This fellow wrote some outstanding essays on the limits of science and religion.
Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington
http://scienceandreligion.com/science.htm
Posted on 12/13/2005 8:34:28 PM PST by tbird5
The renowned biologist talks about intelligent design, dishonest Christians, and why God is no better than an imaginary friend.
British biologist Richard Dawkins has made a name for himself defending evolution and fighting what he sees as religiously motivated attacks on science. Dr. Dawkins sat down with Beliefnet at the World Congress of Secular Humanism, where his keynote address focused on intelligent design.
You're concerned about the state of education, especially science education. If you were able to teach every person, what would you want people to believe?
I would want them to believe whatever evidence leads them to; I would want them to look at the evidence, judge it on its merits, not accept things because of internal revelation or faith, but purely on the basis of evidence.
Not everybody can evaluate all evidence; we can’t evaluate the evidence for quantum physics. So it does have to be a certain amount of taking things on trust. I have to take what physicists say on trust, for example, because I'm a biologist. But science [has] a system of appraisal, of peer review, so that I trust the physics community to get their act together in a way that I know from the inside. I wish people would put their trust in evidence, not in faith, revelation, tradition, or authority.
(Excerpt) Read more at beliefnet.com ...
> This guy basically believes that whenever science
> explains something, it proves the nonexistence of a God
> or reason behind the universe. I'd like to know how that
> foillows logically.
I don't think he would say "proves." I think he would say his consideration of the evidence "leads him to believe."
Arguments from complexity for a designer are invalid (as he pointed out in this article) because they go like this:
* People are highly complex.
* Therefore they must have been created by a Designer.
However, if the Designer is at least as complex as a person (and this holds true for all conceptions of a personal God), then the same argument holds, and somebody even bigger must have created God.
If not (and this is obviously not true according to the concept of God) then the argument is invalid.
Which it is.
You can certainly believe in God (and I do), but you can't use this particular argument to get there.
Sounds to me like his honest opinions. Free country, isn't it? You're free to call him an idiot, he's free to call religious people idiots if he wants. Especially if he believes it, which (it appears to me) he does.
As far as the unfair tactics on the part of some (not all) religious people, I have no doubt whatsoever that's true.
I'll give it a shot.
God, as popularly conceived, is thought to be all powerful and possesses "free will". If he wishes for something to be, well then, by God, it will be! With this in mind, "explanations" for all sorts of things become possible. After all, what science can't explain, we can "explain" by claiming that God willed it. He can do anything, after all.
Well, science makes God "disappear" by showing how many things seem to be very much constrained by a relatively small set of rules or principles, or how a small set of rules or principles leads inevitably to some result or observation.
This is how the theory of evolution pushes the idea of God aside. With just a few basic principles, God becomes unnecessary to explain the emergence of species.
Now none of this "proves" that there is no God. By there certainly seems to be a trend here. Every time some mystery is explained by God, or spirits, or something supernatural, along comes a scientist that gives an alternative that doesn't require an all-powerful God with a free will to do anything he wants arbitrarily.
"What I see in Nature is a magnificent structure that we can comprehend only very imperfectly, and that must fill a thinking personwith a feeling of "humility." This is a genuinely religious feeling that has nothing to do with mysticism" ___ Albert Einstein
"Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind." — Albert Einstein
"Science, Philosophy and Religion: a Symposium", 1941
This is just another example of Richard Dawkin's attempting indirect deception, aimed at those who have not been exposed to a general understanding of God as creator.
Could it be that God is indeed even more complex than His creation? Or that God is even more complex and intelligent than Dawkins.
Is it possible that Dawkins however might be more complex the books he writes?
Of course the fact that Dawkins would balk at a God that is more complex than His creation is silly...as if that would somehow be a problem.
Incredibly, Dawkins says this in all seriousness.
Kalam's argument holds that everything with a beginning had a beginner. Since G-d is eternal and unchanging, He has no beginning and does not require a First Cause.
It is a concept that is outside our experience.
Absolutely incorrect - rather, the opposite. When man was first confronted by lightening, he invented a God (Zeus) to explain it. Do you still believe in Zeus? Of course not. Why? We have another explanation for lightening. But do we know ALL there is to know about lightening generation? No. So, then should we go back to our original idea about Zeus? No. After eons of experience we rather extraopolate and say that Zeus is not needed and eventually we'll understand more of the forces that create lightening. Most of us do this, anyway. Dawkins is now doing this re evolution.
Funny, but when science can't see beyond the Big Bang, or inside a black hole, or determine the precise location of a quantum particle - he doesn't then conclude the existence of a God??? And these are not things science hasn't answered yet - science has determined these things are unknowable. Some would find that unknowable mystery to be the definition of God.
Again, you have it exactly backwards. Because of EVERYTHING that preceded the failure to see inside a black hole (including the knowledge of its existence), the scientist concludes rationally that further discoveries are necessary (in the scientific meaning of the word).
So, you are saying, that just because you can't understand HOW God created the universe, You can't believe he did?
That I don't know HOW lightening is created (not exactly anyway) doesn't mean that I need assume it was Zeus. Of course, I could never proove it wasn't Zeus, even if I COULD explain the process entirely. I don't know from whence came the universe (do you?), but it was once thought to revolve around the earth, eh? Slowly but surely... Anyway, perhaps you should check out some of Right Wing Professor's posts on the subject, he's quite brilliant.
No scientific proof of God's existence is possible, imo, since Western science is founded on observation only of things that can be mathematically quantified and/or logically categorized. God, being prior to all existing material creation, simply cannot be observed. His existence, or non-existence, is simply not a scientific question at all. When people like Dawkins hypothesize about God and revealed religious truth, they are WAY out of their field of expertise. However, before you write me off as a fundie religious nut, let me say that when religious people bring their religious assumptions to the science debate, they also are operating well out of their own field of expertise. This debate has generated much heat and friction, but no light whatsoever, and I have read countless Crevo threads and the posted links.
I remain a believer in a Creator God, but I would be absolutely astounded to learn of any tangible scientific evidence for His existence. Just as psychologists have studied the human mind and neurologists the human brain and nervous system without discovering the human soul that dwells within us all. Why? Because the purely spiritual is invisible to the scientific eye.
You do believe Christianity is based on evidence?
No, I don't believe in Zeus. But why do you assume that man's knowledge of God cannot progress, as has our knowledge of science? IF you learn more about science and religion, you will find they both involve an effort to understand the universe's mysteries.
Just because things can be explained naturally, doesn't mean that they weren't created by a supernatural being ( in the sense of being outside nature). This is a physical world and things can be observed and analyzed. But that doesn't *disprove* the existence of God. The idea that as we come to an understanding of what things are and how they work, chips away at the support for the existence of God, is foolishness. I'm certainly glad that the superstition that existed and resulted from ignorance of the natural world and how it works is gone. But OTOH, we don't want to trade it for a whole other kind of ignorance and evil. Religion needs science to help prevent superstition and science needs religion as a conscience.
Thanks for your thoughts. Very Einsteinian phrasing - I liked it. But his definition of religion was developed carefully in his essay "Cosmic Religion."
Very true. I agree, however, with those here who have pointed out that the inexorably accumultating evidence for evolution is remarkable (and portentious). hat "evolving" evidence do you have for the other side of the debate? The usual response deals with faith. Faith is fine, but could you have shaken the Greek's faith in Zeus? No. Zeus sort of evolved out, and it was primarily due to what I mentioned above. I think Right Wing Professor and Guitarman and narby and Physicist have done better than I at explaining this, however. I am a scientist also, but they are more grounded in TTOE than I (I kept cutting classes in high school and now I regret it). Best wishes, BF.
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