Because they're following the religion of scientism.
BTW science does not claim to know it all or even be able to know it all. In fact it is an important part of science to find the limits of science.
Scientism is not what you defined. From wikipedia (which I take with a big grain of salt)
> Scientism is the opinion that science and the scientific method are the best or only way to render truth about the world and reality.
Watch this to get a different perspective on the matter: https://youtu.be/If3cNUixEBM
There is evidence backed belief in the unseen, and there is blind faith. So your claim that by definition faith is without evidence is not correct.
Secondly, even science needs to accept certain axioms as a given so that we can build upon them.
Scientism is believing that the only way to arrive at truth is through experimentation, which is a false view. There are many things we accept, even though we cannot prove them through experimentation.
Watch the lecture I posted to broaden your horizons.
Religion chooses a substantial set of axioms derived from a mixture of philosophy and fantasy dreamt up by our pre scientific ancestors who thought bad smells caused disease then makes many forms of revision sinful. A set of beliefs without ability to revise everything from the ground up will forever be limited.
The problem with your set of axioms isn't MERELY the size. It's that you are asked to buy them in a box sealed millennia ago by people who if they were transported to our time frame would be regarded as lunatics because they believe crazy shit. Worse you are offered imaginary immortality and the threat of imaginary perdition in order to obtain actual service in exchange for wholly fictional benefits.
Now we go on to a false rant about Islam being inherently peaceful when it didn't arise in a peaceful time nor promote what we would today think of as peace, atheists being bigots, random comparison of atheism to antisemitism. Some hate for the Beatles. Comparison of Beatles fandom to satanism. I have to admit that this is entertaining. Having someone smart enough to read books and speak well while being absolutely committed to falsehood is like watching someone dress up their dog as a human being. The forms are there but not the substance.
People have been declaring society was going to hell in a hand basket for at least the last several thousand years and were we really going to hell we should have long since arrived in perdition. It is common to mistake change in social norms as decay instead of progression because one who is anchored in a particular set of mores and forms is unable to see the value in change. They perceive only the losses and never the gains.
Your speaker declares that a fiction is the root of all morality and I find myself unimpressed with his insight because people hold all sorts of beliefs including none at all and this seems positively uncorrelated with their observed degree of morality and decency. He has it in fact entirely backwards and the necessary fictions we create to explain our world our rooted in our essential nature as sympathetic and empathetic creatures. We look at our fellow man and see the need to care about them as we do ourselves and thus we elevate that concern to a natural law and produce something better than ourselves to defend it.
If we were inherently so lawless the need for law and justice as each society understands it wouldn't flow so effortlessly from our pens or spring so readily to our minds.
The reasoning is simple we developed a mind too complex for direct meta analysis of all its internal workings and a need to work beside others of our own species as complex as ourselves and the tools to understand and predict their behavior works well turned inward.
We perceive the difference between a desired state and a present state even if its not actually physically painful as suffering and produce a society where at least an in group minimizes suffering because its adaptive surely but also because we live not in the world but in our own heads in a model of the world constantly rewritten full of individuals we imagine with the same tools we use to imagine ourselves. If we destroy them or diminish them we must necessarily live in an internal world wrought in part of the blight we have brought about which we must perceive again with the same internal tools we use to experience ourselves. All evil and harm is self mutilation.
For a being capable of sympathy and meta-cognition morality would seem to come naturally even if the end results differ wildly in thoughts, results, and methods. Assigning it ex post facto to the god you created to enforce it is the tail wagging the dog. It's illogical because empathy came millions of years before your particular species of god.
13 minutes in and his argument seems to be that it would be really bad if God weren't real ergo God then some people who promoted atheism were bad dudes ergo we must reject atheism. This mirrors the exact argument he first falsely put in the mouths of his opponents and then helpfully debunked.
Now we are suggesting that atheism suggests that survival of the fittest be applied as a moral principal rather than a description of the evolution of life on Earth. This is a tired trope. If rabbits are different degrees of brown and the browner guys blend in better and the coyotes each more of the other fellows then more browner rabbits will on average breed over time leading to browner rabbits. Trying to apply this moralistically towards human beings is both a misunderstanding of humanity, ethics, and science. We don't need Jesus or Allah to tell us this is a bad idea.
At 16 we segway into shitty parts of American history with a sideline into why Muslims are better because they don't kill women and children. Notably given the religious make up of American leaders these actions were largely perpetrated by people who also believe in God. This is neither here nor there but keeping score on that point seems pretty important to him.
At this point it looks like its important to him to establish a hierarchy of morality Islam > Christianity > Godless.
Since I don't have all day I'm going to skip from minute 18 to 45. Ok now we are proving the existence of gods we have the same tired arguments about a watch implying a watch maker and various aspects of our solar system being particularly amenable to life. One would expect such a discussion to happen on worlds,solar systems, and universes that themselves are amenable to our kind of life while silence is likely to reign in environments were life is impossible or unlikely.
If he had read more of the books he degrades by the "four horsemen" of atheism he might already have good answers to these arguments. Likely he has but he hopes you will click a youtube video and sit back and passively absorb re-enforcement of your existing beliefs than actually reading a book yourself.
I watched at least half the lecture you posted and I found it deceptive, manipulative, and ill founded. It did a reasonable job of lobbing critiques at America's geopolitical actions which one might say are fairly easy targets but a poor job of addressing any big questions.
May I suggest you read something written by one of the "four horsemen" of atheism?
How is it a lie? It's a summary, sure, he can only go into so much given the time. He shows a book by one of them and the title is a giveaway of that summary.
> false rant about Islam being inherently peaceful
Based on what are you claiming that it is false? If you confusing peaceful with pacifist, then Islam is not pacifist.
> nor promote what we would today think of as peace
Then inform us what we would today think of as peace.
> It is common to mistake change in social norms as decay instead of progression
It's easy to see the social decay over time. Of course each generation is experiencing such a decay when they compare it to the previous generations, but we clearly see how things are speeding up. Just look at the ills that we see in so called "developed first world nations", the mental illnesses, the decline of morals, the normalization and over sexualization of behaviors, all the way to children, the destruction of the extended family, then the nuclear family. It's quite obvious where things are heading. This is not fear mongering. When you have someone like Kraus saying that he cannot find a moral argument against incest, then someone with half a brain should think about what this means.
> Your speaker declares that a fiction is the root of all morality
I'm not sure where he said that.
> Trying to apply this moralistically towards human beings is both a misunderstanding of humanity, ethics, and science.
No it isn't. From a purely secular and atheistic world view, there was nothing wrong or bad about horrific historic events like the Holocaust, the nuclear bombs, rape, Epstein, etc. I think it was one of those "four horsemen" who said that rape is not good or bad, but it's just a phenomenon like the spots on a cheetah. Even this atheist biology professor claims that there is no ultimate foundation for ethics from an atheistic world view: https://youtu.be/EqK_JPts26k?t=182
That is the only logical conclusion to arrive at from an atheistic world view, at least he's being honest with himself. More atheists should be honest with themselves as well and we'll see how things end up.
> We don't need Jesus or Allah to tell us this is a bad idea.
Based on the above, we sure do.
> while silence is likely to reign in environments were life is impossible or unlikely.
Yet, we exist. So our world is clearly viable for hosting life. I'm not sure what you're getting at here.
> Likely he has but he hopes you will click a youtube video and sit back and passively absorb re-enforcement of your existing beliefs than actually reading a book yourself.
He's a professor and a scholar of biblical hermeneutics with field specialties in Sacred Languages, Comparative Theology, and Comparative Literature. He doesn't "hope" anything. It seems you're straw manning because you think we in Islam shy away from debates or discussion. That couldn't be further from the truth.
> May I suggest you read something written by one of the "four horsemen" of atheism?
Like the time where Dawkins falsely and cringely claims that Islam teaches that salt water and sweet water don't mix? I've watched lectures for those people, and their arguments are straw men, or just outright lies that shows their ignorance and malice especially when it comes to Islam.
Bear in mind that this lecture was just to have people expand their horizons, especially those that think that science is going to answer everything. It won't. There is so much material out there by good people who have torn down these atheistic arguments. People like Youtube these days, so I recommend Mohammad Hijab and Sami Ameri. I have lots more who speak Arabic, but I think this is not the right audience for them.
People may speak fantasies, but act - they mostly act as they honestly think. “Things” will end up just as they are now. You are dehumanizing atheists and, as I suspect, anyone who doesn’t follow your “ethical” god.
We all have a right to disagree, but thinking that all ethical people who do not agree with you are just not honest with themselves is delusional. You’re basically saying that if your god doesn’t prohibit something that other people may find highly unethical in their culture, you will still do that. That’s the essence of how most people see your religion.
I'm not. We see the evidence of the direction of where the world is heading right before our eyes. The wise people already see it coming.
> thinking that all ethical people who do not agree with you are just not honest with themselves is delusional.
I said that the conclusion that those atheists had reached is the ultimate and only conclusion to reach when one is honest with themselves. I saw many atheists, and they don't think about the implication of their world view. They just live day to day as things around us get worse, then people cry and complain about how bad things are, while being blind to the true causes.
Look at the big mess of the modern day economic system. People are crying about high interest rates, student loans, etc. Islam, Judaism, and Christianity all prohibit usury (interest) for a good reason. Today people are trying to address the symptoms but not the cause, and they're failing at it. All these things have repercussions, but few people see it.
Don’t expect many people to watch this hour long blah blah blah.
Edit: beared with it to 19:18 and stopped, sorry, this guy is full of populistic bullshit he tries to refute. Does god exist or not, we will not know ftom this. But you are literally following a fanatic.
> Proper religion and science do not disagree.
> I am a person of faith (which is backed by evidence), and my faith pushed us to seek knowledge. The Islamic Golden age is a testament to that fact.
My problem is that any religion who believes in an all powerful God quickly runs into logical problems. Here is one quick example and I'd love for you to explain to me where my reasoning went wrong:
1. Assume there is an omnipotent being called God
2. If God is omnipotent then he can create two other omnipotent beings that have the following two goals: 1. destroy the other being 2. protect itself from being destroyed.
3. Clearly both of these created beings cannot both achieve their goals because they cannot both destroy the other and at the same time protect themselves.
4. If these beings cannot do what they were created for then clearly they cannot be omnipotent.
5. If God cannot create such beings then clearly he himself is not omnipotentOne that is backed by proofs and evidence. Islam does not disagree with science.
Your argument is not very different from can God create a rock so heavy that He cannot cary it? The answer is simple, it's a logical absurdity to even go there. God told us about his Attributes, and we are not to hold Him or His Attributes to our worldly logic.
> One that is backed by proofs and evidence.
> Your argument is not very different from can God create a rock so heavy that He cannot cary it? The answer is simple, it's a logical absurdity to even go there. God told us about his Attributes, and we are not to hold Him or His Attributes to our worldly logic.
Yes it's the same argument. I can't follow your logic though. You just claim that we cannot comprehend the concept of god. You say that logic cannot be applied. If we cannot comprehend god and have to give up logic then why would we follow the word of certain people who claimed that god spoke to them? How can we tell apart a true prophet who really was contacted by god from a random imposter? To tell those apart would mean we already know what god would or would not say. But if god does not have to follow logic then how can we deduce what is correct or not?
As you see once you leave the realm of logic the whole house of cards falls.
Another thing you could deduce from your argument btw is that god created humans intentionally in a way that they cannot comprehend. Isn't that painting god in a pretty bad light?
You still continue to conflate science with God who exists outside the realms and is not bound by the laws of our world. He created logic, it does not apply to him. When He revealed to us his attributes, we are not ones to question whether they make sense to us or not.
So your argument stems from illogic? Surely you don't admit such do you? When I was religious, religion captured me by thinking 'that makes sense'. It used a minor amount of logic to convert me but ultimately it failed because it didn't stand up against my rigors in the end. Religion wants to ultimately refrain from the rigors of logic but when confronted, how does it defend itself? That's right, it tries to use "logical" arguments just like in the video you linked.
If you want to deny logic then the guy you're arguing with is just as right as you think you are because he has justification to be illogical. That is the problem with making unfalsifiable claims like the gods exist outside of logic, you basically admit to a tie, at the very least.
No. I as mentioned in another post, God exists outside the realms of this reality, and is not bound by our laws. He created our laws, and he created logic, and they do not apply to him.
We don't deny logic. If you study Islam, logic is one of the 3 methods to arrive at truth. The other two are observations (not dissimilar from experimental science) and the final is truthfully relayed news (الخبر الصادق). We take all of those into consideration when studying our reality.
> When I was religious
Were you Muslim though? Not all religions have these rigors.
> No. I as mentioned in another post, God exists outside the realms of this reality, and is not bound by our laws. He created our laws, and he created logic, and they do not apply to him.
> We don't deny logic. If you study Islam, logic is one of the 3 methods to arrive at truth. The other two are observations (not dissimilar from experimental science) and the final is truthfully relayed news (الخبر الصادق). We take all of those into consideration when studying our reality.
> We apply logic where it applies, and we use other sources of evidence for where it doesn't apply
God is outside the realm of logic. Think about it, if you create a game or simulation, are you bound by its laws? You can make a simulation where 1 + 1 = 5
What is the difference between a holy man who claims to have the word of god, and a scientist who claims to have followed the "scientifc method"?
Modern human believes the latter. That is the difference.
Or How many such claims can be verified with a single average person's limited resource?
Because it is with my own perception that I sense the rest of the world with it. So that is all that one should care. Let me know if you don't get this. I ll elaborate..
My second reply is that it’s important whether things derived from two different claims actually work.
Make two hospitals: one which follows standard Western medical practice, and the other which does not and instead performs prayers over its patients. I can predict which hospital will have better patient outcomes.
That is quite besided the point. The point being every patient who goes there believes the hospital us doing western blah blah blah...
Let me simplyfy it even more. The common mans dependence of "science" is based on beliefs. Just as it was on religion at an older time.
That scientific method is more trust worthy, does not make that dependence not based on belief. That is the weakest link in the chain, and that link is common to both science and religion.
Let’s say this common man is religious (pick one) and is going about his day and is injured in some accident. He is taken to a hospital, and one which he knows is aligned with his religious beliefs. Upon arriving the doctors triage him and tell him he’s bleeding internally. But then they tell him that they have assembled a team of highly respected members of the religion to which he adheres and these persons are revered among its followers. They are about to lay hands on him and pray for his internal bleeding to stop. He asks if they will also be performing surgery, to which they reply that no, their god is loving, caring, and will hear the prayers of the faithful and heal him.
Now if you really are talking about the truly common man, this common man will, with whatever strength that remains, object quite strenuously! He will insist that a doctor perform surgery on him immediately and stop the bleeding.
And why does this common man do this? Because what he really believes is that while his religious beliefs may provide some type of assurance and comfort, when the rubber meets the road, he’d like some science, please.
Aren't you guys truly not getting this simple thing? I should probably get out of this thread..
I'd recommend a read through Plato's Socratic dialog Theaetetus. Then think through whether the progression of sensation, true belief, and justified true belief does or does not form a sequence of increasingly better ways to think about the world.
As for your last sentence, although I could say the same, I think you will agree that it would serve no purpose.
> Tell me, how many scientific "claims" that you rely on a day to day basis, have you verified personally?
You fell into the trap of thinking that each person needs to verify each claim in order to put general trust in science. That's not how it works. If I can pick a random claim and given enough time and effort can verify it with a high chance then I can reasonably be sure the other claims are most likely correct. Not all of them! There are scientific claims that are incorrect. We know because they have been shown to be incorrect. But that doesn't invalidate the rest of the claims. And yes there will be claims that I personally can't verify so I'll have to use my own judgement to trust them or not. Over time someone will emerge to prove them wrong if they are indeed wrong. Unless of course they impossible to falsify like the existance of god. But then I just can ignore that claim if it can't be proven either way - no matter if it's a claim in science or religion.
With religion I can't verify much at all. Can I verify the existance of god? Nope. Can I verify earth was created X thousand years ago? Nope. Can I prove that my prayer will get some result? Nope. So logically my trust in the other religous claims is very low.
We had science classes in school. Physics and Chemistry for example. I remember doing experiments all the time to check if something was really working the way it was claimed. It checked out every single time. We also had Religion classes. I don't remember a single time that we tried to verify a claim. Not even an attempt! How do you build faith in a system full of claims with no evidence? As we kids grew older and developed a stronger independent way of thinking instead of blindly believing what the teacher told us, more and more of us started questioning those claims and were left utterly unsatisfied and ultimately left the religion class and switched to ethics instead.
Unfortunately it doesn't seem like you addressed any of my points.
I am not falling into any trap. Science and religion has its legit original purpose (religion was never meant to explain nature, though it does it as part of its own way of accomplishing its goals). But both are prone to exploitation by selfish entities, because of the need or requirement of laymans belief in the ir claims.
So ultimately, a religious claim and a scientific claim that cannot be realistically verified by 99.9 % of people are both similar, and both can end up casuing similar evils.
How many have I verified? I’m not sure of the #, but I’ve verified much of classical physics, chemistry, astronomical observations, and lots of things in electronics (some of which rely on quantum mechanics) and electromagnetism.
But as I said, they question is not whether you or I have personally verified everything, but whether they are verifiable in principle, by anyone. The claims of chemistry, physics, astronomy, etc, are verifiable. The claims of a holy man are not.
How come? The claims of holy men are verified by other holy men.
Religion wants the best of both worlds, saying it is endowed with logic and verification yet when pushed you get the same tired argument about faith and 'gods exist outside logic'. At the same time it wants to say that it doesn't have to participate. Why should your side be special? Why can't I ultimately resort to illogic? Who knows, maybe my atheistic views are derived from a system so abstracted from my intellectual senses that I can validly resort to claiming they may ultimately stem from a time/place far removed from logic also, I just don't claim that it's an anthropomorphic entity like a god.
Yes
>The scientific method is a process that verifies...
And this process is done by imperfect men...who you end up trusting...
This happens in your "western science" also (despite all the ability to "test" things), he he he...excuse me. Couldn't help it.
The claim of someone who says they have the word of god is hearsay and there’s no way to figure out whether they do or not. The claims of someone who says they’ve followed the scientific method are verifiable by others. If they claim that their experiments show tiny blue tetrahedrons make up all matter, other people can check. Nobody can check if god talks to the first person.
> which are produced from them actually seem to work.
Oh yea, religeious things also seem to work. For example, prayers and other religeous offerings. That is how these things survive so long.
Have you heard about the replication crisis in your "western science"?
Why are you and a few other people on the side of religion argueing so much against the west? Science vs religion does not care what the longitude you find yourself in. Or is "eastern science" somehow different?
Science is not perfect, how could it as it is made up of humans and we clearly are not perfect. It's still waaaaaay better than religious doctrines.
Since no one is willing to do that, people used to accept their word for a fact. The same is the case with science claim that cannot be verified by common men who depend on them.
That they are also "believing", might be hard to get through the thick skull of these modern "science" gushers. They fail to see that "science" can be just a label, strapped to anything businesses wants to sell.
> It is, because you can verify the claims of a holy man if you go meditate in a cave for a couple of decades.
You can readily go and verify a lot of claims of science and I gave you an example in another comment. What claims about god can I go and verify? I'm eager to try.
Well, the same can be applied to your "western science" as well..
First, in a very real sense, the modern physical sciences came from religion. The great founders of science—Kepler, Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Descartes, etc.—were, without exception, trained in ecclesially sponsored schools and universities. It was under the aegis of the church that they took in their physics, their astronomy, and their mathematics. More specifically, they learned in those institutions two essentially theological truths necessary for the emergence of the experimental sciences—namely, that the universe is not God and that the universe, in every nook and cranny, is marked by intelligibility. If nature were divine—as indeed it is considered to be in many religions, philosophies, and mysticisms—then it could never be an apt subject for observation, analysis, and experimentation. And if nature were simply chaotic, void of form, it would never yield up the harmonies and patterned intelligibilities that scientists readily seek. When these two truths, which are both a function of the doctrine of creation, obtain, the sciences can get underway.
Second, when science and theology are properly understood, they are not in conflict, since they are not competing for primacy on the same playing field, like opposing football teams. Utilizing the scientific method, the physical sciences deal with events, objects, dynamics, and relationships within the empirically verifiable order. Theology, employing an entirely different method, deals with God and the things of God—and God is not an object in the world, not a reality circumscribed within the context of nature. As Thomas Aquinas put it, God is not ens summum (highest being), but rather ipsum esse (the act of being as such)—which is to say, God is not a being among beings, but instead the reason why there is an empirically observable universe at all. In this way, he is like the author of a richly complex novel. Charles Dickens never appears as a character in any of his sprawling narratives, yet he is the reason why any of those characters exist at all. Accordingly, the sciences, as such, can never adjudicate the question of God’s existence nor speak of his activity or attributes. Another type of rationality—not in competition with scientific rationality—is required for the determination of those matters.
And this brings me to my third point: as parent said, _scientism_ is not science. Sadly rampant today, especially among the young, scientism is the reduction of all knowledge to the scientific form of knowledge. The undeniable success of the physical sciences and the extraordinary usefulness of the technologies to which they have given rise have produced in the minds of many this conviction, but it represents a tragic impoverishment. A chemist might be able to tell us the chemical makeup of the paints that Michelangelo used on the Sistine Ceiling, but he couldn’t, qua scientist, tell us a thing about what makes that work of art so beautiful. A geologist might be able to tell us the stratification of the earth below the city of Chicago, but he could never, again qua scientist, tell us whether that city is being justly or unjustly governed. There isn’t a trace of the scientific method in Romeo and Juliet, but who would be so stupid as to assert that that play tells us nothing true about the nature of love. In a similar way, the great texts of the Bible and the theological tradition are not “scientific,” but they nevertheless speak the profoundest truths about God, creation, sin, redemption, grace, etc. Both the cause and effect of scientism, sadly, is the attenuation of the liberal arts in our institutions of higher education. Rather than appreciating literature, history, philosophy, and religion as conduits of objective truth, many today relegate these to the arena of subjective feeling or subject them to withering ideological criticism.
My fourth and final point is this: Galileo is one paragraph in one chapter of a very long book. The great astronomer is often invoked as the patron saint of heroic scientists struggling to free themselves from the obscurantism and irrationality of religion. The censorship of his books by the Church, and the great scientist’s virtual imprisonment at the behest of the pope, is taken as the dark paradigm of the Church/science relationship. Obviously, the Galileo episode was hardly the Church’s finest moment, and in point of fact, John Paul II, expressing real contrition, explicitly apologized for it. But to use it as the lens for viewing the play between faith and science is crucially inadequate. There have been, from the earliest days of the modern sciences, thousands of deeply religious people involved in scientific research and investigation. To name just a handful: Copernicus, revolutionary cosmologist and a third order Dominican; Nicholas Steno, the father of geology and a bishop of the Church; Louis Pasteur, one of the founders of microbiology and a devout Catholic layman; Gregor Mendel, the father of modern genetics and an Augustinian friar; Georges Lemaître, formulator of the Big Bang theory of cosmic origins and a Catholic priest; Mary Kenneth Keller, the first woman in the United States to receive a doctorate in computer science and a Catholic religious sister. I believe it is fair to say that all of these figures understood the fundamental points that I have laid out in this article and therefore saw that they could be utterly devoted to both their science and their faith.
> The “war” between religion and science as you are attempting to draw here, is in fact a fantasy, an illusion, the fruit of a tragic misunderstanding.
> First, in a very real sense, the modern physical sciences came from religion. The great founders of science—Kepler, Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Descartes, etc.—were, without exception, trained in ecclesially sponsored schools and universities. It was under the aegis of the church that they took in their physics, their astronomy, and their mathematics. More specifically, they learned in those institutions two essentially theological truths necessary for the emergence of the experimental sciences—namely, that the universe is not God and that the universe, in every nook and cranny, is marked by intelligibility. If nature were divine—as indeed it is considered to be in many religions, philosophies, and mysticisms—then it could never be an apt subject for observation, analysis, and experimentation. And if nature were simply chaotic, void of form, it would never yield up the harmonies and patterned intelligibilities that scientists readily seek. When these two truths, which are both a function of the doctrine of creation, obtain, the sciences can get underway.
Science does not need the doctrine of creation which is a fairly recent concept. Do you think that nobody performed science before these religions existed? The first people who figured out how to make a fire were scientists and not preachers. Do you think people who are not theists are not able to do science? These claims are mindboggling.
Here is a list of famous atheist scientists some which are at on equally high levels as names you quoted: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_atheists_in_science_an...
From Bell to Zuse, they seem to have done just fine without believing in creationism or religion at all.
> Second, when science and theology are properly understood, they are not in conflict, since they are not competing for primacy on the same playing field, like opposing football teams. Utilizing the scientific method, the physical sciences deal with events, objects, dynamics, and relationships within the empirically verifiable order. Theology, employing an entirely different method, deals with God and the things of God—and God is not an object in the world, not a reality circumscribed within the context of nature. As Thomas Aquinas put it, God is not ens summum (highest being), but rather ipsum esse (the act of being as such)—which is to say, God is not a being among beings, but instead the reason why there is an empirically observable universe at all. In this way, he is like the author of a richly complex novel. Charles Dickens never appears as a character in any of his sprawling narratives, yet he is the reason why any of those characters exist at all. Accordingly, the sciences, as such, can never adjudicate the question of God’s existence nor speak of his activity or attributes. Another type of rationality—not in competition with scientific rationality—is required for the determination of those matters.
> And this brings me to my third point: as parent said, _scientism_ is not science. Sadly rampant today, especially among the young, scientism is the reduction of all knowledge to the scientific form of knowledge. The undeniable success of the physical sciences and the extraordinary usefulness of the technologies to which they have given rise have produced in the minds of many this conviction, but it represents a tragic impoverishment. A chemist might be able to tell us the chemical makeup of the paints that Michelangelo used on the Sistine Ceiling, but he couldn’t, qua scientist, tell us a thing about what makes that work of art so beautiful. A geologist might be able to tell us the stratification of the earth below the city of Chicago, but he could never, again qua scientist, tell us whether that city is being justly or unjustly governed. There isn’t a trace of the scientific method in Romeo and Juliet, but who would be so stupid as to assert that that play tells us nothing true about the nature of love. In a similar way, the great texts of the Bible and the theological tradition are not “scientific,” but they nevertheless speak the profoundest truths about God, creation, sin, redemption, grace, etc. Both the cause and effect of scientism, sadly, is the attenuation of the liberal arts in our institutions of higher education. Rather than appreciating literature, history, philosophy, and religion as conduits of objective truth, many today relegate these to the arena of subjective feeling or subject them to withering ideological criticism.
> My fourth and final point is this: Galileo is one paragraph in one chapter of a very long book. The great astronomer is often invoked as the patron saint of heroic scientists struggling to free themselves from the obscurantism and irrationality of religion. The censorship of his books by the Church, and the great scientist’s virtual imprisonment at the behest of the pope, is taken as the dark paradigm of the Church/science relationship. Obviously, the Galileo episode was hardly the Church’s finest moment, and in point of fact, John Paul II, expressing real contrition, explicitly apologized for it. But to use it as the lens for viewing the play between faith and science is crucially inadequate. There have been, from the earliest days of the modern sciences, thousands of deeply religious people involved in scientific research and investigation. To name just a handful: Copernicus, revolutionary cosmologist and a third order Dominican; Nicholas Steno, the father of geology and a bishop of the Church; Louis Pasteur, one of the founders of microbiology and a devout Catholic layman; Gregor Mendel, the father of modern genetics and an Augustinian friar; Georges Lemaître, formulator of the Big Bang theory of cosmic origins and a Catholic priest; Mary Kenneth Keller, the first woman in the United States to receive a doctorate in computer science and a Catholic religious sister. I believe it is fair to say that all of these figures understood the fundamental points that I have laid out in this article and therefore saw that they could be utterly devoted to both their science and their faith.
Some omnipotent being did it and he cares about the sexual life of humans?!
That's bizarre as well, better to just say that at this point we don't know.
And it's not a straw man argument. God in Islam cares about foreskins and sex and if you disbelieve in him he sends you to hell for eternity.
Don't send videos tell me your arguments, you can speak for yourself.
You expect a detailed and nuanced response in 1 paragraph on HN?
If you are so sure then let's discuss it.
I think you're just scared, if not email me. : )
We have proof. We know about the state of the world back then. We have history, archeology, the knowledge of that era, and much much more. Even English author and historian Tom Holland had to admit that the Quran had too much nuanced knowledge about Jewish and Christian texts that, instead of submitting, he had to come up with a completely illogical and provably wrong story that Makkah was not in present day Saudi Arabia, but on the outskirts of Jerusalem.
Even the non Muslims admit and are in awe of what happened.
https://www.reddit.com/r/islam/comments/hxn276/here_are_some...
> That does not prove that what is written in Qran is correct
He proved that what's written in the Quran correct, discoveries made just a couple of hundred years ago.
> We know about the state of the world back then. We have history, archeology, the knowledge of that era, and much much more.
> Even the non Muslims admit and are in awe of what happened.
> He proved that what's written in the Quran correct, discoveries made just a couple of hundred years ago.
The Big Bang, first theorized by theoretical physicist and Catholic priest Georges Lamaitre, states the universe sprang into existence 13.7b years ago; it was not eternal as previously thought.
And we know from observation that everything that begins to exist has a cause for its existence.
This suggests that the universe was caused. Since the universe can't cause itself, its cause must be outside of the universe. It must be immaterial; not made up of the stuff of the universe. It must be timeless and not governed by the laws of the universe. And it must be exceedingly powerful to create all the energy that kicked off the expanding universe with its billions of spinning galaxies, stars, and planets.
A powerful, immaterial, timeless force outside of the universet that caused the universe to exist. This points to God.
There is every reason to believe our present theories are presently insufficient because this is a very hard topic and no reason to believe that the universe is caused by something immaterial or timeless much less something with volition and purpose. There are multiple theories that you could read about if you wish that require neither cause nor volition.
You follow the extremely common logical fallacy that because you want there to be a reason for the universe and you wanting there to be something before the universe then that means there has to be a god?
A big leap based on unproven assumptions.
Who says time does not extend outside the universe? Where's the proof that a universe can't cause itself? Why can't it be governed by the same laws?
Science does not claim to have all the answers but just then jumping to the conclusion that there has to be a god? Nah.
What if there indeed was a God but is now gone? What makes you assume that he cares about us and our morals? What would he think of people that claim he has spoken to them? Why would he create all the sickness and pain in the world? Would it mean there's some extremely sick and perverted being out there that just likes to watch innocent women being raped? Clearly he could prevent that. But then again why do religions assume that their god is good willing? Clearly he can't be that with all the shit going on because if he willed it into existance then all that is on him.
What we observe in nature. Everything in nature that begins to exist was caused by something else. (Some have suggested quantum exceptions to this rule, but even those claims are tenuous at best.)
The best observable evidence we have is that everything that begins to exist must be caused.
While atheist philosophers like Bertrand Russel once believed the universe was eternal -- and therefore didn't need to be caused -- it was the Big Bang theory that proved otherwise. The universe had a beginning, therefore it has a cause. My conviction, then, is that God really does exist, and the he caused the universe to exist.
> "Clearly he could prevent that...clearly he can't be [good] with all the shit going on"
You're entering territory that philosophers and theologians have been discussing for millenia. I won't pretend to have the real answer for you, but one answer I've found reasonable is that if God prevents evil, He also prevents free choice; free will. It is better to exist in a world with free will -- even if it means some people abuse that for evil -- than to exist in a world where free will doesn't exist.
On the same theme of evil and suffering, what is more problematic is if God doesn't exist, then evil is subjective. Only if God exists and right from wrong are legislated by God do we have a grounded morality, one where we can definitely say what is good and what is evil.
> What we observe in nature. Everything in nature that begins to exist was caused by something else. (Some have suggested quantum exceptions to this rule, but even those claims are tenuous at best.)
> The best observable evidence we have is that everything that begins to exist must be caused.
Einstein explained that nothing can move faster than light but the universe seems to be expanding faster than light so clearly the universe itself can follow different rules and of course anything theoretically outside of it could do pretty much anything for all we know (since we don't know anything about it).
> While atheist philosophers like Bertrand Russel once believed the universe was eternal -- and therefore didn't need to be caused -- it was the Big Bang theory that proved otherwise. The universe had a beginning, therefore it has a cause. My conviction, then, is that God really does exist, and the he caused the universe to exist.
> You're entering territory that philosophers and theologians have been discussing for millenia.
> I won't pretend to have the real answer for you, but one answer I've found reasonable is that if God prevents evil, He also prevents free choice; free will. It is better to exist in a world with free will -- even if it means some people abuse that for evil -- than to exist in a world where free will doesn't exist.
You called people doing evil an abuse of free will. But why is it abuse if god wanted it to be like that? Doesn't it mean that god wanted evil to exist? Otherwise he'd create a system with free will but with evil excluded. We would never know about evil being missing since he completely removed it from our reality. In the same line of thinking how would we know if we have true free will? What if there was a third thing next to good and evil? How can we know we have free will? And how can we say it is better to have free will than not? If I gave you the choice of living a life in which 100% of days you are happy or a life in which on random days you will be unhappy, which life would you choose?
> On the same theme of evil and suffering, what is more problematic is if God doesn't exist, then evil is subjective. Only if God exists and right from wrong are legislated by God do we have a grounded morality, one where we can definitely say what is good and what is evil.
Good and bad are actually subjective. Muslims will find me eating pork as bad. For christians it wouldn't be bad. For christians it would be really bad if I had multiple wifes while muslims would be OK with it. Who is right and who is wrong? If you pick either one then you claim that some religions are correct and others wrong. How did you decide which ones are the correct ones? It also means there can only be one final true religion because if there are two religions then they must differ in something and both can't be right at the same time.
You say god legislates what is good and bad. Ignoring that different religions as outlined above disagree about what is good or bad, how exactly do we know for sure that the claimed laws have been handed by god? That someone pronounces so is not good enough.
Do animals who seem to also have a system of good and bad have religous believes? My dog feels really guilty when he makes a mess. Who told him about god and that he shall not make a mess?
Which is why we rely on the honest news. Prophets like Muhammad, Jesus, and Moses Prayers of God be upon them all proved that they came with a message. They performed miracles, and their character is well known. It's basically an inductive proof.
If one man claims that god said to him “such and such”, he may think that god has spoken to him, but I’m not obliged to. All I can say with certainty is that he is a person who thinks god spoke to him and subsequently told me about it.
Of course it's evidence. We have prophecies made thousands of years ago and they're coming true in our very lifetimes. E.g. http://www.provingislam.com
Holy leap of faith, batman, such a non-sequitur. The former I'd agree is plausible but then you just go headlong into a big assumption or in your case, ironically and paradoxically, you state it as a certainty in a thread about our uncertain universal beginnings. I could run with the former in that perhaps some kind of force outside it caused it but what caused that force? Also there is nothing pointing to this force being some intelligent anthropomorphic entity aware of our existence (as generally believed) other than a few religious texts that, some argue, spawned from other polytheistic religious texts that had entirely different views of the gods.
>There is a great deal of evidence, philosophically and rationally, for the existence of God.
And evidence against if you really want to learn about philosophy in a more well-rounded way. And "rationally"? Many views can be rational which can be pretty subjective, just not logical or true.
We actually never observed everything, cause there is a great shadow far in the past. We just launched yet another space telescope to look a little farther, btw.
This suggests that the universe was caused. ... A powerful, immaterial, timeless force outside of the universet that caused the universe to exist. This points to God.
Or to a multi-dimensional coffee machine which farts universes as a side product every multi-morning and its owner doesn't even know that. It doesn't point to anything and even less so to a conscious creator who decides where "you" go after your brain runs low on oxygen for a while.