Can science disprove the existence of God?

[LegionOnomaMoi]

What we accept as true is on a sliding scale. We cannot provide 100% certainty on anything.

Well put.

Besides, absence of evidence can indeed be evidence of absence. If you got a cancer screening and it showed no cancer was present, would you want the doctor to put you on chemo anyway?

Brilliantly put!

I am puzzled by your statement about many scientists trying to disprove god.

Likewise (but I said as much a while back).

I know of no particular experimentation done or hypotheses presented as a matter of some ongoing or completed research project.

Many physicists, rather deeply troubled with the fine-tuning problem, opt for the anthropic principle and/or one of the multiverse theories as a way to remove the need to appeal to a creator ("Indeed anthropically inclined physicists like Susskind and Weinberg are attracted to the multiverse precisely because it seems to dispense with God as the explanation of cosmic design"; from the editor's introduction to Universe or Multiverse? Cambridge University Press, 2007). The fact that other physicists have proposed anthropic multiverse cosmologies (e.g., Amoroso, R. L. & E. A. Rauscher (2009). The Holographic Anthropic Multiverse: Formalizing the Complex Geometry of Reality. World Scientific) and still others have argued that the fine-tuning problem is really a Scheinproblem doesn't seem to have changed the general desire by atheistic, agnostic, and probably even some religious physicists to provide alternative explanations to the fine-tuning problem other than "god". And naturally, the reverse is true of many theists/deists, who see this as evidence of god. A "proof" of such reasoning leading from science to god which is perhaps one of the most problematic I've yet seen is to be found in the attached paper:
Mendillo, M., & Hart, R. (1974). Resonances. Physics Today, 27(2), 73.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Hmmm.....according to contemporary human science, the physical universe detectable is only 2.5% of the whole...so there's 97.5% invisible but not considered non-existent right there... Perhaps atheists don't do science?

It isn't that atheists think that the undetectable doesn't exist; it's that we realize that you can't detect the undetectable either, so when you make claims about it, you're talking out of your butt.

 

[outhouse]

Apparently atheists not only don't know science....they can't understand English either....what does non-existent mean to you?

You admitted to being pseudoscientific

 

[Ben Dhyan]

You admitted to being pseudoscientific

Profound outhouse...profound....

 

[Milton Platt]

Can science disprove the existence of God?

Post #1992 is relevant here also.
Science cannot prove or disprove the existence of G-d. It is beyond it.
Regards

If there is a god that interferes in the day to day lives of humans or continually disrupts the laws of nature to perform miracles or answer billions of prayers, the effects would be observable and measurable. If there is a god who does not involve himself in any observable way with the universe, he would be a useless god and unimportant.

 

[Milton Platt]

Hmmm.....according to contemporary human science, the physical universe detectable is only 2.5% of the whole...so there's 97.5% invisible but not considered non-existent right there... Perhaps atheists don't do science?

You may also want to look into vision and see how much the human eye detects as a percentage of the whole EM spectrum?

I am aware of the limitations of human vision..what does that have to do with anything?

 

[SecularWonder]

If there is a god that interferes in the day to day lives of humans or continually disrupts the laws of nature to perform miracles or answer billions of prayers, the effects would be observable and measurable. If there is a god who does not involve himself in any observable way with the universe, he would be a useless god and unimportant.

This.

I don't think it's (for most) a matter of disproving God. It's just simply that the gaps people used to fill with "God did it" are increasingly being learned to be well... Not God. Learning God didn't do these things isn't a result (generally, again, don't know about ALL scientists) of setting out to disprove God. It's simply a natural byproduct of learning more about the universe around us. When lightning was understood, it wasn't because someone set out to disprove the existence of Zeus. Zeus just fell by the wayside as we learned more about the world and universe around us. For example pretty much the entire account of Genesis can be dismissed on what we can demonstrate now. That wasn't an attempt to debunk the Bible, it just happened as a result of us learning that what was contained within it was incorrect. No one said "Let's study genetic mapping or how stars/planets/etc. form so we can get rid of that book".

If you could demonstrate the existence of or even the need of a "supernatural"... Science wouldn't just dismiss it. It would test it, but that's not seeking to disprove it just for the sake of doing so. It's an attempt to verify the claim. It's out of being more concerned about what's true than the feelings or wishes of the person who claimed it. It's not science's (or scientists') fault if a given claim doesn't hold up to testing.

 

[Ben Dhyan]

I am aware of the limitations of human vision..what does that have to do with anything?

You implied that the invisible is synonymous with being non-existent... But we know from remote sensing that this is not so....

 

[Shad]

You implied that the invisible is synonymous with being non-existent... But we know from remote sensing that this is not so....

Which has failed to be demonstrated at all. Your prior belief is not a fact, it is a presupposition back by your faith.

 

[Parsimony]

God as a whole cannot be falsified, but it might be possible to falsify certain interpretations of God with sufficiently advanced technology. If it ever becomes possible to go back in time (or, at the very least, look back in time), then we could directly see whether or not all events as described in the Bible, Koran or any other holy books actually happened or not. Contest on Mount Carmel? We could check that. Parting of the Red Sea? Ditto. Raising the dead? Same there. If, hypothetically-speaking, it was found that no supernatural events ever happened in the recorded past, I'd called that a falsification. A deistic god, on the other hand, would not necessarily be subject to such falsifiability.

 

[Milton Platt]

You implied that the invisible is synonymous with being non-existent... But we know from remote sensing that this is not so....

Remote viewing has never been shown under properly controled conditions to be a reliable means to know anything.

But I'm willing to let you demonstrate how remote viewing csn provide scientically sound evidence of the existence of a god. Lay it out.

 

[Ben Dhyan]

Which has failed to be demonstrated at all. Your prior belief is not a fact, it is a presupposition back by your faith.

So let me get this straight.....you are agreeing with Milton that if something can not be seen...it is non-existent?

 

[Shad]

So let me get this straight.....you are agreeing with Milton that if something can not be seen...it is non-existent?

No. I was talking about your remote viewings which failed to be replicated outside the circles of people making the claims. It was not demonstrated enough to conclude the claims nor research were even credible. I addressed a specific point not a general idea. A lot of things are invisible to us, like various forms of radiation but unlike your remote views radiation has been demonstrated to exist.

Simply put I was cutting off your presupposition as true premise thus your argument collapses.

 

[Ben Dhyan]

Remote viewing has never been shown under properly controled conditions to be a reliable means to know anything.

But I'm willing to let you demonstrate how remote viewing csn provide scientically sound evidence of the existence of a god. Lay it out.

Not remote viewing...remote sensing....I worked in the field...tracking, and data acquisition from Landsat spacecraft scanning the Earth in the short and long wavelength infra red EM spectrum. There are invisible energy forms not visible to the human eye...and so it is with astronomy across the whole EM wave spectrum that present technology allows us to see...

 

[Ben Dhyan]

No. I was talking about your remote viewings which failed to be replicated outside the circles of people making the claims. It was not demonstrated enough to conclude the claims nor research were even credible. I addressed a specific point not a general idea. A lot of things are invisible to us, like various forms of radiation but unlike your remote views radiation has been demonstrated to exist.

Simply put I was cutting off your presupposition as true premise thus your argument collapses.

Haha...how did you and Milton both get to remote viewing from remote sensing...see my post above to Milton...

 

[Shad]

Haha...how did you and Milton both get to remote viewing from remote sensing...see my post above to Milton...

Considering you drone on about how PSI is real and keep mentioning people that still failed to demonstrate it was a simple mistake. I have no issues with admitting my error.


This is out of the way I already told you I agree invisible to us does not mean non-existent. You had no issues with this. So really your comment is no longer relevant as the discussion has progressed beyond it. It is a moot point in the end.

 

[Milton Platt]

So let me get this straight.....you are agreeing with Milton that if something can not be seen...it is non-existent?

Please quote me correctly. That is not what I said

 

[Ben Dhyan]

Considering you drone on about how PSI is real and keep mentioning people that still failed to demonstrate it was a simple mistake. I have no issues with admitting my error.

This is out of the way I already told you I agree invisible to us does not mean non-existent. You had no issues with this. So really your comment is no longer relevant as the discussion has progressed beyond it. It is a moot point in the end.

Entanglement can be an issue when emotions are in play....stay cool...

 

[Milton Platt]

I st

Haha...how did you and Milton both get to remote viewing from remote sensing...see my post above to Milton...

You are right. I stand corrected. Substitute sensing for the word viewing in my original post. The rest stands.

 

[Shad]

Entanglement can be an issue when emotions are in play....stay cool...

No emotions involved. I just lost track of the two threads we are a part of. Beside remote sensing is also a term in the whole "PSI" field so I made an assumption.