) ways of looking at it. At one level, it seems obvious that “things” exist in “numbers.” Look, there are five deer in that herd. This forest have 402 trees. (Uh-oh, what about this one little seedling, where a tiny little millimeter of green is poking out of the ground! Is that a tree?) But at another, the idea of “numbers” with “properties” – why is five plus four the same as four plus five? – seems to be a creation of our intelligence. As Isaac Asimov once famously asked, “Show me half a piece of chalk.” ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2013, 7:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-science-disprove-god/673301/491 "2013-11-15T07:07:43Z")
> [@reef\_shark](#): > > Red Herring. > > Rebelling against God does justify destruction, there is no way around that. The tablets are recorded in Exodus, Numbers, all throughout the Torah and afterwards. Joshua re-recorded the laws as well. Yes I know when they were supposed to be recorded. But the Law, perhaps the most important thing, did not seem to be known after Joshua. How did the tribes they destroyed rebel against God? By existing? They were not asked to convert or anything, after all. > [@](#): > > I see how you mentioned logic but avoided my question about when you think logic was established. Before humans or not? I used math since we can tell that math existed before humans - it is hard to see how one would determine that logic does (unless we find an alien race who discovered it before we did.) Math and logic are somewhat equivalent, in any case. Clearly Ugg the caveman used logic, but of course did not write it down. Aristotle didn’t invent logic, he just codified it. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2013, 7:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-science-disprove-god/673301/492 "2013-11-15T07:10:55Z")
> [@reef\_shark](#): > > So you admit that logic did not emerge with humans, it was around before us. Where do you think it came from? Where does 1+1 = 2 come from? Same place. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2013, 7:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-science-disprove-god/673301/493 "2013-11-15T07:20:16Z")
> [@reef\_shark](#): > > That was the original prediction of the big bang model. It has since been altered to account for additional scientific discoveries (inflationary theory). Cite that even the original Big Bang theory predicted absolute homogeneity? Because that would be odd, since we see that the universe is lumpy when we look at the distribution of galaxies. I believe that the original prediction was for the background temperature to not be drastically different no matter where you looked, which was true. Then with inflation it was noted that it was impossible to be truly uniform. Inflation predicted the variations observed which would have been impossible to observe in the 1950s. Science refines - that the first cut at a theory is not 100% correct in no way totally invalidates it. None of the people you quote would say that the Big Bang theory is incorrect. Given that it happened 13 billion years ago, and we’ve only understood it for 60 (and have known that the universe consists of more than our galaxy for about 100 years) we are doing pretty good. A lot better than the Bible. ---
**Author:** ![hotflungwok](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/edb3f5/32.png) [@hotflungwok](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hotflungwok)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2013, 2:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-science-disprove-god/673301/494 "2013-11-15T14:38:23Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > As Isaac Asimov once famously asked, “Show me half a piece of chalk.” Ow my brain… [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-science-disprove-god/673301.md?page=24)