“Life-force” is woo, not science.
Well, if you see God in every stalk of grass, bless you, but don’t imagine that has any scientific meaning at all. To begin with, you cannot demonstrate this personal vision to anyone else, and that’s a really big failure in scientific circles. (Rene Blondlot comes painfully to mind.)
You can’t point to any specific observed event and demonstrate that “only God” could have caused it. So the idea also fails the properties of “necessary and sufficient.” Dark Matter, as a model, fits both of those properties; all that’s missing is the concrete discovery.
No. Dark matter is a hypothesis, based on the fact that galactic motion does not conform with the math. Many researchers are trying to figure out how to actually detect it (it is genuinely invisible: we ultimately observe everything through EM, but the putative dark matter is not affected by EM and does not emit any). A cursory search will uncover a few scientists who are trying to resolve the discrepancies by tweaking our understanding of gravity itself one way or another.
It may be this era’s phlogiston, a theory that eventually gets discarded. But, unlike supernatural stuff, scientists will say, “oh, well, weren’t we silly” and move on. There is no heresy in discovery.
nonsense, the science being done on dark matter IS the scrutiny, and it is far, far more that any religious organisation will subject their own deities to.
Your point being?
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Very quickly you fell back into the traditional sky-father concept of God, I believe, halfway through your post. If science can adjust its hypotheses when new evidence presents itself, why can’t religion? Don’t you think religion is capable of evolving?
As for Dark Matter, if concrete discovery is missing, isn’t that on par with saying we believe the earth is flat; we just haven’t discovered the edge of it yet? I believe truly rational people are letting science have way too much latitude with theories that can’t be proven, and therefore rely on faith in future-scientists to solve the problem. Not really all that different from religious faith in many ways. It’s just the substitution of one authority figure for another.
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I have no problem with discounting pretty much all religious belief as superstition, akin to not stepping on a crack or you’ll break your mother’s back. But I am also skeptical of those who blindly have faith in science while at the same disparaging religious beliefs. Evolution, for example, is theory, not fact; that was Darwin’s contention, and though the theory fits pretty well for the most part, it does not explain why species evolve much more than to claim “they just do.” A supernatural deity is not required to cause evolution, but the basic question remains: how did life get started in the first place? What caused it? Science falls short as well,though it does help to explain an awful lot.
In my view, the God question is very simple: God is life. Does life exist? Do you believe in life? Does your belief or disbelief in life change the existence of life even one iota? Does it even matter whether or not you believe in life? If God is simply life itself, then it solves a whole lot of religious problems and reconciles with science no problem.
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Now here did I put that bong?
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I’m really struggling to see this as other than, “We don’t have an explanation for the ‘thing’ that makes nonliving matter into living matter . . . I’m gonna call it God”, in other words, we have no Theory of Abiogenesis . . . that sum it up correctly?
(Which, I’m reasonably certain, can be dismissed as being simply a “(G)god of the Gaps”.)
I also struggle to understand why you need to rename an unexplained, and undefined, “life-force” God; and why you don’t rename the unexplained, but fairly well defined, “gravity-force” God?
(And we also have no Theory of Gravity either.)
CMC fnord!
Ahhh, new partner, same ol’ song and dance, and me too tired to be bothered to teach it all . . . yet again. 
CMC fnord!
Given that many sects of the Abrahamic religions paint their god as perfect and unchanging, and their holy books as the arbiters of ultimate truth…
…And, of course, given that these beliefs are based on faith rather than an ever-evolving evidence base…
…Gonna be a little difficult.
I’m no expert on astrophysics, so I was, at first, hesitant to call this a bunch of bunk that shows little to no understanding of science. Then I saw this next bit, and I feel absolutely free to say that this is a bunch of bunk that shows little to no understanding of science, because it seems to be something of a pattern. :mad:
Utter nonsense. Yes, we “blindly have faith in science”, because the scientific method is the most demonstrably accurate and useful method for determining the truth of our reality. It’s not even just that nothing else comes close, it’s that I have yet to see any epistemology not based on physical empricism and evidence that can be demonstrated to have any value whatsoever. You might as well criticize us for having blind faith in what we can see with our own eyes.
Or do you mean blind faith in the results of scientific inquiry? Again, these results are the best explanations currently available to explain the universe produced by the best method we have for exploring how the universe works. Our faith in them is not blind, it is trust earned through the way science demonstrably works. It is also not dogmatic; if it turns out tomorrow that the preponderance of the evidence indicates that, say, there is no such thing as Dark Matter, then I will change my mind. But until then, your equivalence is absurd.
Evolution, for example, is “just a theory” in the same way gravity is “just a theory”, and the way the germ theory of disease is “just a theory”. If you don’t know what the term means, don’t use it. What’s more, it absolutely does explain why species evolve: because in an environment of limited resources and harsh competition, when individuals are born with various mutations, some of these are more or less likely to contribute to that individual being able to pass on their genes. Those propagate throughout the species more readily. This is the absolute basics of evolution. If two subsets of a species are geographically isolated and both are subjected to different selection pressures, these changes can accumulate and lead to groups which are not interfertile.
The evidence for how and why species evolve was present 150 years ago. Today, we have way, way, waaaay more evidence. I strongly recommend learning the basics of evolution before criticizing it.
At the moment, science does not have the answer for how life got started. We’re working on it, and every year seems to bring us closer and provide a clearer picture, but as of right now, we just don’t have the full picture.
That being said.
Why do you think we should introduce the supernatural to try to explain this? It’s not like we haven’t tried to do that before - Gods were responsible for lightning, volcanoes, diseases, and more. And in every case, this did nothing to advance our knowledge or improve our understanding of the universe. In fact, in many cases, it actively retarded our advancement, because people saw no reason to seek answers to questions we already knew the answers to, or rejected the naturalistic explanations because they thought they knew the answer already. The answer of “god did it” has not ONCE been demonstrably useful or valid. How could you possibly justify reaching to it after a millennia-long track record of complete and utter failure?
It’s not just a bad idea, it’s incredibly intellectually dishonest. If we don’t know, the honest response is, “we don’t know”. You can’t get from “we don’t know” to “therefore I know the answer”. That’s a complete contradiction.
What a confusing, unnecessary, and pointless redefinition of a word. When most people speak of “God”, they do not mean “life”. If they meant “life”, they would use the word “life”. When they refer to “god”, they typically mean a supernatural being with immense or endless knowledge and/or power. All you do by redefining god like this is muddy the waters. Yes, life exists. No, that doesn’t mean that god exists. Words mean things, and there’s literally no reason to try to redefine “god” to mean “life”, other than for confusing conflations.
“Science” isn’t a body of dogma. It’s a method. And no one is required to blindly accept any result of that method; apart from the constraints of time and resource one can reproduce - or disprove - any scientific hypothesis, theory or law one likes via that method.
Thanks BPC, you saved me a lot of less-eloquent typing in response to Biffster.
Their argument is just another rehashed “god of the gaps”, suggesting that what we don’t yet fully understand should be tagged with “god”. Pointless (and unnecessarily complicated).
I’d claim that there is not a single observeable or detectable phenomena for which “god” is the only required explanation.
Biffster, feel free to give examples if you can, if you can’t then shouldn’t you start to reconsider your personal definiton of “god”? it seems poetic at best but truly it is unnecessary, superfluous, pointless.
- That is not a question-that is a statement.
- Life is life-why rename it? Let your god get his own definition instead of stealing something else’s.
If God is life, why does he die so often?
…He gets better…
Look here: you’ve nailed him to the perch!
Literally!
So that’s how he got a fish as a symbol.
Evidence against the existence of a Risen God: If you were a “Risen God” how would you feel about the device used to kill you being displayed in the building supposedly built to worship you, worn around the necks of your worshippers, and displayed on the front of the books that supposedly records your teachings? “Hey, remember how we killed you? Here’s a constant reminder!” A cradle to commemorate his birth, or maybe a Shepard’s Crook to commemorate [del]our fleecing[/del]his guidance, but the lethal weapon used to torture him to death? If he existed, and had any say in the matter, there would be some heavy duty smiting going on, I think.