"Can science prove God does not exist?"

Yahzi said:

This is a pretty big thing to toss off without even one example.
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Human language has rather many concepts that are inherently fuzzy, for example, cold and hot.

If the temperature drops to 0 degrees Centigrade in June, it is very cold. If it raises to 0 in January it is comfortably warm.

We did a demonstration in the 8th grade. There were three cups of water, one ice cold, one so hot that it could be barely touched, and one in the middle. We put one hand in the cold one, one in the hot one, and then simultaneuosly moved them to the middle one. The water was at the same time cold and warm.
 
Re: Re: "Can science prove God does not exist?"

T'ai Chi said:
From the article



I don't see how the conclusion (bolded, underlined by me) follows AT ALL from the premise. So if I don't need a god to explain something, that proves that no such god exists?

Logic aside, to prove a universal negative you have to look through all of time and space, past present and future, everywhere. Last time I checked, that was difficult to do.
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Not necessarily. All you have to do is prove that God has logically contradictory attributes. Just as square circles can't exist so goes for God. The trick is to nail down someone's definition of God well enough that you can actually define His attributes.
 
Re: Re: Re: "Can science prove God does not exist?"

Agammamon said:

All you have to do is prove that God has logically contradictory attributes.
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Yes, you can prove that every single specific god doesn't exist, but you cannot prove that the universe is goddless.
 
Re: Re: Re: Re: "Can science prove God does not exist?"

Upchurch said:
Yes, you can prove that every single specific god doesn't exist,
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Well this should be fun. Go on then.
 
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: "Can science prove God does not exist?"

Interesting Ian said:

Well this should be fun. Go on then.
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OK, I'll start.

I posit that God is a clearly visible blue walrus that eternally sits under every single table in the universe.

I just looked under my office table, and He wasn't there, so it seems that I just proved that He doesn't exist.

Who's next?

[Or, I might be lying, you better check your table yourself.]

Upchurch's point was that if you fix the definition of God, you can disprove his existence, at least in many cases.
 
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: "Can science prove God does not exist?"

Funny, Ian.
LW said:

Upchurch's point was that if you fix the definition of God, you can disprove his existence, at least in many cases.
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My point was that as long as you have an ambiguously defined concept of "God", it cannot be proven not to exist.
 
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: "Can science prove God does not exist?"

LW said:


OK, I'll start.

I posit that God is a clearly visible blue walrus that eternally sits under every single table in the universe.

I just looked under my office table, and He wasn't there, so it seems that I just proved that He doesn't exist.

Who's next?

[Or, I might be lying, you better check your table yourself.]

Upchurch's point was that if you fix the definition of God, you can disprove his existence, at least in many cases.
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Such a definition could not reasonably be labelled as God. How about my definition?
 
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: "Can science prove God does not exist?"

Interesting Ian said:

How about my definition?
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Personally, I don't see how your definition could be reasonably labelled as God.

edited to add:

Actually, there is at least one definition of god that I can prove exists. Where someone to have an idol in their home that they worshiped, one could prove that this god exists.
 
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: "Can science prove God does not exist?"

Interesting Ian said:


Such a definition could not reasonably be labelled as God.
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OK, fair enough. What about an omnipotent and omniscient clearly visible blue walrus that eternally sits under every table in the universe that he made 6000 years ago.
 
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: "Can science prove God does not exist?"

LW said:


OK, fair enough. What about an omnipotent and omniscient clearly visible blue walrus that eternally sits under every table in the universe that he made 6000 years ago.
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An omnipotent and omniscient clearly visible blue walrus that eternally sits under every table in the universe would, of course, be quite capable of making sure that everytime someone saw him they ignored him and forgot they'd ever seen him right away, so there's no way to ascertain through experimentation that such a beast does not exist.
 
Except that, as has been shown on this board many times, omnipotense is internally inconsistant. The fact that the sub-table blue walrus god is omnipotent makes it inconsistant and, thus, logically impossible. There really isn't even a need to check under the table for this one.
 
LW said:

Human language has rather many concepts that are inherently fuzzy, for example, cold and hot.
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With all due respect, that's just stupid.

The water is not cold and hot at the same time. The water is a single, fixed temperature. The fact that it is percieved differently is no more surprising than the fact that large buildings, from a long distance, look small. Would you assert that the building was both large and small, or that it changed size as you got closer?
 
Okay, let's go back to scientific principles.

A rocket has X mass as seen by a passanger in the rocket. The rocket has a Y mass (where X < Y) as seen by a person standing on a nearby planet. Thus, the rocket has the property X mass and not X mass at the same time.
 
All that this article attempts to do is raise Occam's Razor from a logical tool to some sort of universal law. As such, he is misapplying Occam's Razor. Occam doesn't prove anything. It merely directs us to logically choose one hypothesis over another.
 
Upchurch said:
Okay, let's go back to scientific principles.

A rocket has X mass as seen by a passanger in the rocket. The rocket has a Y mass (where X < Y) as seen by a person standing on a nearby planet. Thus, the rocket has the property X mass and not X mass at the same time.
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I don't follow this at all. Why would the mass be different?
 
Upchurch said:
Okay, let's go back to scientific principles.

A rocket has X mass as seen by a passanger in the rocket. The rocket has a Y mass (where X < Y) as seen by a person standing on a nearby planet. Thus, the rocket has the property X mass and not X mass at the same time.
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At the same time doesn't have any meaning.
 
Yahzi said:

With all due respect, that's just stupid.

The water is not cold and hot at the same time. The water is a single, fixed temperature.
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In case you haven't noticed, there exists a concept called 'coldness' in the English language (I just checked OED and Random House Webster's and both have the word). Coldness is (obviously) dependant on the temperature, but the two concepts are separate. You can measure the temperature of an object easily, but measuring coldness is much more difficult as it depends on the context. Can you provide an exact definition for the word "coldness" that can't be easily broken with a single counterexample?

If you want to attack my example, I'd suggest that you go on the line that "hot" and "cold" are not really mutually exclusive even though they are used that way in natural language.
 
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