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The threshold of belief

שו”תThe threshold of belief
asked 2 years ago

As we know, science has its own conditions for determining and understanding the phenomena of the world. The conditions include pure objectivity and the possibility of repeated observation and verification of the claim (by other scientists). As a believer in God, you do not necessarily accept these conditions as *accurate* conditions for determining what is true and what is not (i.e. what should be believed) because science does not accept God as a scientific theory and does not recognize him. You believe in God, from what I understand, due to philosophical and not scientific arguments. I wanted to ask where in your opinion the line is drawn between what should be believed in and what should be rejected, in relation to the fact that science does not accept God? Unlike evolution, the Big Bang, the existence of atoms and gravity, whose truth is a fact for all intents and purposes, science does not accept God as a supersubject (or however science is defined) whose goal is to discover more about the world in an objective way.
So why doesn’t science accept God if it’s such a clear necessity that you think disbelief in God is a heresy in rationality?


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מיכי Staff answered 2 years ago
You are confusing the question of whether a claim is scientific with the question of whether it is true. There are claims that are not scientific but are true. Do you want a clear criterion? Science does not have such a criterion either.

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אוהד replied 2 years ago

Not a clear criterion, I'm not clear on what claims are unscientific and can be said with certainty that they are true without saying that there is a chance that they are not true, but we have never encountered anything that contradicts them and therefore we will accept them so far.
What claims will not stand a scientific test but can we clearly know that they are true? The idea of a God who does not intervene in the world is not scientific according to the conditions of science. Do you think that should be changed?
I don't know if what I am doing is a kind of empiricism, but I really can't understand how it is possible to prove something like God that is not under scientific conditions. By the same token, if God has been proven so clearly according to your claim, I don't understand why he is not a solid part of science.

אוהד replied 2 years ago

I mean to say that science clearly aims to know the truth, with the most ideal conditions possible. In my opinion (and I suppose in the opinion of most sane people too), it would be a shame if science started accepting ideas that cannot be seen in repeated experiments (like God not answering prayers, and there are plenty of examples of that). It would be terrible because as a result we would have to accept a lot of other things that are simply ridiculous and we would hardly be able to see their effect. So why is God not part of science here when there is a clear law of ‘every complex has a component’ and ’the world is complex’?? Why don't scientists accept that?

מיכי Staff replied 2 years ago

It is not true that science does not accept the existence of God. Science does not deal with God because his existence does not explain phenomena in the world, and there is no observational possibility to examine his existence. That is all. Such topics are the concern of philosophy and not of science. Just as psychology does not deal with the acceleration of bodies because that is the concern of physics.
Science does make assumptions that have no observational basis. Many of them. The principle of causality, that there is no action at a distance, that the laws of nature are constant and universal, and more.

אוהד replied 2 years ago

But things in science are not proven only through observation. The story really doesn't end here. There was a time during the existence of Darwinian evolution that science (the vast majority of it) accepted it even though we couldn't yet observe the evolution of bacteria by natural selection (mainly due to clear evidence for everything in the existing natural world). You said that complexity can be measured objectively in a scientific way (‘Science calls it entropy’), and science deals quite a bit with the existence of things and phenomena. So why doesn't it accept God?
The principle of causality and the laws of nature as universals cannot be observed, but again, this is not the only way to prove something in science. We clearly see that only balls that are kicked fly and this works for everything else, so science accepts them. With God, it absolutely doesn't work (it's impossible to predict anything based on God today) but it is possible in another way, your way… Psychology doesn't deal with acceleration because it doesn't really talk about physics, but science would be happy to discover *anything* true about the world, including psychological effects and physical phenomena. This is the exact definition in Wikipedia: “Science is a rigorous, systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the world”.

מיכי Staff replied 2 years ago

Well, you'll have to forgive me. I've given up on this confused discussion.

אוהד replied 2 years ago

I understand you, but it's a shame, I still haven't found a reason to believe in the philosophical arguments that science doesn't even accept as a premise.

מיכי Staff replied 2 years ago

I just hope that you don't apply the same criteria to morality. Science also doesn't accept that it is forbidden to murder or steal.
All the best.

אוהד replied 2 years ago

Science equally does not accept that it is permissible to murder or steal. It does not deal with that. But it does deal with the study of objective truth, which certainly includes God. I explained that relatively clearly.

דוד ש. replied 2 years ago

The scientific tools are not built for this.
Science will not deal with the question of the existence of Russell's teapots either, that can be philosophized about.
Suppose that God exists, characterized exactly as is usually described. What scientific tool will confirm or refute his existence? That's on a completely different level.
It's like me telling you that there are ultraviolet rays that the eye cannot see and you answer that they don't exist because you don't see them.
You can't rule out anything that science cannot measure. It's becoming very popular and people won't accept any claim that isn't clearly empiricist. But that's just an arrogant mistake. You can't sanctify one method and think that arguments that it cannot analyze are wrong simply because our tool is unable to deal with them.
I'm not saying that all 'unscientific' arguments should be accepted, but that they should be examined with other tools, if there are any.

אוהד replied 2 years ago

You didn't understand what I was saying properly. I addressed all of these things.
Science has set a threshold created by several conditions for belief in the existence of something (phenomena/things). I assume (and I believe you do too) that this threshold is the best in the sense that it will filter out the most error while catching as many real things as possible in its net. If you give up even a small condition like consistency and repeated testing of the findings, you will have to seriously consider ideas like the spaghetti monster that affects things spontaneously.
Therefore, assuming that God exists as described, an omnipotent and omniscient God who affects things in the world at his free choice (and for some reason doesn't do it in experiments with prayers, for example) there is indeed no way to know that he exists, and that is exactly what I am saying. The obvious rational conclusion is that he does not exist. The same goes for demons and spirits. These things cannot be tested under basic scientific (objective) conditions and therefore we will reject them (because again, there can exist an infinite number of unreal things that affect and appear spontaneously).
I am not saying that we should reject everything that science cannot measure. There is no actual proof of the existence of reality beyond my imagination, and I still believe that we do not live in a simulation. Why? Because it is good and convenient for me. It is convenient for everyone and therefore it is acceptable to everyone. If life is truly a simulation, then other questions are irrelevant in any case.
The same in the case of morality. Contrary to what the rabbi said when he indirectly criticized me, I do not measure morality according to science for the simple reason that morality is not something that exists or does not exist. Morality is an idea. Just like a state. There is no such thing as the State of Israel. You have a group of people who hold papers that say they are citizens of a state called Israel, and you have some fences that people have erected. States (and to the same extent ‘companies’ like Microsoft) are not something that really exists. Any attempt to define a society fails. Is a society a group of people who work? So what if you replace all the people? A society is the machines that make devices? So what if you renew all the machines? Is it a different society? A country remains the same if all the people in it are replaced and if its borders are slightly changed. These things are accepted ideas. Not existing things that can be measured scientifically. I assume you agree with that.
God is clearly different from them. God is an existing entity (according to the claim) who influences and has influenced the world in certain ways. Therefore, let's try to measure it scientifically. They tried, but it didn't work, and intelligent design is considered pseudo-science. If philosophical arguments worked, science would have to accept them. Science, by the way, is a subfield of philosophy; in the past, scientists were called natural philosophers. If every complex thing really has a component and this is a law in reality, there is no reason for science not to believe in the reason that put the world together. But so far it does not and there is no such scientific theory. It is not that science cannot deal with these arguments but that science, as an objective tool with a defined threshold of belief (which I will assume you accept as logical, one that filters out as much error as possible while absorbing as much truth as possible), tried but they did not work.
Apologies for the wording, it was important to me to be clear.

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