Science affecting the decision on the existence of God?

[_Sethbag]

I should note that Daniel Berger's four anthropic principles are three too many, IMHO. Three of them are really just philosophical ideas, the first one, however, the "weak anthropic principle" is the one that is talked about by in books like Dawkins's. And this is a perfectly reasonable principle, too. There's no sense in trying to cast down on one's existence on the grounds that it is statistically improbable. If one exists, then one exists, and so the probabilities happened to work out in one's favor. That's all it's saying, really.

The Anthropic principle is an alternative to the "argument from personal bewilderment" which says, in effect, I don't see how life could possibly have formed on earth, because of how improbable it all is. So God must have done it!

[_Gorman]

As one or two of you have seen, I am extremely interested in the affect science has on decisions we make in a religious setting. I am merely curious as to how many would state science as a large factor in religious decisions. I am not trying to accuse or be tricky at all.

I probably define an atheist as someone who has decided to live his life as if there were no God, and a theist as someone who has decided to live their life as if there were a God.

If science has affected your religious views in a moderate or large way, and would like to list the scientific information that was integral in that decision making, that would be doubly interesting.

This is my very first poll, so if none of the categories fit very well, you can state why not, but these categories are intentionally broad.

PhysicsGuy stated:
I probably define an atheist as someone who has decided to live his life as if there were no God, and a theist as someone who has decided to live their life as if there were a God.

At least one problem in your choices is no option for agnostic. Again, as you often demonstrate, you have a false choice. That is, there are other options than the ones you offer. Moreover, there are various views among even agnostics (as well as the other catagories).

In addition, just how much difference is there between people who claim a God belief and those who don’t? Most people who go to jail/prison claim they believe in God and claim to believe they know how they should “live their life.”

Others “find God” once in jail/prison. Evidence suggests that going to jail tends to make people find God. At least that’s their claim. Paris Hilton -- the latest public example. But, she plans to party when her time in jail is up.

Most people I know who cheat on their taxes claim that they believe in God -- a singular entity (Nothing like Paul Tillich’s philosophy/theology).

Most people who have affairs or have multiple marriages (even polygamy) claim they believe in God.

I’m skeptical there is much difference between believers and non-believers in their behavior (as in “live their life as if...”).

JAK

I'm sorry, I thought the last option (and the one that got lost in cyberspace) about forgoing with a decision about God was where the Agnostics would go. I guess I didn't make myself clear.

As to behavior, I agree that deciding whether God exists may or may not have affect on ones behavior. This poll is simply asking about ones decision, not their behavior.

[_Gorman]

Interesting. I started on a similar path, but it diverged from yours at some point. The end result being that I acquired a large distrust in science when it discusses anything other than predictions of experiments (as some of you know, this is one of my soap boxes); therefore, for me science does not have much say in things other than warming up my frozen pizza and the like.

I went through a very short phase, in my early teens, where my Mormonism had me thinking things like that the dating methods used by science to predict a very old earth and such must have been wrong, just as the young earth creationists do now, as a defense mechanism against the encroaching scientific awareness, but I'm way too scientifically minded, and that kind of thing didn't last very long at all.

It didn't take all that long before I decided that the science was pretty trustworthy, and if something looked old to the variety of science applied to it that comes back saying it's old, then it probably is old. Same with the rest. I don't trust science implicitly in the sense that I think science has discovered everything, or that science is always right, and so forth, but I do trust science more than I trust anything else, because it has a good track record, a good methodology actually designed to converge on truth over time, etc. I think our scientific understandings of most things are good enough now that we'll see not much more than some evolution of thought from here on, some fine tuning, and probably nothing revolutionary that turns over some major field of current scientific thought completely on its head.

Yes, I think we are on opposite ends of the "trusting science" spectrum. At some point I would imagine science would get to merely fine tuning of theories, but I just don't think that we are at that point yet. I would personally be quite surprised if there are no major revolutionary changes in science as we know it (although this may not happen in my life). One of my undergraduate physics professors thought just as you do, and another one of my undergraduate physics professors (as well as a graduate physics professor) thought more like I do. I argued with my one physics professor for a while until I realized that it was kind of just a personal choice with little evidence either way.

[_truth dancer]

Hi Physicsguy...

Yes, I think we are on opposite ends of the "trusting science" spectrum. At some point I would imagine science would get to merely fine tuning of theories, but I just don't think that we are at that point yet. I would personally be quite surprised if there are no major revolutionary changes in science as we know it (although this may not happen in my life).

I agree...I think we are just barely beginning to understand a small part of how the universe works, which is why I stuggled with religions that claim they have it all figured out and it is similar to their particular religious view.

One of my undergraduate physics professors thought just as you do, and another one of my undergraduate physics professors (as well as a graduate physics professor) thought more like I do. I argued with my one physics professor for a while until I realized that it was kind of just a personal choice with little evidence either way.

This is something with which I disagree!

If your child is sick would you forego a doctor for prayer?

Is blaming Satan for depression as appropriate as understanding chemical imbalance?

Is sterilizing a wound prior to surgery just as effective as giving a priesthood blessing?

Is understanding the science of natural disasters equally beneficial as having faith that God is punishing people for disobedience?

It just seems to me that there is value in embracing the knowledge we have about our world.....

At least with science there is some sort of evidence to suggest it is reflective of our reality.

Just the way I see it!

:-)

~dancer~

[_Gorman]

SethBag and SilentKid:

I agree, the second Law of Thermodynamics tends to get misused a lot.

[_Gorman]

If your child is sick would you forego a doctor for prayer?

Is blaming Satan for depression as appropriate as understanding chemical imbalance?

Is sterilizing a wound prior to surgery just as effective as giving a priesthood blessing?

Is understanding the science of natural disasters equally beneficial as having faith that God is punishing people for disobedience?

It just seems to me that there is value in embracing the knowledge we have about our world.....

At least with science there is some sort of evidence to suggest it is reflective of our reality.

Just the way I see it!

:-)

~dancer~

I agree with you here. I think I may have explained poorly above. I agree that science gives us lots of practical uses. When I was arguing with my physics professor, it was about whether there will be any major upheaval in scientific theories in the future. When there is a major upheaval in a theory it generally does not change the practical purposes of former theories much (if any), is just gives a different view of the fundamental nature of reality.

[_silentkid]

When I was arguing with my physics professor, it was about whether there will be any major upheaval in scientific theories in the future. When there is a major upheaval in a theory it generally does not change the practical purposes of former theories much (if any), is just gives a different view of the fundamental nature of reality.

This is one of the reasons I prefer the scientific method and scientific thought. Theories can adapt and change based on new evidence and technology. As long as peer review, testability, repeatability, convergence of evidence, etc. are present, the scientific method allows for the fine-tuning of theories or the revolutionizing of them. I don't see this as a problem. For me, it is more comforting than a dogmatic, top-down approach taught by many religions. Science does not claim to have all the answers and if it did, I would be skeptical of it (for the same reason I am skeptical of religions that claim to have all the answers).

[_Gorman]

I agree...I think we are just barely beginning to understand a small part of how the universe works, which is why I stuggled with religions that claim they have it all figured out and it is similar to their particular religious view.

Yes, it is certainly a different method than the scientific method. I think that is because there is little scientific evidence for anything along those lines. Science is inherently more comfortable because we know the details from the ground up, but the downside is that it looks likely that we won't get any real answers in our lifetime. Religion claims to know the final answer, but very little details, so it is much less comfortable. It is like Science is building a bridge that we can all see and feel, but has only finished a few meters and doesn't really know where it will end up. Religion claims to know where the bridge will end up, but can't really substantiate its claims. This may or may not be a good analogy, but that is how I think about it.

[_Gorman]

When I was arguing with my physics professor, it was about whether there will be any major upheaval in scientific theories in the future. When there is a major upheaval in a theory it generally does not change the practical purposes of former theories much (if any), is just gives a different view of the fundamental nature of reality.

This is one of the reasons I prefer the scientific method and scientific thought. Theories can adapt and change based on new evidence and technology. As long as peer review, testability, repeatability, convergence of evidence, etc. are present, the scientific method allows for the fine-tuning of theories or the revolutionizing of them. I don't see this as a problem. For me, it is more comforting than a dogmatic, top-down approach taught by many religions. Science does not claim to have all the answers and if it did, I would be skeptical of it (for the same reason I am skeptical of religions that claim to have all the answers).

This is the reason why I prefer science as well, but only when dealing with those practical purposes like trusting that my car will work, or that I'm taking the right medicine, or that my frozen pizza will warm up. The fact that there can be drastic changes in theories that give us an entirely different view of the fundamental nature of reality with only a small change in any of the evidence gives me very little trust in anything science says about the fundamental nature of reality. Although I also agree that it is still more comfortable than the top down approach of religions, but you must be willing to wait for a possibly very long time for science to give out any of the really meaningful answers (apart from pizza thawing instructions) (I guess I must be getting hungry).

Some people think science has already given us these meaningful answers (even though the answers are probably wrong in some way), some people are fine with waiting until science can give the final answers (they will probably have to wait for longer than they are alive, in my opinion), other people are willing to go to religions to get these meaningful answers (even though the answers are likely wrong in some way as well).

[_Sethbag]

I really like this thing Dawkins has said, that religions claim to be able to answer the "why" questions, but there is no reason anyone should consider religion's answers to those questions to be any better than anyone else's.