God and religion

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Originally Posted by John E

Well, strictly speaking, evolution is only a theory for how the higher life forms developed. If we're talking about particles and matter - atoms, molecules etc - the other main theory is the Big Bang.

Neither God nor the Big Bang are yet proveable but my money would be on the Big Bang because we've been trying to prove the existence of God for thousands of years without success.

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Could it ever really be possible to prove the existance of God? I don't really think it could be.

Assume (for agruments sake) that God exists and He created the universe. Okay? Now obviously God, if He created the universe (/multiverse), must exist outside of time and space since these are quantities in the uni/multi-verse. We can only scientifically observe features in time and in space, and so could not observe any features of God. We might be able to derive hypotheses on His nature by observing his creation but not him.
(As an illistration, say I make a box. An ant in the box can't see me, or even know that I exist. By assuming that I do exist, the ant can only deduce what I might be like from looking at the box.)
Gosh I hope that made sense to some body!

My point... If God does exist there is no way to prove it.

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Originally Posted by John E

We can even tell when and where the Big Bang would have occurred. But what we can't say for certain yet is IF it occurred or WHY it occurred.

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I agree. We can look at the evidence and say that there was most likely a big bang.

I also don't think a belief in God and belief in the Big Bang need to be seperable (Ditto for God and evolution). I fail to see why either one would necessarily exclude the other?
I would say that you can't accept Genesis as a scientific/historical document as well as the big bang (or evolution). But then is Genesis really trying to act as a scientific/historical document? I won't say so (see my previous posts).

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Originally Posted by pinky

(As an illistration, say I make a box. An ant in the box can't see me, or even know that I exist. By assuming that I do exist, the ant can only deduce what I might be like from looking at the box.)
Gosh I hope that made sense to some body!

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It makes a lot of sense. But we are starting from the premise that everything must have a creator. And I believe this premise is wrong. There is only a chain of events. Each event is the effect of a cause. People say that Bing Bang was the beginning. No, it wasn't. It was just another effect of some cause, some preceding event. There is no beginning, there's no end. At least that's what I believe.

As for God, well, if there must a God, it ain't any kind of supernatural entity, but that top-level law, or set of laws, that govern this Univers/Multiverse we are living in.

All this discussion about God remembered me of Q. Do you know who Q is? Well, if you used to watch Star Trek: The Next Generation you should. The in the pilot episode, the members of USS Enterprise are captured by an unknown species from a distant quadrant of the Galaxy. The crew is brought before a tribunal, presided by Q. He tries to determine if man kind has reached that point when we should be allowed to roam the galaxy at will. Eventually, the result is our favor and so the adventures of Captain Picard & Co. begins. But as the series goes on, the crew meets again and again with Q. It proves that the individuals of his species are something that we call gods. They have unlimited powers. They can bend basically the physical laws that we know by their will. Obviously they live by rules and laws like we do. Q was my favorite episodic-character from Star Trek (in high school a teacher used to call me Q :D).

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Originally Posted by cilu

As for God, well, if there must a God, it ain't any kind of supernatural entity, but that top-level law, or set of laws, that govern this Univers/Multiverse we are living in.

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Oh? I would have said that if there is a God then surely he/she/it/they would have to exist outside of the universe/multiverse.
Particularly if he/she/it/they created the universe/multiverse. If God did created the universe/multiverse then he/she/it/they must exist outside of it.

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Originally Posted by cilu

...But we are starting from the premise that everything must have a creator...

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Yes, the only reason I start with this premise is to resolve the argument of whether one could prove if God exists or not. If he/she/it/they does exist then I wanted to show that we couldn't prove it... if he/she/it/they does NOT exist then obviously you can't prove that he/she/it/they does exist. So the second case doesn't matter... so I didn't consider it.

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Originally Posted by cilu

Do you know who Q is?

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?Q? Sorry you got me there mate. The only Q I know of is the one from James Bond. Who makes the WIKI gadgets.

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Originally Posted by Pinky98

obviously God, if He created the universe (/multiverse), must exist outside of time and space since these are quantities in the uni/multi-verse.

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On the face of things, yes - but there's no reason to suppose that they are unique quantities. Time and space could have existed before the universe as we observe it today. Science only tells us that the observable universe is about 14 billion years old. Whether anything existed before that we simply don't know.

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Originally Posted by Pinky

Sorry you got me there mate. The only Q I know of is the one from James Bond. Who makes the WIKI gadgets

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Q from Star Trek.

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Originally Posted by John E

On the face of things, yes - but there's no reason to suppose that they are unique quantities. Time and space could have existed before the universe as we observe it today. Science only tells us that the observable universe is about 14 billion years old. Whether anything existed before that we simply don't know.

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Even so. My original point was that the existance of God can not be proven (nor for that matter disproven). Not by scientific observations. If God created our universe/multiverse, he exists outside it... and thus, God can't be observed, measured or quantified in our universe/multiverse... and therefore can be neither proven nor disproven scientifically.

Is it scientifically possible (should God exist) that he is held by the confines of space and time? Yes, it is possible (I don't believe he is but that is another story), scientifically it is possible. But again, this would be impossible to prove or disprove.

(Feel free to replace all "he"s with "she" "it" or "they" if you are that sensitive... I'm, just not typing all the options again and again..)

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Originally Posted by cilu

Q from Star Trek

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Sorry, the much of a trekkie... don't know Q.

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Even so. My original point was that the existance of God can not be proven (nor for that matter disproven). Not by scientific observations. If God created our universe/multiverse, he exists outside it... and thus, God can't be observed, measured or quantified in our universe/multiverse... and therefore can be neither proven nor disproven scientifically.

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Well, I think you are making the assumption that is wrong, i.e. that the nature of god is not related to the nature of the universe. For instance, according to your assumption, no matter what experiments and measurments I make, I cannot deduce anything about that/those entity/entities that have built my house. Obviously this is not the case.

Perhaps, if there must be a God, that God was nothing but a "man" playing in his physics lab trying to verify some latest theory and ended up creating a big-bang. ;)

On top of which, those comments need not necessarily apply to God. If you think about it, it's actually impossible to prove or disprove the existence of anything which cannot be observed or measured.

Which is just an elaborate way of saying that you can neither prove nor disprove anything which can neither be proven nor disproven.

Personally, I still believe that the view that our universe was created by a being is just one or at least two theories, the other principle one being the Big Bang theory. The God theory cannot be tested, not because God cannot be observed or measured - but because the theory itself doesn't offer any predictions that can be observed or measured. The only prediction it offers is that one day, we all end up in heaven or ****.

That isn't the basis for a convincing theory, IMHO.

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Originally Posted by John E

That isn't the basis for a convincing theory, IMHO.

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It isn't the basis for any kind of theory, convincing or otherwise, as that word applies in a scientific context. This ties into another statement that was made earlier:

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Originally Posted by Zeb

Evolution is a theory. God is a theory.

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Please don't conflate the scientific and vernacular meanings of the word "theory." There's a good summary of this problem in Wikipedia's entry on evolution (link):

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In plain English, people use the word "theory" to signify "conjecture", "speculation", or "opinion". In contrast, a scientific theory is a model of the world (or some portion of it) from which falsifiable hypotheses can be generated and be verified through empirical observation.

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As John E correctly pointed out, the idea that God created the universe does not have the aforementioned characteristics and thus cannot be called a scientific theory. I don't know what Zeb meant by posting that statement, since the rest of his post was obviously not an attempt to place religious and scientific ideas regarding the origins of life and the universe on the same level, but I thought I'd point it out anyway. I guess I'm a little touchy after having read too many stories in the past several months regarding people wanting to teach creationism in science classes. :(

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Originally Posted by cilu

Well, I think you are making the assumption that is wrong, i.e. that the nature of god is not related to the nature of the universe. For instance, according to your assumption, no matter what experiments and measurments I make, I cannot deduce anything about that/those entity/entities that have built my house.

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Yes absolutely. Thats my point. You can purhaps deduce something about the characteristics creator of an object by observing the object itself. But you can not scientifically prove the existance of the creator by observing the created.

Consider, if you will, Mr. Smith who makes a box.
If you observe the box you can't then scientifically state that Mr. Smith exists. You can say that IF Mr Smith exists, and IF Mr Smith built this box then he has a good attention to detail, he is a trained craftsman, etc.

I never said ANYTHING about not being able to hypothesise on the nature of God from observing the universe. In fact, I believe I said the opposite (earlier post). I appologies if I did not make this clear. The nature of the creator will obviously be reflected in the created.

BUT...
Saying "well the box is there and so Mr. Smith MUST exist" is equivalent to saying "well the earth is there and so God MUST exist". It is not scientifically sound. So the existance of the created does not prove the existance of the creator.

In the same way, observing that "There is evidence that, during the making of this box, a circular saw was used" neither proves nor disproves that Mr. Smith made the box, or that Mr. Smith exists.
Similarly, observing that "There is evidence that, during the making of the universe, a big bang took place" does not prove nor disprove that God made the universe, or that God exists.
(That is unless, of course, the existance of God and the exsistance of a big bang are mutually exclusive.)

So, back to what I was saying quite a while back IF God exists, and IF he created the universe you can't prove it. Nor can you disprove it. Not by observing the universe.
You can, I agree, that if God created the universe, we can deduce something of His nature.

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Originally Posted by John E

That isn't the basis for a convincing theory, IMHO.

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Originally Posted by Smasher/Devourer

As John E correctly pointed out, the idea that God created the universe does not have the aforementioned characteristics and thus cannot be called a scientific theory...

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Mmmmm, yipe I would agree. I would hardly call God a scientific theory. There is scientific evidence supporting the theories of a big bang and evolution. There is no scientific evidence for God. So? Does that mean God doesn't exist? As I have tried to point out... there is little point in trying to use science to prove or disprove God...

Now, you'll have to excuse me... I have tried to be objective up to now. Please pardon me being subjective for a bit:

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Originally Posted by The Apostle's Creed

I BELIEVE in God... the Creator of heaven and earth...

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I believe. Not because it has been proven to me. Not because I have received some devine revalation. I choose to believe that there is a God. I look at the odds of a stable universe being created after a big bang. I consider the fact that inanimate carbon forms the basis for animate life. I choose to believe.

I agree that stating that God exists is something of an argument from silence. Fine. But a statement argued from silence doesn't necessarily make it wrong (obviously, it certainly doesn't make it right either). But at the end of the day either you BELIEVE in God or you don't. One is right. One is not. Can I categorically state which is right and which is not? Nope. Can you?

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Originally Posted by Smasher/Devourer

I guess I'm a little touchy after having read too many stories in the past several months regarding people wanting to teach creationism in science classes.

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Oh gosh!! Creationism in science class! Please no. I would hardly call creationism a matter for scientific debate. In fact I don't even understand why anyone deffends it to be honest.

I have this argument often enough with people at my church. I know it well. I don't think the book of Genesis can be taken as a factual, historical piece of litterature (see previous post in this thread). But I have never heard much of an argument for why God and Big Bang are mutually exclusive.
The "best" I've heard was a sentence in Scientific American which said something to the effect of "Some morons have decided to take a middle road and offend no-one by saying that God instigated the Big-Bang". I hope you would agree with me that this is hardly a sound scientific argument as to why God and Big bang are mutually exclusive.

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Originally Posted by Pinky98

There is no scientific evidence for God. So? Does that mean God doesn't exist?

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No, it doesn't mean that, and I didn't mean to imply that it does. My post was not an argument against religious beliefs in general, just a complaint about people who try to claim that said beliefs are akin to scientific knowledge. I don't believe in God, but I don't claim to be able to prove his nonexistence either.

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Oh gosh!! Creationism in science class! Please no. I would hardly call creationism a matter for scientific debate. In fact I don't even understand why anyone deffends it to be honest.

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I know, it's frightening. Is it just people in the US making noise about putting "intelligent design" and other such rubbish into biology classes, or have people elsewhere in the world seen things like this as well? I think that Europeans, for example, tend to have their heads on straighter than we do about this stuff, but perhaps I'm wrong.

Oooh my favorite subject flares right up when I take a week off work. :p :thumb: :thumb:

I saw a sign in front of a Church in Sydney yesterday, which I agree with %100. It read:


Two great truths:
1- God exists
2- You are not him.



Best regards,

Deniz. :)

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Originally Posted by Smasher/Devourer

No, it doesn't mean that, and I didn't mean to imply that it does. My post was not an argument against religious beliefs in general, just a complaint about people who try to claim that said beliefs are akin to scientific knowledge. I don't believe in God, but I don't claim to be able to prove his nonexistence either.

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Ah. Okay, so we're arguing the same point for different angles.

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Originally Posted by Smasher/Devourer

I know, it's frightening. Is it just people in the US making noise about putting "intelligent design" and other such rubbish into biology classes, or have people elsewhere in the world seen things like this as well? I think that Europeans, for example, tend to have their heads on straighter than we do about this stuff, but perhaps I'm wrong.

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I think it is FAR more prevalent it America than it is around the rest of the world. Certainly in South Africa, it is not much of an issue at all. And, currently I am living in London, its not too much of an issue here either. In fact it wasn't much of an issue in Paris either... so for now I would say that it is pretty much confined to the USA. I think the europeans are (in general) far more concerned with moral values rather than worrying about creationism vs. evolutionism.

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Originally Posted by Deniz

Two great truths:
1- God exists
2- You are not him.

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Haha. LoL

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I saw a sign in front of a Church in Sydney yesterday, which I agree with %100. It read:

Two great truths:
1- God exists
2- You are not him.

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Wondering how would you define truth. I'm affraid you'll get an assertion failure. :D