''Yes, Scientists believe in God''.

[CoxRox]

So, is the heading of an article in the Daily Mail today.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/articl...faith.html

It's not too long and touches on 'faith' and 'evidence' for God which is what I have been trying to express in other threads on here.

[LukeMC]

I'm seeing claims such as

'The most moving evidence for Christianity I have seen is when a person with a broken life puts their trust in the Lord Jesus and finds healing, peace and purpose.'

This isn't evidence for the truth of the belief, only the impact of it, delusional or not.

'As things stand, atheists must have faith the size of a mountain to believe that life arose without an intelligent designer.

This is just wrong.

'The creationists mistake the first chapter of Genesis for a divinely dictated piece of science,' said Sir John Polkinghorne. 'It's deeper than that. Its purpose is to say that nothing exists except through the will of God

Interpretation. Also, has no baring on truth.

'So if you took the Feeding of the 5,000, I'm sure there was enough food, but people just weren't generous enough to share it until someone started. Things like that moved people, and in those days they might have called it "miraculous".

Moulding the bible stories to fit their world view. It's just an interpration like many others, and the reader would have to similarly interpret all other aspects of the bible for it's metaphorical or literal stories and so on.

'Poetry, music, art, the love I have for my grandchild. Even if I could, I wouldn't want to weigh and measure that, or my relationship with my friends, or with the sunset.

Nobody cares about whether or not you're weigh and measure these things. This has no baring on a creator. It is an irrelevent point and seems an appeal to emotion.

'The wonderful order of the world, which we scientists investigate, is a sign that there is a divine mind behind that order.'

No it isnt...?


But that's just from scanning through, maybe I missed the more compelling evidence.

[Tiberius]

As things stand, atheists must have faith the size of a mountain to believe that life arose without an intelligent designer.

I just have to find this the most ignorant statement, but then it was said by a "Professor of Mechanical Engineering" and not by someone who works in biology. If you spend your life working with human-designed machines, then you probably will have the inclination to look at life and see it similarly designed. Unfortunately until the proof can arrive that it was designed and wasn't simply a load of random events chosen by nature, the "faith" side is with them.

[Darwinian]

I've said it before but the whole problem with theists is their anthropic view of the Universe.

Human beings are pattern seeking creatures who have a strong desire to have questions answered and to ask them. To this end they will construct all sorts of explanations for seemingly impossible to answer questions. They are also impatient and will 'jump to conclusions' rather than put in the work to really find out what's going on.

It seems natural to look for a divine 'father' of some sort. But this is only because we live and historically have lived in a male dominated society and as children looked up and respected our biological father.

Because as a race we can construct intricate and delicate machinery and art and music, our pattern seeking minds leap to the conclusion that the whole world and all of nature must have also been created.

This kind of thinking, while explained from an evolutionary point of view, is no more credible than a child believing that the rain is really angels crying or distant tribes believing that thunder is the sound of waring gods.

It is intellectual laziness to credit all that you cannot understand to a mystical and all powerful creator. Especially the kind that inhabits the pages of the bible.

And I know we atheists keep banging on about evidence but it really is the only way that we can make any sort of progress in our understanding of the Universe and it's origins. As far as creationism or intelligent design are concerned, they is absolutely no evidence to support them, and I mean NONE! And even if there were an intelligence at the backdrop of all reality then it would be so alien and counter intuitive that to consider it would have created and designed life in the sense that we could understand and then to apply our own feeble anthropic desires on the nature of all things shows a staggeringly arrogant view of our own place in the Universe.

[CoxRox]

Darwinian, I don't get the impression these 'believing' scientists are being intellectually lazy. To quote from the article:

'Professor Sir John Polkinghorne of Cambridge University, one of the world's most renowned particle physicists, a Fellow of the Royal Society, who became an Anglican minister when he retired from academia. 'Faith isn't a question of shutting your eyes, gritting your teeth and believing six impossible things before break-fast because some unquestionable authority has told you to. It's a search for truth,' he said.
'Science is great, but it's not the whole story. It deals with repeatable experience, but we all know that in our personal lives, experiences aren't repeatable. And you simply couldn't demonstrate how someone is your friend, or what music is.'
Moreover, he insists that there is no lack of evidence of God. 'I believe God reveals his nature in many ways. They're not demonstrations that knock you down, but they are very striking things about the world that are best understood as the work of God.
'The wonderful order of the world, which we scientists investigate, is a sign that there is a divine mind behind that order.'


Apologies for the longish quote, but this particle physicist doesn't seem to think he is 'anthropomorphizing' the universe, or misinterpreting the patterns and apparent designs. I've said it before, just maybe we see design, because there really is design.

[Darwinian]

That's not quite what I was saying. I will admit that Professor Polkinghorne is not simply grasping at the easiest explaination but then I suspect his view of 'God' is a million mile's from someone like Daystar.

Even though, for every Professor Sir John Polkinghorne there will be a far greater number of Richard Feynman's.

[Tiberius]

I've said it before, just maybe we see design, because there really is design.

All science is asking for is proof, and when we have an explanation of that design that doesn't involve unexplainable complex beings, why are people so against using it?

[CoxRox]

Fair enough guys. (I'll have to remain with the minority for now).

By the way, have any of you read 'Surely you're joking Mr Feynman?'. Very good book.

[Darwinian]

All science is asking for is proof, and when we have an explanation of that design that doesn't involve unexplainable complex beings, why are people so against using it?

You should use that as a quote!

[lilphil1989]

If a god were the creator of the universe, "intelligent" design is hardly the description I'd use.

To start with he apparently sat in the dark for an infinite amount of time twiddling his thumbs, until 6000 years ago!

To say there is a large degree of order at the fundamental level is just wrong, and as a particle physicist, this professor you quote should know it.

There are 60 fundamental particles that i can think of off the top of my head:
36 quarks
6 "electrons"
6 neutrinos
W+/- and Z(0) bosons
photon
8 gluons
(Plus the Higgs' boson if it's observed at the LHC)
And if supersymmetry is correct there are more than double this amount.

To suggest that this huge collection of "building blocks" is the work of an intelligent mind is simply ridiculous.


Then we look at the way matter behaves at the quantum level. It beggars belief that an intelligent designer would create a universe that behaves in this way.
Maybe he sat there and said "hey Zeus, watch this, bet they can't figure THIS one out!"

And as for the "evidence" mentioned in the article, well it simply isn't there.