Religion
In reply to the discussion: The burden of proof is on believers [View all]Htom Sirveaux
(1,242 posts)And the best reason to think that there is no evidence for God is that science has successfully discovered underlying regularities to physical events. And yet, that's a false dichotomy because it assumes that the underlying regularities have nothing to do with God. The scientists working at the dawn of the scientific revolution didn't think so. To them, such discoveries revealed the workings of the creator, and there have been scientists who have also felt this way up until the present day. And that makes sense: if the natural laws were not rooted in God's continuing will, what's to stop them from changing? Why doesn't the universe randomly fall out of existence next Thursday? Here's how wikipedia explains the relationship between religion and science:
Events in Europe such as the Galileo affair, associated with the Scientific revolution and the Age of Enlightenment, led scholars such as John William Draper to postulate a conflict thesis, holding that religion and science conflict methodologically, factually and politically. This thesis is advanced by contemporary scientists such as Richard Dawkins, Steven Weinberg and Carl Sagan, and proposed by many creationists. While the conflict thesis remains popular for the public, it has lost favor among most contemporary historians of science.[1][2][3][4]
Many theologians, philosophers and scientists in history have found no conflict between their faith and science. Biologist Stephen Jay Gould, other scientists, and some contemporary theologians hold that religion and science are non-overlapping magisteria, addressing fundamentally separate forms of knowledge and aspects of life. Scientists Francisco Ayala, Kenneth R. Miller and Francis Collins see no necessary conflict between religion and science. Some theologians or historians of science, including John Lennox, Thomas Berry, Brian Swimme and Ken Wilber propose an interconnection between them.
Public acceptance of scientific facts may be influenced by religion; many in the United States reject the idea of evolution by natural selection, especially regarding human beings. Nevertheless, the American National Academy of Sciences has written that "the evidence for evolution can be fully compatible with religious faith," a view officially endorsed by many religious denominations globally.[5]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relationship_between_religion_and_science
So setting up science as an alternative to religion and necessarily in conflict with the existence of God doesn't hold water. Do you have any other justification for the claim that I should be an atheist? Because as it stands now, I'm inclined to reject that claim for the above reasons.
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What reason is there to believe that God exists? Start with the idea that if at any point there was absolute non-existence, nothing would exist today. That's because non-existence is non-causal (if you doubt that, ask if Santa could still be responsible for bringing toys despite not existing). So because the universe exists today, at least one thing must have always existed.
Now, the universe either had a beginning or it did not. If it did not, that means that a universe of unlimited time and space has always existed. But space/time are relative. They only exist as relationships between at least two things. That means that for an unlimited universe of space/time, at least two things must have always existed. If we could find an explanation that only required one thing to always exist, that explanation would be favored by Occam's Razor.
Alternatively, if the universe has not always existed, then it has a cause (remember, non-existence is non-causal, so the universe could not bring itself from non-existence to existence). That cause would then be the one always existing thing. Because it is prior to space/time, it is bound by neither. That makes it non-material (because it takes up no space), and eternal. Because it caused the universe, it contained in itself the potential for everything that was, is and ever shall be.
We also have good reason to think that it is an agent, that is, that it can make choices. Why? Well, if this always existing thing automatically caused the universe, then the universe would be unlimited again, continually being caused by the one existent thing. But we've already said that an unlimited universe requires at least two things to exist, and that's still more complex than if the universe had not always existed. Plus, it's not incoherent to suggest that the one always existent thing did not have to create. But this leads to a problem: nothing else existed to make the one always existent thing create. Therefore, the cause of creation must been internal, like a choice.
So we've got an agent creator, who we can clearly suggest is intelligent, owing to containing all the possibilities of the universe, and also being the source of the intricate mathematical structure of said universe. This creator is prior to all other existence, eternal, and immaterial. And that being we call "God".