Science may answer the question: Is there a God?
by Old Navy 37 Replies latest watchtower bible
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David_Jay
Remember, science is a critical methodology.
And according to this method, a subject must be able to be studied and sampled in order to be verified. Without empirical evidence there is no way for independent parties to verify anyone's hypothesis and developing an end theory. No end theory, then no answer from science.
This creates an immediate problem. God in the Judeo-Christian sense is transcendent. This means God cannot be subjected to sampling. God transcends the physical universe and the space-time continuum.
One therefore cannot collect any empirical evidence from God. In fact, one shouldn't expect to because for God to be God, God must be this transcendent Being. If we were able to gather a sample of God or some type of evidence to subject to the scientific method for study, then this would mean God was not transcendent and therefore mean that God was not God.
See? It's a paradox. If you had evidence, then you wouldn't have a transcendent God. And if God is God then you shouldn't be expecting empirical evidence since God is transcendent. Science is great, just not the right tool for this.
Just like a screwdriver is a great tool, but if you get your furniture from Ikea, a screwdriver won't help no matter how great a tool it is. You are going to need an allen wrench.
The scientific method requires samples of empirical evidence. If you have that, then there is no God. By making the above claim, you've lost your case.
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never a jw
Of course God is real. We humans invented it. We made him a male, of course. We made him invisible, mostly -- only few people who lived long ago could see him. We made him silent, mostly --only the ancients could talk to him. We made him transcendental so we could shut the mouth of smart people who wanted proof. Also he is infinitely wise so is impossible to question his decisions, no matter how stupid or cruel they seem to us lowly humans. We also made him flexible so he could change His morality to the changing moralities of humans. It's been the most perfect invention of humans. He is never wrong. He has been injected with a rapidly evolving nature that allows Him to always provide the right answer to anyone, in any circumstance, no matter place or time. Billions use Him everyday and there's 99.9 %satisfaction. Take that Honda Motors
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cofty
Old Navy you are guilty of equivocation with your use of the word "god".
Christians do not worship pure energy or light. They preach a personal being who is omnipotent and who is the epitome of love. History proves beyond all doubt that such a being does not exist.
All your work is still ahead of you.
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zeb
... I did hear of a dyslexic agnostic who lay awake wondering if there was a dog.
thanks ON.
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David_Jay
Since the subject is "God," it might be appropriate to bring up that a few terms by the OP and even never a jw are considered archaic in mainstream theology, especially since the year 2000 due to the 50-year-long Christian-Jewish ecumenical dialogues representing almost all major denominations, and especially the changes this made to Christianity in particular in 2015.
Christianity, with the Roman Catholic Church taking the lead acknowledged that Judaism's interpretation of God was first and can no longer be ignored by Christian exegesis.
With that in mind, Judaism has never held that God is male or has gender. Even the Hebrew pronouns used for God, while at first blush was read in the masculine due to a misunderstanding on the part of Christian scholars, is actually neuter. Just as Hebrew has no vowels, Biblical Hebrew has no neuter personal pronoun. It merely uses the masculine as a device of syntax for neuter as it sometimes used the feminine as a device of syntax to describe inanimate objects.
God is also NOT invisible in Judaism, just very hard on the eyes. There is a bit of God in everything and everyone. When it or they fulfill their purpose, or especially when a person does something practical and good, a little bit of God is visibly exposed to the universe. This would be impossible if God were invisible.
Lastly, Jews don't accept that God is always right. One of the reasons Jews believe that God chose to be in a covenant with mere mortals was to grow. The word "Israel" means "those who wrestle with God." That's why we aren't called the nation of Abraham. We take after Jacob, who kept wrestling with God's plan for him. We do not blindly obey, we argue with God, and sometimes we tell God we don't agree with God.
Christians are indeed struggling with these ancient concepts that we Jews have of God, but for the first time in their 2000 year history they have decided to be open to them. At least they've agreed to stop formal attempts at converting us away from them.
So some of your arguments for and against God need to be updated to go back some 4000 years so you are up to date with the today's Protestant and Catholic churches. It's part of the program to prevent the Holocaust from happening again. Christians recognize their old doctrines played at least an indirect part in that horror.
It isn't enough to dredge up old arguments. Religious concepts in Christianity have recently changed and dramatically so because of the Holocaust. It took over a generation of dialogue with Jews (a formal dialogue that is still going on), but in 2015 they indeed did, and on both ends too.
You may have never been a JW, or have recently left, but you're talking to people who are part of the real world now. Here in the real world we're educated, we're engaged, we keep up with what's going on.
Saying merely what you think is true is not enough anymore.
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LoveUniHateExams
Science may answer the question: Is there a God? - er, not sure about this.
In science, hypotheses are formed from questions and must be testable.
How could a testable hypothesis be formed in this instance?
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sir82
See? It's a paradox. If you had evidence, then you wouldn't have a transcendent God. And if God is God then you shouldn't be expecting empirical evidence since God is transcendent.
The Book: The Babel fish is small, yellow, leechlike, and probably the oddest thing in the Universe. It feeds on brainwave energy received not from its own carrier but from those around it. It absorbs all unconscious mental frequencies from this brainwave energy to nourish itself with. It then excretes into the mind of its carrier a telepathic matrix formed by combining the conscious thought frequencies with nerve signals picked up from the speech centers of the brain which has supplied them. The practical upshot of all this is that if you stick a Babel fish in your ear you can instantly understand anything said to you in any form of language. The speech patterns you actually hear decode the brainwave matrix which has been fed into your mind by your Babel fish.
Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mind-bogglingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as a final and clinching proof of the NON-existence of God.
The argument goes like this:
`I refuse to prove that I exist,' says God, `for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.'
`But,' says Man, `The Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED.'
`Oh dear,' says God, `I hadn't thought of that,' and promptly disappears in a puff of logic.
`Oh, that was easy,' says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing. -
cofty
Douglas Adams genius!
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btlc
No, science (at least natural one) cannot answer is there a God or not, simply because God is beyond the reach of the science methods by definition. Further, entities and phenomena which cannot be captured by science tools are completely irrelevant to the science.