Straw man. Science doesn't try to prove if God is real or fake.
I've met a lot of people who don't seem to understand this important concept from epistemology, which is the philosophy of knowledge.
To demonstrate the concept of "non-falsifiability" I will now produce a short fictitious dialog between a made up Scientist, S, and a Religionist, R.
Topic: how old is the earth? Is it 6,000 years old or more than 4 billion years old?
S: The earth must be more than 4 billion years old, because I found these rocks. These rocks have isotopes in them and they definitely look like they've been around for more than 4 billion years. If the rocks are really old, then the earth must be really old too.
R: No. The is only 6,000 years old, because the holy Bible has a list of human descendants from Adam, the first man, to Jesus, who we know was born in 4 BC. If you count it all up, you can find the exact year that the earth was created, as described in Genesis 1, and it's about 6,000 years.
S: But these rocks.... They're really old...
R: God must have created those rocks with the isotopes already set up in the correct ratios to look like they are 4 billion years old, when He separated the firmament from the heavens 6,000 years ago.
S: But how could God create rocks with different isotopes? When minerals solidify from molten lava, lead isotopes naturally form in this ratio. (I don't actually know how initial lead composition was established for this)
R: God is omnipotent! Any miracle is within his grasp.
S: But why would God want to make the earth appear to be much older than it really is? What purpose does it serve?
R: I do not pretend to understand the ways of God.
One of my favorite quotes from Blood Meridian:
God dont lie. No, said the judge. He does not. And these are his words. He held up a chunk of rock. He speaks in stones and trees, the bones of things.
As an aside, it's worth noting not every religion conflicts with science.
True it just keeps invalidating the garbage piled up around someones faith. They could accept it was false and move on with no hindrance to their belief in god but because they can't burn someone as a witch because we know why milk goes bad they reject it all.
If you believe in God and science empirically proved God didn't exist, would you still believe?
If you don't believe in God, and science empirically proved God exists, would you start to worship it?
I don't believe God exists. But if he was proven to exist, I would believe. I would not, however, worship him. Dude's a prick.
I would hear his explanation first. The story is full of holes.
I mean, if Yahweh exists it's not that the story is full of holes so much as that he was part of the Canaanite pantheon and the stories were never originally meant to describe the actions of a singular god.
There is likely a whole mythological cycle that we simply do not have because it was destroyed by zealots for disproving their weird monotheistic fan fiction.
It's like trying to make sense of the Norse sagas if cultists merged all the other gods into Odin, including Loki.
The bible should be considered a book of gossip, like an old hollywood rag and accorded such due respect
More like a fanfiction basically tumblr of that time.
God's existence, by definition, cannot be proven or disproven. That's the nature of faith and free will (in the theological sense). And that's why there are scientists who believe in God. This American idea that religion and science are opposites makes no sense.
Of course it can be proven to exist, as long as evidence of its existence exists.
Victim complex / projection
I've never seen science try to take away people's rights, let alone thoughts.
I've seen religion do both, though.
Not true. Scientists say I can't lick needles I find in the park or stab myself with rusty nails or eat monkey brains scientists keep taking my rights away 😭😭😭
scientists dont tell you not to, the government does. scientists say it's probably not a good idea, but not that you can't.
Good scientists will just let you know the potential consequences and let you decide what to do.
Take global warming for example....
Religion is against science. It teaches that you must have faith unsupported by evidence, which is incompatible with progress and is just an excuse for making up rules in the name of an unseen authority.
Edit: Religion is also vile: whenever they are winning, they try to squash science and its methods. Whenever they are losing, they play the martyr.
Idk. My dad has always liked going to church. My family is catholic, I don't really engage in any of it anymore. But my dad has always been a proponent of science. His opinion is that religion and science can inform each other.
He believes in evolution. He knows vaccines work. And he certainly is not a trumper. He also likes to tell the story of how the big bang was initially hypothesized by a catholic priest.
That priest, Lemaitre, was opposed to mixing science and religion and said that there was no contraddiction between his theory and what the bible says about the origin of the universe. This is a 1984-level cognitive dissonance event imo, and shows that mixing something ever growing like science with something immutable like religious establishment is very difficult especially in one direction.
You can have your faith, so long as you stop forcing it down other people's throats.
People take this to mean evangelizing, but still don't see anything wrong with passing laws about their religion's morality.
and don't insist that every part of the holy texts are literally 100% undiluted word of god, which generally makes religion way easier to integrate with a scientific worldview.
no, god did not create eve from adam's rib, that's just evocative storytelling initially written by people in the middle east 2000 years ago and repeatedly altered and translated since then.
I had a teacher that taught both religion and chemistry. People who learned about that often made comments about it being weird. But he insisted that both topics are not exclusive to each other. It has been a long time since school but I think his reasoning (if that is the correct word) has been that one is philosophical and the other scientific which are separate worlds. You can't prove stuff in faith scientifically but neither has religion a place in the " real" world. And, to be completely honest, he was by far one of the best teachers I have ever had.
I had a similar experience when I started my first job as a software developer and the owner / lead engineer, probably the most intelligent person I’ve ever met, told me about how is religious.
I just couldn’t compute, particularly as I’d be radicalised against religion online.
We have had many discussions and it become clear that he had thought more about his faith than I ever could and who was I to judge his position if he isn’t hurting people then he can believe what he likes.
As you said, its a philosophical belief and not that he believes in a being per se, but that there is something deeper to the universe.
There are phylosophy of science, sociology and psycology. They aren't completely disconnected.
It's not that science and scientists set out to prove god doesn't exists. It's that the word of god as written down by men is contradicted directly and often by proven fact, and that belief in God is associated with a strong ignorance of reality.
People didn't live to 800. Goat blood doesn't protect you from plagues. The earth is not just 5 millennia old. Humans have not existed since the dawn of time.
I remember someone asking what are good documentaries on evolution that doesn't say "this is why religion is BS". I cannot recall a time having watched a documentary on evolution that blatantly says that. Religion on the other hand...
Anyone with two thinking brain cells would already put two and two together and see the contradiction. When I first learned about evolution in school, I thought to myself that it contradicts what the Bible said, and my teacher and the book never even said anything explicitly. However, I somehow rationalised that god must have created beings first and evolution took course after. It is in my later formative years, through education and more reading, which made up my mind that religion overall is nonsense and the denial of reality.
But unironically, "having faith" implies that you do not need proof but you are trusting your belief. So they are kind of correct
Yep, bible has a lot of sections about having the faith of a child. Believing without needing proof.
And there are no ongoing studies, clinical trials, etc regarding the existence or non-existence of god. And of course this IS a "shitpost".
That's probably because the current Abrahamic incarnation of god and his attributes are carefully designed to be a non-falsifiable claim.
So the point is actually rendered moot. God is according to the True Believer invisible, intangible, only works in "mysterious ways," and cannot be observed to have any influence on the universe, nor leaves any evidence of his existence except "faith." By those metrics, it's irrelevant whether he exists or not. A hypothetical force that exists but doesn't affect anything is interchangeable from a functional standpoint from something that doesn't exist.
See also: Russel's Teapot.
Yeah that's pretty good description. But nothing motivates asshole more than the need to prove another asshole wrong
Are any scientists out there with the active mission of "disprove god"? I highly doubt that.
The proofs are already there. Science just tries to find them
Religion: a bunch of deep shits trying to not know something by making up false truths.
Science doesn't prove anything. It disproves things until only a single theory remains.
It doesn't really disprove things either, but can be used to eliminate specific claims as not supported by evidence.
Everybody knows that one guy that always has to prove they’re right.
No Eric, I do not need to hear why the trump verdict was bullshit, especially when I directly ask what you disagree with about it and just get back they railroaded him and how stormy talked about all this sex shit, although I do not understand why that was admitted, but you have nothing to say about the actual evidence
What have ~~The Romans~~ scientists ever done for us?
Putting people's desire to have their beliefs uncontested on a pedestal was a mistake.
A motivatonal meme? Shit did i just mess up the timeline?
And I don't wanna talk to a scientist
Y'all motherfuckers lying, and getting me pissed
Science is like a blabbermouth who ruins the movie by telling you how it ends. Well I say there are some things we don't want to know! Important things!
That's it. Checkmate, atheists, pack it up and go home, you've just been one-upped forever and ever by... this one McDonald's-eatin' megachurch-attendin' rando from Arkansas.
If you want to believe that illness is caused by demons and witchcraft, fine, knock yourself out. But that's not how the real world works. If you're going to make extraordinary claims about reality, then you have to provide extraordinary proof. "I believe" isn't going to cut it in the reality-based community.
You do not need to take away their faith for your own personal gain.
When faith is for your own gain? Science doesn’t get $ if people don’t believe in Jesus. Faiths certainly get more $ if people don’t believe in science.
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