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The Great Debate: "Has Science Refuted Religion?"

Lowpro said:
If the soul existed, it most assuredly doesn't include your consciousness, which is what most people really really really really want their soul to have.
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Haha, my girlfriend didn't like when I said that I don't necessarily think that our memories and conciousness survive death*. She also hates when I talk about nothing and non-existence.

* I do believe in a soul but I think it's something more hidden and obscure than we usually imagine of it.
 
Peterson said:
Haha, my girlfriend didn't like when I said that I don't necessarily think that our memories and conciousness survive death*. She also hates when I talk about nothing and non-existence.

* I do believe in a soul but I think it's something more hidden and obscure than we usually imagine of it.
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I've always liked George Carlin's take on it (Fristbeetarianism) that when you die your souls rises from your body and then gets stuck on a roof.

Just as valid
 
punshhh said:
Yes I agree about going nuclear, I wouldn't attempt to justify assumptions made by religious people about God anyway. Or to suggest that God does or does not exist. However NielC wasn't either, he was adopting a philosophical stance on the nature of any actually existing God. Which is that we cannot say what such a God can or can't do or anything else, or if it exists or not, end of story.

What science may or may not be refuting is human notions about God, or religious practice. The former is the mythological aspect of religion, the later is a lifestyle choice.
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Got any non human notions about god?
 
punshhh said:
*my preliminary definition of God is;

God = the creator or origin of the known universe and all thats in it.
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Under that definition I'm happy to agree that "God" may exist.

You'll note that this defintion though doesn't assume that god is intelligent, that it has a personality, or any of the other characteristics that most people associate with a god.

Now, it's possible that it does. But of all the possible "creator or origin of the known universe and all that's in it"(s) the subset that are intelligent is very small indeed.

For instance, "god" may be a quantum fluctuation.

It also may not exist at all.
 
Peterson said:
Haha, my girlfriend didn't like when I said that I don't necessarily think that our memories and conciousness survive death*. She also hates when I talk about nothing and non-existence.

* I do believe in a soul but I think it's something more hidden and obscure than we usually imagine of it.
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Well, as long as you're being rational.

:)
 
Roboramma said:
Now, it's possible that it does. But of all the possible "creator or origin of the known universe and all that's in it"(s) the subset that are intelligent is very small indeed.
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How do you know this?

For instance, "god" may be a quantum fluctuation.
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Yes or something else.

It also may not exist at all.
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Yes, my point was that we can't say anything about God.

There is a tradition of revelation in mysticism, in which something about which we cannot say anything is revealed to someone. Again science says nothing about whether this is actually what happened. It does give an alternative explanation of brain hallucination, but it cannot address it.
 
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punshhh said:
There is a tradition of revelation in mysticism, in which something about which we cannot say anything is revealed to someone.
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Therefore mysticism is nonsense, yes.

Again science says nothing about whether this is actually what happened. It does give an alternative explanation of brain hallucination, but it cannot address it.
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Wrong.
 
Roboramma said:
Under that definition I'm happy to agree that "God" may exist.
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Quite possibly, it's possible to assign a definition of God to the word in such a way that it's non-existence is not 100% certainly refuted.

The issue is that the definition is meaningless and not the definition that religions use of their Gods.

In that sense, religions are again refuted by science as religions claim certainty and knowledge on things that they couldn't possibly have certainty and knowledge of given the definition of God being used.

The trick is in the switch between 'unknowable meaningless God' when it suits and 'God wants us to eat cheese on Tuesdays' God at all other times.
 
Last of the Fraggles said:
Quite possibly, it's possible to assign a definition of God to the word in such a way that it's non-existence is not 100% certainly refuted.

The issue is that the definition is meaningless and not the definition that religions use of their Gods.

In that sense, religions are again refuted by science as religions claim certainty and knowledge on things that they couldn't possibly have certainty and knowledge of given the definition of God being used.

The trick is in the switch between 'unknowable meaningless God' when it suits and 'God wants us to eat cheese on Tuesdays' God at all other times.
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Yes the believer will say "God is beyond all human knowledge and here's his rules" and never notice the contradiction.
 
dafydd said:
Good question. There are none. Gods were invented by humans. I wonder if punshhh has an example of a god that was not invented by humans.
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I notice that all the gods that have been invented are just humans with bigger hammers.
 
punshhh said:
How do you know this?
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Because intelligence is complex. I suspect you're suggesting that maybe only intelligent things can create universes, but as you'd be happy to point out, we don't know that. We don't know much about what can or cannot create universes, and nothing that we do know suggests that intelligence is involved.
Of all possible things that could exist, most are not intelligent. Given that there's no reason to believe that creation requires intelligence, it is therefore true that of all possible causes of the creation of our universe, most are not intelligent.

Why? Because if the universe has some underlying cause, all we can say is that it has some underlying cause. We don't know anything more than that. Therefore any specific attributes you posit are unlikely.

Similarly any particular lottery ticket is not likely to win the lottery.
There is a tradition of revelation in mysticism, in which something about which we cannot say anything is revealed to someone. Again science says nothing about whether this is actually what happened. It does give an alternative explanation of brain hallucination, but it cannot address it.
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Actually, science can say something about whether this actually happened, in exactly the same way that it can say whether or not homeopathy is effective. If you deny the reasoning that leads to the conclusion that revelations are not mystical in origin, then you deny all of science.
 
Last of the Fraggles said:
Quite possibly, it's possible to assign a definition of God to the word in such a way that it's non-existence is not 100% certainly refuted.

The issue is that the definition is meaningless and not the definition that religions use of their Gods.

In that sense, religions are again refuted by science as religions claim certainty and knowledge on things that they couldn't possibly have certainty and knowledge of given the definition of God being used.
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Why cannot religions have certainty and knowledge gained divinely? I can easily invent a god and have him tell me things. That is their claim - that he's told them stuff that he thinks humans need to know but not everything about him. In that case why cannot heaven be true and your behaviour on earth affect your afterlife? That is pretty meaningful I'd say and yet not scientifically refutable.

Let's imagine for a minute that a Christian-like god exists and Jesus was his earthly form. He has communicated with some humans but it's nigh on impossible for the human mind to really comprehend him and so they get the general gist but get a lot wrong too, which explains the "confusion" with age of earth and other facts wrong with the Bible. God never meant the bible to be his word verbatim but that's how it's turned out and it works for him OK. He has a plan and human confusion is fully expected and not very important to him right now. There is an afterlife. There is a soul but it and god himself operate on a level of existence way beyond our current knowledge of nature. He can interact with our physics but not in a way that makes any sense to us as yet which allows the odd miracle, heaven, souls and so on. His existence and your behaviour is meanignful - it will affect your afterlife.. What scientific test would you propose to prove that wrong? I cannot design one but maybe you can?
 
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NeilC said:
Why cannot religions have certainty and knowledge gained divinely? I can easily invent a god and have him tell me things. That is their claim - that he's told them stuff that he thinks humans need to know but not everything about him. In that case why cannot heaven be true and your behaviour on earth affect your afterlife? That is pretty meaningful I'd say and yet not scientifically refutable.

Let's imagine for a minute that a Christian-like god exists and Jesus was his earthly form. He has communicated with some humans but it's nigh on impossible for the human mind to really comprehend him and so they get the general gist but get a lot wrong too, which explains the "confusion" with age of earth and other facts wrong with the Bible. God never meant the bible to be his word verbatim but that's how it's turned out and it works for him OK. He has a plan and human confusion is fully expected and not very important to him right now. There is an afterlife. There is a soul but it and god himself operate on a level of existence way beyond our current knowledge of nature. He can interact with our physics but not in a way that makes any sense to us as yet which allows the odd miracle, heaven, souls and so on. His existence and your behaviour is meanignful - it will affect your afterlife.. What scientific test would you propose to prove that wrong? I cannot design one but maybe you can?
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NielC the reason the age of the Earth is thought to be as it is is because some idiot decided to add up all the ages of the people of the Bible, hence 6000 years. That's not a matter of confusion, that's genuine addition; you can't be confused. If anything it SHOULD prove that the story is a lie. To invoke mistakes and magic only makes that position ALL THE MORE untenable a hypothesis. It's not a matter of proving whether it's right or wrong because it has so little value to investigate in the first place. The reason those religions are still around NOW is because people were to ignorant to investigate those claims. However now we actually can. Science can refute religion NOW (Scientology methinks), but it's hard when you've got thousands of years of evidence gone away to do it.

And after all that you STILL invoke magic. I can refute that without science; I can do it with just plain old sophistry. Your scenario is ridiculous. There is no afterlife other than when you die your soul gets stuck on the roof regardless of the actions you take in this life. It's just the way of things, because I can make @#(! up just as easily as you can and just as easily as any bronze age moron could.

Your scenario has no VALUE to determine whether it's correct or not, and that's the problem.

It's the main problem with religion. When someone like Hutchinson or Dinesh says they have the correct religion, or that in SOME WAY their argument wins any points, that's a lie. When you say you KNOW something like this, with magic or just plain old "in my gut it's right" thinking you give the game away. Of course Science can refute religion, because religion has NOTHING. Science at least gives something, even if it's an "I don't know" because at least THAT is valid. When you say "I know" using anything from religion you are wrong.
 
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Roboramma said:
Actually, science can say something about whether this actually happened, in exactly the same way that it can say whether or not homeopathy is effective. If you deny the reasoning that leads to the conclusion that revelations are not mystical in origin, then you deny all of science.
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Science can frak off. I do indeed deny all of science, if all of science denies my mystical experiences.

Luckily, science isn't the problem. Scientism thralls are the problem. Well, them and religious fundamentalists.
 
Lowpro said:
And you have been here long enough to know damn well that the question may be a non starter, but their arguments have more content than just the question. These are things we've tried to discuss here before you decided to play dumb about an aphorism.
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Play?
 
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