Does science have any obligations regarding God? If science were to discover the existence or non-existence of God, would it be obligated to share these discoveries?
Does science have an obligation towards proving (or disproving) God? That is, should the goal of science be to come to some sort of conclusion on God? What is the ultimate goal of science? Is it to define reality? To define the truth? Is there any denying that the ultimate goal of science is to eventually try to prove or disprove God?
Note that this is a question on the obligations of science, not whether a god would allow science to prove the existence of the god.
No, but the question doesn’t really make much sense; science is a process, not a person. It would make more sense to ask “Does fatdave have any obligations regarding God?” than to ask “Does pasteurization have any obligations regarding God?”
Yes. One of the basic principles of science is shared information allows greater understanding of the world and offers the opportunity for correction and/or authentication of the information. Some scientist who comes out with an announcement “I discovered God.” but then refuses to share the data would be looked upon as a crank.
No. Science is in the business of testing hypotheses to see how they match with empirical reality. There isn’t much that’s empirical about knowledge of God.
I’d hazard a guess at: To come to as close an understanding of the observeable universe as possible (read “observeable” to include things that are indirectly observeable). Of course, science is a process, not a person, so it’s really inadequate to claim that it can have a single monolithic goal. There are even more goals of science then there are people doing science, since people might do science for multiple reasons.
Certainly. Scientists don’t do a lot of experiments relating to God. A very few do experiments that tangentially approach the issue of God (e.g. on prayer and healing, but that’s a bit controversial.
Think about the main branches of science: Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Geology, Meteorology, Oceanography… not really the realms for folks who want to “study God.” Theology is usually found in a completely different building on most university campuses.
Don’t know how you’re defining God, but the way I most often hear believers explain it, the concept cannot be proven or disproven. So no, the “goal of science” would not be to try to prove or disprove God, because science only concerns itself with things that can be demonstrated objectively.
Science is a type of epistemology concerned with testing (“falsifying”) hypotheses about physical entities.
Those unfamiliar with philosophy sometimes fall for the rather childish oversimplification of considering science to be the only epistemology. But there are many others: mathematics, logic, aesthetics, and so on - these are all systems of thought and knowledge which allow us humans to establish what is true (“truth”, of course, being a metaphysical, *ie.*nonphysical, entity for all intents and purposes outside of a very specific philosophical position called physicalism which attempt to describe it physically - tricky, but possible, and indeed the position which I myself take).
Science cannot be used to establish the truth of statements about non-physical entities, It cannot tell us whether “1+1=2” is true. It cannot tell us whether “A and not A” is true. Science cannot tell us whether “I like this painting” is true. Science has no preferred system of morality or aesthetics, nor does it help us decide what is and is not ethical, or beautiful, according to our chosen system. Crucially, religion is yet another epistemology, again dealing with the non-physical. Science simply cannot tell us whether “God exists” is true: it has no “obligation” to investigating non-physical entities whatsover, except insofar as they might be reduced to physical ones.
To explain the existence of the entire universe and everything in it, including the human mind, solely by reference to the physical.
If, having heard such an explanation, you wish to believe that the metaphysical exists in addition to the physical (or even that the physical does not exist at all), this is a perfectly logically consistent position to take,. However, one should keep in mind the principle of Ockham’s Razor: that a plurality ought not be proposed without necessity. That is, if science can explain everything, including your own feelings and convincing experiences, one must ask oneself what it is necessary to invoke the nonphysical for.
I was recently involved in a debate (on another board) with a YEC whose complaint was that the scientific method does not allow ‘God’ as a hypothesis. My contention was (and is) that, until and unless God starts making himself available to experiment, ‘God did it’ is no more useful a hypothesis than ‘It’s magic’ or ‘We just don’t know why it happens’.
In order to scientifically determine God as the cause of any phenomenon, it needs to be possible to design an experiment that will yield a predictable result if and (only if) God is truly the cause. Nobody seems able to do that.
I made this really nifty experiment with a tin can, a piece of string tied to a stick and a communion wafer. God either does not exist or is stuck in mouse form.
Of course you’re joking, but there’s the problem; there is no way to objectively determine the difference between:
-God doesn’t exist.
and
-God does exist, but just doesn’t feel like playing today.
As Ramachandran himself says, God might be causing the ultra-synchronised activity in the temporal lobe, or the like. We cannot demonstrate that certain claims for God-evidence are not divine. All science can do is offer a physical explanation for that evidence, which one might accept or reject.
We can take into account the fact that people of all faiths and none can have a transcendent experience with and without drugs, and say, that a direct personal experience in no way translates into any particular god or set of moral strictures.
Certainly not, in fact that sort of thing is actually the basis of my own belief, however, I am past the stage where I believe my subjective personal experiences, overwhelming or otherwise, are presentable as scientific evidence.
There are no obligations, regarding God, of any kind except those imposed by people and their particular societal standards of morality and ethics. Whether or not those standards are derived from “God” is an unanswerable question, as has been explained above.
