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The threshold of belief

ResponseThe threshold of belief
Fan asked 1 year 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 manner.
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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1 Answer
Michi Staff answered 1 year 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.

Fan replied 1 year ago

Not a clear criterion, it's not clear to me which claims are unscientific and which can be said with confidence 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, so we will accept them for now.
What claims will not stand up to scientific scrutiny but can we clearly know that they are true? The idea of a God who does not intervene in the world is unscientific by the terms of science. Do you think that should be changed?
I don't know if what I'm doing is a form of empiricism, but I really can't understand how something like God can be proven outside of scientific terms. By the same token, if God has been proven so clearly, I don't understand why he's not a solid part of science.

Fan replied 1 year 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 as well), 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 this). 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 this?

mikyab Staff replied 1 year 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 of examining 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.

Fan replied 1 year ago

But you don't prove things in science just 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, and therefore science accepts them. With God, this absolutely does not work (it is impossible to predict anything based on God today), but it is possible in another way, your way… Psychology does not deal with acceleration because it really does not talk about physics, but science would be happy to discover *any* thing that is true about the world, including psychological effects and physical phenomena. This is the very definition in the English Wikipedia: "Science is a rigorous, systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the world."

mikyab Staff replied 1 year ago

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

Fan replied 1 year 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.

mikyab Staff replied 1 year 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.

Fan replied 1 year 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.

David S. replied 1 year ago

The scientific tools are not built for this.
Science will also not address the question of the existence of Russell's teapots; that can be philosophized about.
Suppose God exists, characterized exactly as he is usually described. What scientific tool would confirm or refute his existence? That's on a completely different plane.
It's like me telling you that there are ultraviolet rays that the eye cannot see and you'll answer that they don't exist because you don't see them.
You can't rule out anything that science can't measure. It's become 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 can't analyze are wrong because our tool can't handle 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.

Fan replied 1 year 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 falsity 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 influences things in the world at his own free will (and for some reason does not do this 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 reject them (because again, there can be an infinite number of unreal things that influence and appear spontaneously).
I'm not saying that we should rule out anything that science can't measure. There is no actual proof of the existence of reality beyond my imagination, and I still believe that we don't live in a simulation. Why? Because it's good and convenient for me. It's convenient for everyone and therefore it's acceptable to everyone. If life is really a simulation, then other questions are irrelevant anyway.
The same thing happens with morality. Contrary to what the rabbi said when he indirectly scolded 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 falls flat. Is a society a group of people who work? So what if you replace all the people? A society is the machines that manufacture 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 change a little. 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) that influences and has influenced the world in certain ways. Therefore, we will try to measure it scientifically. They tried, but it didn't work, and intelligent design is considered pseudo-science. If the 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 everything complex really has a component and this is a law in reality, there is no reason why science should not believe in a cause that composed the world. 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 reason, one that filters out as much error as possible while absorbing as much truth as possible), tried, but they did not work.
Sorry for the wording, it was important to me to be clear.

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