Q&A: God as a Scientific Thesis
God as a Scientific Thesis
Question
Hello Rabbi. Quite often, in discussions with atheists, they raise the claim that God’s existence has to be a “scientific question”—that is, something empirical that can be pointed to. From their perspective, anything that is not under the scientific lens (“empirical”) does not exist, or as one atheist woman told me, “Show me a graph.” They also completely dismiss philosophical thinking as meaningless pilpulim. What is the answer to these claims? (In a Facebook discussion on the topic, I tried again and again to prove to my interlocutor that he was wrong and misleading, but he insisted that only what can be seen in a laboratory exists, and outside it nothing exists.)
Answer
If only an empirical claim is acceptable, then they can throw all of science in the trash. All the laws of nature are generalizations that begin with observation of a particular case and continue through an entirely philosophical move. The foundational principles of science are all philosophical and not empirical: the principle of causality, induction, action at a distance (locality), and many more.
What about morality? And our inner experiences? None of these has an empirical basis.
And what about the question of trusting the senses themselves? Isn’t that a philosophical assumption? Empiricism itself is a philosophical thesis.
By the way, this discussion itself is philosophical.
In the philosophical world, many have already understood the childishness of this positivist-empiricist approach, but among atheists many enjoy clinging to the horns of the altar and not letting reality confuse them.
Incidentally, the chance that you will convince someone from this sect is negligible. If there are “religious” fanatics with whom there is no way to talk, it is the atheists.