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Why Science Does Not Disprove God

door Amir Aczel

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Analyzing the theories and findings of such titans as Albert Einstein and Charles Darwin, a renowned science writer and mathematician demonstrates in multiple ways that science has not, as yet, provided any definitive proof refuting the existence of God.
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  vorefamily | Feb 22, 2024 |
“These new Atheists - Dawkins, Krauss, the late Hitchens, Harris, and Dennet - are bound together under a powerful common purpose, and continually reinforce each other. The problem with the science in the books and lectures of the New Atheists is that it is not pure science - the objective pursuit of knowledge about the universe. Rather, it is ‘science with a purpose’: the purpose of disproving the existence of God.”

In “Why Science Does not Disprove God” by Amir Aczel

“Richard Dawkins claims in ‘The God Delusion’ that there is no shred of evidence for any of the stories of the Bible. [...] In fact, this is not quite true. Biblical archaeology is a thriving field, which has brought us troves of evidence for ancient settlements in the Holy Land and for some of the scriptural events (although nothing supernatural) that took place there.”

In “Why Science Does not Disprove God” by Amir Aczel

“The ‘scientific atheists’ of our day use these same strange probabilistic rules of quantum mechanics to argue that God does not exist - that these laws somehow replace God. And that since we have these quantum laws - which we have highly incomplete understanding of - there is no need for a ‘creator.’ According to Lawrence Krauss, ‘we all, literally, emerged from quantum nothingness.’ But quantum rules do not at all imply that a universe must appear out of the void. Besides the fact that we do not fully understand quantum theory, there is no weel-defined a point, a scale of measurement, at which things stop behaving according to our everyday life rules and start acting according to the bizarre quantum laws.”

In “Why Science Does not Disprove God” by Amir Aczel

“[...] we still don’t understand at all what truly happens innthe world of the very small - all we have may be shadows on the wall, cast by a mysterious ‘veiled reality.’ So to claim that quantum mechanics somehow ‘tells us’ that a universe must come out of nothing without the need of some kind of creation, as Krauss does, seems wholly unjustified.”
In “Why Science Does not Disprove God” by Amir Aczel

“A noninformative prior is the only honest probability distribuition one can use when there is no preexisting information in a statistical study. Furthermore, even when information exists, we really shouldn’t use it in an a priori probability distribution if we want the date of a study to tell their own story in an unbiased way. Jeffrey’s formulation of honest statistical inference uses a term 1/n, where n is the size of the set of all possibilities. When we have two such possibilities: ‘God exists,’ and ‘God doesn’t exist,’ we have n = 2; and therefore, by Jeffrey’s rule, the correct a priori probabilities one should use in such an analysis are 1/2 and 1/2, or 50 percent each.”

In “Why Science Does not Disprove God” by Amir Aczel

I was raised in the Catholic Church and made the choice to leave as soon as it was available ('bout age 11). I gave up belief in a Christian god around age 16. I referred to myself as an agnostic until studying physics in my early 20's. Once faced with the fact that no one could explain why the nuclear force is exactly strong enough to maintain a nucleus together and weak enough to not collapse the atom in on itself. Almost as if it was planned that way. The more I learned about my world the more I found myself learning that we know how some effect is achieved but not why. I made a choice to believe that an omnipotent being created the rules by which the Universe works. I do not believe that it is all knowing and all loving and do not subscribe to a social network of shared belief like the proverbial preacher but I hope this gives you an understanding of why someone would choose to believe in a higher power. As for reasonable people joining a church, that is no different than joining a political party and has little to do with belief. Don't forget that I studied quantum physics, and quantum physicists are trained from an early age to believe six "extraordinary things for which there is no evidence" before breakfast...

Is looking at the Sunset enough for everybody?!! How a child is created and grows inside someone? How Day turns into night? How we have such amazing weird and wonderful creatures? How Oceans produce 6 foot surf to enjoy! I think you have to take a leap of faith with it all, each to their own and all that, but for people to suggest you are mentally ill or delusional because you believe in God is outrageous. Butterflies, eagles, lions, tigers, dolphins, whales, sharks, tropical fish, so much wonder.

Reasonable Christians (yes, they do exist) actually believe in evolution. Reasonable Christians do not take the Bible word for word. Reasonable Christians take God's word and interpret it for today's world and the life they leave, without dissing others viewpoints. Reasonable non-Christians have reasoned and proper debates with reasonable Christians, an each put their case across in a civil, polite and respectful way. As a reasonable Christian, I believe that the questions posed by the people like Dawkins are utterly bonkers, and the tone of the answers is utterly unacceptable. Both sides are to blame for fanning the flames. Ignore the bonkers ones, but live and let live. I get very irate at people who are fixed in their ways and attitudes and show not one inkling of understanding of or respect towards the other side's beliefs / knowledge / whatever.

And then Aczel shows up.

I'm in the curious position of having a sense (not a dogmatic belief, but a "feeling that feels true") that there is a God - by which I mean a sentient being with whom I can enter some kind of personal relationship. I do not believe in the doctrines or the belief systems of any existing religions I have encountered. This feels true to me, and the experiences I have had feel real, and that's good enough for me. Of course this cannot be "proved" scientifically, nor could I put forward an argument that would sound convincing to anyone who didn't feel similarly - any more than I could persuade my parents 30 years ago that Elvis Presley produced great music. We all see the world differently. Doesn't mean we're necessarily wrong. The implication here is that it makes complete sense in a religious viewpoint. But actually that isn't immediately obvious. The simple minded response from the theist would be that God legitimatises moral rules: that in some way, because there is a God, who accepts certain moral rules, and perhaps acts on them, judges sinners, etc. then the problem is solved. But this view faces the 'euthyphro' dilemma, (named after a character in a Platonic dialogue).

Aczel frames the problem in the proper light: in the original language, does god love justice because it is good, or is justice good because god loves it? Is it the case that the moral laws stand because of God's decree, or is God observing laws that are in a sense independent? These are the only two options, and neither is satisfactory. If God simply decrees the laws, then he could have decreed different ones. So if God decided to, he could decree that murder was ok on Tuesdays for example. But this just seems wrong: if God did decree this, he would surely be acting immorally. But the other option is no better: if God is observing the laws, then the laws exist independently of God, and so God no longer has any part to play in the story; God is an idle cog, as much a passive observer as anyone else. Compounding the problems is of course the much simpler problem of access: how do we know what God thinks anyway? Can we really trust the bible, (or the Koran perhaps) and anyway, which bit of it? The angry early bit or the nicer later bit? We have to make a choice, and the only way to make this choice is by trusting our moral instincts (which of course cannot come from the bible without circularity).

The conclusion that enlightened believers must come to is surely that we are on our own on this one. We have to trust our best instincts and hope that this accords with God's divine will. We have to think carefully about what we do and how it affects others, and continually strive to follow whatever we take the moral path to be. In other words, exactly the same as atheists. Of course this isn't an answer to the book’s question: but what it shows, if the reasoning is sound, is that the theist has no easy answers, no escape from hard moral choices, and no way of looking down on atheists. We are all in the same boat.

Talking about God is a bit like talking about art: a strange mix of subjective and intersubjective experiences grounded in claims about reality. The problem, I suspect, is that what is convincing or compelling to me may not be to you, but nonetheless we feel and think (and develop extensive philosophical tools to defend these feelings and thoughts) that that which we comprehend or not must be real or not in some kind of sense. I can love a painting that someone else despises, and I can give all kinds of reasons why that painting is great art, but rarely will the other person be convinced, and certainly not in any kind of immediate fashion. It takes time to convince someone who thinks Picasso is rubbish that he’s actually brilliant, and sometimes no amount of persuasion will bring the ‘truth of an artist’s accomplishments to light for some people. (I suspect I will always find Mozart and Beethoven horrible, pretentious bores no matter how many times I try to learn to appreciate them; I’m more of a Bach man myself…)

So a reasonable, bright person can examine the historical and scriptural evidence regarding the resurrection and come away finding it the most plausible explanation, but an equally reasonable, bright person will not be convinced. Disagreement in such cases is not necessarily about neurological pathologies or rational and irrational or moral and immoral. Viewing the world scientifically is a powerful, important way of perceiving reality, but I’m not convinced it can encompass the whole of human experience. In other words, I’m not sure brain scans will ever be able to tell us what good and bad art is—although they may tell us a lot about what we react to in art—just as it will not answer the question of God, and certainly not the Christian God who transcends material reality, a.k.a. creation.

So, you or anyone else, if you are really interested in why people believe, you may have to walk in their shoes, so to speak, to begin appreciate why they find it powerful. You may not be changed just as I’ve never learned to like Mozart or Beethoven. Likewise believers, if you learned what it was like to let go in the manner of nonbelievers, you may realise your faith is not as well-grounded as you think.

Bottom-line: Aczel, you are right: the answers religious people often give to defend their faith are tosh, but if you find a compelling person who is religious—and whose life seems to be strongly shaped by that religiosity—maybe by learning to live with them (doing the things they do, participating in the religious communities they do, etc.)—that person may provide the ‘answer cheap intellectual tricks cannot. The best argument for or against the Christian God will be Christians. No comment, on how that makes God look...Most of the atheists and Biblical critics simply do not understand the urge to believe in something that makes sense to those who are confused by the complexity of human existence. See the bible as a series of attempts to make sense of a senseless world. If you approach the insights of the new testament with the words "It is as if” you will comprehend the difference between metaphor and narrative. As Ghandi said, the law of a tooth for a tooth and an eye for an eye leads only to land of toothless blind people. Atheists believe they can be moral without help from anyone or anything. Wonderful self-worship but few can achieve that euphoric self-conceit. My own understanding of my own belief in "God" (if atheists will kindly permit me to comment on what I myself believe) tells me that this is not a scientific theory, amenable to scientific "proof" (whatever that could possibly involve). So I wish atheists, etc., would stop trying to bully religious people into accepting their own narrow-minded definitions of "truth" and of what religious believers are allowed to adduce as evidence for their own beliefs. I'm just wondering what an art expert would say if I told him he must judge the artistic worth of a Titian according to the level of scientific insight revealed in the artist's use of colour, or according to the likely sale-room price. Religious beliefs have a truth status different from science, and with a quite different notion of what may count as "evidence". This truth and evidence is to be looked for not in a test tube or a space ship, or the Galapagos Islands, or even in Jerusalem or Mecca, but in the persistent interpretations of life and death found among racial groups from Alaska to Arabia. In the stories (myths) of explanation offered by the great religions. In the moral principles and guides for living emerging from these religions. In the viability and effectiveness of rituals and ceremonies designed to bind groups of like-minded believers together and invest them with a sense of self-worth. A modern religious world-view needs to avoid giving the impression that it is a branch of science or history. I suggest we must stop wasting valuable time asking nonsensical questions about whether religions are "true", or whether we can "prove" or “disprove” the existence of God. Centuries of profitless debate must surely be enough to persuade even the most stubborn that these issues are dead as a dodo. Instead, I suggest we need to tear ourselves away from the Victorian age, fascinating though it may have been, and come into the 21st century. The pressing debate for today asks which principled interpretations of human life drawn from the wealth of religious understandings are the best and most apt to promote welfare, peace, and justice among the widest possible range of racial and national groupings. Because, believe me, if a rational and liberal dialogue fails between religions, what will take over will not be a paradise of Hawkins/Hitchens-inspired liberal atheism, but a new dark age of religious extremism. I find it difficult to reconcile the idea that they’re seriously seeking answers with the suggestion that religious belief might be considered a 'neuropathology', and given much of the rest of the content of the article it's very difficult to separate some religious people from the 'God-bashers' Hawkins declare himself not to be a part of. Much of it, like the majority of atheist reviewers, doesn't get past the 'ooh, isn't that weird' approach to Christianity. The fact is that the God hypothesis is one with millennia of philosophy behind it. People have debated over it fiercely. It's not a case of 'stupid God people' and 'non-stupid non-God people'. There are incisive points made on both sides of the debate. I fail to be impressed by Dawkins because the amount of time he devotes to talking about the philosophical reasoning behind God is absolutely minimal - what, two pages in “The God Delusion”? He then uses his conclusion in these pages as a springboard to seeing believers as somehow mentally deranged. This is at odds with the complexity of the argument itself (and I’m not even talking about his shoddy science). There's no general consensus about what God it is precisely we are arguing about, either, and what characteristics exactly he possesses. Somehow New Atheists have managed to reduce the debate about God, previously complex and nuanced, to one of an incredibly puerile and simplistic nature.

Atheism IS a belief system. Professor Dawkins (technically Douglas Adams') 'orbiting teapot' argument attempts to present belief in god as an unusual alternative of many ridiculous alternatives, but the fact is that all human societies have been drawn to concepts of godhead and that Atheism, while certainly not new (there were ancient Greek atheists) is only one other viewpoint. Science no more 'proves' Atheism than it 'proves' Cubism or Kitchen Sink Drama. Like Einstein, I believe in some kind of God.

We can say "we are every bit as moral as you and possibly more so" and doubtless this is so, but as an Atheist you could have carved up and eaten your grandmother and still made the same claim in full honesty as morality would be entirely relative. Like Elie Wiesel I would ignore 'scientific' arguments against God and just cut straight to "where was God at Auschwitz?" However, notwithstanding this, anyone professing Atheism must in turn be challenged as to how they can dare to hijack the moral systems of the religions they profess to despise. If God is dead all things are indeed "permitted". Dostoevsky's Karamazov was spot on. To pretend otherwise, as an atheist, is dishonest and unsupportable. The evil and bad must be seen as 'moral' too. Atheism has implications far beyond not turning up at the local church. Science and religion are the same in that they are both unable to prove anything absolutely. Science and religion are the same in that there may be different interpretations in light of the quality of the evidence available. Only countless repeated experiments of science over many years have provided an increasing quality of evidence to support our confidence in our understanding of the world around us. However, confidence is not absolute truth. Where science and religion are concerned, it seems that we have a belief spectrum with a supernatural entity . . . and shopping . . . at either end. Where we sit within that spectrum depends upon personal experience and scientific experiment. Some are comfortable, some unhappy and some are curious. This is life.

The question should be put the other way around. Can science be used to prove the existence of God? I'll lose my faith in science if they do that. Read "Why Science Does not Disprove God". I haven’t given it 5 stars because refuting simpleton writers like Dawkins and Hitchens, prepared to maintain such crass "ideas" as that there is no shred of evidence for the stories in the Bible (just to name one example; vide many above-mentioned examples), makes refuting them child's play. ( )
  antao | Oct 7, 2018 |
Debunking of on New atheist argument. ( )
  jay_sejpal | Jun 30, 2017 |
Well written and many good arguments for why science will likely never be able to prove God does not exist. Digs deeply into issues such as the Big Bang, the anthropic principle and the multiverse. As a science writer, Aczel is used to writing for the general reading public, so his descriptions of physics concepts is well done. He does touch on origin of life issues as well, but in a more cursory manner. Nicely up to date on the physics and math, though. ( )
  bness2 | May 23, 2017 |
I'd read this book again. A refreshing, at times, look at the biases brought to the discussion of God's existence. Nice to have a different take on the God question from one involved in science and mathematics. I'd start with the conclusion and then go to the beginning for the best read. ( )
  KevinKLF | Sep 10, 2015 |
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Analyzing the theories and findings of such titans as Albert Einstein and Charles Darwin, a renowned science writer and mathematician demonstrates in multiple ways that science has not, as yet, provided any definitive proof refuting the existence of God.

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