Proof that God exists

[Conspiracy_of_reason]

If one believes in religion then that is one's reality.

We generally find it useful to separate unique internal realities from the common reality.  No one doubts that religion is real to the religious.  That doesn't change the troubling detail of how the devil doesn't come when he's called.  It's an interesting way to talk around a point of contention but it relies on a fundamental equivocation.

I think you have only partially quoted me there. I do go on to qualify that remark in my post. I'm clearly not talking about individual internal realities but the common reality that is religion. The point you raised with reference to the devil is really only an issue of a particular kind of dualist religion and not relevant to religion in general. We don't want to get into wheter or nor all reality is subjective, we'll be here all night.

Science can tell us what happened in the past, it can make very acurate and detailed observations of history which we then use to predict the future, but it provides no proof of future events. That is to say we can guess that gravity will work tomorrow because it has done every day since observations began, but that doesn't mean it will be the same tomorrow and any belief that it will be the same is pure faith. It doesn't matter how small the margin of error is, it is still there and to deny the existance of this margin of error is an emotional, human reaction not a 'calculated acceptance'.

Sure, maybe the sun won't rise tomorrow morning.  Science isn't in the proof business...it's in the evidence business.  It doesn't offer any proof that the sun will rise tomorrow......it just offers a crushing mound of evidence that it will.

Fair point on the issue of proof verses evidence, so I'll rephrase. Science offers 'a crushing mound of evidence' that the sun has risen in the past, not that it will rise tomorrow. It's a subtle distinction but important.

Anyone who claims to have a scientific analytical mind cannot invoke the concept of 'progress' without brteaying that idea instantly. Progress against what? What is the empirical scientific measure of progress? There isn't one, its an emotional human concept (it's Victorian in origin, fashioned out of cast-off Christian concepts) that has no place in modern science.

Lots of words derived their first use in the victorian era.  They had very colorful slang as well.  Nevertheless, you can refer to whatever specific standards a person is referring to when they refer to progress.  If we, for example..refer to progress in the context of increased life expectancy and food security then this presents a concrete metric for human progress, or for scientific progress.   This may not be what a victorian person would have seen as progress...but so what?

I have to ask again, progress against what? It's actually a fine example that demonstrates my point. You believe that increased life expectancy is human progress, but what are you measuring that against? Humanity has no universal goals against which to measure it. We might desire more life but that is not an objective measure. If you are suggesting how we feel about things is enough to create a measure against which we can show progress then you cannot exclude religion. There are more Christians today than 1000 years ago, they are (mostly) all happier because of it, therefore religion shows real progress, if we use your measure.

My point is science provides change, I accept that. Some of the change I like, I have a positive emotional response to because I'm more comfortable and I believe I can have a longer healthier life, but this is all based on how I feel and not some independent universal measure. I can reject the notion that this is progress, in the same way I reject that religion drives progress. In this respect, science and religion are the same, you cannot reject one without contradicting yourself with the other, so I reject both.

---

If I did, I apologise.

I think you're both missing each other a bit. I think CoR made some good points about religion as a social construct... sort of taking a gods-eye view of mankind. Think of human culture in the sense of a bacteria "culture"... if a lab technician is experimenting with certain cultures of bacteria she can set up conditions in which some of the bacteria do not survive/reproduce and others do. Under these laboratory conditions, certain strains of bacteria will thrive, others will not.

Now impose this concept on humanity. In the stone and bronze ages, certain "cultures" of humans adopted a religious outlook which created social cohesion. This helped some scattered tribes unite against others. To keep with the metaphor: the "laboratory conditions" of the stone ages favored this religious strain. Now the whole world is civilized, and just like religion was valuable to to the ancients, science helps us survive under these new laboratory conditions. Religion is now a relic, or worse, something that stands in the way of science. The science strain now benefits our survival, and religion has long outlived its usefulness.

I think CoR's argument stumbles where it tries to draw a line to faith and makes claims about mankind's "faith" in science. Science is demonstrable, and in this way conforms to reality despite the laboratory conditions de jour. Had we some way to transmit scientific information to stone age tribes in a way they could comprehend it, and they subsequently used science as their force of social cohesion, they would have dominated all other tribes in their vicinity. Likewise, if we were to transmit Mormonism, a relatively modern religion, back to stone age tribes they would have been none the better for it.

So, CoR, you made some good points about how religion has been valuable to the cultures who practiced them, but you failed in equivocation of science and faith.

Goodness, it's a big topic.

Thank you for the recognition on some of my points.

My comment on 'faith' in science comes from the very fact that science is demonstrable, but only in an historical sense. Science demonstrates what we have observed in the past. We can use this information to make predictions about what we expect something to do in the future (say gravity) and so far this has worked out for us. In fact, it is only as good as the next wrong prediction, then science goes in search of a better answer. Gravity is a good case in point. We know what gravity does, we know gravity appears to be constant, but we don't actually know what gravity is. We have merely convinced ourselves we know what it is and that it is constant. In 'reality' (there's that word again), we only know that gravity has behaved in the way we expect it to so far (historically) and using that information we can predict (i.e. make a guess) as to how it will behave tomorrow. The preponderance of historical evidence seems to suggest this is a certainty but it is, in fact, still only a guess and it is human heuristics that equates the quantity of historical evidence to the level of certainty in our prediction (i.e. guess). Mathematically we have created levels of certainty (sigma) to help us express this, but they never reach 100%, because nothing is certain. Yet we believe science tells us it is certain.

Using the abstract systems of equivalence and mathematics we have successfully obfuscated the 'faith' at the heart of our apparent certainty in scientific evidence being able to predict the future... but whether we like it or not, it's there and even science recognises it's there.

cor