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Science

Science Cannot Prove the Existence of God 755

Posted by Soulskill from the let's-argue dept.
StartsWithABang writes: This past weekend, Eric Metaxas lit up the world with his bold article in the Wall Street Journal, Science Increasingly Makes the Case for God. As a scientific counterpoint, this article fully addresses three major points of that "case," including what the condition are that we need for life to arise, how rare (or common) are those conditions, and if we don't find life where we expect it, can we learn anything about God at all?
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Science Cannot Prove the Existence of God More

Science Cannot Prove the Existence of God

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  • God, Like an Unseen Hair (Score:5, Funny)

    by smittyoneeach ( 243267 ) * on Tuesday December 30, 2014 @07:15PM (#48700187) Homepage Journal
    God, like an unseen hair
    Untouched by intellectual stare
    Refuses bending to mortal will
    Yet teasing the human soul still
    Burma Shave
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Keeping the population busy
      With stupid fights they're all a'tizzy.
      It's enough to make you dizzy.
      Used to be angels on a pin
      And who is hit by original sin,
      Or the immorality of Huck Finn.
      And all the other "sins" we've seen of late
      If you're not the chosen, then infidels you hate,
      Your martyr's death, and paradise await.
      Better to tackle the extremists problem all over,
      'Cuz while zealots are fools, we still run for cover.
      These haters will turn son against mother.
      This argument about whether god does exit,
      I look at priorities, it's far, far down the list.
      We exist, therefore we are,
      As for the rest, be it near or far,
      Whether they exist or not proves nothing you see,
      It's just speculative clickbait to lure you and me.
      Again, I exist, therefore I am,
      Now please enjoy your green eggs and spam.
      Burma Shave

      Oh, and Happy new year in a bit
      For those who celebrate that sort of ____

  • God is dead. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 30, 2014 @07:20PM (#48700219)

    So is Nietzsche. But you know who's alive? Kim Kardashian. Where's the justice in that?

  • Well That About Wraps It Up For God (Score:5, Funny)

    by tverbeek ( 457094 ) on Tuesday December 30, 2014 @07:21PM (#48700227) Homepage

    "I refuse to prove that I exist," says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing."

    "But," says man, "[that article in the Wall Street Urinal says that science] proves that you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. Q.E.D."

    "Oh dear," says God, "I hadn't thought of that," and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.

    – excerpted from Douglas Adams (for the cretins in the audience)

    • Re:Well That About Wraps It Up For God (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 30, 2014 @07:52PM (#48700473)

      "I refuse to prove that I exist," says God

      Between the burning bush, smiting that dude that saved the Ark from falling off a cart, fucking with Job, wrestling with Jacob, telling Saul to build him a temple, actually occupying tents set up for him, any many more examples, if Douglas had read the Bible, he'd have known that God loved to prove that he existed. It wasn't until the New that he said "Peace! I'm out! If you need anything, ask the kid."

      Not that it matters. Proof doesn't deny faith in the first place. Faith exists in the absence of proof as well in the confirmation of proof.

    • It is simple (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 30, 2014 @08:10PM (#48700587)

      Scientific discoveries tend to make the universe seem even more amazing, and reveal even more limitations to human understanding.

      To theists, the more amazing the universe is, the more obvious it is that God must exist. Similarly, the more limited humans are shown to be, the more obvious it is that God did it all.

      That is why theists keep insisting that science makes their case for them. Emotionally they are right. Logically they are not.

      Many theists also get this strange idea that something intrinsic to science makes the enterprise itself "out to disprove God's existence." Science doesn't disprove God so much as start by assuming God doesn't exist, and operate within the boundaries of what we can actually demonstrate (which will never be God). Some specific scientists want to disprove God's existence (good luck proving a negative!), but science itself just doesn't include God in the equation at all. Theists receive this very reasonable assumption of mechanism over intelligent agency as an attempt to disprove, and go on the counter-offensive, claiming that these attempts are self-defeating.

      So, that is what is going on.

      I contend that anyone who achieves true objectivity on this issue will opt for agnosticism and just leave the debate behind.

      • agnostic atheist (Score:5, Insightful)

        by aepervius ( 535155 ) on Wednesday December 31, 2014 @04:35AM (#48702989)

        I contend that anyone who achieves true objectivity on this issue will opt for agnosticism and just leave the debate behind.

        Agnosticism alone is only about the contention that the existence of gods are unknowable and says nothing about the belief of the person.

        The real category are IMNSHO :
        * gnostic theist , I believe in god(s) existance and I know god(s) existence are knowable
        * gnostic atheist , god(s) non existence is demonstrable (and logically do not believe in gods existence)
        * agnostic theist , I believe in god(s) existance but god(s) existence cannot ever be demonstrated e.g. it is faith only, all the rest miracle and so forth is bunk
        * agnostic atheist , god(s) are a construction of human mind, but this cannot ever be demonstrated to the point of knowing that god(s) do not exists.

        In the very end if you shrug and say I do not know, but live your life without any token prayer , then you are de facto agnostic atheist. There are a few agnostic theist I met, they are quite rare, the vast majority of self declared "agnostic" I met, are actually agnostic atheist, but unwilling to admit the atheist part to themselves. I am an agnostic atheist by the way.

      • Re:It is simple (Score:4, Insightful)

        by cas2000 ( 148703 ) on Wednesday December 31, 2014 @04:36AM (#48702993)

        it's not true that science *can't* prove that a god or gods exist - it's more that a god which can't be proven to exist is a god that does absolutely nothing (if it did anything then that would leave some evidence which could be used to prove its existence) - and is therefore a god that may as well not exist, and is exactly the same as a god that doesn't exist.

        a faith-only god is irrelevant - pointless.

        anyone who believes in a creator god that made us into rational beings and then demands that we ignore our rationality and use only faith to believe in him/her/it (because it refuses to provide evidence of itself) is a fuckwit of the first order.

    • http://www.sacred-texts.com/ao... [sacred-texts.com]
      "During the last century, and part of the one before, it was widely held that there was an unreconcilable conflict between knowledge and belief. The opinion prevailed among advanced minds that it was time that belief should be replaced increasingly by knowledge; belief that did not itself rest on knowledge was superstition, and as such had to be opposed. According to this conception, the sole function of education was to open the way to thinking and knowing, and the school,

    • Re:Well That About Wraps It Up For God (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Charliemopps ( 1157495 ) on Tuesday December 30, 2014 @08:35PM (#48700775)

      "I refuse to prove that I exist," says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing."

      "But," says man, "[that article in the Wall Street Urinal says that science] proves that you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. Q.E.D."

      "Oh dear," says God, "I hadn't thought of that," and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.

      – excerpted from Douglas Adams (for the cretins in the audience)

      And that's about the most intelligent thing a person can say on the matter.

      Ones the subject of logic and evidence. The other is the subject of faith. Those that lack logic and evidence seem to be completely baffled by people of sciences inability to have any spiritual understanding what-so-ever. And those that lack faith seem to be completely baffled by those that are spirituals complete lack of logic. The 2 subjects have little to do with one another other and to try and prove or disprove Science or God with Science or God makes about as much sense as what Douglas Adams eloquently illustrates in his example.

      It's like if I were to play you Beethoven 5th and say "Isn't that a fantastic peace?" and you were to turn to me and say "Music is nothing is superstition!" and then recite to me the Pythagorean theorem. And to make matters worse I then force you to listen to the Beatles and claim that "Octopuses Garden" clearly shows that Calculus is actually just a government conspiracy.

      I personally hope there is a God and that science is the method to understanding of his design. If I'm wrong? Oh well. At least I got Christmas out of the deal.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by towermac ( 752159 )

        It's not even logical to expect to prove God with science.

        First off, If you created the universe, and the four dimensional space-time manifold that encompasses it; then you would necessarily exist/existed/existing outside of that four dimensional space time. How would you expect to detect something outside that manifold with rays and particles that are necessarily bound to it?

        Second, love is real. From this armchair, I am a Scientist, and love is not in the Standard Model. It's not a particle or ray, nor is

      • Here's your problem. God never said that "without faith I am nothing." In fact, even in a world where nobody will praise his glory, "the stones will cry out." (Luke 19:40). God also never said that "I refuse to prove that exist" either:

        24 “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands. 25 And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else

  • The idea or concept of god... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 30, 2014 @07:24PM (#48700249)

    ... violates how language works, when one defines a concept in language it's drawn from the environment, there is no "god" to point to in our environment. If I say house I can point to it, if I say car, I can point to it. The same cannot be said for god. The word god defines nothing, because it's definitions have no coherence in terms of the natural world. All truths are natural and drawn from the environment. This is how people 'argue' that the other persons god is wrong, they use nature. You can use nature to disprove all ancient gods and their claims about reality.

    If a god like being exists, this does not justify religion in any way. The idea that 'evidence for god exists' somehow proves the doctrines of the bible or koran or any other superstitious nonsense is laughable.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by hey! ( 33014 )

      ... violates how language works,,,/p>

      That's what *you* say.

    • Re:The idea or concept of god... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by aBaldrich ( 1692238 ) on Tuesday December 30, 2014 @07:29PM (#48700281)
      Fake premise. I say "unicorn." I can't point to it. Except when under LSD. But hey, the word has a meaning.
      I say "Freedom". Can't point to it. Etc

    • Re:The idea or concept of god... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by taustin ( 171655 ) on Tuesday December 30, 2014 @07:34PM (#48700321) Homepage Journal

      ... violates how language works, when one defines a concept in language it's drawn from the environment, there is no "god" to point to in our environment. If I say house I can point to it, if I say car, I can point to it. The same cannot be said for god.

      I'm curious. Are you saying that you can point to, say, love, beauty, or freedom? Or are you saying that they don't exist?

      What a sad, empty life it would be, to live in a world without abstract concepts.

    • when one defines a concept in language it's drawn from the environment, there is no "god" to point to in our environment.

      When one points at one thing and sys "red", and another then says "green", but a red/green colorblind person sees the same thing... where is your language then?

      Words have always meant differing things to different people to varying degrees, that sure doesn't stop at God.

      Also curious what you do with the word Wind, when it cannot be seen directly (normally), only by it's secondary effects

  • Hardly sporting... (Score:5, Funny)

    by fuzzyfuzzyfungus ( 1223518 ) on Tuesday December 30, 2014 @07:31PM (#48700303) Journal
    Isn't arguing with a WSJ editorial writer roughly the equivalent of racing a team of thalidomide babies, or beating a crack team of retards at Jeopardy? Easy, sure, and likely even an indication of your superior aptitude. Just... Somehow unseemly.

    • Reading their editorials in the first place is kind of like eating their dogfood and washing it down with their kool-aide.

  • This tired old saw again. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by RatBastard ( 949 ) on Tuesday December 30, 2014 @07:33PM (#48700315) Homepage

    Just love the argument from incredulity. "It's more amazing than my puny brain can handle, therefor God!"

    No, stupid. Try proving the claims that your religion makes are true. Prove miracles. Prove life after death. Prove Jesus rose from the grave. Hell, Prove Jesus ever actually existed. Prove that humanity came from a single breeding pair. Find the genetic bottleneck in our genes from when the world was reduced to Noah and his family.

    • Not saying I agree with the WSJ editorial (which I haven't even bothered to read). However, there is one way for science to prove God exists. Holograms.

      Scientists (real ones with physics degrees from prestigious universities, not the Christian science kind) are pretty close to proving that the universe is a simulation. Well if it's a simulation, who's doing the simulating, and who's watching it? Must be some entity that existed prior to the beginning of this universe and is outside it. Might as well call it

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by vix86 ( 592763 )
        It might be god from our perspective, but it might be a let down of a god in other ways. Consider this scenario.

        300 years in the future we discover some way to simulate an entire universe easily within a computer. So we create one and let it run for billions of years inside the simulation till intelligent sentient life emerges. This life makes great strides, it goes to space, it advances, until one day we look in and decide to "pull one of the beings out." We pull the "mind of the being" out of the simula

      • Re:This tired old saw again. (Score:5, Informative)

        by Smidge204 ( 605297 ) on Tuesday December 30, 2014 @09:03PM (#48700951) Journal

        I think you're misconstruing what is actually meant when physicists talk about the universe possibly being a hologram.

        They don't mean the contemporary "Star Trek Holodeck" type of hologram. They mean that all of the information about the 3D volume of the universe can be contained and encoded within a 2D boundary.

        This is not a mathematically rigorous concept of the universe, but if they can nail it down it might have some application in explaining how gravity works and the ultimate granularity of the universe (e.g. how small the smallest possible fundamental particles can be). But in no sense would this prove, or even really be evidence supporting, the notion that our universe is a simulation within some "larger reality."
        =Smidge=

    • Not just that. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by khasim ( 1285 ) <brandioch.conner@gmail.com> on Tuesday December 30, 2014 @08:17PM (#48700649)

      Douglas Adams said it best:

      Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind- bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.

      The WSJ's entire premise is based upon the idea that space is small enough that we could search it for other inhabited planets in the time we've been looking.

      Space isn't that small.

      Space is so big that BILLIONS of years will pass before we even see the light shining from a sun in a different galaxy.

      The universe could have 10,000 intelligent species that we will never know about because they are just too far from us.

  • If God actually came down to Earth and showed Himself, maybe that would be evidence?

    But, be ready, He may not be what you are expecting! [nocookie.net]

  • Saying God doesn't exist is like saying that lunch time doesn't exist, or money doesn't exist, or the United States doesn't exist. You can't disprove the existence of an idea; and dismissing the real influence of that idea (both good and bad) and the potential influence of that idea (both good and bad) is asinine.

  • I'm a Catholic and a scientist. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jpellino ( 202698 ) on Tuesday December 30, 2014 @07:46PM (#48700411)
    It's not that hard. Somehow I make sure that I use the science part to understand the physical world and not poison living things or get hit by a bus, and I simultaneously use the spiritual part to understand people can behave and how to treat them better. But I don't make the mistake of using science to worry about which bed linens might be Jesus' and I don't use the religion part to pray my way out of jams or explain why butterflies look nice. I know science is always subject to new data, and that the Bible was a milleniums-long game of telephone (OT) and written by at least four people each with an agenda (NT). So take it all with a grain of salt and read for deep meaning - it's not a day planner.

  • Nothing to see here (Score:5, Informative)

    by david_thornley ( 598059 ) on Tuesday December 30, 2014 @07:48PM (#48700425)

    It's a takeoff on the Anthropic Principle [wikipedia.org], which says that the Universe has to be set up for intelligent life because otherwise we couldn't be observing it. The idea is that, since there's a whole lot of ways the Universe could be set up in ways that would make intelligent life impossible, God must have set it up.

    One problem is that this, by itself, means nothing. We don't know how many Universes exist in some sense, and it's quite reasonable that infinitely many do, with all possible variations. (This is, of course, unfalsifiable and therefore unscientific, but if true it would completely nullify the divine argument.) It's also possible that physics is set up without all of the independent parameters. It may be that there's a necessary relation between the charge on an electron, the mass of the bottom quark, the gravitational constant, and Planck's constant, so that they aren't all independent. It wouldn't be the first time that physics had found ways two things depend on each other.

    Fundamentally, though, it's an appeal to ignorance. The author doesn't know why all this would have happened without God, so there must be a God, right?

  • I always thought it funny (Score:4, Insightful)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Tuesday December 30, 2014 @07:49PM (#48700431)
    that there was _tons_ of proof that God exists (e.g. Miracles) right up until the invention of the camera, the jet airplane and the t.v. journalist...

  • I choose to define "God" as the intelligence/life force of the universe itself. Seeing as that's something that can never be seen nor measured, there's no proving nor disproving it. It's simply the way *I* choose to look at things.

    That's not to say that I believe in "man in the sky" mythos. My definition is different than that of traditional religions.

    The same goes for anyone arguing about the existence of God. Before you can argue about existence, you first have to agree with each other as to what

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by msobkow ( 48369 )

      Because of my definition, I can see God's guts spread out all over the night sky on a daily basis. So technically, I would claim that I *have* "seen God."

    • I was hoping somebody would go there. How you define "God" will determine if God exists. The definition will determine if you can prove God's existence, and it will determine how you can prove it.

      The article offered seemingly endless statistical assumptions about the evolution of life which neither prove, or disprove the existence of God. If the unlikelihood of the evolution of basic life points to the existence of God, it is only because you started with a definition that God is the creator of life. If

  • Increasingly science has been coming to the conclusion our universe is much larger spatially than previously imagined, (areas that have expanded out of our causal connectivity) and may in fact be infinite. If so, then a reasonable robust set of physical laws would probably lead to intelligence somewhere, somehow, but more than this, the universe is probably infinite in multiply definable ways (see: Tegmark's Mathematical Universe Hypothosis [wikipedia.org]) including how you can define physical laws, and all those universes large enough with complex enough laws probably all lead to intelligent life. The solution to Fermi's Paradox may be that sufficient advanced beings have escaped to the other extra-dimensional Universes.

    I'd say Quantum Mechanics is a strong indicator of infinite overlapping Universes and if the Universe is infinite in this way, why not infinite in all ways including how to cook up physical laws? With the God theory you get one highly anomalous and inexplicable Universe. Whereas if you just allow everything, well then – here we are, with infinite Universes we'd have had to pop up somewhere.

  • God is a metaphor. It doesn't even make sense to ask whether God or a god exists or doesn't exist.

  • In 1966 Time magazine ran a cover story asking: Is God Dead?

    Nodody thinks even Time Magazine would try to run anything like that today.

  • Since proof in science can only be found in mathematics, should we please burn this article for it contains nothing but sophistry? Just to point out: "make a case for" isn't equal to "prove".

    Nice try, Slashdot.

  • Once again (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Ol Olsoc ( 1175323 ) on Tuesday December 30, 2014 @08:09PM (#48700585)
    The God of the gaps.

    Arguing from personal incredulity.

    This dude falls for the old trap that he doesn't understand something, therefore "God did it". Personal incredulity

    We haven't found life on other planets, therefore we must be the only one. Therefore we are the only one. Therefore God.

    Most people have no idea how cell phones work. Does that mean God made cell phones?

    Most people don't understand the quantum. Does that mean that those devices that work on hte quantum don't exist, or that God actually intervenes every time we use them? Once upon a time, illnesses were punishments from God. Some people still think so. Are they? We now know about germs and viruses. We know about biology, and are continuing to learn. As we learn we effect cures, by attacking those things that make us sick, validating the biology. Or is it still God making us sick, and all the biology just a trick of the devil, not unlike those who believe that fossils were put in the earth by the devil or by God to tempt us, or prove our faith,

    The God of the Gaps is silly, as we find the gaps getting smaller and smaller.

    People who were schizophrenic or psychotic were "posessed by demons" Now we treat them with drugs. Do the drugs drive the demons out? Or do they help to control issues of chemical unbalance or other problems. Can an exorcist cure the insane as well as psychopharmacology? That somehow, this foolish man's thinking that his lack of knowledge proves that God exists, if true, means that His god needs people to be as ignorant as possible. Then everythinig they do not know about makes God more and more legitimate and powerful. A person who knows almost nothing can then know that almost everything is proof of God.

  • Science also cannot disprove the existence of God.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by RatBastard ( 949 )

      Well, bully for you. Science can't disprove the existence of Odin, Ra, Mithras, Zeus, Raven, the Spirit of Radio, The Flying Spaghetti Monster, etc...

  • WSJ link: can God make a paywall... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jeffb (2.718) ( 1189693 ) on Tuesday December 30, 2014 @08:42PM (#48700817)

    ...so annoying that not even He can be bothered to try to get to the article hidden behind it?

  • Every time someone mention how "perfect" our solar system is, this blog post [planetplanet.net] comes to my mind. You think one habitable planet is cool? How about 24?!?

  • Science and Religion, explained (Score:5, Insightful)

    by QuietLagoon ( 813062 ) on Tuesday December 30, 2014 @09:18PM (#48701051)
    Science is questions that may never be answered.

    .
    Religion is answers that may never be questioned.

  • No Kidding (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Kozar_The_Malignant ( 738483 ) on Tuesday December 30, 2014 @09:40PM (#48701181)
    "Science Cannot Prove the Existence of God." This is not news. It was not news a hundred years ago. This is pretty standard stuff from any general education philosophy class in any decent university. Don't people go to school any more?

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