Tag Archives: Theism
“God does not exist” is not a scientific assertion
The statement, “God does not exist,” has never been, is not now, and never will be a scientific assertion. (See what I did there, Sagan?) This means that science, by its very definition, cannot be the epistemic justification for atheism. Yet how often do we see popular atheist writers (Dawkins, Harris, Dennett, et. al.) base entire books on the claim: “God doesn’t exist! Let me show you the science!”
Really? Science investigates the matter (including the physical bodies of living organisms), energy, and relationships/dynamics of matter and energy in the material universe. But if God exists, He is immaterial and transcends the material universe. Science, no matter how far it ever advances, cannot rule Him out because it can never reach beyond the physical.
…To say that there is no transcendent mind orchestrating what we are able to observe in the material realm is to make a purely metaphysical statement. Unfortunately, very few scientists are trained philosophers. Perhaps this is why they don’t notice the fallacy or the enormous amount of faith required by their paradigm.
…Essentially, anyone who makes the claim that science has destroyed or undermined theism is trying to piggyback their materialist philosophy onto scientific theories that cannot support the weight of such a piggy.
-Melissa Cain Travis,
Sorry; No Such Thing as a Scientific Argument Against the Existence of God
https://hcchristian.wordpress.com/2014/11/01/sorry-no-such-thing-as-a-scientific-argument-against-the-existence-of-god/
Discovering the mind of God
Theism presents an adequately rich basis for understanding the world in that it readily accommodates the many-layered character of a reality shot through with value. Scientific wonder at the rational order of the universe is indeed a partial reading of “the mind of God,” as the popular books asserted, speaking better, perhaps, than their authors might have realized.
Yet there is much more to the mind of God than science will ever discover. Our moral intuitions are imitations of the perfect divine will, our aesthetic pleasures a sharing in the Creator’s joy, our religious intuitions whispers of God’s presence.
–John Polkinghorne,
Belief in God in an Age of Science
It comes down to “what” or “who”
The whole war between the atheist and the theist comes down to this: the atheist believes a ‘what’ created the universe; the theist believes a ‘who’ created the universe.
― Criss Jami