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Philosophy has come up empty? Who cares? Philosophy doesn't tell us what does and doesn't exist, science does. Before science, philosophy told us lots of falsities existed. Science has come up empty for evidence of god. You can't say god doesn't exist, you just can't find any evidence that god does exist. You can't prove a negative.

Does god exist? Yes, but so far only in the imaginations of large numbers of people. Just the way they used to imagine the earth is flat and that the sun revolved around it. Thank goodness science found evidence disproving that...before someone fell over the edge.

Accords pretty well with my own thoughts. I speak as someone utterly convinced of the reality of God but I have never found a remotely plausible philosophical argument (or scientific one for that matter) for His existence.

I'm not as averse to philosophy as the first posters in this thread. From the fairly limited amount I now about it, it can be useful and interesting. If my days each had 100 hours instead of 24, I'd certainly immerse myself in it more deeply.

What I am much averse to is the hollow empty pseudo-philosophical tosh that is bandied about by too many with delusions of being great thinkers. What they come up with is indeed often trumped by science. But I think it might be a bit harsh to smear all of philosophy by the bad examples.

Marcus;

"Philosophy doesn't tell us what does and doesn't exist, science does"

By "science" do you mean "the senses".

Because I'm fairly sure that no scientific theory or explanation alone can tell us anything about whether something does or does not exists...it relies on GIVEN, EXISTING data.

So science has to presuppose that data exists....and there must be a philosophical assumption of the validity of data in order to ground science.

As for Mr Byrne, I partly agree.

Religious faith cannot fully be justified by argument. But precisely because it deals with an orientation that both transcends and precedes argument.

The prime number example is disingenuous. Is there a foolproof argument that there exist infinite many prime numbers?

Doesn't it first neccessitate some kind of acceptance of the nature of number, and of infinity? Faith is an orientation more akin to that kind of fundamental grounding than Mr Byrne admits.

I

Some other questions.

If there is God[s] is it one[s] deserving of my devotion?
(My answer would be no.)

How can we usurp God[s]?

What went before God[s]?

How would we know if God[s] died?

Is there an everlasting soul?
There appears to be no evidence for this claim; so why should I believe in such a thing?

Ditto, a life after death, salvation, heaven, hell, purgatory, limbo etc etc.

Portwyne

"Proof" can be defined in many different ways. If we mean arguments that will convince every rational person, then I agree with you. That seems a very high standard, given that we don't have a "proof" against skepticism.

On your certainty that God exists - I'd be glad to hear it if anyone in the Western hemisphere could tell me what you mean by God ( ;

GV

Religions are ancient accounts of how the world works. They are like very old maps which show a few potato-shaped shaped countries bunched round the Mediterranean. They are really obsolete, but people are taught to revere them at a very young age and so they find it impossible to assess them properly.

As Loyola nearly said, "Give me a child until she is seven and I will show you the man."

You might as well try to persuade a member of the Taliban that he does not need a beard.

Oldredeyes-

In reference to the average religious person or churchgoer, you're absolutely right. What they believe is a consequence of their upbringing, and little more or less. Culture and tradition dictated their theological 'choices' later in life.

But this thread is most relevant not to the average religious, but to the scholar, student - theologian - who has made a conscious effort to be objective in these matters and to approach them academically. In these cases, there is a more neutral starting point and therefore the possibility of a more objective answer.

I believe God exists and that he wants William Crawley circumcised as soon as possible.Anyone wanting proof of my belief is rather missing the point.How I know this is itself unknown.
Now I call on all bloggers to help me carry out God's will on Will's willy.

nobledeebee

So, you know God exists. There ya are now. But I'm more interested in how you know.... ah never mind.

How can we "prove" that matter exists?

Some people may think that is a stupid question, but from a philosophical point of view it is not. Scientific thought - in other words, the empirical method - is not the highest form of thought, as it is dependent on logical inference. And logical inference is itself not the result of empirical observation. You cannot, for instance, look through a microscope at atoms, or through a telescope at stars and see the command: "Empiricism is true, and therefore only empirical proofs constitute knowledge". The scientific method depends on something that science itself cannot prove. In other words "science" itself has to pay homage to a "faith position" called "empiricism".

We should therefore not rely on "science" to define "proof"; rather we should rely on sound epistemology.

From an epistemological point of view the claims of naturalists (and therefore atheists) are pure presumption. It is the idea that "science" gives us some kind of magical access to "proof" about all things in life. This is the result of shoddy and lazy thinking. From a strictly logical point of view there is no more reason for us to believe in matter than to believe in God. Anybody who doesn't understand this has obviously not thought much about philosophy, logic or the concept of "proof".

Epistemology reveals to us that "atheism" is as much a position of "faith" as "theism". I am well aware that there are many people inhabiting the blogosphere who delight in heaping scorn on such a statement - so if it makes them feel better, then let the stream of insults begin.

But no amount of derision will undermine the logic of my position.

Didn't Douglas Adams say something similar in his Babel fish "argument"?

So it comes down to the same old argument again and again and again. The philosophy bugaboo. Last time I said it, it was pointed out to me that I was arguing with Socrates himself. But I'm not in the least afraid of Socrates who was aparently the first one who said; "Why do we study philosophy? Because the unexamined lif is not worth living." Now if anyone can find a more self serving statement than that, I'd like to hear it. It says if you don't take my course and pay me tuition to understand life, you'd be better off dead. But what does philosophy teach us about life? That depends on which philosopher you choose to believe since every one of them has a new twist to sell. Whatever you want to believe, you'll find a philosopher who says you are right. Or to paraphrase Shakespeare; "There are more philosophies Horatio than are dreamt of in your heaven and earth. When we look back at what ancient philosophers like Aristotle said about the physical world from the philosophies they created before science began to rationally and systematically investigate and deduce the truth of it, those hypotheses weren't merely just wrong, they were laughable and pathetic in light of what we now know. Today just about any five year old child knows more about the physical world than Aristotle knew in a lifetime.

Mark

is you choosing to confine knowledge to scientific "truth" not a philosophical standpoint? why was Shakespeare right?

i think its very easy to live a live inside nice scientific boundaries, helps cope with the fear of finding something you cant deal with, but the irony is that you just end up more and more scared, because the answers you need aren't there.

i don't think Socrates was particularly interested in universities or clever men, he wanted people to not be afraid to go looking beyond what the culture excepted, and he died for this, i find that quite challenging

all the best

If we accept that science is what we can discover for ourselves, then it is probably true that God cannot be 'proved' by scientific investigation.

However, Christians hold that God has revealed Himself - in Creation, in Scripture and in Christ, and that evidence consistent with these IS available...for those who take the trouble to look!
(Though - as someone has said,"An atheist looks for God in the same way a burglar looks for a policeman!"

To such, God offers the invitation: "You will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart." (Jeremiah 29:13)

pastorphilip, unless you have another avocation which pays you an income, you make your money by selling your philosophy. IMO, your analogy is wrong. An atheist if he has a scientifically trained mind looks for god the way a thirsty man looks for a drink of water. The difference is that those who see and think clearly don't find one and live with thirst (for salvation which unlike physical thirst is not fatal) while those who don't, invent the illusion of an oasis in the desert. Often at least in the US, when one illusion disappears, they go looking for another...and another...and another.

What some people seem to want, is for the existance of god to be taken on more than faith alone. As we have seen with so many whose mantra is "trust me" like those who stole money in the world of finance, their promises came up empty. How fortunate for those who sell god that the buyer will never know whether he was sold a pig in a poke until after he is dead...assuming those who sold him the philosophy of his religion were right. Of course if they were wrong, not only won't he know it, he won't have any way to warn others not to buy into it and make the same mistake. It's the perfect scam because it can't be disproved.

Mgnbar

We had this discussion several years ago with a poster who used the moniker Maureen. It was about whether metaphors and poetry told us more truth about the world than science. Guess which side I was on.

If you are scared to die, then you will live a life of perpetual fear. "A coward dies a thousand deaths, the valliant die but once." If your religion brings you comfort, then fine. The only problem is that so many insist on jamming their religion down everyone elses throats no matter whether they have to indoctrinate them by drumming it into their brains from the time they are old enough to speak or fight a war to kill off "the infidels" who aren't convinced. Apparantly, just believing it themselves is not enough to comfort them, they have to get everyone else in the world to agree that they are right. Short of psychiatry, I don't know how you deal with the fear of life without meaning and eternal unconscious death afterwards. Or as Art Bell put it, it's "lights out." :-) Unfortunately, that is what our current understanding of the physical universe leads us to conclude is the actual truth of it.

If a little philosophical reflection can help people to clear out some ancient mistaken assumptions in their world-view, then I think that it has served a useful purpose. Religious believers who have never seriously examined the basis of their own beliefs are in serious need of that kind of philosophy.

At 12 above, LSV wrote "From a strictly logical point of view there is no more reason for us to believe in matter than to believe in God." That seems to me to be a variant of the old solipistic argument - 'the only certainly I can have is in myself'. Which isn't far removed from 'how do you know that everything isn't just a dream'. That sort of stuff is hardly worth bothering with - who wants to discuss whether everything around us is real or not? Plain nonsense.

Descartes and his cogito went out the window when people realised that he had to formulate his scepticism in words, but language is a social institution. Words only have meaning where there are socially agreed rules for their use. So a solipistic stance cannot be expressed. Or if it is expressed, it immediately contradicts itself.

A more sensible approach is to assume that planet Earth does exist and that the scientific knowledge that has been accumulated does tell us something about it. Then we can ask whether ancient stories of palaces in the sky, omnipotent gods and magic carpets are compatible with that knowledge, or should they be relegated to the Fiction Department. I think the latter.

Oldredeyes

You say, "A more sensible approach is to assume that planet Earth does exist and that the scientific knowledge that has been accumulated does tell us something about it."

And I'll assume that you've spotted the philosophical assumptions of that statement.

BTW, yes, magic carpets are fiction.

#18 - oldredeyes - "A more sensible approach is to assume that planet Earth does exist and that the scientific knowledge that has been accumulated does tell us something about it. Then we can ask whether ancient stories of palaces in the sky, omnipotent gods and magic carpets are compatible with that knowledge, or should they be relegated to the Fiction Department. I think the latter."

Oh, how sensible you are, oldredeyes! Of course we should assume that planet Earth does exist. I make this assumption every day of my life, and it is an enormously helpful assumption. But the point I was making is that from a strictly logical point of view (and note that atheists appeal constantly to the LOGIC of their position), it is an assumption. It is a very good assumption indeed.

But scientific investigation, as I pointed out, is based on another assumption called "empiricism" - the belief that all knowledge can be explained as a result of sense perception. But this assumption itself has to held "in faith" before any scientific investigation can take place. In other words, it is a position of faith, logically speaking. No amount of scientific investigation will tell you that the philosophy called "empiricism" is true. You have to believe the philosophy before you do the science.

Now you cannot appeal to logic to attempt to debunk other people's belief in God, and then abandon the rules of logic when your belief comes into question. There is nothing in science or the scientific method which either proves atheism or disproves theism - or vice versa.

So according to your own reasoning the atheistic explanation of the universe qualifies as much for "the Fiction Department" as the theistic explanation.

Hello logica_sine_vanitate,

I think your post #20 went off a bit in several ways.

First there is your treatment of the word assumption. When an assumption has been shown to work very well time and time again, as is the case for empiricism, how long will you persist in calling it an assumption? It seems forever?

But for the sake of discussion let's say science is full of assumptions. It seems you see no distinction between assumptions. They're all on the same level right? And thus you come to the conclusion

"the atheistic explanation of the universe qualifies as much for "the Fiction Department" as the theistic explanation."

So science with its undisputed track record and belief in Magic man high up in the sky looking over each and everyone of us are on the same level? Nope.

And also in your post there seemed to be that implicit claim of having something credible to stand on when you said.

"There is nothing in science or the scientific method which either proves atheism or disproves theism - or vice versa."

Ah, the old canard of taking the inability to disprove theism as reason to claim credibility for it. You should perhaps Google 'Bertrand Russell teapot'.

On the whole, your post seems to claim equal intellectual respect for science and theism. On the part of theism that is wholly undeserved.

greets,
Peter

Further to my last comment, I would also like to add that there is something even nearer to us than "matter" and that is "consciousness".

No one will deny that "consciousness" exists, but we cannot see it, hear it, touch it, taste it or smell it. It is not subject to empirical scientific investigation.

Now I accept that some people may explain its reality by naturalistic means, but such an explanation would have to involve making assumptions. We can believe that our consciousness is the effect of certain physical properties, but we cannot prove that. Such an explanation, as I said, would be dependent on a naturalistic philosophy.

If someone were to explain consciousness in a spiritual way, they would not be making any more of an assumption - or "leap of faith" - than a naturalist.

So, I'm afraid, that all this scornful debunking of faith in God or spiritual realities is nothing other than the workings of naive philosophical prejudice, and has nothing to do with sound logic or indeed good science.

#21 - PeterKlaver - "On the whole, your post seems to claim equal intellectual respect for science and theism. On the part of theism that is wholly undeserved."

I can't help noticing how you juxtapose "science and theism" as if to suggest that "science implies atheism" or that the scientific method has proven atheism to be true. It has not and cannot, since science deals with the investigation of matter, whereas atheism is a philosophy which is read into the universe. "Atheism" is a theory and cannot be anything other than a theory, whereas "science" deals with empirical facts.

This is the error which pervades our culture, media and education system, and is the basis for all the attacks on anyone who dares to suggest that the scientific data suggest explanations which lie outside the natural world. It is the tyrannical imposition of a naturalistic philosophy dressed up as "science".

I really think you need to think more carefully about the nature and limits of science and the scientific method.

Lunch is ready and I'll get back to this thread later.

Just to say at this point, logica sine vanitate we've been discussing similar issues, especially the one on consciousness, on a thread called Science and God, you might wish to look it up.

And Peter, I see you persist in referring to theism as magic; why, I wonder, when you know it's nothing of the kind!

Oh, and can we establish this once and for all, (cos I'm tired repeating it) no one here is saying that Science doesn't have a track record.

Here's a very good debate between Dr. John Lennox and Richard Dawkins on "the God delusion":



For once I thought Dawkins was not that great in explaining his philosophical arguments for the non-existance of God. Lennox, who hails from Norn Iron, on the other hand perfomed surprisingly well. Worth listening to.

Hello logica_sine_vanitate,

I'll echo petermorrows invitation to check out the god and science thread. Although it is running into hundreds of posts now, many quite lengthy. Catching up from the very beginning would probably take the better part of a day of non-stop reading. The bit

"No one will deny that "consciousness" exists, but we cannot see it, hear it, touch it, taste it or smell it. It is not subject to empirical scientific investigation."

is something I would disagree with, but the other thread would be a better place to carry on discussion about it. The rest of post 22 seems again to be all about placing all assumptions on the same level. Do you think that making any assumption put a view on the same level as another idea that involves an assumption? Is there no distinction between assumptions?

In post 22 you wrote

"I can't help noticing how you juxtapose "science and theism" as if to suggest that "science implies atheism" or that the scientific method has proven atheism to be true. It has not and cannot, since science deals with the investigation of matter, whereas atheism is a philosophy which is read into the universe. "Atheism" is a theory and cannot be anything other than a theory, whereas "science" deals with empirical facts."

I don't consider science and atheism the same, although for many the former leads to the latter. I don't think science needs to prove atheism. Atheism (to me at least, definitions may vary, let's not get bogged down) means not assuming a god and being wary of the mode of thinking that does. Atheism doesn't need to be proven. The burden of evidence is on those who claim there to be god(s).
And as a small technical nag: science doesn't deal only with matter. Graham seemed to make the same mistake on the other thread.

"This is the error which pervades our culture, media and education system, and is the basis for all the attacks on anyone who dares to suggest that the scientific data suggest explanations which lie outside the natural world. It is the tyrannical imposition of a naturalistic philosophy dressed up as "science"."

I love listening to such cries. It's almost as if I hear the Dover school board members talking in the discussion in which they changed the definition of science so that they could shove god into it. And cries of repression, "tyrannical imposition" even in your case. Yup, that checks most of the boxes all right.

I've only gotten halfway through the broadcast and will listen to it probably several times. Dawkins does not seem to be a good debater. That does not alter the validity of his ideas. But some of the things he says are irrelevant. For example, whether religion is good or bad has nothing to do with the existance or lack of existance of god.

Darwin's theory of evolution including its extrapolation based on our current far more detailed understanding does not refute the existance of god either. It still leaves open the hypothesis that the original spark of life was created by a god. But that argument is flawed in other ways, certainly unproven. I was thinking back to the debate between Dawkins and MacIntosh and the prattlings of Wilder-Smith we went through a few years ago. Their argument was that the spontaneous formation of DNA from non living matter was as improbable as the spontaneous formation of a 747 plane. Having given this some thought, it became obvious to me that this was very bad science, an entirely unfounded analogy. DNA is a relatively simple molecule. It's made up of only four sugars occuring in only two pairs. The only difference between one strand of DNA and another is the sequence and number of these sugar pairs. DNA could have evolved from the very similar molecule RNA, in fact, the first prokaryotic cells from a virus.



A virus is nothing more than a strand of RNA coated with proteins which are in turn made up of chains of amino acids. All of the constituents to form them were present in the early earth, Amonia, methane, CO2, oxygen in great quantity. All it would have taken was a suitable primordial soup for the earliest form of life to occur, possibly as the result of electrical activity (lightning) in the atmosphere. Once the process of the simplest form of life began, the remaining steps were also natural occurrances. These chemical processes are frequenly observable. The imputing of intelligence to DNA is again bad science. A 747 on the other hand is made up of millions of different kinds of molecules many of which are rarely seen in nature, some never. In scientific terms, its entropy (order versus disorder) is many many orders of magnitude lower than living organisms and much lower than DNA. There is no comparison. That doesn't mean that somewhere in the universe over its existance a 747 won't spontaneously come together somewhere but we have no way of knowing it. It's like that old hypothesis that if you put a chimpanzee in front of a typewriter long enough he'd type out the encyclopedia Britanica and every one of Shakespeare's works.

The queston of creation of the universe is a tougher matter. If there is a god, then the universe is not rational because whatever its laws, he could capriciously change it at any time in any way. Inconsistant from time to time, place to place because god willed it so, one day the law of gravity might be repealed. Considering how precariously our existance depends on the universe being exactly as it is according to these theological pseudo scientists, any change to it would kill us off completely and instantly. I don't think there is any way to prove a multiverse, that is multiple universes. While I believe in the big bang, I'm not so sure that it is the beginning of time. My hypothesis is that we exist on a multidimensional sphere where all of the galaxies will eventually meet on the other side to implode and explolde again in a perpetual cycle. That is, the beginning and end of time has no meaning.

It is clear there are some things science will not be able to explain because it may be that evidence is beyond the reach not only of our senses but our ability to infer from what we can sense. This still does not demonstrate the existance of god. Too bad Dawkins is not a better debater. It's also too bad he dilutes his pertinent arguments with those which have no bearing on his central thesis.

I can't take atheism seriously. Of course God exists. Look at the universe, look at yourself, look at mathematics, and tell me that all of that creativity, ingenuity and genius points to nothing. It points to an amazing intelligence at the heart of the universe. Look at basic ideas like causation and look at the incredible improbability that humans would ever be produced here by chance: it all points to God. Many great philosophers have now become theists as a result of the strides forward in philosophy towards arguments that pack a punch. From the anthropic argument to the nature of science itself: it all points to God. Atheists are in the minority. It's a tiny minority. They will always be in the minority because human beings have been created in such a way that we resonate with the heartbeat of God in the universe. It's in our nature to believe.

I think that I agree with PK - a lot of this seems pertinent to the "Science and God" thread. We could move the discussion here, but that would mean repeating a lot of arguments.

G Veale

Am coming to this thread as one out of due time so apologies but, nobledeebee, with regard to your post #10, I am more interested as to how you know Will isn't already circumcised. Was it a revelation? As Private Eye used to say "I think we should be told".

On a complete aside the genital mutilation of children should be completely banned in any civilised society.