Is science inherently atheistic?

[Dinwar]

Originally Posted by punshhh

Now the're asking us to produce this metaphysical thing so they can place on the scientific table and dissect it with their instruments!

Yes, we are. Because "place on the scientific table and dissect it with their instruments!" actually means "detect any interaction between the thing being proposed and the real world", or more simply "look for evidence supporting it". You and Westprog and AvalonXQ and the rest are insisting that evidence is irrelevant to gods--which means that your gods don't interact with the world in any meaningful (ie, detectable) way. Which means you believe in them because.........Well, the only reason is because you WANT TO.

[tsig]

Originally Posted by Dinwar

You don't get to tell people what science should or shouldn't do anymore. The fact that you thin there's any doubt that the person making the claim needs to provide the mechanism shows you're pretty ignorant of the subject. Wagner's failure to provide a viable mechanism (he provided a mechanism, but it wasn't viable) was one of the main reasons continental drift was rejected. If we're going to reject something with that much support because a viable mechanism hasn't been proposed, we MUST reject gods until a mechanism for at least detecting them is proven. To do otherwise would be intellectually dishonest.

I won't bother with the rest of your post; it can be countered very simply: Scientists aren't anything like what you believe us to be, and you demonstrate that more and more the more I read your posts.

Whipping up on straw men is the best he's got.

[tsig]

Originally Posted by Dinwar

Yes, we are. Because "place on the scientific table and dissect it with their instruments!" actually means "detect any interaction between the thing being proposed and the real world", or more simply "look for evidence supporting it". You and Westprog and AvalonXQ and the rest are insisting that evidence is irrelevant to gods--which means that your gods don't interact with the world in any meaningful (ie, detectable) way. Which means you believe in them because.........Well, the only reason is because you WANT TO.

Believers want their god to be undetectable yet miracle working. Unknown to the human mind yet revealing himself thru revelation.

[JoeBentley]

I've never met a religious person that thought for a second that God was "unknowable." That's just the copout they pull out of the ether when asked to defend the concept.

The idea that you can have something "undetectable" or "unknowable" or "outside of science's realm" or whatever "beyond the horizon of the formless" double speak they want to make up next means that by definition the thing in question can't have any, and that's any, not one little bit, not a single iota, of effect and that's not God in any concept I've ever encountered.

[Dinwar]

Originally Posted by JoeBentley

The idea that you can have something "undetectable" or "unknowable" or "outside of science's realm" or whatever "beyond the horizon of the formless" double speak they want to make up next means that by definition the thing in question can't have any, and that's any, not one little bit, not a single iota, of effect and that's not God in any concept I've ever encountered.

The Clockmaker God comes close--he sets up the universe, then doesn't do anything for the rest of eternity. Not exactly a god worthy of worship, but certainly a popular concept among deists a few centuries ago.

Originally Posted by tsig

Believers want their god to be undetectable yet miracle working. Unknown to the human mind yet revealing himself thru revelation.

This is really one of the fundamental differences between science and religion: in science, if you really want something to be true you start looking for proof that it's not. If you continuously fail, THEN you can conclude it's true. The other, related, difference is that science demands that all ideas have a certain amount of support prior to those ideas being permitted in discussion. Theists get it backwards--they want ideas without support to be considered, and they want to be permitted to only seek out evidence that they're right.

[PixyMisa]

Originally Posted by Belz...

No. Science is not atheistic, but it does lead to that conclusion.

Good point. It's not science that's atheistic, it's reality.

[IanS]

[quote=westprog;8259417]Why do they need to do this?

Let's leave aside the obvious issue that when people are not making a scientific assertion, that they need to be bound by scientific principles.

Of course they still need to be bound by scientific principles. That’s why we have science in the first place - to stop people making baseless assertions without evidence.

What you want to claim is that you can make assertions about the existence of undetected intelligent beings, whose’ properties are apparently impossible and would defy all known science, and yet you say you don’t want to be bound by scientific scrutiny when making that claim. Sorry, that won’t work - if you are making claims about anything real in a real universe then it’s open to scientific scrutiny.

Let's examine the claim that a viable mechanism needs to be demonstrated.

What's the most important, most revolutionary discovery in science? One can argue, of course, but Newton's Principia has to be up there. What mechanism does Newton provide for his law of universal gravity? None whatsoever. This troubled him, certainly - but he recognised that the theory was valid without a mechanism.

If Newton could get by with a scientific theory that lacked a mechanism, then it seems perverse to demand a mechanism for a theory that has nothing to do with science.


I don’t know what Newton actually wrote about his theory of Gravity, but if he had any explanation at all for what gravity is and what it’s properties are, then that’s all I am asking you for when asking for a “mechanism”.

Presumably Newton proposed something like “ gravity is a force of attraction which exists between two solid bodies, and which obeys an inverse square law, such that the attractive force will be inversely proportional to the square of the distance between the two masses “.

OK, fine. So that can be checked scientifically. Do you have a similarly precise detailed proposal of how undetectable objects can exist? That will do for a “mechanism” - just describe how your claim works and give some mathematically defining properties just as Newton did.


It might be helpful for blustering purposes to throw in the Palestinian peasants bit, but it has nothing to do with the general case. It's certainly not a scientific approach.

That was not worth you saying was it? It’s nothing to do with “blustering”. I am pointing out that the sole reason that anyone today believes in such a God, is because they have got the idea from what scientifically ignorant peasants wrote 2000 years ago at a time when their only explanation for how anything worked in the universe was to say that it must all be a miracle from an invisible supernatural God.

That’s where the idea came from. But now in the 21st century, we know better than that.


Which is again a very unscientific way to put it. "All manner of reasons". "To say the least". That's not the way scientific theories are expressed.

We are not writing a research papers here on this forum. There are indeed all manner of scientifically established reasons to think the scenario of an inherently undetectable supernatural creator is not in any way likely. If you disagree with that, then just explain the mechanism by which you say such being would become undetectable …

… what is your proposed mechanism showing how a supernatural being exists but will be undetectable?


It's not necessary to have

“ It’s not necessary to have “ what?



There is no incompatibility in any scientific discovery with a miraculous type creator God. If there were, then some scientist somewhere would have taken the trouble to point it out. As it is, no such scientific paper has (AFAIAA) been published.

Nonsense. Every scientific paper which explains any discovery in purely natural terms, is an example of failing to find any supernatural element at all.

We might have found that any of those discoveries were impossible to explain without invoking a supernatural or miraculous property. But so far, out of many billions of detailed explanations, all the explanations have been entirely natural, and no hint of anything supernatural or miraculous has ever been detected … or do you think it has? Are you under the impression that miraculous inexplicable events have been detected?

Where is the evidence of any miraculous event?

Where is the evidence of a being which is inherently undetectable?

If you want scientifically valid evidence of natural explanations for all known discoveries, then science is full of that … evolution, relativity, atomic structure, medical drugs etc. … the explanations and the discoveries are all perfectly natural … there are no miracles and no inherently undetectable or inexplicable (except by miracle) events anywhere.


All the arguments in favour of such incompatibility have been philosophical arguments. Such arguments can be found a-plenty in philosophical writings.

Philosophy? Well that’s not science is it! And in this thread the question is whether science is atheistic.

You were arguing that a God might be undetectable to science. Well that’s a scientific assertion from you.

And if you make that assertion you have to explain what you own words mean, by showing a mechanism by which that could ever happen …

… what is the mechanism by which your God becomes undetectable?


One might suppose that when a particular argument is found to be entirely associated with one field of study, and entirely absent from another field, that that would be fairly conclusive evidence as to which field it belongs in.

You are trying to claim that science must be barred from checking your philosophical claims of an undetectable God? Sorry, but you get don’t get to make rules for what science is allowed to check.

If you propose that such a God actually exists, and is not purely an imaginary figment of your imagination, then it’s existence is open to scientific study … should scientists wish to waste their time bothering to check for something which has already been found never to exist in any of the billions of discoveries and explanations ever made so far, and which would appear to be a being with properties which defy all known laws of science anyway.

… what is your explained mechanism for how a thing like your undetected God could defy all known laws of science? Can you explain how and why that could happen?


If the being exists, then science can certainly check for it’s existence.

However, if the being is only a figment of your imagination, ie just a “claim”, which is all it appears to be, then various branches of science, and other disciplines using a scientific approach, can test, and afaik often have tested peoples un-evidenced claims about unseen Gods … you are just talking about a claim … and scientific methods can certainly be used to investigate why people make claims like that.



I suggest you produce not evidence of every scientific experiment - instead, just a single scientific paper which supports your claim that God is excluded. Just one statement will do.


OK, the very first thing that comes instantly to mind is the theory of evolution. That is an explanation of a scientific theory of how humans come to exist on earth.

Are you under the impression that God is “included” as an essential part of that theory?

If you are, then you are wrong. That theory of evolution specifically excludes a God as the creator of Homo sapiens.

That theory explains the existence of Homo sapiens in entirely natural terms, with no God creator anywhere in any part of it. No miracles. And no “undetectable supernatural beings”

Nor did your undetected God make the “heavens and the earth” as claimed in the bible (I think it claims something like that?). You want the scientific papers? OK, there are literally hundreds of thousands of papers explaining how “the heavens”, probably formed via what we now call the Big Bang. Every paper on the Big Bang is an explanation of how stars, space, time, and planets all formed. Not one of those papers depended on any “undetectable God” … do you disagree with that?


All of the things once thought to be due to your “undetectable God”, thunder & lightening, volcanoes, earthquakes, night and day, life and death, all those things have now been investigated in many millions of scientific papers, and every single one of those papers shows how and why the God explanation is completely wrong. And they do that by explaining how all those things happen without any God involved anywhere in any part of it …. Or do you also disagree with that?

Etc. etc….

If you don’t mind (and even if you do), I’m going to stop there because it’s perfectly obvious that you have no scientifically valid arguments in any of this. All you are doing is trying to claim that because science has not detected something, it might still exist, no matter how absurd and apparently impossible the thing is … well, if you are going to do that, then you have explain a viable mechanism for how such a being can remain inherently undetectable.


… what is your explanation for how such a God can be undetectable? …

… what is your explanation of how the God can defy all known laws of science?

… do you have any explanation for what you are proposing, or not?

[westprog]

Originally Posted by JoeBentley

Why does this idea bother you so? Why is it so important to you to think there's something vastly unknowable about the universe?

Why are you scared at the prospect that there might be things about the universe that we cannot know?

Quote:

I fully accept that in both a practical and perhaps even theoretical level they are things that which we will never understand, but I don't seem to just take joy in it the way you do.

I don't get the joy of not-knowing. I just don't.

Maybe it's not a matter of "joy" or "fear". Maybe it's a matter of what the universe actually is. Perhaps it isn't neatly designed to fit our capabilities.

[westprog]

[quote=IanS;8259914]

Originally Posted by westprog

Why do they need to do this?

Let's leave aside the obvious issue that when people are not making a scientific assertion, that they need to be bound by scientific principles.

Of course they still need to be bound by scientific principles. That’s why we have science in the first place - to stop people making baseless assertions without evidence.

Is that what you think science is about? Stopping people doing things?

I suppose this thread is a useful gathering point for all the mistaken notions about what science is. That's a good one - new to me.

[westprog]

Originally Posted by Dinwar

You don't get to tell people what science should or shouldn't do anymore.

Well, congratulations on breaking my fifty year stranglehold on the field.

Is there some kind of competition I've missed to say the silliest things about science?

Of course I don't get to say what science is. Nor does anyone posting here get to decide what science is.

However, there are people who decide what science is. They publish hundreds of scientific papers. They accept and reject submissions continuously.

Look at what is published as science every year, and then decide who's version of what science is is correct.

[westprog]

Originally Posted by Dinwar

This is really one of the fundamental differences between science and religion:

That's the characteristic of this debate - insisting that science and religion are different, and demanding that science be part of religion.

[IanS]

Originally Posted by westprog

Is that what you think science is about? Stopping people doing things?

Yes, of course it is. Science is all about confining our claims to objective analysis based on real evidence and real evidentiary explanation (such as precise mathematical explanations) ... did you think it was something else?

Originally Posted by westprog

I suppose this thread is a useful gathering point for all the mistaken notions about what science is. That's a good one - new to me.

Perhaps the reason it was “new to you”, is because you are a philosophy student and not a scientist.

And, no … science and scientists are not remotely interested in what philosophers try to claim about what they say science really is, or what they say anyone can know about “reality” etc. Science is not interested in silly word games of that sort.

[Dinwar]

Originally Posted by westprog

Well, congratulations on breaking my fifty year stranglehold on the field.

Is there some kind of competition I've missed to say the silliest things about science?

You've spent this entire thread more or less telling us what science can or cannot do. Now you've displayed a gross lack of understanding of exactly that.

Quote:

That's the characteristic of this debate - insisting that science and religion are different, and demanding that science be part of religion.

...and now you're putting words in my mouth.

Quote:

Is that what you think science is about? Stopping people doing things?

And you're being completely disingenuous! This really isn't your day, westprog. You KNOW that the "things" IanS was referring to are a specific set of actions WHICH HE NAMED IN THE QUOTE YOU POSTED. Those "things" that science stops people from doing are limited to making statements without proper support. And it doesn't so much stop them as point out that assertions sans evidence are arbitrary and properly should be ignored.

Quote:

Why are you scared at the prospect that there might be things about the universe that we cannot know?

Seriously? You think this is an argument against SCIENCE? An entire suite of fields of thought dedicated to attempting to understand the unknown? Inherent in the scientific process is that we don't know everything--and an extremely close corollary is that we can't know some things. And science is more than willing to admit what we don't know--look at any stratigraphic reconstruction and you'll see huge areas that are basically empty, the result of erosion taking away all the data we have to work with. Astronomers talk about complete loss of information when something crosses the event horizon, and hard limits on what can be known about the past of our universe. There's a smallest unit of length--anything smaller than that is invisible to us, completely. Science is RIFE with things we can't know.

Where science differs from religion is that when we get to something we cannot know, we stop. We don't try to describe it, we don't make up stories about it, we don't make up definitions about it--we simply say "We don't know" and move on to more productive avenues of exploration. You, on the other hand, are insisting that you can know what's unknowable.

[tsig]

Originally Posted by westprog

Why are you scared at the prospect that there might be things about the universe that we cannot know?



Maybe it's not a matter of "joy" or "fear". Maybe it's a matter of what the universe actually is. Perhaps it isn't neatly designed to fit our capabilities.

If there are things about the universe we cannot know then we cannot know how the universe really is.

[westprog]

Originally Posted by IanS

Yes, of course it is. Science is all about confining our claims to objective analysis based on real evidence and real evidentiary explanation (such as precise mathematical explanations) ... did you think it was something else?





Perhaps the reason it was “new to you”, is because you are a philosophy student and not a scientist.

You haven't the least clue what I am.

Quote:

And, no … science and scientists are not remotely interested in what philosophers try to claim about what they say science really is, or what they say anyone can know about “reality” etc. Science is not interested in silly word games of that sort.

Point out one single scientific paper supporting the positions you've espoused here and I'll be more inclined to accept your self-proclaimed credentials. Just one.

[westprog]

Originally Posted by Dinwar

You've spent this entire thread more or less telling us what science can or cannot do. Now you've displayed a gross lack of understanding of exactly that.

...and now you're putting words in my mouth.

And you're being completely disingenuous! This really isn't your day, westprog. You KNOW that the "things" IanS was referring to are a specific set of actions WHICH HE NAMED IN THE QUOTE YOU POSTED. Those "things" that science stops people from doing are limited to making statements without proper support. And it doesn't so much stop them

Exactly. It doesn't. Science has nothing to do with areas outside science.

I realise that having to contradict IanS and agree with me is almost impossible, but the fact remains - science is not in the business of stopping people from doing things.

[westprog]

Originally Posted by Dinwar

Where science differs from religion is that when we get to something we cannot know, we stop. We don't try to describe it, we don't make up stories about it, we don't make up definitions about it--we simply say "We don't know" and move on to more productive avenues of exploration. You, on the other hand, are insisting that you can know what's unknowable.

And yet you seem determined that science should step beyond its remit and pronounce on these matters. Why not accept that science and religion are different things, and the fact that something is not science does not mean that it is impossible to discuss it? Scientists don't make this mistake. When it comes to something outside of science, they don't try to include and exclude it at the same time.

[Last of the Fraggles]

Originally Posted by westprog

Exactly. It doesn't. Science has nothing to do with areas outside science.

What is an are 'outside science'? What does outside science even mean?

Is music outside science? Science can tell us all about sound, how it is created, how we hear it, what it does to our brains, etc. So science doesn't have 'nothing to do' with music, but music is a different thing than science.

The problem with your 'religion outside science' BS is that either religion is making claims about things that we can know and examine and test (in which case science is a better tool) or it's making claims about things that we can never know or examine or test (in which case nothing is a suitable tool)

But in any case, lets return to the question originally asked. It wasn't about 'things outside science' it was about science itself. The things which science does address have been examined and gods have been found absent. The things which science does address are those things which exist and are real and have some effect; so whatever gods are they don't have any meaningful effect on the things that science has looked into. Which is pretty much everything that impacts on us as human beings. I'd say that's pretty atheistic.

Theistic science has been tried...and leads us down the road of Creationism and Intelligent Design and science that...well...doesn't work.

[JoeBentley]

Originally Posted by Last of the Fraggles

What is an are 'outside science'? What does outside science even mean?

Loosely translated "Outside Science" means "Something I want to make up without evidene but not get called on." You'll notice Woo Slingers that invoke things being "Outside science" always seem to think that they get to determine exactly where science's jurisdiction ends, and by some remarkable bit of chance it almost always coincides with where their Woo begins.

It's a copout, a dodge, a meaningless non-distinction that even the people that invoke don't either understand nor really think is true.

[corbin]

Originally Posted by IanS

Uh, huh ... so what is the evidence for this existence of the " metaphysical " world that you are talking about?

Where is this God?

"Metaphysical" doesn't mean some woo-woo world that doesn't exist.

Any view about the fundamental nature of reality, what "truth" is, or whether God exists is a metaphysical view. That is to say, it's a question that can't be answered simply by describing the behavior of the physical world. The fundamental philosophical questions are totally meaningless in the language game of science. There is never going to be a scientific answer to the question of whether there is an uncaused being because it isn't a scientific question. It's a philosophical question - and that's the metaphysical "view" from which it has to be considered that I mentioned in my post.

[tsig]

Originally Posted by corbin

"Metaphysical" doesn't mean some woo-woo world that doesn't exist.

Any view about the fundamental nature of reality, what "truth" is, or whether God exists is a metaphysical view. That is to say, it's a question that can't be answered simply by describing the behavior of the physical world. The fundamental philosophical questions are totally meaningless in the language game of science. There is never going to be a scientific answer to the question of whether there is an uncaused being because it isn't a scientific question. It's a philosophical question - and that's the metaphysical "view" from which it has to be considered that I mentioned in my post.

met·a·phys·i·cal audio (mt-fz-kl) KEY

ADJECTIVE:

Of or relating to metaphysics.
Based on speculative or abstract reasoning.
Highly abstract or theoretical; abstruse.
Immaterial; incorporeal. See Synonyms at immaterial.
Supernatural.

[corbin]

I'm not saying anything controversial.

"God exists," is a metaphysical proposition.

"Only physical objects exist," is also a metaphysical proposition.

Neither of those statements in meaningful in terms of science, science meaning the description of empirical phenomena.

[tsig]

Originally Posted by corbin

I'm not saying anything controversial.

"God exists," is a metaphysical proposition.

"Only physical objects exist," is also a metaphysical proposition.

Neither of those statements in meaningful in terms of science, science meaning the description of empirical phenomena.

Physical becomes metaphysical in the space of a single sentence.

[JoeBentley]

People keep saying "It's not meaningful in terms of science" as if there is some other kind of meaningful.

Science isn't just another way of thinking and making crap up is just as valid.

[corbin]

I don't think you understand that in the context of this discussion, which is about whether observation and description of the empirical world implies any stance about the existence of God, that I am using "metaphysical" in the philosophical sense of what it means as a category of knowledge, not in the ontological sense of there being a world separate from the physical world.

Maybe the Wiki entry will help:

Quote:

Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world,[1] although the term is not easily defined.[2] Traditionally, metaphysics attempts to answer two basic questions in the broadest possible terms:

"What is there?"
"What is it like?"[3]

Quote:

Prior to the modern history of science, scientific questions were addressed as a part of metaphysics known as natural philosophy. The term science itself meant "knowledge" of, originating from epistemology. The scientific method, however, transformed natural philosophy into an empirical activity deriving from experiment unlike the rest of philosophy. By the end of the 18th century, it had begun to be called "science" to distinguish it from philosophy. Thereafter, metaphysics denoted philosophical enquiry of a non-empirical character into the nature of existence.[6]

"Only physical objects exist," is indeed a metaphysical position.

[corbin]

Originally Posted by JoeBentley

People keep saying "It's not meaningful in terms of science" as if there is some other kind of meaningful.

Science isn't just another way of thinking and making crap up is just as valid.

What do you think science is? Plenty of things are meaningful that aren't the description of empirical phenomena. Mathematics is an example. Even your assertion that science is the only kind of "meaning" is itself a meaningful statement with a truth value that doesn't depend on empirical observation.

Whether God exists is only scientifically meaningful if God is defined to be something the existence of which can be determined empirically. Many accounts of God do not define God in physical terms, and such a thing isn't amenable to a system that can only examine physical things. You can say that it isn't meaningful to define something that isn't physical since only the physical exists, but that in itself is a position that is metaphysical. Further, many questions of a type similar to the ones that posit a non-physical God are indeed meaningful (but not necessarily true) - questions about what is true, what causality is, what science describes, etc.

Basically, you can't ignore philosophy. Actually you can, but you have to admit to being the sort of cold pragmatist that few are comfortable with, and you certainly can't be making statements that allege scientific judgments to be more true than any other judgments since that is a position solidly in the realm of philosophy - philosophy of science and epistemology, specifically.

Incidentally, most of the fundamental positions held by the skeptics on this forum of the kind that say God doesn't exist, science is the sole method for obtaining knowledge, etc., are in fact philosophical positions that are fleshed out in a deep and rigorous way in the discipline of philosophy. Here, they are treated as default positions of reasonableness and aren't even recognized as debatable philosophical positions.

[JoeBentley]

Originally Posted by corbin

"Only physical objects exist," is indeed a metaphysical position.

And yet if I threw a rock at your head I bet you'd still duck.

[JoeBentley]

Originally Posted by corbin

What do you think science is?

Well I can tell you what it's not. It's not "That thing I listen to until it stops giving me the answer at want, at which point I will just think things at random."

[corbin]

I must not be explaining myself very well.

I'm having trouble getting a handle on what you think science is, what its limits are (are there meaningful questions that it can't answer?), and what kinds of knowledge it can give us, if any.

[JoeBentley]

I haven't heard anything yet that suggests anyone that pulls the "Science has limits!" card means anything other then a way to avoid intellectual standards.

[corbin]

The scientific method isn't the sole user of intellectual standards, by which I presume you mean things like logic, reasoning, and standards of proof. The definition of science isn't "what tells us in a logical and systematic manner what exists." Whether something is logical or what exists are purely philosophical questions. Instead, scientific knowledge is less ambitious - it aims merely to correspond to empirical observation as closely as possible using a language of symbols called words and numbers. It aims for internal consistency but says nothing whatsoever about what "reality" is or what is actually "logical."

[JoeBentley]

But when it gets to the point of "What if reality isn't real?" navel gazing it's not denying just science anymore, it's denying everything and that's obvious hypocritical B.S. since, as I said, if I throw a rock at your head you're still gonna duck.

[corbin]

I don't know what you're saying. That some philosophy leads to (in my opinion unfounded) nihilistic conclusions that therefore philosophy is nonsense?

And the fact that I duck when you decide, for some reason, to throw a rock at my head isn't really proof of anything.

All the most important fundamental questions are in the realm of philosophy. Wanting to know things like what is, how do we know things, what should we do, what is the relationship between mind and body, etc., doesn't seem to me to be pointless "naval-gazing." Apparently, it's not pointless to you or most of the other skeptics on this forum either since you all hold strong opinions on each of these issues. The unfortunate part is that you don't even realize these are philosophical positions (in the branch of philosophy called metaphysics for the first and last; epistemology and moral philosophy for the middle two).

[tsig]

Originally Posted by corbin

I'm not saying anything controversial.

"God exists," is a metaphysical proposition.

"Only physical objects exist," is also a metaphysical proposition.

Neither of those statements in meaningful in terms of science, science meaning the description of empirical phenomena.

Originally Posted by tsig

Physical becomes metaphysical in the space of a single sentence.

Originally Posted by corbin

I don't think you understand that in the context of this discussion, which is about whether observation and description of the empirical world implies any stance about the existence of God, that I am using "metaphysical" in the philosophical sense of what it means as a category of knowledge, not in the ontological sense of there being a world separate from the physical world.

Maybe the Wiki entry will help:





"Only physical objects exist," is indeed a metaphysical position.

Repeating an assertion does not make it true.

[corbin]

Do you think "only physical objects exist," is a SCIENTIFIC proposition?

EDIT: You're correct that I haven't actually offered specific proof that that proposition is metaphysical. I can't do that until I know what you mean by "metaphysical" or "science," which is what I've been trying to work on in the subsequent posts.

[tsig]

Originally Posted by corbin

What do you think science is? Plenty of things are meaningful that aren't the description of empirical phenomena. Mathematics is an example. Even your assertion that science is the only kind of "meaning" is itself a meaningful statement with a truth value that doesn't depend on empirical observation.

Whether God exists is only scientifically meaningful if God is defined to be something the existence of which can be determined empirically. Many accounts of God do not define God in physical terms, and such a thing isn't amenable to a system that can only examine physical things. You can say that it isn't meaningful to define something that isn't physical since only the physical exists, but that in itself is a position that is metaphysical. Further, many questions of a type similar to the ones that posit a non-physical God are indeed meaningful (but not necessarily true) - questions about what is true, what causality is, what science describes, etc.

Basically, you can't ignore philosophy. Actually you can, but you have to admit to being the sort of cold pragmatist that few are comfortable with, and you certainly can't be making statements that allege scientific judgments to be more true than any other judgments since that is a position solidly in the realm of philosophy - philosophy of science and epistemology, specifically.

Incidentally, most of the fundamental positions held by the skeptics on this forum of the kind that say God doesn't exist, science is the sole method for obtaining knowledge, etc., are in fact philosophical positions that are fleshed out in a deep and rigorous way in the discipline of philosophy. Here, they are treated as default positions of reasonableness and aren't even recognized as debatable philosophical positions.

So only anti social, cold pragmatists ignore philosophy?

[corbin]

My point was that the view that philosophy is useless limits the kind of knowledge we can have strictly to the kind afforded by scientific theories' correspondence to empirical observation. There's nothing logically wrong with that and I find it to be a perfectly coherent view, albeit severely limiting to the point of ignoring all the interesting mysteries in life. My problem is with the people who make all kinds of philosophical and metaphysical statements while simultaneously declaring that philosophy is useless.

[corbin]

To answer the topic question, no, science, (or more specifically, the body of scientific knowledge), does not have anything to say about the proposition "God exists."

No scientific fact can influence the truth value of the proposition in question. Whether an object falls at 9.8 m/s^2, what neurons fire in somebody's brain when they think about that proposition, what the state of the observable universe was 13 billion years ago, or the processes that led us to be here right now - none of these scientific facts individually or collectively make the proposition true or false.

A scientific fact might appear to influence the truth value of the proposition, but only if God is defined as a physical being and existence is defined as "what is empirically observable." Of course, that's not really the question. In such a question, "God" is typically taken to mean some transcendent being with paradoxical qualities.

[Andrew Wiggin]

Originally Posted by Skeptic Ginger

Does that go well with toe jam?

You spread it on toest.

[tsig]

Originally Posted by corbin

My point was that the view that philosophy is useless limits the kind of knowledge we can have strictly to the kind afforded by scientific theories' correspondence to empirical observation. There's nothing logically wrong with that and I find it to be a perfectly coherent view, albeit severely limiting to the point of ignoring all the interesting mysteries in life. My problem is with the people who make all kinds of philosophical and metaphysical statements while simultaneously declaring that philosophy is useless.

Science doesn't do your woo.