If science cant explain everything.. Scientific Materialism

Tart · Post by **Tart** » Mon Aug 20, 2018 6:43 pm

I personally think we are all born with a wonder in our consciousness. Something that tells us that our reality might not be as what it seems, that there may be something mysterious and unexplained in our consciousness.. Something beyond our reasoning...

And we see this manifesting in peoples thoughts all the time... There are sooo many claims (even scientific claims) that go beyond our reasoning.. Like mind over matter, or infinite parallel universes, multiverses, aliens, ghosts, the afterlife, telekinesis, out of body experiences, past lives, the "matrix", mysticism, sorcery, magic, etc... We see people, who honestly wonder about the possibilities of many of these things, perhaps all of us have had these kinds of thoughts amusing the unexplained...

I mean even science, and scientist, and even atheist scientist have amused some of these possibilities, like the multiverse.. The multiverse (something that there is no evidence of) is a theory that came up in a rebuttal against God creating THIS universe... (Ill put a scientific video below that suggest "mind over matter" is a real thing)

But then when we come to the idea of God, all of these wonders turn away and people are certain that God cant exist, that miracle cant happen, that there is no after life, there is no soul, etc.... As soon as God gets into the picture, all these wonders that we are born with contemplating, are trashed as a means of mocking and discrediting anything out of the inexplicable, and everything boils down to cold hard science... This is Scientific Materialism.... This is why David Berlinski (atheist philosopher) says in his book "The Devils Delusion" that "scientific atheism is a frivolous exercise in intellectual contempt"... It is this notion that nothing inexplicable exist, that everything is explained, and anything beyond explanation (like God) is mocked...

Its a frivolous exercise in intellectual contempt...

To me, this seems like a complete indoctrination of atheism... And is there any proof that there is nothing beyond these cold hard explanations? No... But it is assumed....

So if you play around with any of these thoughts, how come you discredit God automatically? If something like "mind over matter" is true, how can you say the divine is false? (example: video below)...

(Personally i think Christianity explains in perfectly.. 2 Thessalonians 2:10-11)

[youtube][/youtube]

DeMotts · Post by **DeMotts** » Wed Aug 22, 2018 11:45 am

[Replying to post 20 by Tart]

Id point to Christ for the proof of God.

Ok so Christ is the proof for god. Is muhammed the proof for allah?

Tart · Post by **Tart** » Wed Aug 22, 2018 11:55 am

DeMotts wrote: [Replying to post 20 by Tart]
Id point to Christ for the proof of God.
Ok so Christ is the proof for god. Is muhammed the proof for allah?

Muhammed would support the reality of a false prophet, soemthing Jesus warns against, becuase Christianity is consistent with our reality.

Actually, there is a prophecy in the Bible about Islam, and the father of the Arabs, who are believed to have descended from "Ishmael"... The prophecy is true, because Christianity is consistent with our reality. (Genesis 16: 9-12)

Post by **DrNoGods** » Wed Aug 22, 2018 1:05 pm

[Replying to post 22 by Tart]

Muhammed would support the reality of a false prophet, soemthing Jesus warns against, becuase Christianity is consistent with our reality.

And a muslim could make the same claim from their side, as could any other monotheist religion that has a central god figure different from yours. You have not made any valid argument, yet, that supports your claim that the "god of Abraham" (which happens to be the same god that muslims and jews worship), is the one "true" god and all others are false. All you've done is reference the Christian holy book and its stories as "proof", but the validity of those stories and claims is what is being questioned. You can't defend a claim up for debate by repeatedly referencing the very source of the claim itself (ie. the bible is true because it says it is true).

Also, what do you mean by the statement "Christianity is consistent with our reality"? That is a vague, generic statement. There are many stories in the bible that are clearly not consistent with our reality (eg. the creation story of Genesis, Noah's flood, tower of babel being the source of languages, Jonah living in the belly of a great fish for longer than he could hold his breath, the sun "standing still" in the sky so Joshua could win his battle, dead humans coming back to life in several instances besides the purported resurrection of Jesus, humans having afterlives, etc.). These are all myths and are positively inconsistent with reality. But maybe you are referring to something else? How is Christianity consistent with our reality?

DeMotts · Post by **DeMotts** » Wed Aug 22, 2018 1:23 pm

[Replying to post 22 by Tart]

I'm 100% with DrNoGods - how in the world is Christianity consistent with reality? Let's start with the examples that DNG just gave.

bluethread · Post by **bluethread** » Wed Aug 22, 2018 1:24 pm

DeMotts wrote:
Let's flip it around. How do you know god exists? How do you know god can work outside of your own rational? That god can do things beyond your understanding? How do you make those truth claims?

No, do not flip it. When one says flip it to the Sceintific Materialist, that is not permitted. If one wishes to investigate the evidence for a diety, there are hundreds of threads for that in this forum. This is the one thread that tests the accusation against theists that ones theism must explain everything in order to be believed by applying it to Scientific Materialism. Can Scientific Materialism meet the standard required of theism?

[Replying to post 20 by Tart]

Id point to Christ for the proof of God.
Ok so Christ is the proof for god. Is muhammed the proof for allah?

Tart misspoke. Yeshua is not proof of Adonai, at least not in a scientific sense. He is evidence, as Muhammad is evidence of Allah. More specifically, the teachings of Yeshua are arguments in favor of Adonai. This is a philosphical argument, not a scientific one, because as has been noted by another poster, we are talking about things that can not be tested using the scientific method. So, why should we believe in scientific materialism, if it can not explain everything?

Post by **DrNoGods** » Wed Aug 22, 2018 1:59 pm

[Replying to post 25 by bluethread]

So, why should we believe in scientific materialism, if it can not explain everything?

Because it is the best tool we have (science in general) for explaining how reality works. I don't know of any scientist or materialist who thinks science has to explain "everything" in order for it to be valid. The biggest problem I have with the many different concepts of gods and religions is that they are not necessary to explain nature.

"God of the gaps" arguments are very popular but those gaps have been continuously disappearing over time, and especially compared to when the most popular religions of today were developed (over 3,000 years ago for Judaism which has only about 14 million adherents today, but over 2,000 years ago for Christianity and 1,400 for Islam).

It made perfect sense during those times to assign things to deities that were not understood from the scientific perspective. But there has been very little "modernization" of these three religions, in particular, since ancient times, despite the tremendous advances in scientific knowledge that has been gained since then. I think the majority of religious people today don't take the biblical stories (for example) literally ... especially the time frames inferred from biblical chronology ... but I'm surprised that more modern versions of these religions have not sprung up over the last 500 years in particular. There are just too many details within them that are completely inconsistent with modern scientific knowledge, and science has a far better record of explaining nature than any religion.

Guy Threepwood · Post by **Guy Threepwood** » Wed Aug 22, 2018 2:14 pm

[Replying to post 26 by DrNoGods]

Because it is the best tool we have (science in general) for explaining how reality works. I don't know of any scientist or materialist who thinks science has to explain "everything" in order for it to be valid. The biggest problem I have with the many different concepts of gods and religions is that they are not necessary to explain nature.

"God of the gaps" arguments are very popular but those gaps have been continuously disappearing over time, and especially compared to when the most popular religions of today were developed (over 3,000 years ago for Judaism which has only about 14 million adherents today, but over 2,000 years ago for Christianity and 1,400 for Islam).

It made perfect sense during those times to assign things to deities that were not understood from the scientific perspective. But there has been very little "modernization" of these three religions, in particular, since ancient times, despite the tremendous advances in scientific knowledge that has been gained since then. I think the majority of religious people today don't take the biblical stories (for example) literally ... especially the time frames inferred from biblical chronology ... but I'm surprised that more modern versions of these religions have not sprung up over the last 500 years in particular. There are just too many details within them that are completely inconsistent with modern scientific knowledge, and science has a far better record of explaining nature than any religion.

this argument worked a little better 150 years ago, in a Victorian age model of reality, when many materialist/reductionist scientists believed in static/eternal universe models, classical physics, classical Darwinism

notions of a beginning, a creation event, underlying mysterious hidden guiding forces behind physics and life,- were still considered 'religious pseudoscience' back then
but science has come a long way since ..

The simplest explanation is certainly usually the most tempting one, but reality has shown little regard for Occam's razor !

bluethread · Post by **bluethread** » Wed Aug 22, 2018 3:34 pm

DrNoGods wrote: [Replying to post 25 by bluethread]

So, why should we believe in scientific materialism, if it can not explain everything?

Because it is the best tool we have (science in general) for explaining how reality works. I don't know of any scientist or materialist who thinks science has to explain "everything" in order for it to be valid. The biggest problem I have with the many different concepts of gods and religions is that they are not necessary to explain nature.

It has value in explaining how some things work, but not all things. It doesn't clearly validate history or explain consciousness. However, there are many, at least on this site, who require theism to explain everything. Also, there are very few theists that say that science has no value. So, why is it acceptable for Scientific Humanists to say that theism has no value, because it does not explain everything?

"God of the gaps" arguments are very popular but those gaps have been continuously disappearing over time, and especially compared to when the most popular religions of today were developed (over 3,000 years ago for Judaism which has only about 14 million adherents today, but over 2,000 years ago for Christianity and 1,400 for Islam).
Science of the gaps is also very popular, but that does not help us to deal with such things as consciousness and morality. When is it that you believe that science will fill those gaps and what are we to do in the mean time?

It made perfect sense during those times to assign things to deities that were not understood from the scientific perspective. But there has been very little "modernization" of these three religions, in particular, since ancient times, despite the tremendous advances in scientific knowledge that has been gained since then. I think the majority of religious people today don't take the biblical stories (for example) literally ... especially the time frames inferred from biblical chronology ... but I'm surprised that more modern versions of these religions have not sprung up over the last 500 years in particular. There are just too many details within them that are completely inconsistent with modern scientific knowledge, and science has a far better record of explaining nature than any religion.
There are many "modern forms" of theism, some of them that align themselves with what has been discovered scientifically. However, even if that were not the case, how does that releave scientific materialism of the obligation to explain everything, as is required of theism? If one were to make the argument that one can hold a form of theism that does not explain everything, that would be one thing. However, that is not the argument that this tread is addressing. It is argued, as you appear to be doing, that if some theistic philosophy does not line up with your scientific understanding, all theisic philosophy is to be rejected. Well, based on that view, if science can not explain meaning and morality such that it lines up with someone elses understanding, why shouldn't all science be totally rejected. I personally do not take either view, because I do not buy the all or nothing premise for science or theism.

DeMotts · Post by **DeMotts** » Wed Aug 22, 2018 3:37 pm

bluethread wrote:So, why should we believe in scientific materialism, if it can not explain everything?

You are free to believe in whatever you want. You should believe in scientific materialism as a default position until proven otherwise because it is logical, and the best means we have at arriving at universal truth.

If you were on trial for a murder you didn't commit, would you want your jury to judge you based on evidence collected by the standards of scientific materialism? Would you be ok with the judge allowing men of faith, paranormal investigators, psychics and fortune tellers, alien abductees, to be heard with full credence?

"Your honor I sense a bad aura around the defendant. I feel that god is communicating through me and telling me that we should convict him." Would that be acceptable testimony for you? Why or why not?

edit: I feel a bit like I've pigeon-holed myself in this debate by taking the side of "scientific materialism", a term that I wouldn't necessarily label myself. My broader point isn't that we should avoid philosophical debate about the nature of the universe and being, but rather we should start from a place of understanding what is necessarily true and move outwards - adding more to that view as we come to understand it. I'm not a hardcore materialist, there may well be more to the universe than the concrete stuff that we are capable of observing. But I won't simply posit a belief in something that I can't reasonably prove to be true.

Guy Threepwood · Post by **Guy Threepwood** » Wed Aug 22, 2018 3:48 pm

[Replying to post 29 by DeMotts]

If you were on trial for a murder you didn't commit, would you want your jury to judge you based on evidence collected by the standards of scientific materialism? Would you be ok with the judge allowing men of faith, paranormal investigators, psychics and fortune tellers, alien abductees, to be heard with full credence?

more to the point though, if the victim was found with a knife in his back, should the Jury be told to reject any involvement of intelligent agency? It must restrict it's conclusions to some sort of unintended accident/ spontaneous mechanism?