07 September 2008

Does science make belief in God obsolete?

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Definition of God
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First off, to address the question "Does science make belief in God obsolete?," God has to be defined. All this talk of God, and seldom is it defined (if ever?) in these discussions.

I'll define God for the purposes of these discussions as being the final or ultimate cause, from which all else springs.

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Hypotheses
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Metaphysical entities exist and are palpable. (Examples are: love, loyalty, addition, beauty.)

Metaphysical entities are detectable with the instrument of human awareness.

God is the ultimate metaphysical entity.

The existence of metaphysical entities can be substantiated by groups of trained observers applying scientific method, just as, say, heliocentrism of the solar system is verifiable by trained astronomers.

Metaphysical entities very frequently, BUT NOT NECESSARILY, have physical correlates. (Example: Consider one who is experiencing the feeling of beauty, triggered by looking at a rose. The rose is the CORRELATE, but not the metaphysical ENTITY, of beauty. The metaphysical entity of beauty is palpable and discernible WITHOUT the rose or another physical correlate. Beauty in the abstract exists, and the human awareness is the device necessary to "pick it up." You don't necessarily need the rose. One can "feel beautiful.")

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Where a lot of people get hung up is thinking that scientific method is usable only by having physical instruments detect physical entities.

But, there is nothing barring using the human awareness as an instrument for objective detection of metaphysical entities.

Groups of individuals well-trained in scientific method can have very significant agreement about the existence of otherwise non-physical, or metaphysical, entities.

Take the concept of addition. Or beauty. Or loyalty. Or love. There is a vast consensus throughout history that these metaphysical entities exist. By what basis could one reasonably hypothesize that these entities do not exist? Some will say they are "merely" a construct of the mind. If that is so, is the existence of a distant star "merely" the construct of a telescope? and is the existence of bacteria "merely" the construct of a microscope? Not so.

Same with the metaphysical entities of loyalty and mathematical concepts and beauty and God.

I hypothesize that God is palpable and, ultimately, metaphysical, and very detectable with the human awareness by using scientific method (not wishful thinking, or denial, or imagination, or groupthink, or blind adherence to the words of others, or any of a number of counterfeit "verifications").

I hypothesize that all physical creation is collection of transient correlations of the non-transient metaphysical entity, God.

I hypothesize that God is not detectable on the physical plane using physical instruments, but is only detectable on the metaphysical plane using the physical/metaphysical interface of the human awareness.

So, in answer to the question "Does science make belief in God obsolete?," I say that the sustained application of scientific method using the human awareness can culminate, in the "hands" of gifted researchers, in a direct discernment of the ultimate metaphysical entity, God.

In short, scientific method is necessary to discern God. Moreover, I hypothesize that the inevitable outcome of sustained and properly executed application of scientific method is the discernment of God.

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An aside
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A religion is a recipe for finding or tapping God.

A religion is like a set of procedures that is hypothesized to lead on to God, but is all too often presented not as a hypothesis but as a certainty.

For example, one religion might say, "Don't eat meat on Fridays, and you'll be better able to tap God's power."

Another religion might say, "Kill infidels, and you'll tap into God."

Religions often turn off people to even considering that there might be a God because the rules of the religions are misunderstood or grossly misinterpreted, or taken out of context.

To me, the followers of a religion are best considered to be a group of scientists, as it were, testing out a group of hypotheses for finding God. Just as in conventional science, some research groups can be radically off base. Think of the earliest flying machines, for example.

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