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how can you prove god's non existance?
Posted on: May 24, 2007 - 8:34pm
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how can you prove god's non existance?
So i have a question, if you forget relegion, bible, ten commandment and all that none sense, how can you prove that god doesnt exist?
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On the other hand, my post didn't deal with a single "hard fact", so you will get some that don't.
http://arlettaq.spaces.live.com
Because of the religious figurativism in Einstein's speech, he is probably one of the most popular targets of the evangelical christian. Here are some other quotes from him you might wish to ponder.
"It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it."
-- Albert Einstein, 1954, from Albert Einstein: The Human Side, edited by Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffman, Princeton University Press
"I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with the fates and actions of human beings."
-- Albert Einstein, following his wife's advice in responding to Rabbi Herbert Goldstein of the International Synagogue in New York, who had sent Einstein a cablegram bluntly demanding "Do you believe in God?" Quoted from and citation notes derived from Victor J Stenger, Has Science Found God? (draft: 2001), chapter 3.
"I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own -- a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotisms."
-- Albert Einstein, obituary in New York Times, 19 April 1955, quoted from James A Haught, "Breaking the Last Taboo" (1996)
"I do not believe in immortality of the individual, and I consider ethics to be an exclusively human concern with no superhuman authority behind it."
-- Albert Einstein, 1954, from Albert Einstein: The Human Side, edited by Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffman, Princeton University Press
"It seems to me that the idea of a personal God is an anthropological concept which I cannot take seriously. I also cannot imagine some will or goal outside the human sphere.... Science has been charged with undermining morality, but the charge is unjust. A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death."
-- Albert Einstein, "Religion and Science," New York Times Magazine, 9 November 1930
"Scientific research is based on the idea that everything that takes place is determined by laws of nature, and therefore this holds for the action of people. For this reason, a research scientist will hardly be inclined to believe that events could be influenced by a prayer, i.e. by a wish addressed to a Supernatural Being."
-- Albert Einstein, 1936, responding to a child who wrote and asked if scientists pray. Source: Albert Einstein: The Human Side, Edited by Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffmann
"I cannot conceive of a personal God who would directly influence the actions of individuals, or would directly sit in judgment on creatures of his own creation. I cannot do this in spite of the fact that mechanistic causality has, to a certain extent, been placed in doubt by modern science. [He was speaking of Quantum Mechanics and the breaking down of determinism.] My religiosity consists in a humble admiration of the infinitely superior spirit that reveals itself in the little that we, with our weak and transitory understanding, can comprehend of reality. Morality is of the highest importance -- but for us, not for God."
-- Albert Einstein, from Albert Einstein: The Human Side, edited by Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffman, Princeton University Press
"I cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes his creatures, or has a will of the kind that we experience in ourselves. Neither can I nor would I want to conceive of an individual that survives his physical death; let feeble souls, from fear or absurd egoism, cherish such thoughts. I am satisfied with the mystery of the eternity of life and with the awareness and a glimpse of the marvelous structure of the existing world, together with the devoted striving to comprehend a portion, be it ever so tiny, of the Reason that manifests itself in nature."
-- Albert Einstein, The World as I See It
(Hat tip to the poster known as THHuxley on various muslim forums for this list.)
There is no lao tzu
I love how detractors (especially Christians) LOVE to appeal not just to emotion but to authority (as opposed to LOGIC) as well. For some reason, they keep thinking that emotion and authority has more credibility than logic lmao. And that's exactly why this is most lmao-worthy - effectually, they are shooting themselves more in the foot the more confidence they rest in emotion and authority.
"If I don't think something can be explained conventionally, it must be magic. And magic comes from God!" -everyday religious person
Unfortunately, unlike many of you, I'm not lucky enough to be hundred percent sure that God doesn't exist, there's always this doubt that comes from not knowing the truth, and this doubt is what makes me to ask questions and dig deeper and not be satisfied with mere scientific evidence.
I do not see science as a strong foundation to draw opinions from. Just as firm and sure were the people when they believed that the world is flat, what we now believe to be unshakable scientific proofs may be nothing more than a fool's writings on the wall that would go away as soon as the next Galileo comes along.
Yet I do envy those of you who are so sure about this matter. You definitly live a happier life than someone like me who;s always looking for answers and always has the doubt.
I think you bring up interesting points. My thoughts:
1. This of it this way - if you were never aware of the concept of God, would you still have this doubt? The ONLY reason why this doubt exists is because the concept of God effectively instills fear unto us by creating a seemingly infinitely horrible punishment. We all have emotions, and some of us are more affected by it than others, but it's NOT necessarily because some have a better grasp of rationality, but rather we possess individually unique psychological profiles (which are further influenced by our unique life experiences, environment, intelligence, etc.).
2. I'm not a history buff, but I'm willing to bet that during the earth-is-flat days, there was a lot of religious pressure and persecution for those who challenged that earth isn't flat. In other words, emotion and authority was used to cockblock logic. I'm not going to definitively say that today is better, but we do seem to live in an environment where logic is better honored and less feared. The key is to know when emotion and authority has it's place and time.
3. We can trust logic. Emotion is what gives us drive, and logic is the tool that enabled us to survive and adapt. That also means we can misuse emotion to give us the wrong drive and/or misuse logic to give us the wrong tool which will not give us the desired product.
"If I don't think something can be explained conventionally, it must be magic. And magic comes from God!" -everyday religious person
Mhmm, it's definitely good to keep looking for answers and be skeptic! What really puzzles me (and I'd genuinely like to know why you think this way) is your fear of "approximated truths".
You "do not see science as a strong foundation to draw opinions from" and I honestly don't understand why you'd think like that.
What would you consider a stronger foundation than our knowledge about reality? For me it is very relieving to know that we can always stumble across new evidence and refine our understanding of the world. At least I wouldn't want to continue believing something after it has been proven wrong. I'd rather rejoice in the fact that our understand has yet again, moved further towards the "absolute truth" that we may eventually achieve one day.
Your example as for why you feel insecure believing in science (the flat-earth one) is to be blunt, a very bad one. As it shows what dogmatic religion can do to science. After all, the Greek people knew that the world is a sphere. That knowledge was "overwritten" by christian dogma.
Wasn't it science that showed that our earth is a sphere? The early "science" (Greek nature philosophy) has never indicated that our earth was flat to beginn with.
What I'd really like to understand is why dogma should be "truer" than science, just because it provides more "security". To be honest, this sounds like "emotion vs. reality" to me.
Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life. - Immanuel Kant
Science is what is most informed about reality. So, our opinions about reality are best informed by science. To say the opposite is like saying
"I don't think statistics is a strong foundation to draw opinions about blackjack on."
It's as if I were dealt a hand that totaled 20 and said to myself
"It is highly unlikely that I will be next dealt an ace and score an unbeatable hand of 21, but I cannot prove that it won't happen. Therefore, either 'staying' or 'hitting' are equally intelligent decisions."
Except the existence of a creator is many orders of magnitude less likely.
Scientific illiteracy is reality illiteracy.
An argument of endless regress does not and cannot prove that anything exists. Evolutionary theory (which addresses only the origin of life on earth) does address its concerns without any argument for endless regress , as do some well-thought out theories of the cosmos.
I think that all arguments for god's existence when taken as far as possible, always lead to an endless regress. This seems antithetical to scientific inquiry and understanding about the origin of life (and the universe). Arguments for the origin of the cosmos may also lead to such endless regress, at least from an abstract philosophical perspective, but such argument that favors more endless regress, seems specious in light of the fact that the cosmos is something we can observe and that science can date and quantify, at least to a large extent. So far, God plainly is not observable or quantifiable and only seems to exist as the protagonist/creator/rapist in various mythology collections, such as the bible.
Applying Darwinian theory to the origin of the cosmos, as Smolin (?) has done, provides a much keener, cleaner concept of origins, period, without the problems of endless regress.
Anyway, if a creator - whom I won't call god cuz it don't make sense - does become an observable phenomenon with whom we can communicate, which I highly doubt, then he has a lot of answering to do.
Let me also add that if there was an "intelligence" that had to start the Big Bang, it would have been destroyed by the enormous power of the explosion itself...
Not to nitpick, but.... the big bang was NOT an 'explosion'.
It was a rapid expansion of space and matter in all directions called 'inflation'.
Big Bang Theory
P.S. - Sorry for being picky, it's just a pet peeve of mine.
. . . this reasoning, especially:
" . . . we're saying that we're not going to bother disproving something for which there's no evidence. The lack of evidence makes that kind of supurfluous, wouldn't you say?"
Very cleanly put, but it would go over the creationists' heads; they see all of nature as the only evidence they need. How do you get past that?
"Submitted by andrewgor on Thu, 2007-05-24 22:12.
I can see your point, I'm obviously not qualified to present an educated opinion about the origins of the universe, although I've read Stephen Hawkings books and know a little bit about the Big Bang and the expanding universe. But I can ask the questions, no?
The Big Bang theory, as far as i remember says that the whole universe was once a very compressed tiny dot, all the matter and energy packed into a very small space, then something happened (we dont know what) that released those stuff and so the universe was born. correct me if im wrong here, still the questions remains, where did those stuff come from in the first place? how and why were they compressed so tight? what kind of force could have made the compression? what triggered the BANG and why?
sceince does not have an answer to these questions.
there could be a perfectly logical and scientific reason to all of them, but we dont know, that's the point im trying to make, science does not prove one way or another the existance of a supernatural being behind the creation of the universe.
my personal opinion is that the answer to these questions is just too much for human mind to grasp at this time, maybe some distant time in the future we'll reach the brain capicity to be able to sort it out purely based on scientific facts but for the time being, and for all we know, there could be some kind of god responsible for creation of the universe, no?"
That's no reason to give up on Scientific research into the origins of the cosmos, sacrificing science at the altar of petulant religion.
We have reached the brain capacity and we do have the technology to continue sorting out what religion continuously tells us is unknowable.
As for the big bang theory and compression/expansion of the universe question, I was reading recently a bit about it, and there is a possibility that a multiverse existed before the "big bang," and that our known universe was being compressed into a "singularity" which the laws of quantum physics interrupted - (in answer to "what triggered the BANG and why?"
- creating the expansion and heating toward the so-called big bang singularity - expansion we are continuing to experience now as our galaxy hurtles through the universe. SO, our known universe may have evolved out of the singularity of another universe in the multiverse . . .
Where they came from? Maybe quantum physics has an answer. Or will have.
You said:
"science does not prove one way or another the existance of a supernatural being behind the creation of the universe." NOR does religion, but religion attempts to hijack scientific endeavor with the introduction of pseudoscience, by bringing the idea of a creator into the scientific arena, again and again. And it has no right to do so until overwhelming scientific evidence is accumulated on behalf of the creator. So far, evolution as a theory for life's existence stands alone without god, gaps and all.
If Darwinian theory can be applied to the origin of the cosmos and established as its cause in some kind of 'natural selection' of multiverses theory, , then its origin too will be attributed not to the supernatural, but rather, to naturally occurring forces that are scientifically quantifiable, observable, and predictable (unlike the god of scripture).
Why give up on that possibility by trading scientific endeavour in for such a tribal concept?
I guess my real question then is: If the definition of "God" is sound, would you agree that it is impossible to prove His non-existence (just as much as it is impossible to prove His existence)?
Unfortunately, "if" is the most important part of the question here. Why? Because the definition of god is indeed incoherent, unsound. That is why proving or disproving his existence is irrelevent to scientific research. God is immaterial, as someone has already pointed out, and science only deals with the natural, NOT the immaterial which can not be coherent or sound.
BGH, sorry, I did not write that; I was quoting the questioner, but I am new to this forum and did not clarify it as well as I thought. I did mention expansion in my post . .
Oh sorry about that, my bad. I thought that was your statement.
Here is a link that may help, it is a little tutorial on using the quote function written by Susan.
. . . you addressed that as you did, BGH; I did imply in my response that I thought the big bang would have destroyed the supposed creator; when I replied to you above, it was after another post I'd made, blah blah
Anyway, don't you think the expansion would have been powerful enough to destroy its supposed creator, as well?
I only started reading this stuff about the big bang theory a few weeks ago. I am quite new to theories of cosmology and have a very weak background in science in general. As a liberal arts grad, I avoided science and tech as much as possible.
So, anyway, thanks for the information; I have only a little of it in my head to begin with, and I sometimes get things pretty jumbled up, anyway, esp. about science and technology! I go dead behind the eyes often when people discuss it - short attention span or slow processing or ADD or something! Thanks again.