The most current scientific evidence for the existence of God?

To define such evidence we would need to understand how a universe without a God would be different from a universe with a God, but one who wants to remain hidden. Can you help with that?

1 Like

‘Love’ is an abstraction, a label that we humans assign to a particular set of feelings and behaviours. If you want to say that God is a similar abstraction I would agree, but you probably mean more by it than that?

2 Likes

Ok, but that wasn’t what I asked.

Does the fact that the universe contains Volkswagens now mean that the origin of the universe included Volkswagens? If it does not, why wouldn’t that also apply to rationality, intelligence of relationships?

1 Like

Be warned: @Meerkat_SK5 frequently cites things he hasn’t read. Don’t expect them to match his description.

3 Likes

Can it? That’s not a loan whose terms anyone should ever accept, if one has already made the gods inscrutable. Once the gods are inscrutable, there is NO way that evidence, of any character, can bear on their existence at all.

In practice, what this sort of thing tends to mean is that people don’t actually believe the gods to be inscrutable. They merely want to wall their own gods off from hostile scrutiny, while basking in the warm fuzzy feelings that come from McCainesque “when I see the glory of a sunset, I know there are gods” sort of line of thought. While nobody can be denied the right to get warm fuzzies wherever they can be got, it’s obvious that such notions are worse than worthless. If the gods are scrutable, then the only thing worth doing is to explore them by scrutiny. If they are not, there is nothing anyone can say about them at all. But putting a one-way valve in it, so that the gods are the subject only of glowing and positive scrutiny but are immune from so much as a bad Yelp review, is indefensible.

Why do people like this statement so much? I see it constantly. It makes no actual sense as an analogy. The difficulty is that the concept “love” is only a descriptive tool for various phenomena which are known to exist: the experiential aspects, and their neural underpinnings. “Love,” the concept, does not exist as such, but can be a useful descriptive tool because, by the nature of language, it is helpful to be able to categorize similar phenomena together for the sake of discussion. But it is a gross error to think that because “love” is a useful descriptive term, “love” as some sort of reified essence also exists.

In the case of the gods, it’s entirely different. When the very issue is whether there is any “there” there, one cannot say that the idea of “god” is real even in the limited sense of being a useful descriptive term for some class of known entities. At best, if the gods are inscrutable, it’s a descriptive term for a hypothetical class of unknown and utterly unknowable entities. “Love,” while not real as an entity itself, has the merit of being a term usefully describing things already known. One cannot reify love, assert that it is now “real,” and then bootstrap the gods in similar fashion, because the difference is that the term “love” describes an underlying, real substrate: a class of neural and experiential phenomena with undoubted existence. No such thing can be said of any of the gods, without the very evidence which you assert cannot exist.

8 Likes

Such evidence?
That seems to me to reflect what I see as the problem.
Do we need to fabricate a unique definition when talking about God? Do we want to do this to either easily rule God out, or to easily see him allowed to fit within the scope of evidence?
Can we not just use an overarching definition? One that would be used in everyday, but nevertheless with some rigor usage. Some rigor as in not sloppy. But not refined as to exclude a priori what one want to see excluded.
Yesterday I listened to (watched) a podcast where the terms hypothesis and theory were at one point used interchangeably. The one guy corrected himself when he found himself having used the word theory when what he was actually doing was meaning hypothesis. He put his usage down to using the word theory colloquially.
I’m probably rambling here, but I’m not looking for some crazily worked-over definition, (for evidence) but just something that gives us a clue as to whether the standard of evidence has been met.
It seems to me entirely reasonable to ask the guy that used the word, what he meant by it. No?

1 Like

No, I don’t think it means that. I believe that rationality and relationships are more primary and fundamental than Volkswagens. Volkswagens are one of many products of there first being intelligence and relationships.

Perhaps God is known, not through the scrutiny of our finite minds, but in our hearts through humility and faith. Religious texts tend to say God is known only through the heart, and that pride and disbelief are obstacles to such knowing.

Also, God is described in various religious as immaterial (due to being unlimited; matter infers limits).

I think that the credibility of religion is greatly compromised by scrutiny-evasive, excuse-making claims of that sort. And it is certainly the case that if you actually believe that, you should never, ever ask for or look for scientific evidence in support of or against that sort of belief. It can’t be done, in either direction.

Lots of things, of course, are phenomena rather than matter. That doesn’t stop them from being scrutinized. The flow of electrons is not a “thing” in the sense of being the presence of some physical object, but it is a phenomenon with measurable effects. If you assert that gods exist, but have no effect upon the world, then that’s theoretically possible but practically quite worthless. If, instead, you assert that gods have had or do have an effect upon the world, then this notion that they’re inscrutable is out the window, as is any notion that they can only be scrutinized by methods so incapable of scrutiny as “humility and faith.”

Now, for one’s own pleasure, one might, if one is the sort of person who can choose what to believe, choose to believe in a god scrutable only by such means. But it should be obvious that the explanatory and convincing power of such notions is nil.

5 Likes

So, for Dawkins, or for the materialist that concurs with him, that,
“The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.”
forced to concede, that there is nothing objectively good about love, and nothing objectively evil about hate?

I would suggest that you are misinterpreting Dawkins. He appears to be saying that the universe itself contains no inherent purpose, good, evil, etc. That does not mean that we cannot create our own purpose, etc. I don’t think even those who disagree with him would claim that Dawkins acts without purpose – whether you find his purpose to be admirable or not.

5 Likes

Euthyphro!

3 Likes

That is you disagreeing with Dawkins?

So, what exactly have I misunderstood?

That is incorrect.

If someone is in a state with no brain activity, they are permanently dead, and they will not be waking up to tell people what they were experiencing while dead. Dualists commonly make this mistake. Brain death and clinical death are two very different things.

During NDE’s and general anaesthesia, there is still lots of brain activity going on.

5 Likes

Have you identified any big Dawkins fans here, Sam?

If not, why bring him up instead of having an actual discussion with the people here?

2 Likes

Too subtle? My understanding is that you were trying to skewer Dawkins with his own words. I was disagreeing with your disagreement. It’s not just true for “the materialist that concurs with him”; it’s true for anyone who thinks clearly on the subject. But what do you think is objectively good or evil, and why is it?

2 Likes

Sorry, on closer examination, my problems with your original statement are:

  1. The assumption that believing that objective morality does not exist is something that one is “forced to concede”, as though it is something embarrassing – rather than a position one would actively avow (as many atheists do).

  2. The claim that love is per se good (let alone objectively good) – when that word encompasses obsessive love, love of the Nazi Party (and its agenda), etc, etc.

  3. That any of this has anything to do with @faded_Glory’s point that “‘Love’ is an abstraction, a label that we humans assign”.

It would appear that you have simply (i) assumed the existence of objective morality and (ii) assumed that its existence in some way undercuts @faded_Glory’s point.

3 Likes

Science can detect endorphins, which might be a proxy marker for love. While this is not ideal, there are plenty of clinical trials using proxy markers for outcomes that are difficult to observe directly (it is inconvenient to wait around for all your cancer patients to die, and some of them are so inconsiderate as to die of something else. Dark humor intended.).

We can also construct latent variable models for hypothesized latent variables that Connor be directly observed.

We can measure love scientifically in this way, admittedly within limits of subjective definitions. It is NOT entirely objective, but there are many examples of things we try to measure with this same problem. Love may not be a rigorously objective concept, but that does not exclude all forms of scientific observation. There are limits, yes, but we accept similar limits in other examples.

1 Like

If God did not want a bunch of aliens running around, barely compatible fits with Earth as intended to be privileged. Fine tuning does not require as much life as possible.

1 Like