Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Madhukar Kulkarni on August 3, 2012 at 6:30am

Science isn't going to prove any god described in any scripture of any religion. I can't vouch for others but as far as I am concerned, I am here because I am convinced that god is a fiction. Science will take us to the god, not a creator god, not a personal god but to the most elementary source of material, like the god particle, and may be the most elementay source of energy or something like that. I do not exert my brain by thinking about a hypothetical question, since the matter is fully settled in my mind. 

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Permalink Reply by Alan Perlman on August 3, 2012 at 3:29pm

This is the reply I most agree with.  I have long since become bored with activities like reconciling a perfect God with an imperfect, often evil world, or with logically proving that God does not exist. Case closed.  Raising impossible hyotheticals like the original question is more of the same.

Nobody's there. Case closed. I'm concentrating on what comes next.

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Permalink Reply by Joan Denoo on August 3, 2012 at 5:51pm

Alan, Changing the focus from trying to prove creationists fallacious to learning how to flourish under the influence of freethinkers, is a bit of an adjustment.

Years ago I was invited to teach college classes on an Indian Reservation preparing women to leave dependency on government "handouts" which were actually treaty agreements for their land and agreeing to go peacefully onto reservations. The USA government failed to live up to promises to educate the young or to supply basic necessities. Many women did not like the male leadership in their tribe, feeling left out in decision making and financial planning. Women wanted to learn leadership skills and improve the quality of their lives.  

The first thing I did was invite in women elders to tell their personal stories. Then we teased out things they did to survive in face of failed treaties. Natives felt angry because they had kept their part of treaties but USA did not. Many Native men and women turned to religion, many to alcohol, some gave up trying, others committed suicide.

I wanted to learn what these women experienced and how they coped. Then we moved to how they could overcome their history and create lives that were healthy and happy. My goal was to celebrate their Native history and enter a very different culture successfully. Today I would call that "flourishing", as defined by Martin Seligman,  Sam Harris and others.

Many women of all races and cultures and men as well, have left religion behind and live with different ways of defining morality, some want better marriages and family life, others want better working conditions and wages, increasingly, women want leadership roles. 

Being an atheist, agnostic, freethinker, secular humanist, or skeptic opens opportunities never dreamed of by women of my generation, and perhaps not for men, either. The one basic underlying thinking is there is no god, yahweh, allah or whatever name one would use for a deity. From there on, thriving and flourishing is open to interpretation. 

It seems to me that an individual who is flourishing has a strong sense of self, of realizing one has physical and emotional needs, most are equipped with sensory organs providing needed senses to perceive the internal and external world; that one is endowed with interests and skills unique to the individual that supports and sustains life; that one lives in communities of families, neighbors, nations, Earth and participates with others in ways that can be enriching for all; that one has a mind to think and reason and make decisions and solve problems and resolve conflicts.

With a strong sense of self and respect for other, meaning people, flora, fauna, water, soils, and air, one can learn how to live non-destructively.  

With an ability to think and reason, linked with the ability to act, one can make a difference in one's own life and in the lives of others, as well as the well-being of the Earth. 

All of that said, one has a scaffold upon which to build a life. 

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Permalink Reply by Joan Denoo on August 3, 2012 at 4:15pm

Madhukar, You make good sense. In addition to not thinking about hypothetical questions, trying to remember refutation of creationist or christian or religious claims, is a waste of time and energy. Just as soon as one irrational claim is countered, religious folks find another ... ad infinitum.

Nice to see your response. It has been a while since we shared comments.  

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Permalink Reply by Idaho Spud on August 3, 2012 at 6:05pm

So true Joan.  Irrational claims are infinite.  

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Permalink Reply by Joan Denoo on August 3, 2012 at 8:19am

If science proves god's existence, then it will be a god of war, of dispute, of intolerance, of domination, of oppression, of violence, of alienation WRIT BIG! If he/she/it/they created all these universes in one day, or one millennium, depending on how you define a day, then god should go on trial on poor engineering, faulty reasoning, lack of judgment, and irresponsibility. If god exists I will burn in hell and figure out a way to rebel. 

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Permalink Reply by Dr. Allan H. Clark on August 3, 2012 at 10:38am

Given that science only deals with material objects and effects on them, it would mean that God manifests himself as a material entity. That is, he would have a body, be visible, and be locatable in space.

This would certainly contradict most religious descriptions of God and would pose far more problems for religion than for disbelief. So the answer is that it would nullify all major religions which claim that God is pure spirit.

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Permalink Reply by Jonathan Chang on August 3, 2012 at 6:21pm

I agree with SGA Atheist that science cannot logically prove God. Perhaps he is an agnostic like me. However, God manifesting itself in material space doesn't necessarily contradict my agnosticism, nor most religions that I know of. For instance, at least 2 of the Big 3 -- Christianity and Islam -- explicitly state within their canon that God can manifest itself in physical form (i.e. Jesus). Most ancient religions also allow for Gods/deities interacting with mankind, influencing wars or natural disasters. Even some forms of Buddhism have deities that are personifications of humanly traits.

The only religions that disallow for physical manifestations of God that I think of are probably religions that exist entirely within the mind, like Zen Buddhism, Rastafarianism, or folk religions that state that when we die, we all return to the Earth or something.

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Permalink Reply by Dr. Allan H. Clark on August 3, 2012 at 6:33pm

I'm not quite as sure as you that Christians believe God manifests himself in physical form. If asked whether he could, most would say yes, God can do anything; but if asked whether God has manifested physically, I think most would confine that to his single appearance as Christ. Much of Christian tradition has affirmed the ineffability of God. It is a constant theme of theologians throughout history. The experience of God has usually been characterized as the mystical experience of a single individual.

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Permalink Reply by archaeopteryx on August 5, 2012 at 8:28am

With all due respect Dr. Clark, in its contributions to Genesis, the Yahwist (J) Source, writing around 950 BCE, consistently imagined a god capable of visiting earth in human form.

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Permalink Reply by Dr. Allan H. Clark on August 6, 2012 at 8:51pm

Yes, indeed. Moses saw God's backside, Adam and Eve heard his footsteps, and others heard his voice, but as time went on, God was less and less manifest in any physical way. The physical Christ is most always distinguished from Christ as God. This helps to explain such things as Christ saying that no man knows the time when the world will end: it was his human character that failed to know. A similar explanation is offered for his saying that none is good but God.

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Permalink Reply by archaeopteryx on August 6, 2012 at 9:45pm

RE: "as time went on, God was less and less manifest in any physical way."

The Hidden Face of God, by Richard Elliot Friedman, addresses this phenomena.

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