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Hawking says there are no gods

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David Mo said:
Suddenly? I've been asking the same question over and over again since 22nd October 2018, 06:36 AM. See my comment 3950.

If it hasn't been published anywhere or in a place so dark that you and I can't find, you and I have no way of knowing if science deals with that issue that mysterious chemist has investigated. Be it a great discovery or not to you and me it does not serve us in this debate.

Apart from that I do not believe that pharmacists investigate the existence of God.
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No-one is claiming that there's been an empirical scientific study with "is there a God?" as its research question. Your insistence that we should either cite such an article, or admit that science can't say anything about God is a false dichotomy.

What people are saying is that science has shown again and again that natural phenomena that were once said to be caused directly by the interference of a supernatural entity really have natural causes, that rituals, prayers and magic meant to invoke the power of the gods have been shown to do nothing. And so on...
So gods have been forced to retreat into the salons of philosophers, where they survive as intangible abstractions, bereft of all the powers their believers claim they once had.
There is nothing left of them but navelgazing what-if stories.

Science has shown us plenty about the gods that we once believed ruled our world, and insisting that it hasn't, because no scientist has empirically tackled the literal question of whether the gods exist in a peer reviewed journal is using a ridiculous narrow definition of the word scientific.
 
David Mo said:
I'm not saying that a scientist could be researching something without publishing it. I'm talking about how we know if a subject has been the subject of scientific studies or not.

If a pharmacist tells you that it is scientifically proven that prayer cures cancer, how do you know if it is true that there is a scientific study on the subject? Just because the pharmacist tell you that? In my country drug manufacturers ought to test and register its products before commercialize them. Is it not so in your country?
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Oou look, more backpedaling.

You are cherry picking the pharmacy example to make a case for your misstatements about what science is.

Your comment about registered drugs completely misses the point about negative results not being published.

David Mo said:
How can you tell whether a specific topic has been scientifically investigated or not?

If you answer this question, perhaps we can return to the original topic.

By the way, I don't like to dance.
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This doesn't deserve an answer. You are back to asking, how do you know Péle isn't hiding in a volcano if there isn't a published paper on it?
 
David Mo said:
Suddenly? I've been asking the same question over and over again since 22nd October 2018, 06:36 AM. See my comment 3950.

If it hasn't been published anywhere or in a place so dark that you and I can't find, you and I have no way of knowing if science deals with that issue that mysterious chemist has investigated. Be it a great discovery or not to you and me it does not serve us in this debate.

Apart from that I do not believe that pharmacists investigate the existence of God.
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DavidMo said:
I'm not saying that a scientist could be researching something without publishing it.
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I think you meant "couldn't".

Regardless, that admission that science goes on outside of published papers differs from your initial claims, if it isn't published it isn't science.

Back to the science investigating gods question. If every god scientists investigate turn out to be mythical beings, no one needs to go further and publish a paper that they looked in volcanoes for Péle and didn't find her for it to be a scientific statement that there is enough evidence accumulated now to declare the theory that all gods are mythical is well supported by the evidence.
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
I think you meant "couldn't".

Regardless, that admission that science goes on outside of published papers differs from your initial claims, if it isn't published it isn't science.

Back to the science investigating gods question. If every god scientists investigate turn out to be mythical beings, no one needs to go further and publish a paper that they looked in volcanoes for Péle and didn't find her for it to be a scientific statement that there is enough evidence accumulated now to declare the theory that all gods are mythical is well supported by the evidence.
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No. I say that a scientist can be studying a question before or without publishing it by different reasons.
But I affirm now and from the beginning --please, read my 3950 comment!!-- that we have not any way to know it if he doesn't make public his enquiry. And the most reliable and common way is publishing in a peer reviewed paper. Do you know another way? (I ask this for the 300th time).

Your argument is very respectable, but it is not science. I don't know many scientific articles about the existence of particular gods? Can you give a list?
 
GDon said:
Not "special", rather "relevant" and "irrelevant". Legalities, economics, science and theology may all be at play at some point.

CS Lewis once wrote that if you put a dollar a day in a drawer, and if after 10 days you find you only have 5 dollars, then it isn't the laws of mathematics that has been broken, but the laws of England. It doesn't mean either is "special", just what is relevant. You might argue that theological questions are never relevant; that's an opinion rather than a scientific conclusion.
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Oh, I'm all for theological questions, or really any other questions. I'm also up for Batman vs Superman questions. The point though was that in theology it doesn't seem to be a problem if an argument is UNSOUND.

Or to return to the original example, I don't really see any reason to fall back on any other null hypothesis than "nope, it doesn't exist" when it's about God than when it's about beer in the fridge.

GDon said:
Again, it comes to relevancy: the question of "is" vs "ought" doesn't seem to be in the science sphere, though Sam Harris might disagree. Even so, I'd argue that questions of "ought" are very important, even if not susceptible to scientific experimentation.
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I don't see what this has to do with the beer metaphor, but sure, we can discuss that too.

Because that argument is an all around stupidity. It goes like this: even if you prove that choice X is the best choice, and that it leads to the best possible outcome, you can't tell me I OUGHT to do X. Maybe I want the worst outcome. Who are you to tell me I have to choose the best one?

Well, first of all, that's all a big word game. As David too can tell you, that distinction doesn't even exist in either philosophy, nor in everyday speech even. When someone says you ought to do X, really it means nothing else than that is the best option. Introducing an artificial lexical difference is only done for that contrived argument.

Second, and more important, if you do introduce that lexical artefact, then religion can't either. It can tell you that if you do X, you go to heaven, and if you do Y, you go to Hell, but then the same hurdle applies. It can't tell me I OUGHT to do X. Maybe I want to go to Hell. I mean, all interesting people are there.

The whole argument that religion can give you an ought, but science can't, is based on the idiocy of pretending that you can ignore the exact same gap in logic for the former but totally not for the latter.

Third, since neither can bridge that gap, I'd like to see some evidence that some schizophrenic "prophet" or theologian is any better at deciding what's best than, really, anyone else.

Not the least because: which religion? On just about any topic, different prophets of different gods have come up with polar opposite rules. E.g., is suicide good or bad? Xianity says bad, Norse religion says you go to Valhalla if you die without fear, including by jumping off a cliff.
 
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HansMustermann said:
Because that argument is an all around stupidity. It goes like this: even if you prove that choice X is the best choice, and that it leads to the best possible outcome, you can't tell me I OUGHT to do X. Maybe I want the worst outcome. Who are you to tell me I have to choose the best one?
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Or, more to the point, from another point of view X might not be the best choice because the axioms are different.
 
And again (on top of Hans' excellent breakdown) a continued parroted litany of "X can't do Y so we have to use Z" doesn't make it any sense if nobody can explain how Z can do Y any better than X can.

If I just hit the "I believe" button and agree that science can't describe love or tell me why a painting is beautiful or solve the trolley problem (all of which in my opinion only lay outside a narrow strawman version of science but whatever...) somebody will still have to explain to me how "philosophy" does it.

It seems people want to take everything "science can't do" (or more accurately everything they don't like the answer science gives them to" and put it under the umbrella term of "Philosophy" and think that's... it.

But I've been screaming the "How does philosophy answer questions" questions into the void for a while now, to the point I have little hope of a non-word salad, non-gibberish answer.
 
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@Belz...
I'm up for that version too. But, as you probably already realize, then the same hurdle applies to religion too. It still doesn't get a free ride to magisterium, so to speak. Since the answer I was writing was in a talk about theology turning magically into "but science can't give you an ought".
 
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HansMustermann said:
@Belz...
I'm up for that version too. But, as you probably already realize, then the same hurdle applies to religion too. It still doesn't get a free ride to magisterium, so to speak. Since the answer I was writing was in a talk about theology turning magically into "but science can't give you an ought".
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Right. Science can give you an ought if you specify the axioms.
 
JoeMorgue said:
And again (on top of Hans' excellent breakdown) a continued parroted litany of "X can't do Y so we have to use Z" doesn't make it any sense if nobody can explain how Z can do Y any better than X can.

If I just hit the "I believe" button and agree that science can't describe love or tell me why a painting is beautiful or solve the trolley problem (all of which in my opinion only lay outside a narrow strawman version of science but whatever...) somebody will still have to explain to me how "philosophy" does it.
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It's the same false dichotomy that theists use. If science can't explain the universe, all of it, then choose the Christian God. It's nonsense, of course.
 
@JoeMorgue
Well, some schools of philosophy are more anchored in reality than others, but personally I see the value of philosophy more in asking the questions than in having all the answers.

Like if our tribe is chopping down trees to go across the river to teach the other guys a lesson, science may tell you the buoyancy needed to carry a squad of fully armed warriors on a raft, and engineering may tell you how to build a sturdy bridge, sometimes you need someone to ask "well, why DO we have to attack those guys anyway? Are we SURE it was their evil magic that caused the drought?"

But of course, you still don't have to take any answers or even the questions seriously, unless they show the evidence.
 
HansMustermann said:
@JoeMorgue
Well, some schools of philosophy are more anchored in reality than others, but personally I see the value of philosophy more in asking the questions than in having all the answers.

Like if our tribe is chopping down trees to go across the river to teach the other guys a lesson, science may tell you the buoyancy needed to carry a squad of fully armed warriors on a raft, and engineering may tell you how to build a sturdy bridge, sometimes you need someone to ask "well, why DO we have to attack those guys anyway? Are we SURE it was their evil magic that caused the drought?"

But of course, you still don't have to take any answers or even the questions seriously, unless they show the evidence.
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Again this is why I've tried to pull the discussion back from "Science Vs Philosophy" which can't move beyond certain posters hangups over the mere word 'science' to a broader "Testable hypothesis versus untestable" on level.

Where the demarcation between Science and Philosophy lays is a question for those lovely people for whom the labeling of the parts is super important. I'm not one of those people.

What I'm rejecting, regardless of what we have to call it to keep the discussion on track, is any methodology which rejects the ideas of evidence, falsefiability, and testability.

Now cards on the table personally I'm little... distrusting of the "It's philosophy's job to ask questions, science's job to answer them" standard because... that never really seems to be how it works.
 
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JoeMorgue said:
Now cards on the table personally I'm little... distrusting of the "It's philosophy's job to ask questions, science's job to answer them" standard because... that never really seems to be how it works.
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The universe is stranger than we can imagine. It is scientific discovery that leads to the really hard questions. I think it was Carl Sagan who said that scientists have had to take over the role of philosopher because science moves so fast and philosophy moves so slowly. If you are an expert on the cutting edge of your field you are both asking the questions and attempting to answer them. If you are not an expert in the field you philosophize on you can't even fathom what the questions are let alone understand how to answer them.
 
I don't think we can codify "curiosity" into it's own separate methodology and place it "above" everything else in any way that makes sense.
 
David Mo said:
No. I say that a scientist can be studying a question before or without publishing it by different reasons.

But I affirm now and from the beginning --please, read my 3950 comment!!-- that we have not any way to know it if he doesn't make public his enquiry. And the most reliable and common way is publishing in a peer reviewed paper. Do you know another way? (I ask this for the 300th time).



Your argument is very respectable, but it is not science. I don't know many scientific articles about the existence of particular gods? Can you give a list?
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I think you have a valid point -but based on, perhaps, a miscommunication. I mean, you are right, I doubt you will find a hidden trove of secret science that studies the direct question of God. But that isn’t the point and I don’t think anyone here has said such. Only that not all science is published in journals -which is also true.

But put all that aside. Science does not care about answering the God question. It doesn’t need to address the god question in order to do its work. All it needs to do is make observations, create testable hypotheses, carry out those tests and draw conclusions. Rinse, repeat. Through that process, many real phenomena that were once attributed to God have been shown to be the result of natural processes with no god needed. At the same time, many god-attributed phenomena have been shown not to exist. But science never needed to talk about god in order for all that to happen.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
David Mo said:
Suddenly? I've been asking the same question over and over again since 22nd October 2018, 06:36 AM. See my comment 3950.

If it hasn't been published anywhere or in a place so dark that you and I can't find, you and I have no way of knowing if science deals with that issue that mysterious chemist has investigated. Be it a great discovery or not to you and me it does not serve us in this debate.
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Oh, you can find it. If you will.

Apart from that I do not believe that pharmacists investigate the existence of God.
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So what?

Hans
 
OK, let's forget science completely for the scope of a quick philosophical exercise.

WHICH god should I take seriously? Because their tenets are WILDLY all over the place.

E.g., let's start with an easy one: is suicide good or bad? Well, Xian God says "bad", Odin says jumping off a cliff is actually a guaranteed way into Valhalla, no matter how bad you may have been. The old IIRC Mayan religion says that hanging yourself also gets you a decent afterlife, and they even had a goddess of suicide. Etc.

E.g., another easy one: is attacking some neighbour to take slaves good or bad? Well, Zoroastrianism says slavery is forbidden, but the OT God actually COMMANDS it. And Odin at best doesn't care, as long as you died bravely in such a raid, although sacrificing some slaves for a funeral is actually a good thing, so you have to get them SOMEHOW.

E.g., let's say you're a pacifist and refuse to fight even in defense. Good or bad? Well, the very early Xians thought it was even commanded (you know, turn the other cheek and so on), Odin says you're going straight to Hel for that kind of cowardice.

E.g., screwing children. Good or bad? Well, the ancient Greeks sure had no commandment against it, for example. And even the early medieval Xians were only against screwing someone younger than 7 years old. No, seriously, they thought at 7 you can give informed consent for sex. And for at least one tribal culture it's even prescribed to have a pre-teen boy suck you off. See, they think a male can't actually produce his own seed before being *ahem* seeded by someone who can.

E.g., homosexuality, good or bad? See above.

E.g., being a transvestite, good or bad? Well, the OT God says "bad", several shamanic cultures actually REQUIRE one to be a trans-guy or trans-gal and live their whole life as such, if they want to be a shaman or practice magic. Other cultures and gods don't give a flip.

E.g., rape. Good, bad, neither? Well, Innana was actually a serial rapist godDESS. The OT God even gives rules as to how to properly rape the conquered in war. Other gods don't give a flip.

E.g., prostitution. Good, bad, neither? The OT god seems to dislike it, but some ancient cultures actually had SACRED prostitution. According to Herodotus, at least one religion has MANDATORY prostitution. Seriously, a woman must have at least one paying customer before she could marry.

Etc, etc, etc. The space of existing religions in these coordinates is immense. The space of POSSIBLE religions even more so.

So, WHICH should I take seriously?

Let's forget science entirely for the moment. Hell, let's even forget skepticism. Let's say I'm ready to accept A god (or several) in my life. WHICH of them?

It seems to me like without SOME evidence as to who's the real deal, the religion proponents are still left holding an empty bag. Whichever god is proposed without evidence, by sheer probabilities is probably not the right guess in that space of godly rules.
 
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