In fact, in today’s modern age of photo-shopping, and simulated reality, and even actors being killed by props they believed to be harmless…
you put too fine an edge on this idea that things can be “Proved to Render Belief Irrelevant”.
While this may be true, this is not the universal situation. As long as their are Proofs that are imperfect and which still leave a margin of error (no matter how small), your point is:
if heat does away with the toxic effect it tells you that your toxic effect was heat labile, not that it was a protein unless you are so scientifically clued up to infer a toxin to be a protein if it is affected by heat.
we can prove theories true to an acceptable level of risk, e.g. to have faith in their applicability. It is reasonable to have doubt about the theory which is why we always look for better explanations, otherwise science would not be reasonable.
Proof does not render belief irrelevant but dissolves it by turning it into knowledge as it establishes the truth status of a proposition. Proofs that are not proof are by definition irrelevant as they fail the criterion of truth.
If we look at the hypothesis of God as the ultimate cause of our material reality that has bound reality by laws to create order that make it comprehensible to the human mind you will have to accept that the hypothesis has not failed us so far as we seen to be able to comprehend reality based on the order we observe, which is why it is intellectually inept to look for evidence for the creator of order by finding events that are in conflict with this order. as demanded by atheists who want to see things that deviate from this order as evidence for a God that created the order. It’s a declaration of intellectual bankruptcy :slight_smile
would be such declaration as the natural processes are by definition actions of God if reality conforms to his law. To demand a description of God in a way that he would be / act unreasonable in order to be scientifically detectable is like demanding results to show your theory to be wrong in order to prove your theory
There is Proof in the epistimological meaning of the word… and there are proofs which can be relatively solid, but lack a gurantee of certainty - - endemic to all the Cosmos…everything real outside of the theories of epistomology.
Of course I would not accept it as a valid argument because it is BS. The appropriate argument from lightning is: If lightning existed in ancient times, then the source of lightning, which is electricity, existed in ancient times, even though no one at that time had a notion that electrons and electricity existed. Are you going to dispute the logic of that statement?
In terms of a God hypothesis we need to start with the definition of God that God (YHWH) gave us. God said, “I AM WHO I AM.” Exodus 3:14. This indicates that YHWH has unlimited power, wisdom, and love, which makes YHWH uniquely able to have created the universe out of nothing. This agrees with Genesis 1 and John 1. It also corresponds to the facts of the Big Bang Theory, which makes it clear that the universe does have a Beginning and did not create itself.
The God Hypothesis is important to science, because it means that the universe is rationally structured which is basic to the scientific project.
The source of lightning is Thor, not electricity. The evidence for this is the existence of lightning. If Thor did not exist then there wouldn’t be lightning.[quote=“Relates, post:130, topic:37310”]
In terms of a God hypothesis we need to start with the definition of God that God (YHWH) gave us. God said, “I AM WHO I AM.” Exodus 3:14. This indicates that YHWH has unlimited power, wisdom, and love, which makes YHWH uniquely able to have created the universe out of nothing. This agrees with Genesis 1 and John 1. It also corresponds to the facts of the Big Bang Theory, which makes it clear that the universe does have a Beginning and did not create itself.
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Lightning also has a beginning, so Thor has to create it.
If you are going to argue that everything which has a beginning requires a deity to create it then almost everything in nature requires a deity to create it.
No, everything has a source, including nature or the universe…
Only God Who Is Who God Is does not have a source, because God is not material, God is beyond time, space, and Beginning. You might not accept this, but this is the Reality to which the facts point.
But why does that source have to be a deity if something has a beginning? I don’t understand the logic behind this line of reasoning. Lightning has a beginning, yet doesn’t require a deity to create it, or at least doesn’t appear to need one. Why would the universe be any different if the only thing we are going by is that it has a beginning?
And just to stress this once again, I am not questioning your beliefs on this matter. I am not here to tell other people what they should or shouldn’t believe. Rather, I am more interested in the reasoning behind specific claims that appear to wander outside the arena of faith and religious belief.
The Source of the universe is the GOD WHO IS WHO GOD IS, just as the source of lightning is electricity. The source of lightning is not light or gravity, even though these are both energy, it is electricity. It is what it is, because this is what the fact indicate that it is. .
Here you all have Stenger’s perspective about the “God hypothesis” (directly from the book):
"In my 2003 book, Has Science Found God? I critically examined the claims of scientific evidence for God and found them inadequate.
In the present book, I will go much further and
argue that by this moment in time science has advanced sufficiently to be able to make a definitive statement on the existence or nonexistence of a God having the attributes that are traditionally associated with the Judeo-Christian-Islamic God.
We now have considerable empirical data and highly successful scientific models that bear on the question of God’s existence. The time has come to examine what those data and models tell us about the validity of the God hypothesis."
Page 11
"My analysis will be based on the contention that God should be detectable by scientific means simply by virtue of the fact that he is supposed to play such a central role in the operation of the universe and the lives of humans. Existing scientific models contain no place where God is included as an ingredient in order to describe observations. Thus, if God exists, he must appear somewhere within the gaps or errors of scientific models."
Page 13
he clearly fails his God by his own definition of God. He looks for a God that is the error of science whilst the Judeo Christian God is in the foundation of science, e.g.the axiom of ultimate reason and the origin of laws that were put upon the universe, thus making it comprehensible to us.
Agreed, but the hubris, and contradictions in these claims by this atheists are difficult to consider as reasonable:[quote=“archicastor1, post:136, topic:37310”]
We now have considerable empirical data and highly successful scientific models that bear on the question of God’s existence
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yet, these same people claim they are not dealing with a scientific hypothesis.
I would agree. The best you can do is falsify a description of God if it falls within the confines of science, but there are so many concepts of God that fall outside of science that it is impossible to absolutely rule out the existence of God. At the same time, taking out small quotes from larger texts can suffer due to a loss of context so we shouldn’t be too judgmental based on a small snippet. The vague generalizations in that quote might be explained elsewhere.
