Re: [DMCForum] Re: God Squad

[Andrew <aos+yahoo@xxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, 11 Jun 2004, John Dore wrote:

> Andrew, sure its a bad analogy, but I was trying to get us back onto 
> some sort of DeLorean thread! 

Fair enough, but I do think it valid to compare faith in god, where people 
have much, to faith in things which are actually provable one way or 
another, where people have very little.

When something can be conclusively demonstrated (i.e. my car has a gas
tank), people are much less likely to believe something without verifying.  
But then these same people will turn right around and believe something
that cannot be proven, and base large parts of their lives and efforts on
it.

People can easily turn around and say "well, you're guilty of what you 
just said, because you believe there is no god, and you have no proof."  
Close, but not quite.  In logic, something does not exist until it is 
shown to exist.  Something that exists always can be brought down by a 
single counterexample.  It's kind of like the American legal system in 
which the onus is on the prosecution, not on the defense.  I see god in 
very much the same way.  I refuse to believe in something until I have 
seen beyond reasonable doubt that it exists.

I admit that when I make absolute statements like "there is no god", I'm
stating as a fact something that I cannot back up with facts.  The purpose
of statements like that is to stir the pot a little, not to push an
absolute on someone.  I expect people with the "there is a god"  point of
view to present their cases with a similar level of trepidation.

> PS How does science explain where everything comes from, why it was 
> created, who created it, and who created the force that created it, 
> etc. etc. Call it what you like, God, whatever, but there must be 
> some sort of very powerful "something" out there that did all this.

Science explains by studying available data, forming hypotheses, 
experimenting, collecting experimental data, and finally by theorizing.  
Obviously when discussing the nature of existence, we tread upon ground 
which remains on the leading edge of cosmology (my specific area of 
interest and study, incidentally), and which has been there for as long as 
cosmology has existed.

There are many very significant unanswered questions of cosmology.  But at
the same time, there are many very significant *answered* questions of
cosmology.  Our understanding of the universe today is astounding compared
to our understanding throughout most of human history.  Modern physics
(i.e. most post-1900 physics) has answered thousands of questions that
humans have had for thousands of years.  Of course, it's also given rise
to thousands of new questions, but that is the nature of scientific
inquiry.

Can I tell you exactly where everything came from?  Why it was created?  
Who created it?  What was there before?  What exists outside it?  No, I
can't.  But I almost can.  I can start to answer those questions with
absolute scientific fact that simply wasn't available until the last 25, 
50, or 100 years.  And I absolutely believe that someday, we will be able 
to answer every one of those questions completely without a shred of 
doubt.  Perhaps it won't happen during my lifetime, but it will happen.  
Science has answered so many "unanswerable" questions that I do not doubt 
for a moment that these, too, can be answered, and I don't think god is 
that answer.  (I'm not closed to the idea, however.)

I should point out that nothing I have said at all precludes the existence
of a god or gods.  If a god created the universe, it also created the math
and science that we uncover as we study.  We don't invent math or science.  
It's there and we discover it and understand it.  A god certainly could
have made it, but just as I'm not yet prepared to attempt to answer your
creation questions fully, I'm not yet prepared to make the leap of logic
necessary to believe in a god either.

-andrew

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