Justification for Theistic Beliefs

Great Debates
121

-Emphasis mine.

This is a common misconception I’ve heard time and again- the assumption that God, if he existed, is somehow outside the realm of science.

Science, however, encompasses all. Science is the pursuit of knowledge of everything, which includes the supernatural. There are those desperately searching for some fleck of proof, or even circumstantial evidence, of ghosts, souls, telepathy, remote viewing, you name it.

If God appeared tomorrow on a hilltop and commenced performing undeniable miracles- materializing food, perhaps instantly regenerating missing limbs of amputees- scientists around the world would immediately start cataloguing this new phenomena.

Can He be photographed? Does everyone see the same image? In videos of the food materializing, does it wink into existence instantly, fade in relatively slowly, or does perhaps a rift in space-time open?

When the limb appears, is it simply a tremendously-accellerated cellular growth, or does the limb appear from thin air? If we tested it’s DNA will it be precisely the same as the person’s original arm? If the person had broken it years before he lost it, would evidence of that break still be in the bone? Would the fingerprints be precisely the same as before?

What if the person was born without that arm? Could he immediately begin using it as if he’d never been without it, or would there be a period of acclimation? Would he still carry the recessive gene that caused the birth defect in the first place?

You see, such an event would add a new chapter to science, not be outside of it.

But until that happens…

122

I imagine He’d also have some bloody akward questions, like ‘So, Lord, what took you so long?’

123

I have to disagree. Science encompasses all that is publicly observable, which is not necessarily “all.” The pursuit of knowledge of everything? Heck yeah, count me in, but when we ask questions for which no serious evidence has ever been found in spite of searching (or cannot be found), we have to consider the possibility that science won’t help us.

The existence of God is one such problem: I have yet to hear a remotely satisfying public argument either for or against the existence of God. By “public” I mean an argument or evidence that can potentially be accepted as valid by anyone. This excludes arguments like “I know God answers my prayers” or “The concept of God just makes no sense to me” because while I may have great trust in my inner feelings, I’m probably the only person who does.

I’m certainly not holding my breath waiting for this to happen. In the absence of evidence, what help is science?

So I agree with WinAce: I have yet to hear of any publicly reliable justification for Theistic beliefs…or Atheistic beliefs.

Soup_du_jour, I think you’re right on the money: this the absolute best you can do with regard to this problem.

124

Weak, I don’t think there’s anything to disagree with. You’re quite right, anything observable, or at least anything that can be plausibly theorized- and by this I mean things like the fact we “knew” that Neutrinos probably existed before anyone ever actually detected one.

The argument here is that science would, if such an unlikely- well, impossible, actually- event as god’s sudden appearance ocurred…

… Well, let’s just say very few scientists would burn their labs down, toss out the white smocks and start worshipping.

Instead, they’d try to understand how this new phenomena meshed with the existing understanding of the world. God’s appearance wouldn’t render things like gravity, the Bernoulli Effect or Coriolis forces null and void- at best it might simply alter, greatly or slightly, our view of how these things work.

Suffice to say that I have not the least worry that such an event will ever happen. God, quite simply, does not exist and never did- he/they are literary creations, fables taken too seriously.

What I was trying to explain was my interpretation of the common- much too common- misconception that, were he to exist, he’d be somehow outside the realm of science. Well, true enough, as we now read about the character, he would indeed be outside the envelope of what we know of science and physics. But, if he somehow did appear/reveal himself, the assumption is, by the quote I referenced, that we’d have to throw out all science and start reading the Bible as literal truth… or something.

When instead, if such an event ocurred, there would be flocks of people getting out the Infrared cameras, the Geiger counters and neutron detectors, EM band scanners and RF sensors and digital cameras to record and analyze the phenomena. We’d have people trying to get a tissue or hair sample, using gas sniffers to see if God breathes normally, using IR thermometers to see what his body temperature is, you name it.

125

Doc Nickel -

I think you misinterpreted it; I don’t see that assumption anywhere.

God really would be outside the realm of science, except in the unlikely situation that God is visually revealed to millions of people; is photographed; actually enacts miracles; etc. Your argument only covers this situation, which I don’t think would be likely even in the event that God does exist. (We might actually agree on this; I couldn’t tell from your post.) If God exists and does not interfere with the Universe in any documentable way, science doesn’t help us. I think this is what Soup_du_jour meant.

126

I think I can agree that science could not directly observe god, assuming he exists. God showing up on a mountaintop would just be a projection of what god really is, and analyzing this projection would not necessarily tell us much about god.

However god is not the only unobservable thing. The Big Bang and black holes are not directly observable in principle. We can however observe their impact on the rest of the universe. If god did exist, and had interaction with us, now or in the past, the effects of this interaction should be obervable. If there are no such effects, well we can invent explanations, but the absence of god seems the best such explanation - especially when various holy books claim that god has had an impact on the world which we can’t find.

If you are a deist you don’t have these problems.

BTW, I don’t believe there is ever going to be evidence that everyone can accept. If you don’t think so, try chatting with a rabid creationist some day.

127

Right, God is not the only unobservable thing. To modern science, even consciousness is unobservable. The situation with consciousness may change; I doubt the situation with God ever will.

At least in theory, a God might intervene in publicly unobservable ways, but observable to an individual. Consider a God that speaks to you directly, but only to you and only through your mind. You could vehemently claim “look, I know God exists because I hear his voice every night” and be 100% right, but nobody has any obligation to believe you. The interaction is privately observable but publicly unobservable. Many people actually have claimed to have discourse with God (not that I believe them).

Another example: according to quantum theory, there is a limit to how precise measurements can be. So if God were to interfere only on minute length and time scales, we would have no scientific way of verifying it, although the effects would be real. Ultimately, the effects might (probably would) even turn out to be macroscopic, but we would have no way of knowing that God was behind it.

I think there’s an important, maybe subtle, distinction between religion and the problem of Theism vs. Atheism. A religion typically has one or more myths (or “stories” if you believe them) and some prescription of behavior, while neither of these is required for a simple belief in the existence of God. I agree that there are lots of arguments against lots of religions, but I don’t see any of them as evidence against Theism in general.

128

There ARE no atheistic beliefs. Atheism is not a belief; it is the lack of one particular belief. So although your statement is true, the last 3 words are superfluous.

129

Oblivion: Known. Known to be unobservable. Known to disprove God.

God: Known. Known to be unobservable. Known to disprove oblivion.

Existence: Unknown. Known to be observed. Known to hold both Oblivion and God.

Difference: Known. Known to be observed. Known to hold God.

Change: Known. Known to be observed. Known to hold God. Known to never actually change.

Some of the basics.

-Justhink

130

Oh yeah…

Stasis: Known. Known to be unobservable. Known to disprove God.

-Justhink

131

From dictionary.com:

I guess “disbelief” could be construed as a mere lack of belief, but accordin to definition 1b, which I think is the most common in modern usage, atheism does have a definite belief. I think simple lack of belief in the existence of God/gods is usually attributed to agnosticism.

132

Just as an observation, science is not merely the process of observing phenomena, but of reasoning logically in an inductive manner from them.

No one has ever observed a neutrino – merely their effects as regards other, observeable particles. No one has ever observed the theory of evolution by natural selection. Gresham’s Law is a truism of economics – but it is not itself an observed phenomenon, merely the generalization of many similar phenomena.

Hence, to determine scientifically whether God exists and/or meets any given definition of Him, one would need to come up with an agreed definition, define what tests would demonstrate His existence, perform those tests, and submit them to peer review.

Blowero, as regards atheism: There is a defined mind set which most theists erroneously regard most atheists as holding, thanks to the classic definition, of a dogmatic belief in the absence of any gods. This would certainly be an “atheistic belief.” However, virtually every atheist of my own acquaintance holds merely that in the absence of adequate evidence of the existence of any god to satisfy their own criteria for credulity, Occam’s Razor leads one to posit the non-existence of any god, save perhaps for a deus otiosus who in no way interacts with the phenomenal world.

justhink, regarding your last post: – Your statement out of context is bizarre. Care to expound so that we can agree, refute, dispute, or whatever?

133

That is quite true, and the reason that the challenge to an atheist to prove that there is no God is absurd. God is not well defined, and even one religion, Christianity, has several definitions. The fundamentalist definition is far different from a liberal Presbyterian.

However, most religions have their God or Gods acting upon the earth, since invisibly whispering in someone’s ear is not likely to be good for recruiting. This supposedly gives the “proof” of the religion. A religion, such as deism, which has no such interaction is indistinguishable from philosophy, since there is no final arbiter of morals and rules. Those religions don’t cause any problems, however the ones who require all to follow rules laid down by a deity whose existence they are unwilling and unable to prove do.

134

Disbelief is indeed a lack of belief in several dictionaries I have checked.

One must wonder if definition 1b is the atheist’s definition of atheism or the theist’s definition. Since there are more theists than atheists, it is plausible that the dictionary might use one biased towards being indefensible. The inclusion of definition 2 leads me to believe this.

I think we should be careful about using dictionary definitions of controversial topics. Remember the scandal a while back about Roget’s synonyms for homosexuality?

135

I think it’s quite obvious that the definitions found at Dictionary.com are biased:

Immorality? Is this supposed to be a definition, or an opinion? This is tantamount to giving “spendthrift” as a synonym for “Jew”, or “lazy” as a synonym for “Negro”.

I love that first choice of quotes. No bias there. :rolleyes:

My Oxford American Dictionary says: “a person who does not believe in the existence of a god or gods”, which is the correct definition.

I always get a chuckle when anyone makes the strawman argument that “this is what you believe, and you can’t prove it”. Atheism is not a belief system. Certainly, many atheists have beliefs, but they cannot rightly be called “atheistic beliefs”.

136

Ah, Merriam Webster.

Wherein “god” is “the creator of the universe” not “the being who some believe to have created the universe” and yet astrology is merely a “belief that…” Some words, apparently, are objective: everything else is subjective superstition.

—I think simple lack of belief in the existence of God/gods is usually attributed to agnosticism.—

Gnosis is knowledge, not belief. One can believe without a gnosis: an agnostic can also be a theist. Lack of belief is atheism plain and simple: as it has always been so for the major atheistic thinkers. Only some theists (most famously with the Catholic theologian Maritan, who exapnded on the idea that everyone KNOWS that god exists: athiests are just liars) and the more militant agnostics wish it to be different, in order to make things simpler. Look at C.S. Lewis: to him, the only alternative to the worship of his god is to forcefully deny the existence of his god. That isn’t very honest: but it makes ridiculing non-believers so much easier…

137

How would this be differentiated from “unbelief”?

138

Noooooooo not again!

139

Got a chuckle out of this definition from dictionary.com for theism.

:cool:

140

Here…I’ll just try to define my meaning precisely; maybe we can still avert semantic meltdown (my fault, mostly):

Meaning: I have yet to hear any convincing objective argument for either proposition: (1) there exists some kind of God; (2) there is no God.

You probably knew that. The semantics issue is hardly trivial, though.