I am not the one who uses empiricist philosophy - you are! Therefore, you are the one that must prove your own method. So really, what you are saying is that you can't prove it. Therefore, you have no basis to assert "that which is not measurable is not real"). Implicit in your statement that the "supernatural cannot be observed" is the BELIEF that only that which is observable is real. That is what I would call "FAITH" since you have no way of proving that using any sort of scientific method.
One of the main reason why science was so successful in the west is the fact that we learned to separate science from the supernatural, something that hasn't occurred in the rest of the world.
Yeah, let's look at what atheistic science has brought us: Global warming, human cloning, abortion, embryonic stem cell research - you call the desruction of human dignity success?
The point is they didn't make that separation but allowed the supernatural to creep in their explanations (i.e. so Allah wills).
What is this - a weak insinuatiion that Christianity is akin to the Taliban? Re-read my past posts (before your arrival). I clearly lay out the FACT that the most important scientific discoveries in the history of man were made by CHRISTIAN men - not muslim men. Do you need a list of their names and discoveries? Why is it that these Christian men, and not some atheistic scientists, were the ones to make these discoveries - was it dumb luck? The Christian worldview presents an ordered universe that is rational and can be comprehended to a certain extent - that is the basis on which Newton, Kepler, Copernicus, Pasteur, Pascal, and other Christians based their investigations. An atheist, however, beginning from himself, has no reason to believe the universe is ordered and comprehensible, does he? And why was it that breakthroughs occurred int eh Christian West and not in China or India or Micronesia or Africa? I'll tell you - their worldview did not drive them to understand an ordered universe. You can't deny the historical facts.
Science deals with the universe as we observe it, whether a god made it or not. And just because we think it is ordered doesn't mean that it had to be created by a god.
Here's the rub. You tell me that the supernatural cannot be observed, therefore it must be ignored. At the same time, you take things on FAITH that you cannot observe - e.g. spontaneous generation of life - has a scientist observed that - then by your reasoning it must be ignored and discounted; how about molecule-to-man evolution - has anyone observed that - then it must be ignored and discounted; what about the Big Bang - then it must be ignored and discounted. It seems that you take a lot of things on FAITH that you have not observed! This is an egregious inconsistency on your part and your own argument boomerangs.
And why is it non-rational? What observation (within our universe, or can you see beyond our universe?) has led you to the insight that our universe shows these properties because it has been created by a god? Why can't it show the same properties without being created? What mechanism prevents an uncreated universe to be the same as a created one?
It's non-rational because there is no known way for the complex reality we see to have just popped into being by chance. It is a non-rational leap for you to believe it. What observation tells you it happened by time+chance+energy+matter? Again, your argument boomerangs. Who has the biggest faith here? It takes a great deal more faith to believe this complex universe "just happened" than to believe God created it. Empiricism doesn't work - just face it.
I don't think those two ideas are necessarily connected. The first is a fact, the second is a ludicrous assumption (I know that you are not making this assumption). We can't observe many things that are widely accepted to be real.
Yeah, let's look at what atheistic science has brought us: Global warming, human cloning, abortion, embryonic stem cell research - you call the desruction of human dignity success?
I clearly lay out the FACT that the most important scientific discoveries in the history of man were made by CHRISTIAN men - not muslim men. Do you need a list of their names and discoveries? Why is it that these Christian men, and not some atheistic scientists, were the ones to make these discoveries - was it dumb luck? The Christian worldview presents an ordered universe that is rational and can be comprehended to a certain extent - that is the basis on which Newton, Kepler, Copernicus, Pasteur, Pascal, and other Christians based their investigations. An atheist, however, beginning from himself, has no reason to believe the universe is ordered and comprehensible, does he? And why was it that breakthroughs occurred int eh Christian West and not in China or India or Micronesia or Africa? I'll tell you - their worldview did not drive them to understand an ordered universe. You can't deny the historical facts.
There is a lot in here that is just a blatant attack on atheism, such a shame.
"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." [From a letter Einstein wrote in English, dated 24 March 1954. It is included in Albert Einstein: The Human Side, edited by Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffman, published by Princeton University Press.] "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."
Somewhat agnostic perhaps, but far from the Christian mindset that you believe necessitates scientific thinking.
No. I'm not saying that only that which is observable is real but that only of that which is observable we can know to be real. For instance, a parallel universe may exist but since we cannot observe it (neither directly nor indirectly) we cannot know that it exists.
Also, it should be quite diffcult to determine whether object 'A' which may exist but cannot be observed (neiter directly nor indirectly) is better or worse than object 'B' which also may exist but simply cannot be observed.
And how many things are there that may exist after all but cannot be observed?
Yeah, let's look at what atheistic science has brought us: Global warming, human cloning, abortion, embryonic stem cell research - you call the desruction of human dignity success?
And how do you know that all these scientists are atheists? Or is it simply that label them as atheists just because you don't like their work?
Cloning exists since there are identical twins and abortion exists only since Roe vs. Wade. Oops! No wait, it doesn't. It's almost as old as humanity.
Hmm... human stem cell research bad? - I don't think so, but that's just my humble opinion.
What is this - a weak insinuatiion that Christianity is akin to the Taliban?
Heh? Where did I say Taliban? I didn't say it nor did I want to insinnuate something like that. You seem to see things which aren't there.
Why is it that these Christian men, and not some atheistic scientists, were the ones to make these discoveries - was it dumb luck?
No, I'd rather say that if you were an atheist in those times it was healthier to stay in the closet. So if there were scientists who did not believe in a god they wouldn't have made it public since atheism was a thought-crime extraordinaire in most of the Christian world as late as the early 19th century.
Only then people and here especially scientists didn't hide their atheism from the public. Today many scientists (and especially the top notch scientists) are atheists. Yet they still continue to do science and make discoveries even if they are not Christians or adherents of an other religion.
An atheist, however, beginning from himself, has no reason to believe the universe is ordered and comprehensible, does he?
The strawman atheist you build may have a reason to believe this but alas, he's just a strawman. So an atheist, beginning from himself, doesn't have to believe this. He may believe that this universe is ordered and comprehensible because there are no gods who meddle with it and work in misterious ways. Do I have to repeat this again in an other post?
And why was it that breakthroughs occurred int eh Christian West and not in China or India or Micronesia or Africa? I'll tell you - their worldview did not drive them to understand an ordered universe. You can't deny the historical facts.
I don't deny any historical facts. The belief that our universe is ordered and comprehensible can be very useful if you want to do science but the reason why you hold that belief (there is a god who made it so or there are no gods who meddle with it) is absolutely irrelevant.
Here's the rub. You tell me that the supernatural cannot be observed, therefore it must be ignored. At the same time, you take things on FAITH that you cannot observe - e.g. spontaneous generation of life - has a scientist observed that - then by your reasoning it must be ignored and discounted; how about molecule- to-man evolution - has anyone observed that - then it must be ignored and discounted; what about the Big Bang - then it must be ignored and discounted. It seems that you take a lot of things on FAITH that you have not observed! This is an egregious inconsistency on your part and your own argument boomerangs.
Please tell me WHAT is the supernatural. Do you have a model of it? And how can we tell whether something is of supernatural origin or not? Is there something of which can be said that it isn't of supernatural origin with a high degree of certainty? The natural is bound by certain rules, the supernatural isn't.
So if you include the supernatural (even if it does exist), the universe is no longer ordered (there is no known way to determine the laws of the supernatural) nor comprehensible (how do you want to comprehend something that you can't even observe, neither directly nor indirectly?).
Evolution has been observed and we also have a lot of evidence in form of fossils that it happened in the past and the fossil record points to a common ancestor. So yes, evolution has been observed directly as well as indirectly. And so-called micro-evolution is also evolution and creationists still haven't presented any compelling evidence of this ominous barrier that prevents micro-evolution from becoming macro-evolution. The only thing one hears is moving goal posts since in some creationists circles the fact that speciation can occur has been accepted but of course it is only micro-evolution and anything beyond speciation cannot happen because of this barrier that hasn't been shown to exist.
Abiogenesis is a hypothesis for the origins of life based on the observation that complex organic molecules do exist and that rather complex compounds (usually organic) can form from simpler molecules. So the only thing you can say about abiogenesis is not that it is chemically impossible, only improbable. However, improbable doesn't mean impossible.
Now can you say the same about the supernatural? Is a supernatural hypothesis probable or improbable? How improbable does a natural hypothesis have to be in order for a supernatural one to be more probable? Is there an accepted value for this probability?
It's non-rational because there is no known way for the complex reality we see to have just popped into being by chance. It is a non-rational leap for you to believe it. What observation tells you it happened by time+chance+energy+matter? Again, your argument boomerangs. Who has the biggest faith here? It takes a great deal more faith to believe this complex universe "just happened" than to believe God created it. Empiricism doesn't work - just face it.
Awwww!! Now this is pretty dense. I think Physicist explained this ad nauseam: time, matter and all the rest of that bunch only make sense within our universe.
And again, what other universe do you know of that is different from ours because it "just happened" instead of being created by your god? Do you know a mechanism that prevents a universe to be like ours if no god created it?
So I don't know whether this universe was created by a god or not but as long as I don't have evidence in form of at least an other universe that was demonstrably not created I won't assume the existence of a god. Does Occam's Razor ring a bell?