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Does science support Atheism, positively?
- Thread starter paarsurrey
- Start date
Gjallarhorn
N'yog-Sothep
Both of these would require a god-concept with no interaction with the physical/material/energetic world.
As for the Hamlet thing, some literary critic has probably already done it.
CynthiaCypher
Well-Known Member
I don't think you get it. What we are saying is that certain magisteria or areas of study exclude certain subjects. You cannot analyse biology with astronomy, you cannot study Shakespeare with a pick and a shovel. But you seem to not to be able to make those distinctions.
CynthiaCypher
Well-Known Member
And what if God has a light touch?
As for the Hamlet thing, some literary critic has probably already done it.
I wouldn't put anything past postmodern critical theorists.
Gjallarhorn
N'yog-Sothep
A single touch is enough to secure the scientific foothold on the search for God.
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Mycroft
Ministry of Serendipity
Science doesn't support atheism necessarily just as it isn't the antithesis of religion, as many seem to think it is. It is simply that, since no experiment can be performed either way to determine whether there is or is not a God(s), it doesn't deal with the matter at all.
FunctionalAtheist
Hammer of Reason
I don't think you get it. I agreed with you, those distinctions are very clear. You do not seem to accept just what the distinction between science and religion is. Science purviews that which can be sensed. The senses cannot be used to purview the non-sensible. God, angels, after-life, metaphysics, these things are non-sensible.
FunctionalAtheist
Hammer of Reason
Science assumes there is nothing knowable beyond the natural.
The Sum of Awe
Brought to you by the moment that spacetime began.
Both of these would require a god-concept with no interaction with the physical/material/energetic world.
As for the Hamlet thing, some literary critic has probably already done it.
What if god's interactions are observed up to the point that they are physical? Those physical interactions could be anything. Say, for example, the exact reason why things are determined in the way they are? Perhaps the laws of physics?
Think of knocking a marble off of a table, unto a floor where multiple marbles await to be knocked by it. Now imagine science as observing only on the basis of the floor and spirituality as observing only on the basis of a table.
With science, from only the scope of the floor, you will notice that something came along and hit the marbles, but where it came from, how it came from there, etc. is unknown for that has to do with spiritual studies.
You might think that example is null, as it would imply there is something in the physical world that science might never be able to trace back to, which so far there isn't, but perhaps it's so detailed and complicated, one little flick of the marble could compare to a whole spectrum of events leading upon each other observed by determinism. An example there would be String Theory, which many think is impossible to ever prove, but is created for an explanation of one of those traces, but we'll never know.
Or else you might think "Holy crap Sum can type 4 paragraphs and still make no sense!"
Gjallarhorn
N'yog-Sothep
To (hopefully) answer this all at once, science's limit in this case would be the human ability to see the links, but the links still trace clearly back to some sort of entity that has (at least in part) a material existence.
God as a "spiritual concept" would have no method to interact with our world unless spiritual is a metaphoric term.
CynthiaCypher
Well-Known Member
And what instruments do you think scientist can use to study God?
Gjallarhorn
N'yog-Sothep
Depends. Where on the standard model did God touch you-I mean, the universe?
CynthiaCypher
Well-Known Member
O rly? Science assumes that or do you do?
The Sum of Awe
Brought to you by the moment that spacetime began.
Indeed, it's always occurred that way hasn't it? With people's limited scientific knowledge in the past, later being proven by other, physical influences. The sole reason behind the term "God of the gaps"
But maybe this interaction lies somewhere where physical nature grows thin to the unprovable, something that is impossible to know exactly, something impossible to test or observe. To find this area, it'd be an area that, after scientific observation, it seems to grow more and more chaotic and random the deeper you research it, and at a point this randomness will have a cause from an outer, unscientific reality, a spiritual one.
I, too, find it absurd to think the spiritual would have a way to interact with the world. People seeing ghosts taking on form or moving things, I definitely can't see that happening.
But what I can see happening is a being, specifically God, that may be spiritual or perhaps God is even beyond spiritual nature, that links between both natures, a way that they can interact with each other but definitely indirectly (through our point of view at least).
Sort of like the spiritual interacting with the physical by influencing it, considering God would have created the physical world would that not imply that God can influence the physical world?
In a similar way it's observed that two different substance worlds have this sort of relation and can interact with each other by influence - the physical and the psychological. A depressed mind can lead to an unhealthy body, and vice versa, and often if not always, the mind's patterns or way of thinking is always influenced by the physical.
FunctionalAtheist
Hammer of Reason
Do I need to repost the BASIC assumptions of science from the 3 sources I previously did, or can you read up.
CynthiaCypher
Well-Known Member
So we cannot know anything that isn't a product of natural laws?
FunctionalAtheist
Hammer of Reason
No. We cannot know anything except through the senses, directly or indirectly. A fact must be consistent with our senses in order to be confirmed. Science can address anything that can be sensed. There is also the assumption that what we sense, i.e. the world, is real.
CynthiaCypher
Well-Known Member
And so can other disciplines.
And didn't you just say that nothing can be knowable beyond the natural?
FunctionalAtheist
Hammer of Reason
Correct.
First, there is nothing wrong or inconsistent with other disciplines. But they do not provide repeatability, i.e. predictability. If they do then they are crossing into the realm of science in that something that is observable is being measured or evaluated in some way. Therefore any 'knowledge' that comes from them can be seen under the auspice of science. (As I said science is a philosophy of observation, measurement, hypothesizing, testing, predicting.)
Second, We cannot sense anything beyond the natural, so saying we can know nothing that does not present itself to the senses, directly or indirectly, eliminates anything beyond the natural. If i can see it, hear it, taste it, smell it, or touch it, then it is natural. Not because I define it that way, but because we know how senses work. If i see it it is composed of light, which is electromagnetism. Hear it and it is energy in the form of a sound wave. Etc.
This is precisely why acceptance of science is a denial of super-nature. While science does not address the supernatural and cannot prove it does not exist, it is because super-nature is non-sensible.
If super-nature, being non-sensible, left so much as a fingerprint on nature, science would falter.
