Do you believe in God?

[Alex]

Originally Posted by Cadaverous Pallor

This is why I love Alex Stroup - he has no belief beyond what he can prove, and that's cool. If you're going to argue against people having a belief system, you better not have one yourself, and that includes all beliefs.

That's not quite accurate but is well in the direction of what I strive towards.

When it comes to others I really don't care what people believe but when it comes up in the context of discussion there are two things I can't avoid picking at:

1) If there is a claim of real world affects that should be measurable, I'll want to investigate whether they are actually measured.

2) If there is a claim that rational methods suggest belief for something lacking an evidentiary basis I'll want to investigate whether there are gaps in that rational method.

But if someone keeps it completely in the realm of untestable and unknowable then there is nothing to debate. But I saw a lot (not necessarily here) of "I believe god is unknowable and not subject to scientific methods of investigation. I also believe in the healing power of prayer" or "Since science can't explain how the pre-Big Bang state [which, by the way was not a ball of gas; pre Big Bang neither matter, sub atomic particles, nor time as we know it appear to have existed] it seems the only option is a sentient creator."

The former makes claims that should be testable and the former makes logical leaps that I don't think are supported.

But when someone says "God is the love I feel for all mankind" all I can say is "please don't sit on my furniture you stinky hippie."

[Alex]

Originally Posted by Cadaverous Pallor

Heh, I'd buy it if you said "I theorize it could be true."

That's like the people who write in response to my movie reviews at MousePlanet saying "That's just your opinion, you should say so." Just as "in my opinion" is inherent in a movie review, "could be" is inherent to "I theorize."

[Motorboat Cruiser]

Originally Posted by Alex Stroup

But when someone says "God is the love I feel for all mankind" all I can say is "please don't sit on my furniture you stinky hippie."

Priceless.

[Tref]

Sept. 8th -- Happy Birthday Mama Mary!

[RStar]

Originally Posted by Frogberto

Absolutely. I think the current status of data shows that our universe is not an infinite one, but any questions of what's outside of our universe, whether other universes exist, or have different laws than ours, what came before the big bang, or whether our universe always existed requires data outside of space and time (or our universe), and thus can only be pure speculation, without supporting data, almost by definition.

But it sure is fun to think about.

It sure is! I think that's why I like Science Fiction so much. And as a kid I was facenated by Dinosaurs and time travel stories. The laws that make up our known part of the universe and all the new discoveries are just so facinating.

[Ghoulish Delight]

Originally Posted by Alex Stroup

That's like the people who write in response to my movie reviews at MousePlanet saying "That's just your opinion, you should say so." Just as "in my opinion" is inherent in a movie review, "could be" is inherent to "I theorize."

Very true, but a lot of people miss that point.

Science is as much of a belief system as anything else. It requires acceptance on faith of certain base assumptions that are not proveable. The basic axioms of mathematics, the basic postulates of geometry. There is no positive proof for the identity axiom, or that a straight line can be drawn between any 2 points. They simple must be accepted because there's no reason not to believe they are true. And yet all of science is based on them.

[Alex]

Originally Posted by Ghoulish Delight

They simple must be accepted because there's no reason not to believe they are true. And yet all of science is based on them.

This isn't quite true. There is no reason to not believe they are true but there is also a lot of reason to believe that they are true.

Why? Because based on those assumptions we can make predictions about the universe. Predictions that are born out by observation. Unlike simple faith, science includes a method for attempting validation and revision. Simple faith, generally explicitly rejects any such effort ("despite any evidence to the contrary I know the Earth is only 6,000 years old"). And until that process of validation can be performed ideas aren't accepted completely and even then are open to revision and re-examination.

For 200 years the luminiferous ether was accepted as a theoretical necessity because nobody could figure out how light could otherwise move through space. They could think of no experiments to prove its existence but it did a good job of filling a theoretical gap. And yet, even after 200 years of the most educated believing it existed it was still open to examination and by the late 1800s technology was allowing experiments that created paradoxes at odds with the idea of the luminiferous ether and opened the door for relativity.

When Einstein published his paper on the electrodynamics of moving objects (special relativity) there was no objective evidence for it. The technology did not exist to prove it. And yet within a decade it had completely overturned physics because the theory makes sense, makes predictions that matched was was known and also made predictions that could eventually be tested to provide opportunity for validation. Several aspects of relatively were not directly testable for nearly 30 years. Einstein's 1906 prediction of time dilation was not directly measured until the late 1930s (with muon decay) and not to general acceptance until the early 1940s (with direct measurements by cesium clocks on airplanes).

The scienctific method is not simply a different kind of faith. It has a fundamentally different structure.

[Ghoulish Delight]

Originally Posted by Alex Stroup

The scienctific method is not simply a different kind of faith. It has a fundamentally different structure.

I disagree. I'm not saying it's the same kind of faith as religious faith, but it still takes a certain level of faith to accept unproveable axioms (I'm talking a=a; if a=b and b=c then a=c, etc.) as, or close enough to, true. Yes, it is clearly different in that those axioms are open to change should evidence otherwise come forward, but the fact remains that to get off the ground, to make any mathematical or scientific progress, one must believe that certain things are true without proof. Experimental evidence, yes, but not proof. I, for one, do believe them to be true.

[Alex]

Mathematical axioms have nothing to do with the axioms of the scientific method (and the example you provide does have proofs, mathematical proofs). You can change mathematical axioms all you want, devise perfectly functional mathematics and it changes nothing. There is no inherent connection between mathematical axioms and the acutal observed universe around us.

The reason we use the mathematical axioms that are most commonly taught is that they have proven best as providing descriptive and predictive power for the universe around us. If it turns out that "parallel lines intersect at Trump Tower but at not other point" is a better geometric axiom for describing our universe it would soon supplant the traditional Euclidean axiom.

If you want to call that faith, I can't stop you but I think it is a perversion of the word that removes all meaning.

There is really only one axiom of the scientific method: that the fundamental properties of the universe are consistent across space and time. Yes, this, I suppose, requires an unprovable faith. But to assume a different axiom is to render all observation of our universe pointless. But again, it is an axiom that is supported by observable evidence.

Of course, pretty much all religious thinking is a rejection of that axiom and that is why I hold religion and scient to be unreconcilable.

[mousepod]

I know that there are things in the universe beyond my comprehension. When I'm talking with religious friends who I don't want to piss off, I call those things "God". Privately, I'm more interested in observable truths. I don't need God to teach me morality. When I first got sober through AA at age 19, I was aware that it was a religious program and that "GOD" played a big role. I balked at the idea until some old-timer in the program told me that many people think of God as "Good, Orderly Direction." Worked for me at that time.

If anyone is interested, I'd be happy to share my copy of "A Rough History of Disbelief," a great BBC miniseries written by and starring Jonathan Miller. I've also got Miller's accompanying "Atheism Tapes," unedited interviews that Miller conducted with Colin McGinn, Steven Weinberg, Arthur Miller, Richard Dawkins, Denys Turner, and Daniel Dennett for the "Rough History" series.