Has Science done away with a need for God?

[IATIA]

Jenny I would be happy to discuss it with you if you would like to start a thread or even request a moderated debate. Each time I start one I get admonished for starting a topic that has been done ad nauseum

Damn near everything has been discussed "ad nauseum". The difference would be new insight or knowledge. Or not.

[LastPoet]

I got the whole idea of dipping myself in shit the first 2 months here. From there to here, only repetition. I wonder if I will ever find a religious fellow with an original thought. And why are the apologists so afraid of TAG, and prefer to use Kalaam ?

[Brakeman]

The fact the universe cannot explain it's own existence, to me, necessitates an explanation outside of itself. 

So why does "god's fairy dust magic" explain it any better?

[Esquilax]

The fact the universe cannot explain it's own existence, to me, necessitates an explanation outside of itself. 

So why does "god's fairy dust magic" explain it any better?

Because it's easier to argue for deism while actually believing in specific christian theism?

[Wyrd of Gawd]

Apart from splitting hairs about the definition of God etc., though, I think we can safely say that there are several important thinkers in history who would have been full blown atheists if the had known what we know today about evolution by natural selection. For example, I recall Voltaire saying in his philosophical dictionary that he cannot reject God because of the apparent design in nature. I take this as an admission that he would favour being an atheist if that issue had been taken care of. I guess the same would have pushed more than one Deist among the US' founding fathers.


edit:

Voltaire repeatedly talks about the moral dangers of atheism - however, I cannot believe that he was so shallow a thinker that he would seriously argue that atheism must be false because he dislikes the (imagined) consequences.

"The atheists are for the most part impudent and misguided scholars who reason badly, and who not being able to understand the creation, the origin of evil, and other difficulties, have recourse to the hypothesis of the eternity of things and of inevitability. "

"Let us add especially that there are less atheists to-day than ever, since philosophers have recognized that there is no being vegetating without germ, no germ without a plan, etc. and that wheat comes in no wise from putrefaction."

The only real argument against atheism I recall him making was the one from design.

I always found it fascinating when people bring up Voltaire and how his argument from design would not stand against today's modern scientific achievements but quite often people either forget and completely ignore modern atheists arguing and admitting the argument from design still stands.  Do we forget the most notorious atheist of the 20th century conversion to Deism, Antony Flew when he said:

‘almost entirely because of the DNA investigations. What I think the DNA material has done is that it has shown, by the almost unbelievable complexity of the arrangements which are needed to produce (life), that intelligence must have been involved in getting these extraordinarily diverse elements to work together. It’s the enormous complexity of the number of elements and the enormous subtlety of the ways they work together. The meeting of these two parts at the right time by chance is simply minute. It is all a matter of the enormous complexity by which the results were achieved, which looked to me like the work of intelligence’ (p. 75)

Richard Dawkins has also stated that one could make the argument that there appears to be design in the universe.  Stephen Hawking also stated that the universe appears designed, but again both argue that this is not evidence for God.  I am not espousing that either, just pointing out that the "design" argument even today still holds weight.

When you see patterns in the sand and piles of leaves did God do it or did the swirling wind create them?

[robvalue]

A quick observation on DNA:

Even if you consider DNA to be "spelling out your name", and find that amazing and unlikely, I don't think it is actually even surprising.

Using this analogy, it is not just spelling out your name, it is your name. Your name "spells out" your name. It can hardly do anything else. If it was different, you would be different. We are each defined by our DNA; we were not previously hovering around waiting to be born, trying to match ourselves to a lottery ticket of DNA language.

[rexbeccarox]

Language is a way of codifying communication. We'd have communication even without language, just like DNA would exist with or without its code.

[Longhorn]

A quick observation on DNA:

Even if you consider DNA to be "spelling out your name", and find that amazing and unlikely, I don't think it is actually even surprising.

Using this analogy, it is not just spelling out your name, it is your name. Your name "spells out" your name. It can hardly do anything else. If it was different, you would be different. We are each defined by our DNA; we were not previously hovering around waiting to be born, trying to match ourselves to a lottery ticket of DNA language.

Rob is back!!!! (?)

The comparison between letters in a name and DNA is extremely flawed. The DNA is an acid. It is nothing like a word. The amino acid sequences don't seem to be intelligently put together.....genetic diseases and all.

[robvalue]

Aww that's sweet! Yeah I'm back Had a great time, I'll tell you more soon. I probably won't be posting any more tonight but I wanted to drop this one as it came to me while I was away.

I agree the analogy is bad, comparing DNA to language. But I realized that even if you let that go, the fact that your name spells out your name is tautology, not a coincidence!

[Aristocatt]

I said this earlier, but it really doesn't matter if you want to declare DNA a language or not. You can not use it to come to the conclusion of intelligent design.

If you assume language has to have the quality of coming from conscious intelligence, you cannot define DNA as a language until you have already shown that god exists.
It is just another circular argument.