# 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:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Shearer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/57b2e6/32.png) [@Shearer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shearer)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2013, 3:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-science-disprove-god/673301/61 "2013-11-07T15:55:37Z")
Talk about back to front. The burden of proof should be on people to prove something exists in the first place, otherwise scientists should assume it doesn’t. ---
**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 7, 2013, 5:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-science-disprove-god/673301/62 "2013-11-07T17:41:23Z")
> [@Pjen](#): > > The scientific method cannot disprove the existence of God. I think you get neither the point nor the scientific method. Deciding to use as an assumption that god does not exist is perfectly reasonable. I do it also. And it is different from stating that God has been proven to not exist, which as we see is a grey bearded strawman. My assumption that God does not exist implies that my lack of belief and lack of prayer will not effect my life in any way, and that I will not see evidence showing God does not exist. This has been pretty much the case in the 45 years since I’ve stopped believing. Someone who believes in a personal god should be able to draw some conclusions also - that God will reward their faith, that prayer works, that history and science will support their God. None of this seems to have happened. We get excuses like praying is good but does no good, that the Bible is the inspired word of God except where it isn’t, etc., etc. We wind up with absurd contradictions in the OP about knowing God who has never been sensed. The only god belief not leading to these contradictions is deistic god belief, but except for comfortable feelings about there being a reason for it all the impact of this belief should be indistinguishable from atheism. ---
**Author:** ![cornopean](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/8c91f0/32.png) [@cornopean](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cornopean)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2013, 10:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-science-disprove-god/673301/63 "2013-11-07T22:01:33Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > So your argument is basically that scientists know all the stuff that can be known and religious people know all the stuff that can’t be known. Well this raises another question…is all knowledge limited to stuff that can be sensed? i.e. empirical? back on junior high school, we all learned about abstract nouns; justice, love, etc. ---
**Author:** ![cornopean](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/8c91f0/32.png) [@cornopean](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cornopean)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2013, 10:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-science-disprove-god/673301/64 "2013-11-07T22:03:25Z")
> [@Boyo\_Jim](#): > > Name a scientist who has claimed this. I know of a number of scientists who claim that a god is not necessary to explain the universe as we know it, and others who simply claim they don’t believe in any god, but I can’t think of a one who has claimed to _prove_ god doesn’t exist. > > However, I’m confident you can find at least one person on the internet claiming to be a sientist who claims to have proved jut about anything. So – how about a scientist who has some kind of actual reputation outside of his own website? I agree completely. This is well said. Good scientists would never claim to have disproven God. Yet, alot of atheists do believe that science has disproven God. no? ---
**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 7, 2013, 10:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-science-disprove-god/673301/65 "2013-11-07T22:04:09Z")
> [@cornopean](#): > > Well this raises another question…is all knowledge limited to stuff that can be sensed? i.e. empirical? > back on junior high school, we all learned about abstract nouns; justice, love, etc. Let’s get back to the main question here: _Which_ god would have science disprove, and what are the characteristics of said god? ---
**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 7, 2013, 10:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-science-disprove-god/673301/66 "2013-11-07T22:04:21Z")
> [@cornopean](#): > > I agree completely. This is well said. Good scientists would never claim to have disproven God. Yet, alot of atheists do believe that science has disproven God. no? Funny you should ask. No. I don’t think a lot of atheists do believe that. ---
**Author:** ![cornopean](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/8c91f0/32.png) [@cornopean](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cornopean)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2013, 10:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-science-disprove-god/673301/67 "2013-11-07T22:10:53Z")
> [@Budget\_Player\_Cadet](#): > > Please clarify this a bit, in two regards: > > 1. What about the universe is “orderly” specifically? well there are these fixed laws that never change. the laws of physics. > [@](#): > > 1. How does it follow that an orderly universe must be the result of a mind? because it just seems intuitive that chaos comes from chaos and order comes from mind. no? ---
**Author:** ![cornopean](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/8c91f0/32.png) [@cornopean](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cornopean)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2013, 10:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-science-disprove-god/673301/68 "2013-11-07T22:14:12Z")
> [@RitterSport](#): > > And, even if there was some intelligence that set things in motion, created the universe and the physical laws, so what? Does that mean I have to go to church on Sunday? Why would that being care about what’s going on with our little planet, and why would care it about how one organism on that planet thinks about it? > > Say, for example, I created a simulated universe on some really powerful computer. That universe contains trillions (quadrillions?) of stars, and many of those stars contain multiple planets. I’m doing this to play with some higher order physics problems, and seeing how the 10^80 particles in the universe interact with each other, given various initial conditions and laws of interaction. This is a really complete simulation! So, anyway, on some tiny subset of these planets, due to the physical laws I set up, some version of the game of life gets going. Hmm, interesting, but I’m not sure if I’d even notice it. It would be cool, however, if there was some game of life that got started on a galactic scale, though – neat! > > So, let’s assume, for the moment, there’s a prime mover. What follows from that? Who cares? Why would it care about us? We’re like a quark in an atom on a bacterium in a flea on a hair of a galactic dog. this is a whole separate question. I am just wondering about science and God. ---
**Author:** ![Inner\_Stickler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inner_stickler/32/318_2.png) [@Inner\_Stickler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inner_Stickler)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2013, 10:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-science-disprove-god/673301/69 "2013-11-07T22:14:42Z")
Spoken like someone who’s never played with the fan in the glass case of sand in the science center. ---
**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 7, 2013, 10:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-science-disprove-god/673301/70 "2013-11-07T22:17:42Z")
> [@cornopean](#): > > this is a whole separate question. I am just wondering about science and God. No-you asked a question that cannot be answered until you define to the best of your abilities the characteristics of the god you would have science disprove. What’s the hold up here? ---
**Author:** ![cornopean](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/8c91f0/32.png) [@cornopean](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cornopean)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2013, 10:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-science-disprove-god/673301/71 "2013-11-07T22:20:02Z")
> [@El\_Kabong](#): > > If I may, IMO this perfectly illuminates the OP’s position, which seems to be that he does not in fact want to discover anything on this topic, but has made a fixed decision and simply wants to assert his position while dismissing out of hand any opposing viewpoints. My point is merely that science cannot disprove God. Religionists are making claims that are not accessible to scientists. What is interesting to me is how many people seem to believe that the only things we can know are those things that are scientifically provable. But who can resist asking questions like: 1. where did we come from? 2. why is there something rather than nothing? 3. why is there morality? 4. why is there intelligence? 5. where are we going? 6. why are we here? and btw…science is no help here at all. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2013, 10:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-science-disprove-god/673301/72 "2013-11-07T22:20:46Z")
> [@cornopean](#): > > well there are these fixed laws that never change. the laws of physics. > because it just seems intuitive that chaos comes from chaos and order comes from mind. no? No. I suggest you learn a little bit about chaos theory, complexity theory, and spontaneous emergent order. Order can arise out of simple physical rules, and has. Complexity can grow to astounding levels by iteratively applying these simple rules. For example, there is no mind governing the complexity of an ant colony. Queen ants aren’t any smarter than any other ant, and not all colonies have queens anyway. And yet, the colony as a whole behaves in very complex, seemingly-intelligent ways. Ants don’t even have complex brains. They are basically just little machines that respond to certain stimuli with rules baked into their firmware. They don’t know what they’re doing, they don’t ‘plan’, they’re not even aware that they’re part of a larger colony. And yet when you put them all together they can build bridges, efficiently seek out food sources, defend the colony against interlopers, build nests for eggs and regulate the temperature carefully, and even form rafts out of their bodies to allow the colony to float to safety in a flood. They can build bridges out of their bodies to span chasms, and have great wars with battle fronts and all. And yet, all of this complexity comes out of some very simple rules and a set of rudimentary senses. No intelligence required. Just evolution, which itself creates complexity out of very simple rules. ---
**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 7, 2013, 10:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-science-disprove-god/673301/73 "2013-11-07T22:21:35Z")
> [@cornopean](#): > > My point is merely that science cannot disprove God. Religionists are making claims that are not accessible to scientists. What is interesting to me is how many people seem to believe that the only things we can know are those things that are scientifically provable. > > But who can resist asking questions like: > > 1. where did we come from? > 2. why is there something rather than nothing? > 3. why is there morality? > 4. why is there intelligence? > 5. where are we going? > 6. why are we here? 1. why won’t the OP clarify his OP? ---
**Author:** ![cornopean](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/8c91f0/32.png) [@cornopean](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cornopean)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2013, 10:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-science-disprove-god/673301/74 "2013-11-07T22:21:40Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > No-you asked a question that cannot be answered until you define to the best of your abilities the characteristics of the god you would have science disprove. What’s the hold up here? b/c this is irrelevant. I am not asking about the nature of God. I am trying to think thru how we might even begin to find out if there is a God or not. ---
**Author:** ![cornopean](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/8c91f0/32.png) [@cornopean](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cornopean)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2013, 10:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-science-disprove-god/673301/75 "2013-11-07T22:27:18Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > No. I suggest you learn a little bit about chaos theory, complexity theory, and spontaneous emergent order. Order can arise out of simple physical rules, and has. Complexity can grow to astounding levels by iteratively applying these simple rules. > > For example, there is no mind governing the complexity of an ant colony. Queen ants aren’t any smarter than any other ant, and not all colonies have queens anyway. And yet, the colony as a whole behaves in very complex, seemingly-intelligent ways. > > Ants don’t even have complex brains. They are basically just little machines that respond to certain stimuli with rules baked into their firmware. They don’t know what they’re doing, they don’t ‘plan’, they’re not even aware that they’re part of a larger colony. And yet when you put them all together they can build bridges, efficiently seek out food sources, defend the colony against interlopers, build nests for eggs and regulate the temperature carefully, and even form rafts out of their bodies to allow the colony to float to safety in a flood. They can build bridges out of their bodies to span chasms, and have great wars with battle fronts and all. > > And yet, all of this complexity comes out of some very simple rules and a set of rudimentary senses. No intelligence required. Just evolution, which itself creates complexity out of very simple rules. you say that order arises from simple rules with no intelligence required. but this seems to beg the question. I can’t account for the existence of these rules w/o immediately being led to believe that some mind is behind it. As for an ant colony, religionists would assert that God created these animals with these instincts. A purely random, unguided universe can’t account for an ant colony. ---
**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 7, 2013, 10:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-science-disprove-god/673301/76 "2013-11-07T22:33:02Z")
> [@cornopean](#): > > b/c this is irrelevant. I am not asking about the nature of God. I am trying to think thru how we might even begin to find out if there is a God or not. Irrelevant to the OP? Bull. “Can science disprove God?”-it’s right there in the title and in your first post, and your inability to participate in your own OP doesn’t concern me in the least. I would like to stick to the actual topic of this thread, but that can only be done if you answer the entirely necessary questions needed to go forward. This isn’t the first time religionists have tried to pull this “Prove the god I’m not going to describe to you doesn’t exist!” schtick, btw. ---
**Author:** ![Blake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2013, 10:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-science-disprove-god/673301/77 "2013-11-07T22:44:13Z")
> [@cornopean](#): > > But who can resist asking questions like: > > 1. where did we come from? > 2. why is there something rather than nothing? > 3. why is there morality? > 4. why is there intelligence? > 5. where are we going? > 6. why are we here? > > and btw…science is no help here at all. Nonsense. There have been literally thousands of scientific papers on 1, 2, 3 and 4. ---
**Author:** ![Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/budget_player_cadet/32/205_2.png) [@Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Budget_Player_Cadet)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2013, 11:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-science-disprove-god/673301/78 "2013-11-07T23:01:44Z")
> [@cornopean](#): > > Well this raises another question…is all knowledge limited to stuff that can be sensed? i.e. empirical? > back on junior high school, we all learned about abstract nouns; justice, love, etc. Yes, but those are, as you seem to indicate, _abstractions_ of things we observe. We observe punitive actions in society and abstract them to justice. We observe emotions and hormonal reactions in our brains and abstract them to love. These things are, when you bring them back out of the abstraction, completely observable. Or is there a different definition to those terms? You need to start defining your terms, by the way, because just as “God” can mean very different things to very different people, so can “Love” and “Justice”. > [@cornopean](#): > > I agree completely. This is well said. Good scientists would never claim to have disproven God. Yet, alot of atheists do believe that science has disproven God. no? No. I’m not aware of any atheists in public positions who would make that claim, nor am I aware of any atheists in my personal sphere who would make that claim. Perhaps that science has disproved the bible as a literal message from god (which it has, beyond any reasonable doubt), but certainly not that science has disproved god. > [@cornopean](#): > > well there are these fixed laws that never change. the laws of physics. And this is a very common failure from the religious, in particular when trying to speak about science. You are conflating man-made “natural laws”, derived empirically through observation, with universally constant natural laws, which we have yet to actually establish. But this nitpick aside, this hardly accounts for an ordered universe when you consider just how complex and bizarre these laws are, and especially when you facter in quantum mechanics. > [@](#): > > because it just seems intuitive that chaos comes from chaos and order comes from mind. no? Intuitive, maybe. But intuitive is not good enough, and if you think it is, I urge you to check out [where intuition has led us in the past](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUYjnL2PqUg). “It just seems intuitive” is _never_ good enough to come to any sort of solid logical conclusion. You’re trying to bridge a massive logical gap with the deductive equivalent of “it just _feels_ right”. > [@cornopean](#): > > My point is merely that science cannot disprove God. Religionists are making claims that are not accessible to scientists. What is interesting to me is how many people seem to believe that the only things we can know are those things that are scientifically provable. Well, I welcome you to propose literally any other path to truth. Because outside of empiricism and the scientific method, we have _nothing_. There is no other path to truth humans have which has any sort of good track record. All we have is the scientific method. How else _could_ we “know” anything other than through observation? > [@](#): > > But who can resist asking questions like: > > 1. where did we come from? > 2. why is there something rather than nothing? > 3. why is there morality? > 4. why is there intelligence? > 5. where are we going? > 6. why are we here? > > and btw…science is no help here at all. What that says to me is that these questions may never be satisfactorily answered, because we lack any mechanism to gauge the truth value of any answer to them. And that makes those questions _completely and utterly worthless_. If you cannot gauge the truth value of a question with a purportedly true answer _by the nature of that question_, then the question is meaningless and worthless. > [@cornopean](#): > > b/c this is irrelevant. I am not asking about the nature of God. I am trying to think thru how we might even begin to find out if there is a God or not. But the nature of God is a huge part of finding out whether or not there is one! Two hypothetical gods - one exists outside of space and time and has no interaction with our universe whatsoever; the second takes casual strolls around the continent every Tuesday, blessing those who offer sacrifices to him and smiting those who reject his divinity. That’s two entities with _fundamentally different answers to the above question_, and both are versions of god people have, to one approximation or another, believed in. This is why you need to define the term “God” for this discussion. Because that makes all the difference in the world when talking about how to determine whether or not it exists empirically. ---
**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2013, 11:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-science-disprove-god/673301/79 "2013-11-07T23:07:49Z")
> [@Claverhouse](#): > > No; you just have to have faith in God’s non-existence. I don’t collect stamps. Does that make me a stamp collector? ---
**Author:** ![Princhester](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3e96dc/32.png) [@Princhester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Princhester)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2013, 11:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-science-disprove-god/673301/80 "2013-11-07T23:10:42Z")
> [@cornopean](#): > > b/c this is irrelevant. I am not asking about the nature of God. I am trying to think thru how we might even begin to find out if there is a God or not. So you think the first step is to try to look for a particular thing, and the second step is to ask what the particular thing you are looking for looks like? You cannot be serious. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-science-disprove-god/673301.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-science-disprove-god/673301.md?page=5)