Scientific Knowledge? If there is no God?

[QuestingHound08]

I'm curious--since our science extrapolates (on a type of human faith) that the world we see is objectively measurable and understandable, and that our minds are equipped to know it not only instinctively, but speculatively...doesn't our entire system of Science kind of presuppose an ordered universe, with something faintly like a person ordering it (since it's intelligible to other persons)?

Obviously one doesn't have to be theistic to employ science--anyone could conduct an activity, and notice the effects, and for the heck of it, do it again...but you'd have nothing like the ordered system of science, the methodologies or the belief in progress we have today, if we didn't believe in some sort of fixed nature of the universe, would we? There'd be no more point in recording your findings, than in writing a map of a world which was one constant shift of tectonic plates and floating continents. It could all fall apart at any moment (which you could believe as a Theist, too--but then you'd also believe in a God with a knowable nature that was eternal...a sort of further undergirding knowledge of the nature of reality, and the reality of nature...a source of stability, purpose and order guiding it, Who WANTED and WANTS to be understood).

Again--I'm not saying that no atheists are scientists, or anything like that--it's just funny to me that the whole idea of order, logic, method--of trying to understand, seems to imply a personal orderer of the universe, to make it relevant. Otherwise, you could say that every scientific discovery was pure luck, and we just keep going with it--like kids pulling one rabbit, tree, bug, or amoeba after another out of a Magicians top-hat, when there's no Magician, and therefore no ultimate meaningful relation between them to understand. Is science as hoky as many of us here believe religion to be? Is it just creating our own framework of meaning out of what is at root a completely chaotic universe? It seems to me that one's got to choose one way or another--is there undergirding order, or not? If there's order to things--where do we derive that from?

If there's no order--there's really no point to either reading or not-reading this thread. And especially not for arguing with it . But then again--we've got nothing better to do, either.

JMJ

[The Grand Nudger]

It may seem to imply such a thing to you. To others it does not. When you start with god, you usually end up with god, no surprise there right? You could go one of two ways with this, the presuppositional route, or the "Classical" route. You'll find resistance either way. A couple of questions. Do you think that christianity invented the notion of an orderly universe? Are you of the opinion that the RCC fostered scientific achievement?

[Rhizomorph13]

QH,

You are right in one thing; science does start with the basic belief in the laws of logic and the reality of what is presented to us. But if we don't start with these assumptions then nothing is sensible. For example if the law of non-contradiction is not true, by what standard would we know it not to be true? If it isn't true then things could be both true and not true at the same time so things break down to be not sensible at all. By what standard could we prove that reality was real when we live inextricably within the very reality that we are testing? We could be brains in jars fed very convincing hallucinations that we interpret as real. So there are certain basic beliefs that have proven necessary to hold, even though there is no standard to prove them real, for reality to make any sense.

Some theists would say that God is a basic belief and just as necessary for reality to make sense. They will claim that for there to be a movement there needs to be an unmoved mover, or origination point. I don't see it that way and I certainly don't see how one could start at the idea of actus purus and get to any of the existing religions today without serious leaps of blind faith.

Order exists but there is no evidence that without God that order would not exist.

[Minimalist]

Are you of the opinion that the RCC fostered scientific achievement?

And, if so, explain it to Galileo.

[Captain Scarlet]

No science does not presuppose a god nor an ordered universe. It empirically gathers facts and organizes facts into theories which in turn allow predictions and applications of knowledge. All theories are tentative and falsifiable.

Science assumes a neutral stance to god and the supernatural, ie we will never be able to repeatably find the supernatural by definition. But this in turn has led to the development of philosophical naturalism which rejects the idea of god and the supernatural by inductive reasoning, in short the absence of evidence is enough evidence of absence.

[Godnoze]

I'm curious--since our science extrapolates (on a type of human faith) that the world we see is objectively measurable and understandable, and that our minds are equipped to know it not only instinctively, but speculatively...doesn't our entire system of Science kind of presuppose an ordered universe, with something faintly like a person ordering it (since it's intelligible to other persons)?

Shit happens. People observed that shit happening. They used not to be able to explain in any real meaningful way what made the shit happen, so they made up gods and stuff. It seemed to work, so their faith in it deepened, until it became a doctrine (several doctrines actually, often competing). Only then people who were actually looking at the shit happening rather than the doctrine noticed the doctrine didn't always agree with what was actually taking place, eg Copernicus, Galileo, et al. So science developed and gradually became separated from religion, and the dichotomy grew between "faith" and "knowledge".

Unlike religion, which starts from the presupposition that the shit was actively created by some clever bloke (usually a bloke rather than a bird, for some reason) who somehow already existed, the great thing about science is that it doesn't "presuppose" anything, not even an "ordered universe " (whatever that might be), but bases everything upon what is actually observed (on the general principle that "one thing leads to another"). The really big difference between scientific knowledge and religious "belief" is that the former starts out from the observable here and now whereas the latter stems entirely from someone's imagination of zillions of years ago, and is supported only by relentless repetition (ie dogma).

The insertion of an imaginary god into the universe does not add anything to the sum of human knowledge, and ultimately only confuses the issue. If god "created" the universe, then who "created" the god? But it's a daft question anyway, it's as plain as the nose on your face that god is a concept invented in the imagination of people in order to "explain" stuff they didn't understand. God did not "create man in His own image", on the contrary it was men who created God in their image. They made "Him" up! As a way of "explaining" stuff.

Nevertheless, I would be among the first to agree that a notion of "god" had many things going for it in its time, and certainly contributed a great deal (good and bad) to the formation of current civilizations. However the time for such blind faith has now passed, and humanity is poised to enter a new era of true enlightenment, in which knowledge will replace faith and people can become free from the shackles of religion and its associated bigotry and other baggage. That is, of course, if the flippin' atheists don't screw it all up with wanton cynicism and cold-hearted flippantry and force good-hearted people back into the clutches of the priests...

_______________________________________________________________________________

WAKE-UP ZONE

Oh no, not again........ get me outa here! ........................................... !

[Anomalocaris]

I'm curious--since our science extrapolates (on a type of human faith) that the world we see is objectively measurable and understandable, and that our minds are equipped to know it not only instinctively, but speculatively...doesn't our entire system of Science kind of presuppose an ordered universe, with something faintly like a person ordering it (since it's intelligible to other persons)?

No, it does not. What it does do is to find what order there really is to be discovered, then apply that order more generally to see if it results in what is to be expected, while remaining vigilant to any evidence that would suggest any specific inapplicability. Thus over time science build up and continuously refine a systematic catalogue, for the want of better vocabulary, of exactly which orders there are, and where and how those orders apply, and whether certain order is merely a reflection of more fundamental order like multiplication is but a series of additions.

So science does not pressuppose an ordered universe. Science discovered the universe has order, and some of the orders discovered does not exhibit known convincing evidence for inapplicability anywhere we've thus been able to look. So science disovered an ordered universe.

For example, science does not presuppose conservation of energy. Science has discovered conservation of energy nearby where we can test that assumption to satisfactory detail, and has not discovered that applying conservation of energy more broadly to the rest of the universe would bring about clear and unavoidable contradition of what we can observe to be there.

[Godnoze]

... But then again--we've got nothing better to do, either.

JMJ

I have! So WTF am I doing here...................................???

Jeeez!

(Woops!)

[downbeatplumb]

I'm curious--since our science extrapolates (on a type of human faith) that the world we see is objectively measurable and understandable, and that our minds are equipped to know it not only instinctively, but speculatively...doesn't our entire system of Science kind of presuppose an ordered universe, with something faintly like a person ordering it (since it's intelligible to other persons)?

Since everything is so understandable fully explain quantum mechanics.

I'll give you a start here is the wiki link.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Introductio..._mechanics

[Rhizomorph13]

... But then again--we've got nothing better to do, either.

JMJ

I have! So WTF am I doing here...................................???

Jeeez!

(Woops!)

We haven't decided to ban you yet.