I’ve always thought that the biggest difference between religious people and atheists is that we’re willing to just say “I don’t know”.
I don’t know if there was something before the universe, how it’ll end or if there will be something after, or if we’re in some kind of simulation, or whatever else. But I’m willing to leave it at that and I don’t feel the need to point to some deity to fill in the gaps of my knowledge.
Years ago I ordered a bunch of science books, On The Shoulders of Giants, The Selfish Gene, Not Even Wrong, The Big Bang Origins of our Universe, and some others while on a deployment in the military and when I opened my big bundle my boss “made fun of me,” by saying something along the lines of, “Y’all think you’re so smart, but you need so many books and I just need one.” Referring to his Bible.
The irony being that the more I read, the more I realize I don’t know, and the more he reads, the more certain he becomes. So yeah, “I don’t know” is my fucking motto these days because I don’t know shit.
Got my undergrad in physics and commissioned as a Lt. The first taught me how little I actually know. The second taught me how little everyone else actually knows. But damn, some of them are confident in it
Nothing more humbling than telling a professor about your very niche undergrad research and they know more about it off the cuff, lol. What did you end up going to grad school for, I’m curious? My undergrad was physics but I ended up falling into coding.
The government wouldn’t release me for any degree I wanted, so I haven’t gone yet. My plans got derailed because I either applied to a program outside my career field, or I didn’t have a background related to a masters in my career field. Perfect catch 22. Currently trying to get accepted to an electrical engineering program. But it’s tough after being away from school for so long
In my person interactions, the religious conservative folks seem to care most about having clear answers for things. Once they “know” something, they’re good, and they will repeat it confidently to anybody else who asks. If they particularly like the answer, or it is financially or personally beneficial to them, they might just make it part of their core identity.
Of course, not all conservatives are like that, and progressives are not completely immune to it. It’s a problem with the irrational human mind, after all.
Your definition is of an agnostic atheist. I agree with you, as I believe it’s more scientific to be agnostic. There are also gnostic atheists, who believe with certainty that there is no god. There are many of them commenting here as well. It’s an interesting discussion.
Science = ouch, pain in brain hole (science man scary)
Jesus done it = easy, make brain hole feel good
This is my first time reading “brain hole”, and I do not like it.
You’re welcome
I’ve never understood why people so often keep the two separated. Like, if you already believe in a god, why not interpret things like physics and chemistry as how your god set the world up to run? I totally get that religion is complex and divisive, but at an individual level, it seems like such an easy “problem” to resolve.
Because often enough, results in science contradict religious belief. Heliocentric model, for example.
I think a big problem is many people aren’t wired to appreciate the difference between knowledge and belief. Knowledge and science are the realm of the empirical. Belief is about the unknowable.
Something that can be known cannot be believed, and something that can be believed cannot be known. That separation should be complete, so belief and knowledge never conflict.
Where did you get this definition? You can absolutely have concrete proof of something, therefore knowledge of it, and still believe it. I believe in gravity. Do you know why? Because there is a lot of proof out there for it. I do not believe things I have no proof of. You can also have faith in something you know, due to proof, is true.
You can also believe, and/or have faith in, things that have no proof.
I think chilliedogg may have hit the bong one too many times before replying. I don’t really smoke anymore, but absolutely remember thinking I was being profound while just spouting garbledygoop.
thinking I was being profound while just spouting garbledygoop
This comment included?
No, that was a pretty coherent comment.
And the definition above doesn’t cater to the fact that we change what is known, based on fact. With the definition above, any belief about the this that was unknown is suddenly, magically erased once the fact emerges.
My take is instead that if you believe in something that hasn’t yet been proven which turns out to be true, you should still rightly believe in it. If you believe in something that is proven wrong, you should change your belief.
I’d rather say that beliefs are internal and facts external. We don’t know (and can’t know) all facts. The problem here is you first have to believe that something is a fact, in order to change your other beliefs.
Science is the process of allowing - trusting - others to state facts rather than having to find out all the facts yourself. If we don’t trust in science, anything can be true because you can still believe that something is a fact, even if you are wrong.
Faith is “complete trust or confidence in someone or something”. Gravity is essentially a statement of a physical phenomena where things with mass are attracted to other things with mass. You can have faith in that physical phenomena, but that is no more useful than having faith that the number 1 exists. It just is, whether or not you believe it.
Then there’s Newton’s theory of gravity, which exists as a mathematical model of gravity, where the force of attraction of gravity can be modeled as a proportion of their masses. That works great in certain cases but break down elsewhere, and not until Einstein’s General Relativity did we have a model that more accurately explained other things about gravity such that time itself behaves different around different sized masses, and also the speed of those masses has an effect on the way that they experience time, and changes in gravity take time to be communicated with other things that can experience that gravity: they are not instantaneous. Time matters. None of that is covered in Newton’s model.
So, if you have faith in gravity, what do you have faith in? Newton’s model, or Einstein’s Model? If you have ‘faith’ then you have completely trust or confidence, by the definition of faith. So if you have complete confidence in Newton’s model, you’re wrong. Newton’s model doesn’t accurately explain many of the gravitation things we can observe. So say you want to change your mind and don’t want to ‘believe’ in Newton’s model anymore. You’re a follower of Einstein now, because his model is better. Well that means you didn’t actually have ‘faith’ in Newton’s model in the first place. You didn’t have complete trust or confidence.
When people talk about faith having no place in science, this is what they mean. Believing one thing to be true does not matter. All that matters is which model fits the evidence the best. And which model best fits will change over time. So a good scientist should change as well.
I have faith that there is an attractive force tied to mass
Great. Again though, that’s about as useful as saying you have faith that the number 1 exists.
The question of whether it’s the mass that causes the force, or the force that causes the mass, or even if is a force in the first place are all open questions. It can be modeled as a force tied to the proportionality of the masses involved and their distance separated. It can also be modeled as a warping of spacetime, where objects moving closer to each other over time is just the result of of objects moving in straight lines through a curved spacetime. Whether it’s a force or not is a question of if it can be modeled to have a force carrying particle as part of the standard model, just like we have the photon for the electromagnetic force, the W and Z bosons for the weak force, and the gluon for the strong force.
If you have faith in any of those interpretations, it means you’re ignoring observational evidence supporting any other interpretations, which is just bad science.
Then my faith will change
Can we stop using “religion” to refer to only Christianity? Please?
So we call them a cult instead?
I am much less familiar with religions other than christianity, but I don’t think what what Pete90 said was technically wrong, given my limited understanding. I do however agree with you that we should use language more precisely.
I agree with his generic statement too, when applied to most religions. The one I studied the most is Islam and this does not apply. For instance it got the planetary model right around year 640, at a time when science was wrong about it (see reference below).
I copied the comment about not conflating all religions with Christianity from someone in a different thread because this is unfortunately what I see over and over again not only here on Lemmy but on “the other site” too, I guess because of the demographic typically using them and certainly the lack of awareness regarding other religions.
ٱللَّهُ ٱلَّذِى رَفَعَ ٱلسَّمَـٰوَٰتِ بِغَيْرِ عَمَدٍۢ تَرَوْنَهَا ۖ ثُمَّ ٱسْتَوَىٰ عَلَى ٱلْعَرْشِ ۖ وَسَخَّرَ ٱلشَّمْسَ وَٱلْقَمَرَ ۖ كُلٌّۭ يَجْرِى لِأَجَلٍۢ مُّسَمًّۭى ۚ يُدَبِّرُ ٱلْأَمْرَ يُفَصِّلُ ٱلْـَٔايَـٰتِ لَعَلَّكُم بِلِقَآءِ رَبِّكُمْ تُوقِنُونَ ٢
It is Allah Who has raised the heavens without pillars—as you can see—then established Himself on the Throne. He has subjected the sun and the moon, each orbiting for an appointed term. He conducts the whole affair. He makes the signs clear so that you may be certain of the meeting with your Lord.
I get where you’re coming from on this.
For example: why not believe that “god” used physics and science to create all of this. Gently manipulating everything as it developed to create humanity and the universe the way they wanted it to be?
The religious issue with this idea is that it undermines the very idea of their belief. God created the heavens and the earth. Period. God didn’t create a bunch of stuff then shape it to become the heavens and the earth… No, he thought it, and it happened.
The difference being that in a more reasonable interpretation, using physics and whatnot to create everything, would be a slow and not very profound process. Under the premise that God basically snapped his fingers and poof, earth… That’s incredible. Impossible by any other measure.
By inviting a more measured approach, you diminish the perceived power of God, making the entire concept less awesome (in the sense of inspiring awe), and wondrous. This is the root of faith. Speaking more generally “my Deity can do all this with the snap of a finger, we are nothing compared to them”
By putting people into this subdued mindset of being so much less powerful than God, you can basically exert full control over them “in the name of our Lord”. You really only need to convince them that what you want them to do is “the will of God” and they’ll be mentally servile to whatever it is.
That’s the root of religion. Control. Not eternal salvation. Not saving your soul from damnation. Not doing good for goodness sake… Control.
Simply, making god seem less wondrous, even by a small amount, makes people less malleable to suggestion, for what God “commands” of them.
God choosing the exact mass of the electron vs the proton, and gravitational constants that support life is pretty awesome.
But it also opens up the idea that “god” is an alien child with a supercomputer playing The Sims. He picked the constants for the universe and hit “run”, which seems less impressive.
I like imagining him trying lots of other combinations and being very disappointed.
If you belive in your own understanding of god, than there’s no conflict, it’s pandering in my opinion, inserting something somewhere just for the sake of it without being promoted to, but the point is that it’s not conflicting. The problem is that most religious people cling to some select dogmas from their respective texts that directly conflict with the scientific method.
But in a way you are correct, the original western “scientist” were usually christian and were looking for God or God’s perfect work through the observable world (and were occasionally quite disappointed with their discoveries of the mess they found).
Like, if you already believe in a god, why not interpret things like physics and chemistry as how your god set the world up to run?
Cause then you’d be a Catholic.
It could have been dog.
A wizard did it.
Big shoutout to the installation wizard for creating the universe
I see, all right yes. But in episode AG4…
The Personal Confusion Fallacy or Personal Incredulously Fallacy - if I don’t understand it, it must be false.
I don’t get this meme. But I guess god works in mysterious ways 🙃
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Nobody thinks our current understanding is perfect. But, just because we don’t know everything, doesn’t mean we need to entertain wild ideas without a lick of evidence. Sure, there could be supernatural explanations for things. But any other time we’ve previously thought something was caused by the supernatural, it was proven to not be. Every. Single. Time. Why bet on the horse that’s lost 1,000 races?
You don’t have to bet against it, though.
What do you gain by putting down other belief systems?
Other belief systems have caused death and despair.
Science has, too. Splitting the atom had some pretty harsh consequences.
It wasn’t science’ s fault though, was it? No. It was people using science to hurt others.
Sure seems like an awful lot of people use religion to hurt others. Almost like it’s their main tool, or like religion was purpose-built to harm.
Spirituality, God, and Religion are all separate things. And if you have any research on when and why any of those concepts were created I’d love to read them.
You have to understand that the problem here is bad people, not bad ideas.
I currently live in a society where trans and gay rights are constantly under attack by religious folk simply because a ‘holy book’ supposedly says they’re sinners (despite it never mentioning trans people). Forgive me for not feeling sorry for the religious.
Besides, you’re in an atheist community. What do you expect us to talk about?
I’m not here simping for religion, I promise. The concept of god can and does exist separately from religion.
Yeah, I know horrific things have been done in the name of big G God, but those things were done by people. Not a god, or God, not spirituality. Allowing that to narrow your worldview to only things we can directly observe and quantify is leaving an entire realm of understanding on the table.
I know where I am, I’m just wondering why other people are here.
Imagine I created a community around my belief that flying pigs didn’t exist and all the content was shitting on the people who did… What do I get out of that other than putting people down? It literally widens the division in the name of scoring meaningless points against “the other team.”
Religion isn’t a cohesive group, and judging everyone who participates because certain sects are deplorable isn’t very “enlightened.”
I still don’t see any reason to believe in things I don’t see any evidence for. If you want to believe in ghosts or spirituality or Bigfoot or whatever, have at it. I don’t agree with you, but I don’t really care either. I only take issue with people that have, and act according to, beliefs that cause direct harm to others. Religions, crystal healing, antivaxxers, etc.
Sure, a community based around not believing in flying pigs might not make sense to you. Why build a community around not believing something? But you’re missing the same point a lot of religious folk do when they say, “why do you hate god if you don’t believe in him?” See, what if you lived in a world where 90% of people believed in either flying pigs, flying sheep, or flying cows, and all around the world, people in power are making laws based around these things that directly hurt, suppress, and ostracize the lives of others? Suddenly, making a community around it makes more sense.
What do we get out of it? Well, we get a sense of community and belonging for one thing. We all have something in common, and many of us have even been directly hurt or oppressed by the beliefs we stand against. And besides, we’re not perfect human beings—sometimes it’s just fun to poke fun at things we find ridiculous with a group of like-minded individuals.
You make a lot of good, valid points.
Define a “spiritual explanation.”
Pretty sure it involves mescaline. Or shrooms. Maybe LSD. Possibly all three.
Still working on my answer to the question, but I think you’re in the ballpark, in a way.
well. when you do the god drug, let the rest of us know which one it was, so we can do it too?
If I discovered a god drug I’d open source it, lol.
The Placebo Effect is, in my opinion, -is- the power of belief. (And I think it can do more than that, but that would mean going into my woowoo closet. We’ll just leave it shut for now.)
I know spirituality doesn’t put people on the moon and it doesn’t do much for the economy. (Worship on the other hand…oof.)
Anyway. My point is the pendulum swung hard because religion as we know it fucking sucks, and there is more material value in science. But that doesn’t mean spirituality is worthless.
I think we’re capable of more than what science alone can teach us.
The brain is a material organ that has some amount of control over the rest of your body. If that organ believes a certain thing, it is not supernatural or spiritual for that to have a material effect on your body.
Edit: Misread your reply.
I agree. It doesn’t provide any proof. Speculater was asking for a definition of a spiritual explanation and I was just giving an example.
Spiritual means different things to different people, and they’re right, I think a lot of these kinds of discussions would go a lot better with some baseline definitions.
That being said… Virtually 100% of the time, I’ll go with scientific consensus. My entire argument is that we’ve swung pretty far into physical science when I think there’s an entire realm of understanding that we’re leaving generally untapped because we can’t make a graph out of it (yet)
Why? Because people do horrific shit in the name of god? People do horrific shit in the name of science, too.
Atheists go on about proof of everything, yet any time I ask for proof that some type of “god” doesn’t exist I get the burden of proof line.
…my position is that it’s unknown. The burden of proof isn’t on me.
I asked you to define the term to highlight that what you’re referring to is untestable and as you pointed out unmeasurable.
I think very few reasonable people will say, “God absolutely doesn’t exist.” Because that’s an untestable claim, but I do think most atheists feel strongly that there’s insufficient evidence that a god should exist.
I asked you to define the term to highlight that what you’re referring to is untestable and as you pointed out unmeasurable.
I’m not suggesting you apply the scientific method to spirituality, though. I’m suggesting that Cause can be unmeasurable. If we can do that, it opens up possibilities for new understanding.
I think the material world can only be half explained by modern physics. (I have a few reasons for coming to this conclusion, which I’ll share if you care to hear them. It’s hard for me to type out, I can explain myself better in speech, if that makes sense.)
And that’s fair. But it’s always going to have that margin of error until it doesn’t, it has been my actual, lived experience online that you can bet on an Atheist to be a complete dick to anyone even hinting to a supernatural belief. (Look at these comments.) You (generally speaking) don’t get to go around being a giant dick to the “other team” like that with any margin of error.
I genuinely feel that we aren’t going to science ourselves into the Star Trek future. Corruptibility is Humanities Achilles Heel, and I don’t see how we science our way out of that.
I completely agree. Just as religion should not be used to negate scientific evidence, the arrogance of the logical mind should not be used to negate spirituality without sufficient scientific evidence.
I love how saying ”Hey, maybe we don’t know everything yet, and belittling people who have differing opinions is a dick move." gets downvotes in a supposedly science centric community.
(And just to clarify, I’m replying to my own comment as a broad reply to others.)
The post is arguing that a lack of evidence for one option should not justify belief in a different option. An absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
The funny part is how how this gets twisted into attacking people. If your belief is so core as to becomes part of your identity, then that belief being wrong becomes a personal attack, and anyone looking for the truth becomes an enemy.
If saying “I don’t know” threatens your belief you have a problem with reality, and once you start ignoring reality your can justify nearly anything to yourself.
The post isn’t dunking on spiritualism, just the claim that anything about it can be known without evidence. It always comes back to evidence.
Yeah, the meme starting with “Your inability to understand basic science” is definitely not meant to belittle or shame anyone.
Good call. My bad.
Science hasn’t explained everything. There’s room for both science and god.
However, disregarding scientific evidence in favor of god is simply willful ignorance.
There’s room for both science and god.
I mean… whenever he’s ready.
To be fair, banning shrimp was a very good idea at the time. Do you think it’s a good plan to be eating the shrimp when you are a desert people and the invention of portable refrigeration is still a few thousand years away?
Very logical. Wonder why he hasn’t stopped by to reverse the ban since the invention of refrigeration, or at least clarify the rule as just meaning to keep people safe?
“Hey guys, thanks for all the likes and subscribes over the years. Good to see you! Just wanted to give a shout-out to my man Leviticus. We knew, back in the day, that y’all weren’t ready for the whole “microbe” thing, so we wanted to just kinda steer folks away from stuff that could hurt them. But man, you guys have been busy since then! You figured all this shit out! I’m proud of you, I really am. Or at least I would be if I was allowed, am I right?”
crowd laughs
“So yeah, now that it’s mostly safe to eat that stuff, go right ahead. Watch out for buffets though… if they can afford to feed your uncle Charlie for five shekels they have to be cutting corners somewhere. Anyways, I gotta go so I will talk to you later. Be safe! Love, peace, and all that jazz!”
crowd cheers
“Oh, one more thing. If you could stop killing one another in my name that’d be great. It’s super un-cool. But hey, free will and all. I won’t stop you. Until next time!”
fanfare over credit roll
Hahaha. Well done 😝
I’ll always go to bat for the idea that religion was a necessary evil. In the past, prior to telecommunications and concepts like a social democracy, you needed some way to keep the members of your primitive tribe alive and loyal to each other.
The problem is that now we no longer need it, and it’s been consistently twisted into a weapon by those who crave power over anything else.
“Room for both science and god” only works if you’re not referring to the Christian god as portrayed in the bible, as he has been defined with specific, disprovable characteristics.
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That’s not how the burden of proof works my guy.
If someone claims a godlike entity exists, they better come with godlike evidence. Not the ramblings of potential schizophrenic shepherds from 2,000 years ago.
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It’s like you filled in those tiny gaps in our knowledge with the possibility of a god. It’s like a god… of… those gaps.
That doesn’t mean you should believe that there’s a god. It just means there scientifically could be a god. That is what Einstein said on the matter. He was a pretty smart guy, and rather unbiased in his opinion.
Your hypothesis is that there is no god. I just provided you with two unexplainable events. According to the laws of physics, that matter could not have been created from nothing, nor could have it have generated motion from nothing. Until you can find more evidence, your hypothesis is unsupported.
Who knows? Maybe the JWST will prove there was no creator. I’m scientific. I’ll accept a logical explanation as soon as we have one. Until then, I maintain the position that there there is equal possibility of existence and non-existence of a creator.
While I agree with the general sentiment of your comment, I refuse to believe in anything without empirical evidence of such. These are gaps in our current understanding of our reality. History has shown, there is a logical explanation for just about everything. Nothing… ever… literally… EVER… has pointed toward the existence of such a god…ever.
Science has yet to explain why it happened, or what if anything came before. Those are not “tiny gaps”
Tiny gaps are subjective. Sure.
god has been attributed to everything that science had no explanation for at the time. Earthquakes, weather events, cosmological events, etc. Now… the general theory has been relegated to one of the very few things that we don’t understand with near certainty. While I agree it’s not exactly a small gap, but I would argue, in the scale of all of science, microscopic is being generous.
When your creator shows up and apologizes for all the bullshit he caused by being an asshole, I’ll apologize for calling him an asshole.
Until then, there is no evidence such a being exists, and if he did, he’s a fucking asshole.
My creator? I didn’t say I believe in god, nor did I suggest omnipotence. I simply said there’s a possibility of the existence of a creator based on what science currently understands.
My apologies, i assumed you were a believer of one faith or another. You know. On account that you’re all over this post defending it.
While you are correct to say that in a formal argument, there is no more (or less,) evidence for either position, we are in a not-formal setting.
Further it’s is entirely reasonable to say that the absolute lack of tangible evidence that such a being exists- despite billions of people looking for such a being today, suggests such a being does not exist.
That is, it is reasonable to say that the lack of evidence is, itself, evidence that a thing does not exist. It is not absolute proof- the universe doesn’t work that away- but it is evidence of non-existence.
lack of evidence is, itself, evidence that a thing does not exist.
100% disagree.
In all fairness, my initial comment was that there’s room for both god and science, but rejecting scientific evidence in favor of god was willful ignorance. A commenter challenged my “room for god” point, so we had a debate.
As someone who is very scientific in my understanding of the world around me, I take offense to people leveraging science against the intangible. Can I use a logic proof to defeat the claim that god is both all powerful and all good? Absofuckinlutely, but logic isn’t science. Logic is used to create a hypothesis, and then we repeatedly test said hypothesis under controlled conditions.
Science has not provided sufficient explanation or evidence supporting a creation without interference. I will defend the scientific room for a creator, regardless of my personal opinion, until we have a better understanding of creation. Who knows what we’ll learn from the JWST in the next decade. It’s already reshaped so many theories.
Stephen Hawkings had an interesting perspective regarding the creation of our universe. When people ponder our universe’s creation, they ask questions like “what caused the big bang?” or “what caused the universe to exist?”. Hawkings would have responded with the sentiment that these kind of questions were pointless. When one asks such a question regarding cause/effect, this presupposes the existence of a timeline. Cause and effect explanations have no merit without time; therefore to ask what caused the creation of the universe is silly, because time did not exist which means the notion of cause/effect would not have existed either.
Nevertheless, I think a lot of the folks commenting here have a problematic understanding of science, which is resulting in them agreeing with the toxic meme. Science and Religion don’t compete because they are fundamentally different in the way they approach understanding the universe. Religions relies on “truths” whereas science relies on “models”. There are no scientific facts or truths, there are only models that can accurately predict things we observe.
For example, the atomic model (atoms, +ions, - ions) can accurately predict a lot of different phenomena in our universe (electrical phenomena, chemical reactions, thermal phenomena, etc). Nevertheless, no good scientist should confidently tell you that atoms actually exist in reality. The atom is a model that functions well in explaining our universe, but that doesn’t mean it is “The Correct Model”.
lack of evidence is, itself, evidence that a thing does not exist.
That’s not correct. However if we continually fail to find any evidence for its existence or any way it interacts or effects our reality, we can safely act as though it does not exist since it won’t change things at all. There could be a divine being out there, but until we have evidence that it interacts with our reality in some way, we can put it aside and go on with our lives.
It does not change the truth of whether it actually exists somewhere or not.
This is amusing.
Lets use a different example. Clinical drug trials.
By your logic, we can never know if drugs are in fact safe, because we can’t prove they’ll never have ill effects. Can’t prove a negative, after all. Which is logically incorrect. We can prove their safe by running clinical drug trials in controlled settings. You know how all that goes. You give rats or whatever drugs and see if they die. if they don’t you see if they tolerate it well. when they do, you give it to humans, eventually, and see if they die, and if they tolerate it well.
You do this enough and you can say the drug is in fact safe. The absence of evidence that the drugs are harmful, is evidence that they are not harmful.
This is true because, presumably, it’s extremely well and extensively studied. Rational people will look at the studies and agree: the drugs are reasonably safe to use under those guidelines.
the existence of god has been studied extensively. It follows then, the lack of tangible evidence is itself evidence of absence.
“Agnostic” describes whether or not one believes something can be known for certain.
Most atheists are agnostic atheists, as it’s intellectually dishonest to say that you know for certain that gods don’t exist.
Although when referring to a specifically defined god, like the Christian god Yahweh, it’s very possible to be certain he doesn’t exist, as he’s clearly defined in the bible and does not match the evidence of empirical reality.
I completely agree. I define myself as an agnostic omnitheist. I do not know if there is, or is not, a god, therefore I believe any and all paths could potentially lead to god, or to nothing at all.
That’s the fundamental basis of my initial claim that there is room for god and science. There is scientific room for a creator. What created the matter, and set it into motion, to cause the Big Bang? I’m not claiming said creator possesses omnipotence or omnipresence, simply saying that there is sufficient evidence to believe in interference at the beginnings of creation.
Science isn’t simply logic. A theory or hypothesis is based on logic, and then those theories are tested, and the evidence is examined. Science is best suited for repeatable phenomena.
To say that interference-based creation is impossible is not scientific, it’s simply arrogant.
Then yes, there is absolutely room for god as a general concept and science. If science finds a way to measure whatever god is, it will no longer be considered supernatural.
None of what I posted claimed to prove or disprove anything. You keep saying there’s room. Of course there is. We’ve made room. It just remains *conspicuously empty.
Right. I initially was speaking in support of your meme. I said that rejecting scientific evidence in favor of god was willful ignorance. The debate came into play when Speculater challenged my assertion that the existence of god was possible. You and I are on the same page though.
It is, quite literally, physically impossible to completely disprove that a god exists. Just like it’s physically impossible to disprove that space outside of the observable universe is actually made up of infinite tiny rainbow unicorns.
How would you disprove something you can’t interact with?
The JWST can observe information from ~13B years ago due to the limited speed of light. It’s not impossible to suggest we could find evidence of the beginnings of existence with optics.
I never said we couldn’t. But even if we found the cause of the existence of everything (assuming there was one), and it wasn’t god, its still impossible to rule out that God just set all of that into motion. The likelihood gets smaller and smaller, and god’s influence gets smaller and smaller, but its physically impossible to actually disprove it. There will always be a smaller hole for a creator-being to crawl into. Which is why “nobody has disproved god” is a meaningless sentence.
Proving god exists would only benefit those who are attempting to convince others of the existence of god. I’m only defending the possibility of existence against gnostic atheists that claim to be citing science is the “burden of proof” argument. I believe the stance of a true scientist is that of an agnostic atheist. All possible explanations remain available until more evidence is discovered.
I mean, I agree completely. I’m an agnostic atheist myself. I believe it is highly unlikely a god exists, but outright claiming absolutely no gods exist is a positive claim that also requires evidence if you wish to convince others. It’s not a stance I’m willing to take.
That said, I’m very willing to make the positive claim that certain gods do not exist. The christian god, for example, at least as described in the bible, is so logically inconsistent that I am willing to take a hard atheist stance on its existence and say outright I believe it does not exist.
I’m not even remotely religious, but I can think of multiple ways to reconcile science and religion.
For example, if God created the universe and all of its physical rules, and He gave us reason, what could be more religious than trying to fully explore His creation?
Or from a slightly different angle, so much of the fundamental levels of physics seem to operate based on probabilities, who’s to say an omniscient being couldn’t poke a probability here and there, fully knowing what the cascading effect will be?
For example, if God created the universe and all of its physical rules, and He gave us reason, what could be more religious than trying to fully explore His creation?
That is, in fact, pretty much the world view that gave us the scientific method in the first place, and from which sprang most of scientific progress until the early 20th century.
Gentlemen, I give you the god of the gaps.
Or the god of the science-minded.
they simplify everything to “because God wanted it” :DDDD
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God is basically a placeholder for something we don’t understand yet. It should have gone away when we understood how things like sun rises and such worked, but most humans can’t handle the thought that death is final. Exploiting peoples existential crises about death is a great way to manipulate the population for power and wealth.
While there’s no solid answer for what existed before the big bang and what caused it to happen, there’s no reason for God to be the answer.
At any rate, even if there was a higher level being that created the universe, to think they actually care about what humans do with their lives is just pure hubris.
Wait? What is your definition of God?
God would be the being responsible for the creation of the universe, if that is the true origin of the universe. Maybe some sort of 12th dimension being (if string theory is true).
I definitely don’t think it’s some petulant, narcissistic child sitting in the sky judging us for using the free will they supposedly bestowed upon us.
Why is it easier for nothing to exist? As far as I can see, it’s impossible for nothing to exist.
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It doesn’t look like you have an answer to this, but are still basing your argument on this point. Are you really sure that nothing existing is “easier” than vaguely gestures at everything.
Let’s flip the question around and look at it another way. If the state of existing is so easy why is there so much apparent discreteness? And if what would a universe look like with all possibilities actualized with infinite energy? An answered based on your actual beliefs would be appreciated, but if not, that’s okay too.
I’ll try to flip the question, but I don’t agree with a few points in your premise. The opposite of ‘nothing’ isn’t ‘everything’ or ‘infinite energy’, it’s ‘anything’, and it’s very easy to see that something exists. Even in the vacuum of space, we can still detect energy from particles and anti-particles spontaneously being created and destroyed. There’s something there, even when there’s “nothing” there. That’s one of the things that still blows my mind about our universe, and that’s also what I mean when I say that from what I can see, it’s impossible for nothing to exist, even in a square meter of empty space.
Your question of discreteness is a good one, but also something that science can never answer because science doesn’t answer ‘why’. It answers ‘how’. We can get closer to guessing the ‘why’ the more we test a subject, but any explanation to the ‘why’ is our just current best theory that makes the most sense and is always subject to change.
Now, if there was a universe with infinite energy, then it would have infinite mass. If it has infinite mass, then it would become a black hole. We can’t see inside black holes because their gravity won’t allow the fastest thing in the universe to escape, so if there were such a universe, we couldn’t tell what it was like unless we were already inside it. We might figure out something faster than light someday and be able to study black holes more, but until then, we know that we can’t know that.
And that’s one of the biggest frustrations with science that I hear from religious people. We have to get comfortable knowing that we can’t know something, and people have been too ingrained with the idea that if they CAN’T know something then it MUST be god. But to quote an annoying scientist I occasionally agree with, “Just because you don’t know how something works doesn’t mean you know how it works.” I.E. You can’t just substitute ‘god’ in anytime you don’t know the answer because I can always do the same with ‘The Flying Spaghetti Monster’.
I don’t know. Why is a supernatural deity being the cause the answer you jump to? Especially since it solves nothing, as the question then becomes, “Why does god exist?”
I think there’s a huge confusion. I didn’t say there is a supernatural diety. I don’t believe in the God most people believe in and reject. I’m more of a complicated panthiest. Basically universe and God are almost synonymous. To understand the fundamental truth of existence from inception to end one will understand all things as a God would. We could get there using a scientific approach or some other path, maybe, eventually.
Sounds like you’re a deist. But really, if it’s discovered and proven that some higher power created existence, that would then become part of scientific knowledge. The next step would be figuring out where the higher power came from.
Makes sense. I wonder if there is a true start to every everything, if there is a meta-universe, that is.
I don’t know, but this is an interesting read.
A long but interesting read!
Because if there was nothing then we wouldn’t be here to ask why. All the universes where someone is around to question things are universes where stuff exists.
Why do things exist? Who knows? I sure don’t. Being able to admit you don’t know everything is humbling, you should try it some time.
Something you don’t know, for example, is whether or not it would be easier for nothing to exist. How could you possibly know that? Maybe that’s true, maybe it’s literally impossible. Yet here you are pretending you know for a fact that it’s true.
Enjoy your god of the gaps, though.
I think you’re reading way too much into this. How many possible things could exist but dont? Is it more or less than what there is? You assume I believe in God, what if you’re wrong.
You basically described something we don’t know and then said if you don’t know them that’s where you’ll find god. Unless you know the answer to your original statement, which no one can know, than it’s safe to assume you believe in god. Whether you’ll admit it or not, you made the absolute statements to begin with.
You’ll find God there, scientifically or not.
I mean, feel free to correct me if I’m wrong, but it sure seems like you believe a god exists when you say something like that, no?
As for the rest of what you said… that’s irrelevant. The problem is that it could be (and IMO is) physically impossible for literally nothing to exist. We simply don’t know, as we don’t know what came before or caused the big bang. The concept of nothingness is a whole complicated philosophical debate. Saying “erm, things exists, therefore god” makes no sense.
Besides, god is ‘something’. You have the same problem regardless.
It’s more humble to accept that neither science nor religion have a definitive explanation to creation, than it is to leverage a burden of proof argument against those who believe in a creator, when science doesn’t have an explanation or evidence either.
A true scientist would acknowledge that there is possibility of interference-based creation based on our current understanding of physics.
What created the matter? How was it set in motion?
Arrogance is the enemy of science.
when science doesn’t have an explanation or evidence either
The difference is that we’re willing to admit we don’t know, while the religious think they do. We don’t have a burden of proof here because we’re not claiming anything.
A true scientist would acknowledge that there is possibility of interference-based creation based on our current understanding of physics.
Most people do acknowledge that its possible. Its just very, very, very, (…) unlikely to be the case. Everything else we’ve ever proven to be true has been caused by natural causes. Why should it suddenly be different? I’m open to being proven wrong when the time comes, but in the meantime I will continue to ignore wild ideas that contradict everything we know and are brought forth without any evidence. That’s not arrogance.
Science has the burden of proving that two masses collided to create existence without breaking the laws of physics. What created that matter? What set it in motion?
I’m only saying the argument works both ways. I’m also very against dogma over science. I’m a scientific person who simply believes it’s equally possible that there was, and was not, interference-based creation of existence.
You’re begging the question(s).
As far as we know, matter can’t be created or destroyed. Before asking “what created it” you have to demonstrate that it even CAN be created.
And “what set it in motion?” Have you ever seen anything NOT in motion? Everything is moving relative to everything else.
As far as we have observed, there is no such thing as “nothing” or “motionless.” To ask a question like how does something come from nothing, or how did things begin to move, you are assuming states that we have never observed to be possible.
Matter and energy cannot be created nor destroyed. Both matter creation and spontaneous motion are against by the laws of physics.
The current theory of the perpetual expansion of the universe is that all objects are moving away from the universal center due to the Big Bang. It is supported by observations of directional movement and evidence of perpetual slowing toward universal entropy. That explains the motion we observe in all of existence. It does not explain the existence of two enormous masses prior to the Big Bang, nor what caused them to be in motion to collide in the first place.
This person gets it: https://lemmy.world/comment/10602199
Many questioned what drives evolution when Charles Darwin introduced it. Nobody knows until 80 years later, DNA has finally been visualised, which confirmed and reinforced the theory of evolution.
Also, what do you mean “God”? Why do you assume there is only one “god”? It is funny that the ancients would say “gods” (Hindus and other poytheists still do so) but now with monotheistic proselytisation or forced conversion, half the world say “god”. So which god are you referring to? What if other gods are real and yours isn’t? Abrahamic practioners say like it is a checkmate when-- if you take science out of the debate-- there are other religions who say their deities are real, and their religious beliefs and claim of how the universe was made are correct and yours isn’t. I can’t remember the name of the medieval European philosopher but he also saw how religions contradict each other arrived to the same conclusion that religions must not be real; long before modern atheists even thought the same.
I love/hate the certainty of atheism and the contrarian in me wants to push in the other direction for fun 😁
At one level, you can assert that God is unknowable because we have baked “unknowable” into the Godly hypothesis. In that sense, you’re just kinda blandly asserting unknown unknowns and trying to prove such a thing’s existence becomes a fool’s errand.
At another level, you end up with a God Of The Gaps, which recedes as our own understanding of the world around us expands. And at some point, you have to ask why we’d even care if this God did exist? A God that is forever retreating from human perception seems very different from the Abrahamic Deity or the Hindu Pantheon or Japanese Ancestor Ghost that is constantly trying to make itself known.
Evangelicals assert their god as an elephant in the room. It’s something so big and so meaningful and so obvious that it cannot be ignored. Why are we trying to find this same god in the space between Plank Lengths and on the back side of Black Holes?
Holy cat
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