Can Science explain everything in the universe without a God?

[Memammal]

So what I'm saying is that all these explicit anomalies working together harmoniously strongly affirms divine creativity. If nature were just a meaningless machine, the universe would be mostly self-destructive without harmonious home-environments and without conscious beings to experience them.

 

My apologies if this has been raised already, but this reminds me of an analogy about patches of dry land that transform into puddles of water when the rainy season starts after which tadpoles make their appearance from fertilized eggs and at some later point engage with each other in a philosophical discussion about the fact that their specific puddle should have been intelligently designed and/or created for them to have the perfect environment with just enough sunlight, water, depth in order to survive, to be given tails to swim, etc. This of course without knowing that there are many more puddles just like theirs, that they will soon lose their tails and was it not for the rain or the eggs, well, they would not have been there.

 

PS. Nicely constructed and insightful post above ^ by PoPpAScience.

Edited May 6, 2016 by Memammal

[Lyudmilascience]

I am also a fan of religion I'm an atheist. I think science can explain everything without a god, I dont believe in magic, god would be magic, he would not be able to have a scientific explanation to his existence.I think everything can be explained by science. so far we have learned so much about the universe,gravity,orbits, we still have alot to learn but so far we have found a scientific explanation for most things on earth,

[disarray]

Science cannot give a full account of how the universe popped out of whatever it popped out of, nor can science fully explain how life pops out of, what some refer to as, the primordial swamp (aka soup). Nevertheless, science has made huge strides towards giving a coherent and unified account that is consistent with the rest of scientific knowledge over the centuries, making rather exponential progress.

 

I could take a stab at discussing in a little more detail such topics as the significance of vibrations in the Higgs Boson field, or of rudimentary rDNA fragments in deep-sea hydrothermal vents (as possible scientific explanations for the origin of the universe and life), but I think that this would merely be a didactic excursion that does not address the true implication of the question, which is really, I think, :"What would be the impact on religion were scientists able to provide significant evidence that the universe and life forms "naturally" come into existence without supernatural assistance?" Perhaps the impact would be similar to that provided by Newton upon claiming that the earth moved (about the sun), or Darwin suggesting the interconnectedness of all life forms.

 

Perhaps, we would have to redefine, as suggested by some posts above, the notion of God(s). Indeed, Einstein used the term God, but rejected any suggestion of a personal God as well as the suggestion that such a God would legislate morality.

 

Also, I would point out that the question is a little rigged....just because science cannot, as of yet, explain everything (and probably will never be able to), does not mean that it can't present a more cogent and believable picture of the universe than that found, for example, in Michelangelo's rendition of the 'Creation of Adam'.

Edited May 29, 2016 by disarray

[ajb]

Science cannot give a full account of how the universe popped out of whatever it popped out of, nor can science fully explain how life pops out of, what some refer to as, the primordial swamp (aka soup).

You mean right now or in principle never can?

 

Also we do not fully understand spinning tops... you can add that to your list.

[disarray]

I meant at this point in time...right now. And, yes, there are many things that science can't now explain, of course, but the ones I mentioned seemed most germane to the discussion.

[B. John Jones]

No

[Moontanman]

No

 

 

citation please...

[Thorham]

Can Science explain everything in the universe without a God?

Unknown.

 

Also we do not fully understand spinning tops...

Really? And they want to make a theory of everything

Edited June 10, 2016 by Thorham

[Moontanman]

 

So what I'm saying is that all these explicit anomalies working together harmoniously strongly affirms divine creativity. If nature were just a meaningless machine, the universe would be mostly self-destructive without harmonious home-environments and without conscious beings to experience them.

 

But God, by his divine nature of perfect love, chose as a master father to bring into his own house disobedient children of an imperfect world--he even struck his sinless, firstborn Son, Jesus, who took ownership of our own sin, receiving God's divine judgment, on our behalf.

 

 

Can you provide any evidence that what you are asserting is true?

[disarray]

I guess the logical response to this question is to ask in turn how one defines God. Once one does that, I would suggest that many of the issues become scientific ones, e.g., can the universe come out of a background field spontaneously? Does evolution satisfactorily explain how life develops, etc.?

 

Religious answers tend to rely on the previous assumption that everyone in the discussion agrees that the Bible is literally true, so that any arguments tend to become circular.

 

What scientists tend to object to is that, without the scriptural assumptions, the term God (or whatever) is merely a three letter symbol that one might designate as some natural or, less likely, extra-natural (outside of nature and its laws) force that we don't really understand yet. The solution to this problem is that if there is some unknown force that, for example, agitates, say, the Higgs-Boson field, then we might as well use a term other than "God" that does not have the scriptural connotations and baggage, so to speak in order to simplify matters and avoid confusion (Occams Razor sort of thing). We might as well use some Greek symbol to designate such a force...but hey, that's what physicists tend to do anyway...Nobody really understands the basic forces in the universe, e.g., strong, weak, gravity, electromagnetic fields, etc.

 

Indeed, this is pretty much what Einstein did with the word God with reference to the way laws of the universe work. But even then, we see that many people in the general public assume that Einstein is referring to the Christian God. So again, I would just use a letter of some alphabet to designate forces that we haven't identified yet. And when we do identify them, why we just rename them after the name of the person who discovered them (e.g., Higgs).

Edited June 11, 2016 by disarray

[Velocity_Boy]

No, science may not have explained everything just quite yet, but we are getting closer every decade. And like others have said, there is absolutely no reason to insert a place holder God of the Gaps and say He did it! in those few areas we are still working on.

 

 

Science has never needed gods. They simply don't apply. They are non sequiturs to any scientific question. Most psychiatrists and biologists and especially anthropologists view our obsessions with gods to simply be an undesirable by product, a sort of psychological residue, left over from our evolved homo sapien brains. Seems that when us wise apes attained self awareness we also attained a fear of our lives ending all too quickly and that they had little purpose to begin with. Thus, as an example of the mind's incessant need to comfort and soothe our fears, voila! Gods and an afterlife were invented!

[disarray]

Velocity_boy:
I agree. The main problem with Gods is that they tend to be far too anthropomorphic to be taken seriously. I don't think that we need equate a belief in such Gods with a belief in an afterlife, as the jury is still out with regards to the nature of consciousness, even as far as top physicists are concerned, e.g., Davies and Penrose. On the other hand, I would agree that the desire to believe in life after death is, to one extent or another, a manifestation of the survival instinct.

 

Pinker et al. note that women tend to be more religious as a whole than men because they are more in need of external protection from things that they fear (as per, for example, their more nurture-oriented nature), and, as Jung et al. point out, there is indeed some sort of innate religious impulse.