Why Science Does Not Disprove God

[Wilikon]

[...]
Why did everything we need in order to exist come into being? How was all of this possible without some latent outside power to orchestrate the precise dance of elementary particles required for the creation of all the essentials of life? The great British mathematician Roger Penrose has calculated—based on only one of the hundreds of parameters of the physical Universe—that the probability of the emergence of a life-giving cosmos was one divided by 10, raised to the power 10, and again raised to the power of 123. This is a number as close to zero as anyone has ever imagined. (The probability is much, much smaller than that of winning the Mega Millions jackpot for more days than the Universe has been in existence.)

The “Scientific Atheists” have scrambled to explain this troubling mystery by suggesting the existence of a multiverse—an infinite set of universes, each with its own parameters. In some universes, the conditions are wrong for life; however, by the sheer size of this putative multiverse, there must be a universe where everything is right. But if it takes an immense power of nature to create one universe, then how much more powerful would that force have to be in order to create infinitely many universes? So the purely hypothetical multiverse does not solve the problem of God. The incredible fine-tuning of the Universe presents the most powerful argument for the existence of an immanent creative entity we may well call God. Lacking convincing scientific evidence to the contrary, such a power may be necessary to force all the parameters we need for our existence—cosmological, physical, chemical, biological, and cognitive—to be what they are.

http://time.com/77676/why-science-does-not-disprove-god/

[scottsecret]

I will feel more stupid going to bed after reading that.  Thank you.

[Balthazar]

They are so stupid... And still trying to prove or disprove something that couldn't  be proved or disproved.  

You can't "disprove" existence of Cthulhu or Flying Spagetty Monster through using a scientific approach. Science can't disprove existence of God because this statement does not apply to scientific knowledge. These two areas couldn't be overlapped, any attempt to merge scientific and religious knowledge doesn't make any sense.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability

Science is science, religion is religion. That's the point here.

[Nemo1024]

I expected a little bit more from Time, but then again, their tracks record in the brain department has not been inspiring.

One of the answers is: because god is a construct of a human brain, that is placed in an area, where ignorance begins as a placeholder universal answer for the yet unknown.

On the same topic, I have a favourite quotation whenever someone tries to say that atheism is just another religion:

Atheism is a religion like not collecting stamps is a hobby.
 - Penn Jillette

[5flags]

Yeah, this is just epistemology 101. Science is concerned with theory, and empirical evidence. Faith is concerned with plugging the gaps in human knowledge left by the questions to which we cannot get answers.

Anyone who tries to argue that science disproves the existence of God understands neither science, nor Godness (yes, I might have made that word up).

[Wipeout2097]

Of course science doesn't disprove God. But scientists aren't the ones with the burden of proof in the first place.

[5flags]

Of course science doesn't disprove God. But scientists aren't the ones with the burden of proof in the first place.

There is no burden of proof. If there was, it wouldn't be considered "faith"

[Wipeout2097]

Of course science doesn't disprove God. But scientists aren't the ones with the burden of proof in the first place.

There is no burden of proof. If there was, it wouldn't be considered "faith"

I know there isn't. But if religious people want to meddle into science, they should start working on an effort of backing up their faith with facts, like everyone else that comes forward with theories.

[cryptodevil]

Hell, if science cannot disprove the existence of the dragon in my garage, there's little hope of them disproving an omnipotent deity I can initiate a one-way telepathic conversation with simply by making special hand gestures and invoking magical and mystical words.

"A fire-breathing dragon lives in my garage"

Suppose (I'm following a group therapy approach by the psychologist Richard Franklin) I seriously make such an assertion to you.  Surely you'd want to check it out, see for yourself.  There have been innumerable stories of dragons over the centuries, but no real evidence. What an opportunity!

"Show me," you say.  I lead you to my garage.  You look inside and see a ladder, empty paint cans, an old tricycle -- but no dragon.

"Where's the dragon?" you ask.

"Oh, she's right here," I reply, waving vaguely.  "I neglected to mention that she's an invisible dragon."

You propose spreading flour on the floor of the garage to capture the dragon's footprints.

"Good idea," I say, "but this dragon floats in the air."

Then you'll use an infrared sensor to detect the invisible fire.

"Good idea, but the invisible fire is also heatless."

You'll spray-paint the dragon and make her visible.

"Good idea, but she's an incorporeal dragon and the paint won't stick."  And so on.  I counter every physical test you propose with a special explanation of why it won't work.

Now, what's the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all?  If there's no way to disprove my contention, no conceivable experiment that would count against it, what does it mean to say that my dragon exists?  Your inability to invalidate my hypothesis is not at all the same thing as proving it true.  Claims that cannot be tested, assertions immune to disproof are veridically worthless, whatever value they may have in inspiring us or in exciting our sense of wonder.  What I'm asking you to do comes down to believing, in the absence of evidence, on my say-so.  The only thing you've really learned from my insistence that there's a dragon in my garage is that something funny is going on inside my head.  You'd wonder, if no physical tests apply, what convinced me.  The possibility that it was a dream or a hallucination would certainly enter your mind.  But then, why am I taking it so seriously?  Maybe I need help.  At the least, maybe I've seriously underestimated human fallibility.  Imagine that, despite none of the tests being successful, you wish to be scrupulously open-minded.  So you don't outright reject the notion that there's a fire-breathing dragon in my garage.  You merely put it on hold.  Present evidence is strongly against it, but if a new body of data emerge you're prepared to examine it and see if it convinces you.  Surely it's unfair of me to be offended at not being believed; or to criticize you for being stodgy and unimaginative -- merely because you rendered the Scottish verdict of "not proved."

Imagine that things had gone otherwise.  The dragon is invisible, all right, but footprints are being made in the flour as you watch.  Your infrared detector reads off-scale.  The spray paint reveals a jagged crest bobbing in the air before you.  No matter how skeptical you might have been about the existence of dragons -- to say nothing about invisible ones -- you must now acknowledge that there's something here, and that in a preliminary way it's consistent with an invisible, fire-breathing dragon.

Now another scenario: Suppose it's not just me.  Suppose that several people of your acquaintance, including people who you're pretty sure don't know each other, all tell you that they have dragons in their garages -- but in every case the evidence is maddeningly elusive.  All of us admit we're disturbed at being gripped by so odd a conviction so ill-supported by the physical evidence.  None of us is a lunatic.  We speculate about what it would mean if invisible dragons were really hiding out in garages all over the world, with us humans just catching on.  I'd rather it not be true, I tell you.  But maybe all those ancient European and Chinese myths about dragons weren't myths at all.

Gratifyingly, some dragon-size footprints in the flour are now reported.  But they're never made when a skeptic is looking.  An alternative explanation presents itself.  On close examination it seems clear that the footprints could have been faked.  Another dragon enthusiast shows up with a burnt finger and attributes it to a rare physical manifestation of the dragon's fiery breath.  But again, other possibilities exist.  We understand that there are other ways to burn fingers besides the breath of invisible dragons.  Such "evidence" -- no matter how important the dragon advocates consider it -- is far from compelling.  Once again, the only sensible approach is tentatively to reject the dragon hypothesis, to be open to future physical data, and to wonder what the cause might be that so many apparently sane and sober people share the same strange delusion.

See, even the great Carl Sagan utterly FAILED to disprove my garage dragon!

Or something . . .

[Nemo1024]

Of course science doesn't disprove God. But scientists aren't the ones with the burden of proof in the first place.

There is no burden of proof. If there was, it wouldn't be considered "faith"

I know there isn't. But if religious people want to meddle into science, they should start working on an effort of backing up their faith with facts, like everyone else that comes forward with theories.

A tiny correction there: it should have read hypothesises. A theory is a hypothesis that has already been strengthened by multiple empiric experiments. This is one of the reasons why people detached from the scientific process have trouble with, say, the theory of evolution, calling it "just a theory".

[zetaray]

Science cannot and will not disprove god totally, but it poked so many holes in the bible. So much that religious beliefs have to change and accommodate for scientific advancements.

[solex]

Humans are now gods of this universe (until AGIs come on-stream that is :-)

[Spendulus]

.....great British mathematician Roger Penrose has calculated—based on only one of the hundreds of parameters of the physical Universe—that the probability of the emergence of a life-giving cosmos was one divided by 10, raised to the power 10, and again raised to the power of 123.....

That's preposterous.  He would have to understand "the cosmos" to be able to make such a prediction, and if he/we understood it, this calculation would not have to be made.  The cosmological constants, which he refers to as "parameters", are not random guesses.

We just do not know the basis underneath their numerical values.

[herzmeister]

The whole discussion if "God" exists or not is so moot and worn out. It's a philosophical farce.

To be able to discuss this subject, you'd first have to define what "God" actually means. That's where 99.9999% of all (internet) discussions fall short in the first place already. If "God" means the bearded man in the sky, then I guess we're all atheists, even the pope. If "God" simply means "all there is", then we might well all be theists.

Ultimately it boils down to the question why "existence" "exists" in the first place.

A better discussion might be what consciousness is. Is consciousness a product of matter, or is matter a product (or projection) of consciousness?

[Wilikon]

The whole discussion if "God" exists or not is so moot and worn out. It's a philosophical farce.

To be able to discuss this subject, you'd first have to define what "God" actually means. That's where 99.9999% of all (internet) discussions fall short in the first place already. If "God" means the bearded man in the sky, then I guess we're all atheists, even the pope. If "God" simply means "all there is", then we might well all be theists.

Ultimately it boils down to the question why "existence" "exists" in the first place.

A better discussion might be what consciousness is. Is consciousness a product of matter, or is matter a product (or projection) of consciousness?

Cogito ergo sum. "I think, therefore I am", Descartes' philosophical proposition would mean consciousness came first, then "matter". And yet most of the western civilizations would translate this as "I am, therefore I think", which is what most people always end up doing on countless treads all over the world.

[Vod]

Science cannot disprove god any more than the flying spahgetting monster.

Science can, and does, disprove that god made the universe.

[dank]

Science cannot disprove god any more than the flying spahgetting monster.

Science can, and does, disprove that god made the universe.

Bullshit, god is the universe.  The universe always has and always will be.  Existence is eternal.

All you have to do is look within and you will find all the proof you could fathom and more.

You are god.

[herzmeister]

Science can, and does, disprove that god made the universe.

Here is another term that's very problematic in such discussions: What is the universe? Mostly it refers to our "big bang bubble" we observe. But what if there's a Multiverse? Many scientists in fact do propose that such a concept might exist, although the term makes no sense, as "universe" should already mean "all there is", but apparently doesn't. But anyway, how did that multiverse come into existence then? So the questioning just goes on. And who knows what else might exist "out there". So what the hell do we know.

[Nemo1024]

We know a great deal more than we did before, and we can strive to learn even more. The problem with religions is that they provide prefabricated answers, thus quelling the need to search for knowledge.

I'd like to recommend a very well-written and entertaining series of books by Terry Pratchett, Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen: The Science of Discworld

Each books takes a different aspect of what makes us human, using alternating chapters of fantasy and real-world science to illustrate points that the authors try to bring across. These books don't pretend to give all the answers, but they provide a good starting point, springboard, for the enquiring minds, adult and young alike.
http://www.amazon.com/Science-Discworld-Terry-Pratchett-ebook/dp/B00BFTSVSI
http://www.amazon.com/Science-Discworld-II-Globe-ebook/dp/B0052Z0NC8
http://www.amazon.com/Science-Discworld-III-Darwins-Watch-ebook/dp/B00546DOYY
http://www.amazon.com/Science-Discworld-IV-Judgement-Day-ebook/dp/B00BFTSZUC

[the joint]

They are so stupid... And still trying to prove or disprove something that couldn't  be proved or disproved.  

You can't "disprove" existence of Cthulhu or Flying Spagetty Monster through using a scientific approach. Science can't disprove existence of God because this statement does not apply to scientific knowledge. These two areas couldn't be overlapped, any attempt to merge scientific and religious knowledge doesn't make any sense.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability

Science is science, religion is religion. That's the point here.

Science is science and religion is religion, yes. The problem is that the scientific method is often considered (by true scientists as well as the 'parrots' that regurgitate their findings) the *best* method of acquiring knowledge for all subjects.  Accordingly, all other methods of knowledge acquisition are rendered inferior; and, if there's a subject science can't explore, the subject itself is rendered inferior or unworthy of discussion.

This is where scientists become complete idiots.  It is absolutely possible to reason about god or religion or any other subject science can't explore including the study of the very large (I.e. the universe as a whole), the very small (subatomic and quantum levels), extremely rare events (e.g. Alien encounters, UFOs, God manifesting the body of a single individual, etc.).  

Thankfully, we do have disciplines (e.g. Philosophy) that can soundly explore these topics in a reasonable, methodical way.  Science, aside from being a method, is simply one of many theories of knowledge acquisition, and by no means is it the best or most comprehensive in scope for all topics.

In short, science can't explore religion or religious claims because it is entirely ill-equipped to do so.  But, don't be a fool in thinking this makes the topic unworthy of consideration, but instead recognize that science is unworthy of exploring it.