Can you mix science with god?

[iNow]

[tar]

iNow,

 

But someone can engage in scientific method, better the human condition and still be unable to transcend parochial concerns.

 

Such a real condition exists with any one of us that holds onto an idea or principle whose purpose it is to transcend our parochial concerns in favor of a greater good. And faith in that principle can be held, ignoring contrary evidence as in the box on the right under the "faith" column.

 

As it is a tenant of Humanism to attempt to transcend parocial concerns in favor of a common morality that places all humans in an equal position in the eyes of this god, this principle, this transcendent good, and as it is proven that Humanism is compatible with science, in that many scientists seem to hold a belief system akin to Humanism, and have faith in the workable nature of this belief system, then it is possible for a scientist to have faith, ignorant of the impossible nature of transcending parochial, local, selfish, individual concerns.

 

As it is unrealistic to "love the world" by holding Jesus in your heart, or striving 'til all the world is for Allah, or to understand Brahman and Atman as one, it is unrealistic to be a Humanist, and discount the transcendent beliefs of most every "other" human on the planet.

 

If transcendent belief in the unparochial is real, and good and proper and useful, then the atheist can embrace this belief, when found in a theist, and a theist can embrace this belief, when found in a Humanist, and there is a mapping that can be made between the beliefs. And you can mix science with God.

 

Regards, TAR2

Edited March 2, 2013 by tar

[Semjase]

 

This is priceless but one thing science and faith can agree on if something that is proven

correct within a known set parameters, for example a computer program, it stands correct forever

although religious people have problems with "ignore contradicting evidence".

[iNow]

Such a real condition exists with any one of us that holds onto an idea or principle whose purpose it is to transcend our parochial concerns in favor of a greater good. And faith in that principle can be held, ignoring contrary evidence as in the box on the right under the "faith" column.

Except that's not the type of faith being referenced. It's a completely different usage of the term. You are referring to trust or acceptance, not faith of the type referenced in the image. It's as if you're asserting that one's "faith" that the sun will rise in the morning or that gravity will pull us toward the earth when jumping off a building is somehow equivalent to ones faith that a magic dictator exists and cares whether or not we eat shellfish or marry a non-virgin. As I'm sure you'll agree, those are not the same, so it's important not to conflate them.

 

one thing science and faith can agree on if something that is proven

correct within a known set parameters, for example a computer program, it stands correct forever

Sorry, but wrong. Science is always provisional, and nothing is ever proved. It is accepted based on the weight of the evidence, but that acceptance is something subject to change in the face of new evidence or information. Proofs are for math, not science.

[Semjase]

 

 

Sorry, but wrong. Science is always provisional, and nothing is ever proved. It is accepted based on the weight of the evidence, but that acceptance is something subject to change in the face of new evidence or information. Proofs are for math, not science.

 

A real computer works under science and it is proven to work one way unless the hardware and/or

software is faulty, therefore it is proven to work one way under known parameters of science, maybe religion

and science can find common ground on this issue. Scientist are now trying to find evidence that

we are part of a computer simulation, maybe knowing all the parameters of our reality, then science and

the reality of God can be unified under one complete picture of our reality.

[John Cuthber]

A real computer works under science and it is proven to work one way unless the hardware and/or

software is faulty, therefore it is proven to work one way under known parameters of science, maybe religion

and science can find common ground on this issue. Scientist are now trying to find evidence that

we are part of a computer simulation, maybe knowing all the parameters of our reality, then science and

the reality of God can be unified under one complete picture of our reality.

If it turned out that we are a computer simulation, where does that leave the existence of God?

If I'm not real, how "real" would God be?

Anyway, it's an amusing matter to discuss in the pub, but I don't think many people take the Matrix seriously.

Anyway, back to the topic.

The thing about God is that He expressly forbids science about Himself.

(Deuteronomy 6:16)

So, if you believe in Him, you don't do science on Him.

If you don't believe in Him, why would you bother to do science on something that's not real?

The whole point of God is that He's supernatural, and science deals with nature so there's no sensible science to do with Him.

Of course there might be plenty of neuroscience which explains why people suffer from the delusion called religion.

[tar]

iNow,

 

I do conflate the two definitions, primarily because a see a similarity between the beliefs of a humanist and the beliefs of (for instance) of Pope emeritus Benedict. A humanist would suggest that there is purpose and workable goodness to be had, by living in a way that takes other entities into consideration, that their will is important and real, and that there is an overall scheme which our individual attitude toward this greater good fits into. Pope Benedict would suggest that there is purpose and beauty in building ones life with Christ at the center.

 

A humanist would suggest that others should follow their perscription and things would be better. The Pope would suggest that if everyone held Christ in their heart, things would be better.

 

If Pope Benedict is referencing a sky dictator, that does not exist, then people would not find value and purpose in a life, with Christ at the center. If humanism is referencing a common morality that does not exist, then people would not find value and purpose in a life based on a common concern for each other and the planet we reside on.

 

So I conflate the two because the scientist trusts the world to consistently be there, to have been there before, and to be there later. Not unlike the trust in an eternal God.

 

And I conflate the two because the scientist knows the laws of physics to be operating everywhere, all the time consistently in a manner that fits together perfectly, with every piece and part aware of and informed of the rest, and affected by the rest, in time, that there is overriding truth that the universe knows, a truth greater than that held by an individual component of the universe. Not unlike the conception of a perfect, omnipotent, omniscient originator and ruler of the universe.

 

I conflate the two, because I personally can not find there to be the black and white distinctions between the two, that you evidently are certain of. And I tend to give everybody the benefit of the doubt, in the sense that they have just as much "right" to reality, as I do, and it could be true, that a Theist's view of it, is more similar to an Athiest's view of it, then what would be guessed or assumed by the Theist about the Atheist's view, or by the Atheist about the Theist's view.

 

Especially interesting to me, when talking about faith and belief, is that I look for agreement toward other people, for validation of my beliefs. Peer review is not limited to only one class of studies.

 

Regards, TAR2

Edited March 3, 2013 by tar

[Semjase]

If it turned out that we are a computer simulation, where does that leave the existence of God?

If I'm not real, how "real" would God be?

Anyway, it's an amusing matter to discuss in the pub, but I don't think many people take the Matrix seriously.

Anyway, back to the topic.

The thing about God is that He expressly forbids science about Himself.

(Deuteronomy 6:16)

So, if you believe in Him, you don't do science on Him.

If you don't believe in Him, why would you bother to do science on something that's not real?

The whole point of God is that He's supernatural, and science deals with nature so there's no sensible science to do with Him.

Of course there might be plenty of neuroscience which explains why people suffer from the delusion called religion.

 

 

I believe in the truth about God, the science about God what's the difference? How can you put trust a higher power

who is not prepared to be honest about himself with anyone? I believe in the highest intelligence in this reality which may not be the

Judah Christian God. Being a believer in the science of this reality I'm interested in the origins and theory behind our reality. Science

and intelligence is trying to move us ahead to a better world but many organized religions are trying to move us backwards away

from the truth of the intelligence overseeing this reality.

Edited March 3, 2013 by Semjase

[Tamorph]

Religion is subject to scientific thought just as much as everything else is, and there are Christians who are scientists, Atheistic scientists and agnostic scientists.

 

For me agnosticism is the scientifically honest view, as I know of no convincing scientific evidence that proves there is a god, and I know of no convincing scientific evidence that there is no god.

 

There may be. There may not be. I am happy to accept scientific proof either way. There is ample evidence that the world could have been created without a god, but that is not proof that it was created without a god.

 

What I do object to is evangelical Christians who say I MUST BELIEVE, but provide no scientific evidence, and evangelical atheists who say I MUST NOT BELIEVE but provide no scientific evidence that there is no god.

 

The current state of scientific knowledge cannot prove or disprove god, so this is definitely an area that some scientists should be (and are) looking into. Science and religion definitely mix. What could be more exciting than trying to prove, or disprove, this ultimate riddle.

[JohnCli]

It is true that almost every religion have loop holes but we shouldn't forget that religion also helped humanity excel and progress.

 

Christianity guided most of the western European countries during the medieval ages.

 

They gave people hope and helped them to be civil in their time.

 

The fear of going to hell or purgatory also helped a lot of countries maintain order.

Religion is subject to scientific thought just as much as everything else is, and there are Christians who are scientists, Atheistic scientists and agnostic scientists.

 

For me agnosticism is the scientifically honest view, as I know of no convincing scientific evidence that proves there is a god, and I know of no convincing scientific evidence that there is no god.

 

There may be. There may not be. I am happy to accept scientific proof either way. There is ample evidence that the world could have been created without a god, but that is not proof that it was created without a god.

 

What I do object to is evangelical Christians who say I MUST BELIEVE, but provide no scientific evidence, and evangelical atheists who say I MUST NOT BELIEVE but provide no scientific evidence that there is no god.

 

The current state of scientific knowledge cannot prove or disprove god, so this is definitely an area that some scientists should be (and are) looking into. Science and religion definitely mix. What could be more exciting than trying to prove, or disprove, this ultimate riddle.

 

Well said.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Atheists deny that there is a God but they still consider that there are Life Forms outside earth and some of them believe the Big Bang Theory so why don't they consider that maybe God is another form of life who lives in a separate dimension who created the dense matter and made that dense matter to explode resulting into the creation of our universe?

[John Cuthber]

"It is true that almost every religion have loop holes but we shouldn't forget that religion also helped humanity excel and progress."

 

Can you cite evidence for that please?

 

People may have done good things in the name of God, but those people would probably have done good things anyway.

What evidence is there that religion "helped humanity excel and progress"?

 

Incidentally, how agnostic are you and tamorph about the tooth fairy and Santa?

What about Thor and Ra?

You can't prove they don't exist so you should believe in them just as much as you believe in "God".

Or would that be a bit silly?

Edited March 3, 2013 by John Cuthber

[Tamorph]

science seems to contradict almost everything about God

 

I'm an agnostic scientist but I've never seen ANY evidence to contradict god, nor to prove god's existence for that matter.

 

Science does not 'seem' to contradict god, it simply has nothing to say about the matter.

 

It may seem to contradict 'your' idea of god, or contradict some teachings in religious scripture, but this of itself neither proves nor disproves whether there is a god.

 

Science contradicts the idea of god creating everything in seven days, but there are other views about god. Some, for example, believe that god created the big bang and the rules of physics, and then left everything to work the way it has.

 

I'm not saying that is what happened, as there is no evidence of anything before the big bang. What I'm saying is that we just don't know, and in that respect one theory is as valid as any other.

 

Of course, if you've come up with evidence of what there was before the big bang I'm quite willing to read it, but if not, then I'll just sit on the agnostic fence and wait until there is such evidence one way or another,

[SciFiReal]

For me science is God and it is in every object or being. It is just the ancients did not call it "science".

[JohnCli]

"It is true that almost every religion have loop holes but we shouldn't forget that religion also helped humanity excel and progress."

 

Can you cite evidence for that please?

 

People may have done good things in the name of God, but those people would probably have done good things anyway.

What evidence is there that religion "helped humanity excel and progress"?

 

Incidentally, how agnostic are you and tamorph about the tooth fairy and Santa?

What about Thor and Ra?

You can't prove they don't exist so you should believe in them just as much as you believe in "God".

Or would that be a bit silly?

 

 

So you don't believe that the Catholic Church never influenced humanity in a good way?

 

There is no evidence that Thor and Ra Exist/Existed, however there are a lot of evidence that Jesus existed though most likely you're kind of people would just treat these evidences as rubbish or invalid.

 

Santa is Saint Nicholas so yeah he does exist.

[Ringer]

There is no evidence that Thor and Ra Exist/Existed, however there are a lot of evidence that Jesus existed though most likely you're kind of people would just treat these evidences as rubbish or invalid.

 

Santa is Saint Nicholas so yeah he does exist.

 

There is as much evidence for Jesus as there is for Hercules, Odysseus, etc. Meaning there is a book that says they existed and did incredible things.

[immortal]

Religion + Science = Pseudo-science

Yes, if you mix religion with science what you get at best is pseudo-science. Science deals with the phenomena and religion deals with the noumena, their epistemology, ontology and methodology are completely different and do not mix well.

Religion is under no obligation to go by the rules of science, an omniscient God is free to set up this universe in his own ways. As Eugene Scott said "You start with the revealed truth and that governs your reflection upon the empirical world". This is religion. Creation myths are more real than ordinary reality, modern people don't understand what our ancients stood for and they mix religion with science either to make their beliefs look rational or to gain credibility for their claims by using scientific terms.

Religion is independent and it defines reality for us and writes down the implications for science, not the other way around where religious scriptures are twisted so that it is made in accordance with what modern science says. I also think that observers came first and then Big Bang happened. Religion trumps logic, reason and just about everything.

Religious people are disinterested in such questions like the first cause of Big Bang, origin of life, whether universe expands forever or collapses back into a Big Crunch, what they are more interested is in the manifested world of God. Most people don't know that there is a manifested world of God out there, God is a person and he is anthropomorphic and this is incompatible with science.


Take Kabbalah for example:

Concealed and Revealed God

The nature of the Divine prompted kabbalists to envision two aspects to God:

 

(a) God in essence, absolutely transcendent, unknowable, limitless Divine simplicity, and

 

(b) God in manifestation, the revealed persona of God through which He creates and sustains and relates to mankind. Kabbalists speak of the first as Ein/Ayn Sof ( "the infinite/endless", literally "that which has no limits").Of the impersonal Ein Sof nothing can be grasped.

 

The second aspect of Divine emanations, however, are accessible to human perception, dynamically interacting throughout spiritual and physical existence, reveal the Divine immanently, and are bound up in the life of man. Kabbalists believe that these two aspects are not contradictory but complement one another, emanations revealing the concealed mystery from within the Godhead. According to Kabbalistic cosmology, the Ten Sefirot correspond to ten levels of creation. These levels of creation must not be understood as ten different "gods" but as ten different ways of revealing God, one per level. It is not God who changes but the ability to perceive God that changes.

[ydoaPs]

Science deals with the phenomena and religion deals with the noumena, their epistemology, ontology and methodology are completely different and do not mix well.

Thanks for stating the obvious that science is accountable to reality and religion just makes stuff up.

[immortal]

Thanks for stating the obvious that science is accountable to reality and religion just makes stuff up.

 

Not really, phenomena is the world as it appears to the human mind and noumena is the real world as it actually exists independent of us so the world which religion deals with is far more real than than the world of empirical sciences.

[John Cuthber]

According to the WIKI article about it, "The noumenon pron.: /ˈnuːmɨnɒn/ is a posited object or event that is known (if at all) without the use of the senses."

 

And, yet, as long ago as Descartes' time, we knew that we only know about things via our senses.

So, you are talking about the set of things which we don't know to exist.

That's made up stuff.

[ydoaPs]

Not really, phenomena is the world as it appears to the human mind and noumena is the real world as it actually exists independent of us

Which as Kant (who coined the term) points out, is necessarily beyond evidence. Any belief about the noumena other than that (and things derivable from that) is by definition irrational since it is impossible for any belief about the noumena to meet the threshold for sufficient evidence. Per your distinction, this means religion as a whole is an irrational enterprise.

so the world which religion deals with is far more real than than the world of empirical sciences.

Except that there's nothing you can know about it. You can't even know that it exists. ALL you can rationally have beliefs about is the phenomena.

 

According to the WIKI article about it, "The noumenon pron.: /ˈnuːmɨnɒn/ is a posited object or event that is known (if at all) without the use of the senses."

 

And, yet, as long ago as Descartes' time, we knew that we only know about things via our senses.

So, you are talking about the set of things which we don't know to exist.

That's made up stuff.

Indeed.

[Iggy]

Religion + Science = Pseudo-science

 

Yes, if you mix religion with science what you get at best is pseudo-science. Science deals with the phenomena and religion deals with the noumena, their epistemology, ontology and methodology are completely different and do not mix well.

 

...Creation myths are more real than ordinary reality, modern people don't understand what our ancients stood for and they mix religion with science either to make their beliefs look rational or to gain credibility for their claims by using scientific terms.

 

But, religion is not the noumena. Given the map / territory relationship, religion is not the territory.

 

If it is impossible to know what is in a box then it doesn't matter if I use my senses to reason about what might be in the box, or if I use my spiritual non-senses to make up a story about what is going on in the box -- either way my description is not as real as the thing in the box.

 

Creation myths don't transcend explanations, they are just bad explanations.

[Consistency]

The OP meant God as in the energy of the universe which flows through all of us. Not religion.

 

OP; you can mix the possibility of the existence of a God(s) with science, as a variable. I do this all the time.

 

I strongly believe that anyone without enough life experience, such as a spiritual intimate relationship, has no say in whether a god exists or not. If you can't feel the energies within you, those of others around you and radiate energy through your hands... you haven't had enough life experience to judge on the existence of a god.

Edited March 7, 2013 by Consistency

[iNow]

I strongly believe that anyone without enough life experience, such as a spiritual intimate relationship, has no say in whether a god exists or not. If you can't feel the energies within you, those of others around you and radiate energy through your hands... you haven't had enough life experience to judge on the existence of a god.

But most of us just call that wonder and awe at the unknown... deep and profound inspiration about the magnificence and mind boggling scale of the universe itself. Why introduce the term "god" to describe all of that... a term so inescapably sullied and bogged down with such baggage and bullshit and batshit craziness when regular terms more than suffice?

 

We can agree that there is passion inspiring amazingness all around us. Can't we also agree that calling it "god" only detracts from that amazingness?

[ydoaPs]

But, religion is not the noumena. Given the map / territory relationship, religion is not the territory.

 

If it is impossible to know what is in a box then it doesn't matter if I use my senses to reason about what might be in the box, or if I use my spiritual non-senses to make up a story about what is going on in the box -- either way my description is not as real as the thing in the box.

 

Creation myths don't transcend explanations, they are just bad explanations.

I would rep this like six more times if I could.

 

Can't we also agree that calling it "god" only detracts from that amazingness?

That reminds me of the end of Tim Minchin's "Storm":

Isn't this enough?

 

Just this world?

 

Just this beautiful, complex

Wonderfully unfathomable, NATURAL world?

How does it so fail to hold our attention

That we have to diminish it with the invention

Of cheap, man-made Myths and Monsters?

If you're so into Shakespeare

Lend me your ear:

To gild refined gold, to paint the lily,

To throw perfume on the violet is just "really" silly

Or something like that.

[tar]

iNow,

 

While I agree with your #48, it is almost equally difficult to believe that all that amazing stuff is NOT god.

 

One can discount all the bats**t, subtract all the baggage, undo all the usurption of divine will, and forgive all the misapplication and misappropriation and STILL have something amazing left, that any one of us could easily consider his or her's. At that point, calling it the universe, or calling it reality, or calling it God (that which is still the case, regardless of our definition of it) is not really all that different. Whatever is the case, is still the case, and we belong to it, are made up of it, and have no other recourse but to be in and of it. No other position to take, but to believe in it. Whatever science learns about this amazing thing, it has no way to trump it, or to do without it.

 

Science and religion are easily at odds, but science and God should have no quarrel.

 

Regards, TAR2