Straw man. Science doesn’t try to prove if God is real or fake.
I’ve met a lot of people who don’t seem to understand this important concept from epistemology, which is the philosophy of knowledge.
To demonstrate the concept of “non-falsifiability” I will now produce a short fictitious dialog between a made up Scientist, S, and a Religionist, R.
Topic: how old is the earth? Is it 6,000 years old or more than 4 billion years old?
S: The earth must be more than 4 billion years old, because I found these rocks. These rocks have isotopes in them and they definitely look like they’ve been around for more than 4 billion years. If the rocks are really old, then the earth must be really old too.
R: No. The is only 6,000 years old, because the holy Bible has a list of human descendants from Adam, the first man, to Jesus, who we know was born in 4 BC. If you count it all up, you can find the exact year that the earth was created, as described in Genesis 1, and it’s about 6,000 years.
S: But these rocks… They’re really old…
R: God must have created those rocks with the isotopes already set up in the correct ratios to look like they are 4 billion years old, when He separated the firmament from the heavens 6,000 years ago.
S: But how could God create rocks with different isotopes? When minerals solidify from molten lava, lead isotopes naturally form in this ratio. (I don’t actually know how initial lead composition was established for this)
R: God is omnipotent! Any miracle is within his grasp.
S: But why would God want to make the earth appear to be much older than it really is? What purpose does it serve?
R: I do not pretend to understand the ways of God.
One of my favorite quotes from Blood Meridian:
God dont lie. No, said the judge. He does not. And these are his words. He held up a chunk of rock. He speaks in stones and trees, the bones of things.
As an aside, it’s worth noting not every religion conflicts with science.
True it just keeps invalidating the garbage piled up around someones faith. They could accept it was false and move on with no hindrance to their belief in god but because they can’t burn someone as a witch because we know why milk goes bad they reject it all.
Victim complex / projection
I’ve never seen science try to take away people’s rights, let alone thoughts.
I’ve seen religion do both, though.
Not true. Scientists say I can’t lick needles I find in the park or stab myself with rusty nails or eat monkey brains scientists keep taking my rights away 😭😭😭
scientists dont tell you not to, the government does. scientists say it’s probably not a good idea, but not that you can’t.
Scientists are more likely to encourage you to do dumb things so they can see the outcomes.
If you believe in God and science empirically proved God didn’t exist, would you still believe?
If you don’t believe in God, and science empirically proved God exists, would you start to worship it?
I don’t believe God exists. But if he was proven to exist, I would believe. I would not, however, worship him. Dude’s a prick.
I would hear his explanation first. The story is full of holes.
I mean, if Yahweh exists it’s not that the story is full of holes so much as that he was part of the Canaanite pantheon and the stories were never originally meant to describe the actions of a singular god.
There is likely a whole mythological cycle that we simply do not have because it was destroyed by zealots for disproving their weird monotheistic fan fiction.
It’s like trying to make sense of the Norse sagas if cultists merged all the other gods into Odin, including Loki.
The bible should be considered a book of gossip, like an old hollywood rag and accorded such due respect
God’s existence, by definition, cannot be proven or disproven. That’s the nature of faith and free will (in the theological sense). And that’s why there are scientists who believe in God. This American idea that religion and science are opposites makes no sense.
Of course it can be proven to exist, as long as evidence of its existence exists.
it depends which god we ended up proving the existence of, if it’s prometheus i’d join the movement to free him from his eternal punishment for gifting humanity the fire of innovation.
“Flying spaghetti monsters, did in fact, create all life in the universe.”
blessed be his noodly appendage
ramen
But unironically, “having faith” implies that you do not need proof but you are trusting your belief. So they are kind of correct
Yep, bible has a lot of sections about having the faith of a child. Believing without needing proof.
And there are no ongoing studies, clinical trials, etc regarding the existence or non-existence of god. And of course this IS a “shitpost”.
That’s probably because the current Abrahamic incarnation of god and his attributes are carefully designed to be a non-falsifiable claim.
So the point is actually rendered moot. God is according to the True Believer invisible, intangible, only works in “mysterious ways,” and cannot be observed to have any influence on the universe, nor leaves any evidence of his existence except “faith.” By those metrics, it’s irrelevant whether he exists or not. A hypothetical force that exists but doesn’t affect anything is interchangeable from a functional standpoint from something that doesn’t exist.
See also: Russel’s Teapot.
The way faith is treated in the First Century doesn’t translate well to modern audiences. Having faith of a child isn’t an analogy to a child being gullible. It’s an analogy to the way a child trusts in and depends on his parents. Trust, arguably, would be a better translation than faith in many instances.
Faith for ancient religious peoples wasn’t about believing without proof. That would be as ridiculous for a Firsr Century jew as it is for us. Faith is being persuaded to a conclusion by the evidence.
deleted by creator
Yeah that’s pretty good description. But nothing motivates asshole more than the need to prove another asshole wrong
The quickest way to get the right answer to a complicated question is to post the wrong answer, confidently, and wait.
or (pretend to) be female: https://lemmy.world/comment/10363254
Not in my experience, but ok :)
Science doesn’t prove anything. It disproves things until only a single theory remains.
It doesn’t really disprove things either, but can be used to eliminate specific claims as not supported by evidence.
… yet.
…single
theoryhypothesis remains.A hypothesis is an observation stated in a falsifiable fashion, which allows it to be tested. Once a hypothesis has been tested thousands of times and always generates the same outcome, then it can become a theory.
Nonetheless, you know whats up, science proving shit only happens when the stars align. But disproving shit is super valuable as it allows researchers to reassess the hypothesis and experimental design in hopes of proving shit sooner rather than later.
Putting people’s desire to have their beliefs uncontested on a pedestal was a mistake.
Faith based and ignorance pilled
Biblecore
The proofs are already there. Science just tries to find them
Everybody knows that one guy that always has to prove they’re right.
No Eric, I do not need to hear why the trump verdict was bullshit, especially when I directly ask what you disagree with about it and just get back they railroaded him and how stormy talked about all this sex shit, although I do not understand why that was admitted, but you have nothing to say about the actual evidence
That’s it. Checkmate, atheists, pack it up and go home, you’ve just been one-upped forever and ever by… this one McDonald’s-eatin’ megachurch-attendin’ rando from Arkansas.
Science is like a blabbermouth who ruins the movie by telling you how it ends. Well I say there are some things we don’t want to know! Important things!
I had a teacher that taught both religion and chemistry. People who learned about that often made comments about it being weird. But he insisted that both topics are not exclusive to each other. It has been a long time since school but I think his reasoning (if that is the correct word) has been that one is philosophical and the other scientific which are separate worlds. You can’t prove stuff in faith scientifically but neither has religion a place in the " real" world. And, to be completely honest, he was by far one of the best teachers I have ever had.
One of my favourite biochemistry tutors at university was also a reverend. We never spoke about the overlap but I’ve read his books since graduating and it’s interesting to see how his faith augments his science and vice versa.
At it’s most basic concept, there’s nothing stopping a God from creating all this and giving us the free will to explore it. It’s the specific doctrine of man made organized religion that contradicts itself and science.
I had a similar experience when I started my first job as a software developer and the owner / lead engineer, probably the most intelligent person I’ve ever met, told me about how is religious.
I just couldn’t compute, particularly as I’d be radicalised against religion online.
We have had many discussions and it become clear that he had thought more about his faith than I ever could and who was I to judge his position if he isn’t hurting people then he can believe what he likes.
As you said, its a philosophical belief and not that he believes in a being per se, but that there is something deeper to the universe.
It’s not that science and scientists set out to prove god doesn’t exists. It’s that the word of god as written down by men is contradicted directly and often by proven fact, and that belief in God is associated with a strong ignorance of reality.
People didn’t live to 800. Goat blood doesn’t protect you from plagues. The earth is not just 5 millennia old. Humans have not existed since the dawn of time.
You can have your faith, so long as you stop forcing it down other people’s throats.
People take this to mean evangelizing, but still don’t see anything wrong with passing laws about their religion’s morality.
and don’t insist that every part of the holy texts are literally 100% undiluted word of god, which generally makes religion way easier to integrate with a scientific worldview.
no, god did not create eve from adam’s rib, that’s just evocative storytelling initially written by people in the middle east 2000 years ago and repeatedly altered and translated since then.
The problem is, the Abrahamic religions will always seed new fundementalists because, regardless of how people with a modern mindset might interpret it as allegory etc. to make it more palletable, the texts were intended to be read and believed literally. They were written by people in the bronze age, based on made up stories that go who knows how far back.
It’s what makes them so toxic, the belief virus of fundementalism is always there in a latent state waiting to be activated by some new context (usually a particularly charismatic leader or radical change in society).
You see a great example with the current pope – people thought from his language of “acceptance” towards lgbt people that the church was becoming more progressive, but then recently you see him using slurs that pretty clearly contradict that sentiment, because he understands the text is unequivocally anti-lgbt. The Abrahamic religions will always betray people in this way.
