# 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:** 5
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2013, 11:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-science-disprove-god/673301/81 "2013-11-07T23:11:02Z")
> [@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. The first step to literally any scientific endeavour is to describe, as exhaustively as possible, what it is you’re setting out to prove, disprove, or otherwise ascertain. Then, and only then, can you even \*begin \*dreaming up purposeful observations, experiments, counter-experiments (because in science, you don’t want to simply prove that your hypothesis fits, you also desperately want to prove that all the _other_ hypotheses you could think of to explain the given phenomenon don’t, if only to better rub it in all their stupid faces, when they dared call you mad, MAD !), the necessary control parameters and so on. So, yes, the first step towards “beginning to find out if there is a God or not” is specifying what “a God” is exactly, what it’s supposed to do and so on. You can’t prove or disprove a vague and \*\*extremely \*\*wide concept. [QUOTE=cornopean] 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. [/QUOTE] Your lack of imagination is not, in itself, evidence of anything beyond itself. I’ll give you a counter example : cricket exists, and has rules, but I’ll be damned if there ever was any mind at all behind them ! > [@](#): > > A purely random, unguided universe can’t account for an ant colony. But a universe where sheer survival applies selective pressure can, and does. There can, in fact, be a watch [without a watchmaker](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcAq9bmCeR0) (I apologize in advance for the somewhat aggressive tone of the commentary early in the video - the experiment itself is what’s really fascinating). [QUOTE=Blake] Nonsense. There have been literally thousands of scientific papers on 1, 2, 3 and 4. [/QUOTE] 5, too, for certain amounts of “we”. For example, we know (or we think we know) exactly how and when the Sun as we know it is going bye-bye. Give or take a few tens of thousands of years, all right, but in astronomical terms that’s pinpoint :). ---
**Author:** ![Fake\_Tales\_of\_San\_Francisco](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/8491ac/32.png) [@Fake\_Tales\_of\_San\_Francisco](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fake_Tales_of_San_Francisco)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2013, 11:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-science-disprove-god/673301/82 "2013-11-07T23:11:55Z")
> [@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. Yes it is. Evolutionary biologists and physicists (and others) are studying these very questions. We may not have complete answers, but if that’s what you’re after you’re better off just making things up. Knowledge is a work in progress. There are scientific [lectures](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EilZ4VY5Vs) on this very subject. What do you think anthropology, psychology, sociology, cognitive science (etc) is there for? Tell me, if you’re ill, what do you do? Do you go to a witch doctor or go see a qualified doctor who has spent their lives studying medicine? If your toilet just wont flush, do you ask for help from a preacher or a plumber? Why do you use these individuals for their specialised knowledge, and not any other people who have spent their lives studying the origins of the universe, ethics, how moral values emerged etc? What do you know that they do not know that allows you to brush aside the countless hours of study scientists have put in to get us one step closer to knowing a bit more than we do now? ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2013, 11:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-science-disprove-god/673301/83 "2013-11-07T23:15:55Z")
> [@Budget\_Player\_Cadet](#): > > 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 [factor] in quantum mechanics. I’m glad to have read Isaac Asimov’s essay’s on the topic. I recall especially his comments the Newton was _nearly_ right, and would have been exactly right if the speed of light was infinite. Of course, we know the speed of light is _not_ infinite, just very very very very fast (and if it were infinite, the universe would be significantly different), hence the need for Einstein’s tweak-like refinement which only comes into play under extreme circumstances like near-_c_ speed and planet-level mass and whatnot. Will Einstein’s work have to be further tweaked, and/or could some new idea come along that replaces Newton _and_ Einstein with an even better model of how the universe works? I wouldn’t bet against it, but a useless “God” concept won’t cut it, in this field or any other. ---
**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, 11:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-science-disprove-god/673301/84 "2013-11-07T23:22:46Z")
> [@Blake](#): > > Nonsense. There have been literally thousands of scientific papers on 1, 2, 3 and 4. My understanding is that those questions are philosophical questions typically ranged under the head of metaphysics. But let’s just take one of the questions, why is there something rather than nothing. How can science possibly answer a why question? ---
**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, 11:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-science-disprove-god/673301/85 "2013-11-07T23:25:52Z")
> [@Princhester](#): > > 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. Ok that’s fair. Let me just define God then as a being who is outside of the universe of space and time. ---
**Author:** ![sisu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/df705f/32.png) [@sisu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sisu)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2013, 11:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-science-disprove-god/673301/86 "2013-11-07T23:27:50Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > Which god? What are the specific characteristics of the god that you claim science cannot disprove? I think this is the fundamental question. I cannot prove or disprove anything unless I know what the thing is. ---
**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, 11:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-science-disprove-god/673301/87 "2013-11-07T23:28:13Z")
> [@Kobal2](#): > > The first step to literally any scientific endeavour is to describe, as exhaustively as possible, what it is you’re setting out to prove, disprove, or otherwise ascertain. > > Then, and only then, can you even \*begin \*dreaming up purposeful observations, experiments, counter-experiments (because in science, you don’t want to simply prove that your hypothesis fits, you also desperately want to prove that all the _other_ hypotheses you could think of to explain the given phenomenon don’t, if only to better rub it in all their stupid faces, when they dared call you mad, MAD !), the necessary control parameters and so on. > > So, yes, the first step towards “beginning to find out if there is a God or not” is specifying what “a God” is exactly, what it’s supposed to do and so on. You can’t prove or disprove a vague and \*\*extremely \*\*wide concept. but my hypothesis is not is there a God but can science disprove or refute the idea of God’s existence. > [@](#): > > Your lack of imagination is not, in itself, evidence of anything beyond itself. > I’ll give you a counter example : cricket exists, and has rules, but I’ll be damned if there ever was any mind at all behind them ! the rules of cricket are not the product of some mind? ---
**Author:** ![Canadjun](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/76d3ee/32.png) [@Canadjun](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Canadjun)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2013, 11:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-science-disprove-god/673301/88 "2013-11-07T23:31:28Z")
> [@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. If you refuse to define what a god is, then clearly it is not possible to prove that all possible variations on what might be called a god do not exist (one obvious possibility being a god who thinks it is a fun idea to cloak itself against any detection methods that its creations develop to try to detect it). However, that does not have anything to do with proving that Jehovah, Allah (in the Moslem sense - I know “allah” is simply arabic for “god”), Zeus, Ra, Ahura Mazda, etc. etc. etc. do or do not exist. ---
**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, 11:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-science-disprove-god/673301/89 "2013-11-07T23:31:46Z")
> [@Fake\_Tales\_of\_San\_Francisco](#): > > Yes it is. > > Evolutionary biologists and physicists (and others) are studying these very questions. We may not have complete answers, but if that’s what you’re after you’re better off just making things up. Knowledge is a work in progress. There are scientific [lectures](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EilZ4VY5Vs) on this very subject. > What do you think anthropology, psychology, sociology, cognitive science (etc) is there for? I guess this is where we part ways then. I can see no possible scientific way to find out why there is a universe as opposed to why there is nothing. or why it is wrong to cause people pain or why the laws of logic are worth anything. > [@](#): > > Tell me, if you’re ill, what do you do? Do you go to a witch doctor or go see a qualified doctor who has spent their lives studying medicine? If your toilet just wont flush, do you ask for help from a preacher or a plumber? Why do you use these individuals for their specialised knowledge, and not any other people who have spent their lives studying the origins of the universe, ethics, how moral values emerged etc? What do you know that they do not know that allows you to brush aside the countless hours of study scientists have put in to get us one step closer to knowing a bit more than we do now? do you see the difference between asking how moral values emerged and why it is wrong to cause people pain? ---
**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, 11:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-science-disprove-god/673301/90 "2013-11-07T23:33:10Z")
I think we have to answer this question…is scientific knowledge the only true knowledge we can have? ---
**Author:** ![sisu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/df705f/32.png) [@sisu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sisu)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2013, 11:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-science-disprove-god/673301/91 "2013-11-07T23:35:27Z")
> [@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? > > and btw…science is no help here at all. 1 to 4 is addressed in science. 5 is yet to happen but people are looking at future scenarios that may happen 6 assumes that there is a reason, there may be but easily there may not be. We can know things based on evidence or we can believe things based on faith, they are very different. Science at this stage cannot disprove or prove that something exists outside the realms of the known universe, this is why I am still mildly agnostic. ---
**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, 11:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-science-disprove-god/673301/92 "2013-11-07T23:36:37Z")
> [@cornopean](#): > > Ok that’s fair. Let me just define God then as a being who is outside of the universe of space and time. Wasn’t asking _where_ your god is(and your answer is nonsense anyway). We’re asking _what_ your god is. Please define the characteristics of your god. ---
**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, 11:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-science-disprove-god/673301/93 "2013-11-07T23:37:04Z")
> [@cornopean](#): > > Ok that’s fair. Let me just define God then as a being who is outside of the universe of space and time. So what kind of evidence would you be wanting to prove or disprove such a all-encompassing concept? You didn’t just move the goalposts; you widened them so much no one can tell if they can score a goal or not because they can’t see them. ---
**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, 11:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-science-disprove-god/673301/94 "2013-11-07T23:37:41Z")
> [@cornopean](#): > > I think we have to answer this question…is scientific knowledge the only true knowledge we can have? Nope-we already have a question on the table. Care to address it? ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2013, 11:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-science-disprove-god/673301/95 "2013-11-07T23:38:41Z")
> [@cornopean](#): > > but my hypothesis is not is there a God but can science disprove or refute the idea of God’s existence. Yes. And before you or anyone can do that, the God in question must perforce be specified. As has already been stated upthread, some gods we can categorically rule out (e.g. we can say with some certainty that thunder is not, in fact, the by-product of Thor’s hammer smashing his anvil ; and considering that’s a big part of Thor’s raison d’être, we can therefor infer that Thor’s a cool superhero, a somewhat dickish mythological character, and not a being that actually exists in our consensual reality). Some are so far removed from material existence that their existence (or lack thereof) doesn’t make any difference whatsoever. Some are in-between. So what God did you have in mind, exactly ? > [@](#): > > the rules of cricket are not the product of some mind? Spoken like a man who’s never watched a game of cricket. (It is a joke, Mr. Moreau) ---
**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, 11:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-science-disprove-god/673301/96 "2013-11-07T23:38:45Z")
> [@cornopean](#): > > 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. That’s because you don’t understand enough about the science behind it to make considered judgments. You are dismissing evidence that you don’t understand based on your ‘intuition’, which itself is based on incomplete knowledge. There has been a lot of scientific and mathematical work done on spontaneous order. I suggest you read about it before dismissing it out of hand. Unless of course you’re not really trying to understand, but are instead simply trying to assert your correctness and have a closed mind. > [@](#): > > 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. Yes, it can. I don’t care what you ‘assert’ unless you can formulate a logical argument to prove your case and provide evidence. We have been studying the creation of our universe and the evolution of life on this planet for a long time, and so far have found nothing that would violate basic scientific principles. To give you a simple example of how order can arise out of randomness when simple rules re applied, consider the formation of a solar system from a gas cloud. You start with random particles drifting around - the rule is that gravity attracts particles together. So when the random motion causes the distribution of particles to be uneven, gravity causes them to collapse together into a ball. If there is any rotation to the cloud at all, the conservation of angular momentum makes the collapsed ball spin. If enough material collapses into it, the pressure causes hydrogen to fuse, and a star is born. Light pressure from the star starts blowing on the gas cloud, causing other collapses that form planets. They begin orbiting the star. Eventually the star uses up its fuel, and if it’s a certain size, it explodes. The explosion causes simple molecules and elements to fuse into more complex ones. These in turn form other stars and planets. Now we have gone from disassociated hydrogen and helium at the start of the universe to heavy elements. Now planets that form also collect atmospheres and water. Electricity from spinning magnetic fields bombards material and causes organic compounds to form. These organic compounds eventually form life - perhaps rarely, but we’ve done lab experiments where we can see the kind of process involved. And so it goes. This isn’t just theoretical. Take a small telescope or a pair of binoculars out into your backyard and look at the sword of Orion, and you’ll see one of these large dust clouds and the hundreds of stars that are being formed within it. With the right filters, you can identify Oxygen, Silicon, Hydrogen, and other elements in that cloud. With a slightly better telescope, you can observe protoplanetary disks. You can actually see the formation of solar systems. With other tools you can test and see how complex hydrocarbons can be formed from simple materials under natural conditions. With other experiments you can observe evolution in action as Gregor Mendel did. With high powered microscopes you can observe DNA and the process that results in increased specializaation and complexity from what are again simple rules. At no point in any of this was a designer required. There’s nothing about any of this that requires us to believe in a creator or some directed intelligence. And again, this is not theory - this is stuff we can observe today, with our own eyes. Heck, you can even see the process of complexity emerging from simple rules with computer simulations. Look up “Cellular Automata simulation” online, and you can play around with programs that will evolve into complex systems from very simple rules. ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2013, 11:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-science-disprove-god/673301/97 "2013-11-07T23:40:00Z")
nm, double post ---
**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 7, 2013, 11:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-science-disprove-god/673301/98 "2013-11-07T23:43:46Z")
> [@cornopean](#): > > How are things like science and reason even possible in a universe that started purely from random, unguided forces? and note, this is not a scientific question. Of course it is; it’s cosmology. And science and reason are possible because the universe isn’t purely random; it has laws and structure. And as always, this entire religious tangent is pointless since at most it just pushes the question back a step to “where did ‘God’ come from”? > [@cornopean](#): > > you cannot answer this question empirically. You have to do philosophy to answer this question. Even if that was true, philosophy isn’t religion. Religion is by its nature worthless, intellectually dead; it’s based on faith, not facts or reason. No knowledge can come from it. > [@cornopean](#): > > the proof is that this universe is an orderly universe where math, science, logic, reason all exist and work. such a universe must be the result of some mind. Nonsense. On the contrary, such a universe is necessary for mind to exist. Not the other way around. > [@cornopean](#): > > but wouldn’t you agree that it is arrogant for a scientist to claim that he has refuted or disproven God? No, because gods are a ridiculous idea, less plausible than Santa Claus. One of the most ridiculous and blatantly false beliefs in human history; transparently nothing more than baseless wish fulfillment. Something that’s even obvious to most believers - as long as the god in question isn’t their god. Believers make fun of the ridiculous beliefs of other faiths all the time; they are just blind to the fact that their own religion is equally laughable. _“I contend we are both atheists, I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all other possible gods, you’ll understand why I dismiss yours.”_ – Steven Roberts Of course the vast majority of scientists don’t claim they’ve “refuted God”, for the simple reason religion is politically very powerful and accorded far more respect than it should be. It (and reason in general) clearly has however, over and over again; which is why believers have over time vastly altered their public definition. They’ve kept moving the goalposts, changing their definition of “God” until now they claim to believe in the abstract, formless, undetectable thing that is the official God that is brought up in these discussions. ---
**Author:** ![the\_diego](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7bcc69/32.png) [@the\_diego](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/the_diego)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2013, 11:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-science-disprove-god/673301/99 "2013-11-07T23:46:46Z")
> [@Blake](#): > > Not even remotely true. Can you tell me how logic cannot be even remotely scientific? [/QUOTE] ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2013, 11:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-science-disprove-god/673301/100 "2013-11-07T23:49:01Z")
> [@Musicat](#): > > You didn’t just move the goalposts; you widened them so much no one can tell if they can score a goal or not because they can’t see them. But God can. And his agents will simply tell you how many goals Notre-Dame has scored on every other team, every time :). [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-science-disprove-god/673301.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-science-disprove-god/673301.md?page=6)