Feel free to address any or all of the major religions as well as "personal spirituality"?

Why not?

Science attempts to answer questions of how the world works.

Problems arise when people attempt to use spirituality for this purpose, such as, say.. creationists do.

If you look at all the major sciences and who started the branches, you will see them filled with men who believed in a creator and believed in the Bible. We have Sir Isaac Newton, perhaps the greatest Scientist to ever live (although he is challenged by another scientist who believed in the Cretin account, Louis Pasteur,) and he wrote more about the Bible than he did about science, we have Nicolas Steno, the father of Modern Geology and Paleontology, we have Louis Pasteur, the father of Microbiology. In fact Louis Pasteur was a a strong opponent of Darwinism when the idea was first brought up. He also famous disproved spontaneous generation and showed that life cn only ever come from life. Even now there have been numerous attempts to get life from non life sources, but all have failed. If one can solve they can claim $1,000,000. Go here if you think you have solved the problem. http://www.lifeorigin.org/

If you look at all the major sciences and who started the branches, you will see them filled with men who believed in a creator and believed in the Bible. We have Sir Isaac Newton, perhaps the greatest Scientist to ever live (although he is challenged by another scientist who believed in the Cretin account, Louis Pasteur,) and he wrote more about the Bible than he did about science, we have Nicolas Steno, the father of Modern Geology and Paleontology, we have Louis Pasteur, the father of Microbiology. In fact Louis Pasteur was a a strong opponent of Darwinism when the idea was first brought up. He also famous disproved spontaneous generation and showed that life cn only ever come from life. Even now there have been numerous attempts to get life from non life sources, but all have failed. If one can solve they can claim $1,000,000. Go here if you think you have solved the problem. http://www.lifeorigin.org/

Louis Pasteur proved only that in the conditions he used life can't come from nowhere. He didn't prove that it can't come from completely different conditions over millions of years.

Just because someone important believed in something doesn't mean it is true. Aristotle was one of the wisest philosophers ever lived, but does this mean emancipation is wrong because he didn't support it? They lived in their time, when things were understood differently and scientifically less accurately.

And the most important question: is there any evidence of a creator outside a 3000 year old book based on the science of that time? Why should it be considered more accurate than the science of now?


But to avoid being off-topic, I think they can be compatible if spirituality isn't used to explain what or how, but rather why.

Spirituality is a character flaw: science is a methodology.
Of course they're compatible.

If you look at all the major sciences and who started the branches, you will see them filled with men who believed in a creator and believed in the Bible. We have Sir Isaac Newton, perhaps the greatest Scientist to ever live (although he is challenged by another scientist who believed in the Cretin account, Louis Pasteur,) and he wrote more about the Bible than he did about science, we have Nicolas Steno, the father of Modern Geology and Paleontology, we have Louis Pasteur, the father of Microbiology. In fact Louis Pasteur was a a strong opponent of Darwinism when the idea was first brought up. He also famous disproved spontaneous generation and showed that life cn only ever come from life. Even now there have been numerous attempts to get life from non life sources, but all have failed. If one can solve they can claim $1,000,000. Go here if you think you have solved the problem. http://www.lifeorigin.org/

Deism is not "spirituality".

Anyway, this thread needs to define spirituality in a non-vague way if it is to go anywhere.

Anyway, this thread needs to define spirituality in a non-vague way if it is to go anywhere.
Use whichever dictionary definition you prefer.

Science and spirituality are compatible, but one should never be used to discuss the other.


Ialthough he is challenged by another scientist who believed in the Cretin account, Louis Pasteur,)

Cretin? Is that a typo or am I missing a reference?



In fact Louis Pasteur was a a strong opponent of Darwinism when the idea was first brought up.

Oh really? I guess that explains his comments then:
""Virulence appears in a new light which cannot but be alarming to humanity; unless nature, in her evolution down the ages (an evolution which, as we now know, has been going on for millions, nay, hundreds of millions of years), has finally exhausted all the possibilities of producing virulent or contagious diseases - which does not seem very likely.""


He also famous disproved spontaneous generation and showed that life cn only ever come from life.
Not really. He showed that complex life (germs) can not spontaneously arise from non-life. He did not demonstrate the impossibility of very simple life arising from nonlife after a long series of chemical reactions.

They needn't be incompatible, but generally are.

Scientific spirituality. :p

They can be compatible, but needlessly aren't due to fanatics on the religious side, and zealots on the scientific side whom scare those into fanatics or zelots on their side, etc.

They can coexist like politics and religion. Well, in theory.

Well, they can coexist. I'm not sure about compatibility. But you can be both scientific and spiritual at the same time.

I do not see why not. A person could be looking to discover all the majesty of nature/God/gods/spirits/what have you.

Use whichever dictionary definition you prefer.

Then yes! :)

I know a few people who are both and it works perfectly fine as long as either side doesnt get too zealous. If you can make science work with spirituality, as in discovering the majesty of god, or w/e it is that is present in your spirituality, and you use spirituality to supplement the science, I do not see why they shouldnt work.

Okay, this thread's gonna be pretty boring if everyone just answers yes :p

Spirituality and science are incompatible. If you agree that scientific method is the only (or at the very least, the best) way of determining objective truth, then one must apply the same to spirituality. But when one does, one is forced to conclude that, lacking evidence, there's no "higher power", no "afterlife", no "astral plane" to which the worthy ascend, nothing.

That is, of course, if we assume that it is unreasonable (or at the very least, undesirable) to believe true something that cannot be proven true. But if you don't assume that, then what interest would you have in science? If you allow yourself to believe something without proof, then why would you even bother with science at all? It would be much quicker to just say, "God did it," and be done with it.

Hence, science and spirituality are incompatible.

Science attempts to explain.

If religion can cope with the 'new' 'truths' then it is compatable.

Science attempts to explain.

If religion can cope with the 'new' 'truths' then it is compatable.

Won't that lead to a sort of cognitive dissonance? If you know that it is like this, but know also that it is not, that's not compatible, is it?

They are compatible as long you don't try to answer the same question with both.

science and religon are only compatible if they agree with one another, which rarely hapens.

science and religon are only compatible if they agree with one another
Without twisting science to suit religion
which rarely hapens.
true.

From personal experience, I don't think it is possible. I've been trying to reconcile the two, but my education in science has damaged my faith.

No, Science, Spirituality and Religion makes bad bed fellows.
There not compatible.

No, Science, Spirituality and Religion makes bad bed fellows.
There not compatible.

How can't they be?
So which would you choose to what extent?

Science and spirituality are quite compatible. Just go to any bar/pub/biergarten near a university...

not really. science is about testing, observing, and coming up with facts. spirituality is about believing in irrational stuff.

Even so sometimes you just have to take the lab coat off and break out the lucky rabbits foot and believe in something before your mind explodes.

Spirituality is not necessarily about believing in irrational stuff. In fact, i think in the Dark and early Middle ages the best scholars were Muslim...they were spiritual, and scientific.

Yes, why wouldn't they be? I definitely think they are.

Possibly.

I believe that religions have a set of beliefs that they accept as true, as that's what they're told to believe. Basically, this is the truth, end of story.

Science on the other hand tries to explain, break down how it works, and find out why. It goes in depth trying to learn and explain every last little detail in order to learn.

If they both come up with a similar or the same answer, then yes, they can be compatible.

--------------------------

Now I will quote my signature (which ties into my little summary of religion and why it doesn't generally coincide with science):

I think, therefore, I'm atheist.

absolutely narz!

the problem with religious zealots is that they fail to compartmentalize there own spirituality. for some reason they feel like putting there religion on a pedestal. and then when they do that, they shut out anything which condradicts there super awesome book of truth.

and it's sad, because ultimately religion and science are both rooted in achieving truth.

the two could co-exist and be compatable in harmony, but never as one. people must learn to rationalize religion, and there own personal spirituality. they need to learn to seperate it from science.

absolutely narz!

the problem with religious zealots is that they fail to compartmentalize there own spirituality. for some reason they feel like putting there religion on a pedestal. and then when they do that, they shut out anything which condradicts there super awesome book of truth.

and it's sad, because ultimately religion and science are both rooted in achieving truth.

the two could co-exist and be compatable in harmony, but never as one. people must learn to rationalize religion, and there own personal spirituality. they need to learn to seperate it from science.

To be honest, there are scientific zealots, and your post could be rewritten by substituting religion with science and have the exact same weight.

I agree Masquerouge, indeed zealots are not limited to religion or science. I read years ago an essay by the late Asimov who wrote about scientific zealots, which stressed the importance of maintaining an open mind and not becoming emotionally attached to your discoveries.

I believe there is no inherent conflict between science and religion. Individuals make the conflict.

I believe there is no inherent conflict between science and religion. Individuals make the conflict.

No conflict? Science argues against the supernatural and faith, and religion disdains the "rational" investigations of science. To believe in two doctrines needs a certain amount of self-delusion.

No, science investigates how the universe works. It is humans that use science to promote a particular agenda. Likewise, it is humans that use their faith to promote views that run against established scientific theories.

The existence of the natural does not rule out the existence of the supernatural.

No, science investigates how the universe works. It is humans that use science to promote a particular agenda. Likewise, it is humans that use their faith to promote views that run against established scientific theories.
Then what is pure science? And for that matter, what is pure religion?

The existence of the natural does not rule out the existence of the supernatural.
Disease was once thought to be supernatural...

Yes, with the caveat that they are on relatively different time schedules.

Science is largely a tool and process to find fact and rigoursly justify explanations of fact. Religion (organized spirituality) can be you meaning in life and your source of ethics, and a reason to pursue science. But Religion as a tool and process to invent facts, or non-rigoursly create explanations is a very bad idea, in my view.

Similarly, I strongly dislike science used to propagate religious belief, as well as religion dressed up to look like science. Science and religion are distinct processes that should be kept separate in my view.

Science is merely the practice of learning how the laws of physics work.

How those laws of physics came to be, is something else entirely.

This thread belongs in OT. I thought the purpose of this forum was to discuss only scientific or technological matters, not raise vague questions about their relation to other topics. And as usual in threads like that, we see a lot of hot air with precious little illumination.

Spirituality and science are incompatible. If you agree that scientific method is the only (or at the very least, the best) way of determining objective truth, then one must apply the same to spirituality.

Your argument is poor, because why must anyone suppose that the scientific method is the only or best way of determining objective truth? To believe in science requires only that you think it's the only or best way of determining scientific truth, perhaps defined as truth about the physical world. But there's no reason why someone can't accept that while also thinking that there are other sources of different kinds of knowledge, such as knowledge of logic or mathematics. Similarly, I could believe in the scientific method as applied to the physical world but also believe that God has revealed truths about non-physical things such as the existence and nature of the spiritual realm. There is no inconsistency in such a belief. Moreover, such a belief might not only be consistent but be rational too. If I find myself experiencing what appears to be supernatural revelation on a regular basis (perhaps beliefs or notions just pop into my head), and some of this revelation concerns (say) things that are about to happen, and subsequent events invariably match the revelation, then I might well be rationally justified in concluding that this apparent revelation is reliable. And I might well be rationally justified in concluding that other things it tells me - such as claims about supernatural things - is also true.

But when one does, one is forced to conclude that, lacking evidence, there's no "higher power", no "afterlife", no "astral plane" to which the worthy ascend, nothing.

One can conclude that only if one supposes that absence of evidence is evidence of absence. But it would be a mistake to suppose that.

Besides, if you think that the scientific method is really the only means of determining objective truth, and you also think that the scientific method can tell us nothing about "spiritual" matters, then you should conclude that we can't know either way. You can't conclude with a definite "no".

That is, of course, if we assume that it is unreasonable (or at the very least, undesirable) to believe true something that cannot be proven true.

That's also a pretty wild assumption. You can't prove that the world is older than ten minutes; you can't prove that your parents love you; you can't prove that we're not living in the Matrix. But it doesn't follow that it is unreasonable to believe these things.

But if you don't assume that, then what interest would you have in science? If you allow yourself to believe something without proof, then why would you even bother with science at all? It would be much quicker to just say, "God did it," and be done with it.

You seem to overlook the possibility that someone might prefer to believe only what can be proven true, but in the absence of definite proof, is willing to plump for only what seems to be most likely to be true. That's an example of how one might reject the notion that one should believe only what can be proven, yet still be interested in science.

Besides, science only "proves" theories in the old-fashioned sense of the word "prove", which is "test"; the more tested a theory is the better it is (assuming it stands up to the tests), but no theory is ever 100% final and watertight. Moreover, "provenness" is a matter of degree. Some theories are more proven than others. But you seem to want to divide claims up into two distinct camps, those that are "proven" and those that are "unproven", and restrict belief to the former camp. But there is no such hard-and-fast division. There is no black and white, only shades of grey.

What I'm trying to say is that neither in science nor in everyday life do we restrict our beliefs to what can be "proven" in the modern sense of the word. Perhaps we believe what best fits the evidence, which is what scientists do, but that is not the same thing as proof.

Perhaps, when you talk about the undesirability of believing something without proof, you actually mean believing something without any reason to believe it at all; belief that is completely arbitrary and irrational. I'd agree that such belief would be wholly undesirable, but I know of no good reason to suppose that belief in "spirituality" must be like that.

No conflict? Science argues against the supernatural and faith, and religion disdains the "rational" investigations of science. To believe in two doctrines needs a certain amount of self-delusion.

This is simply ludicrous; science, by its very nature, doesn't say anything whatsoever about the supernatural. It certainly doesn't say anything about "faith", whatever you mean by that word. And religion certainly doesn't disdain "rational" investigation, although it may not be very interested in it. This is mere assertion without any substance to it at all.

This is simply ludicrous; science, by its very nature, doesn't say anything whatsoever about the supernatural. It certainly doesn't say anything about "faith", whatever you mean by that word. And religion certainly doesn't disdain "rational" investigation, although it may not be very interested in it. This is mere assertion without any substance to it at all.
Somehow I already foresaw us arguing about the definition of science and religion. And I'm pretty sure if I said science hasn't proven any of religion's tenets, and that we should use cautious skepticism in belief, I'd be attacked. Viciously.

I am curious aobut one of your statements though. How is it that we cannot prove that the world is older than 10 minutes?

Somehow I already foresaw us arguing about the definition of science and religion. And I'm pretty sure if I said science hasn't proven any of religion's tenets, and that we should use cautious skepticism in belief, I'd be attacked. Viciously.

Ah, but that's not what you said there. It's one thing to say that science hasn't proven anything in religion and that we should be cautiously sceptical about such matters - it's quite another to say that science actually argues against religion and that religion actually rejects rational investigation. If your post above means that you're abandoning the latter, more improbable claim and sticking only to the former, more reasonable one, then I'd be glad to agree with you!

I am curious aobut one of your statements though. How is it that we cannot prove that the world is older than 10 minutes?

Well, suppose someone believed that the universe popped into being ten minutes ago precisely as it is now. He thinks that we ourselves were created at the same time, complete with all our "memories" - false memories, of course. Perhaps he thinks the world was created by a capricious god who wants to fool us, or perhaps he doesn't have any hypothesis to explain how the world came into being complete with apparent evidence of age; he just thinks it's true. There is absolutely no evidence or argument you could produce that would persuade this person that he is wrong, because all possible evidence is equally compatible with his belief that the world is ten minutes old and with your own belief that it is billions of years old. For example, if you say you remember things happening yesterday, he will say that those are pseudo-memories that you were created with ten minutes ago, and yesterday never really happened at all. If you point to an ancient oak tree and say that its rings show it is decades old, he will say it was created that way, already "old". If you point to history books, he will say that they also popped into being ten minutes ago, complete with their fictional contents. If you point to the light from distant stars, which must have begun travelling to us centuries ago in order for us to see it now, he will say that that light popped into being ten minutes ago, ten light-minutes away from us. And so on and so forth. Any evidence for the antiquity of the universe could equally be evidence for pseudo-antiquity.

The point is that even though you can't prove it either way, we wouldn't normally think it is rational to believe that the world is only ten minutes old - indeed it would be ludicrous to believe such a thing, while it is rational to believe that the world is much older than that. And that suggests that we do think it's possible to believe something, and to do so rationally, even when that claim can't be proven. Philosophers in the "Reformed epistemology" school, such as Alvin Plantinga, argue that examples such as this show that religious faith may be rational even where it is not evidentialist.

Well, suppose someone believed that the universe popped into being ten minutes ago precisely as it is now. He thinks that we ourselves were created at the same time, complete with all our "memories" - false memories, of course. Perhaps he thinks the world was created by a capricious god who wants to fool us,On what would he be basing this belief? The most elegant solution is that the Universe is as old as it looks; to 'believe' any other scenario is to complicate matters beyond what is observed without any reason. If there is evidence that the universe is X years old, why would this guy be assuming otherwise without any evidence to the contrary? Clearly he is not applying reason because his conclusion is contrary to his proposition.
I could believe in the scientific method as applied to the physical world but also believe that God has revealed truths about non-physical things such as the existence and nature of the spiritual realm. There is no inconsistency in such a belief.And what 'truths' would these be? I suspect they would not stand up to much scrutiny.
One can conclude that only if one supposes that absence of evidence is evidence of absence. But it would be a mistake to suppose that.Cute. But it is still more elegant to assume something does not exist if there is no reason to suppose that it does. It would be hard to list all the things for which we have no evidence of absence, which one's would you be happy to rule out?

1) God
2) The Flying Spaghetti Monster
3) Invisible pink unicorns
4) The Tooth Fairy...

Your argument is essentially 'you don't know it doesn't exist' which is a simple ad ignorantium.
This is simply ludicrous; science, by its very nature, doesn't say anything whatsoever about the supernatural.Demonstrate the validity of a Dualist viewpoint please.

On what would he be basing this belief? The most elegant solution is that the Universe is as old as it looks; to 'believe' any other scenario is to complicate matters beyond what is observed without any reason. If there is evidence that the universe is X years old, why would this guy be assuming otherwise without any evidence to the contrary? Clearly he is not applying reason because his conclusion is contrary to his proposition.

That's irrelevant to the point I was trying to make, which is that you can't prove such a theory to be false. Whether anyone could rationally believe in that theory is neither here nor there; the point is that it is an example of a theory which we would normally think it is rational to reject even when we cannot prove it false.

And what 'truths' would these be? I suspect they would not stand up to much scrutiny.

What difference does that make? My point was simply that it would not be inconsistent to believe them and at the same time believe in the validity of the scientific method for the investigation of the physical world. The question whether either of these beliefs would itself be justifiable is distinct.

Cute. But it is still more elegant to assume something does not exist if there is no reason to suppose that it does. It would be hard to list all the things for which we have no evidence of absence, which one's would you be happy to rule out?

1) God
2) The Flying Spaghetti Monster
3) Invisible pink unicorns
4) The Tooth Fairy...

Also cute, but your reasoning is flawed, because it could plausibly be argued that we do have good reason to suppose that most of these things don't exist, in addition to lack of reason that they do. For example, the Tooth Fairy is unlikely to exist because such a creature is intrinsically improbable; it is hard to imagine how a creature could exist that zips about collecting children's teeth, or why it would do so, or how it could have arisen. Considerations such as that make the Tooth Fairy intrinsically unlikely; and it is when you combine this with the lack of evidence for its existence that you can legitimately conclude that it probably doesn't exist. The lack of evidence for its existence alone would not be enough to draw that conclusion. So in other words, you are wrong to say that there is no evidence of absence of entities such as these; their very nature is evidence of that kind.

Now if there were something like that which is not intrinsically improbable, but for which there is no evidence either way, then I think it would be rational to suspend judgement. In the absence of evidence, assumption of non-existence is as unreasonable as assumption of existence; one should assume as little as possible either way.

In the case of God, plenty of people have argued that there is evidence of his absence, and that in two main ways: first, in a way analogous to the argument I just gave about the Tooth Fairy, namely that God as he is usually described is either impossible or highly unlikely. One such suggestion is that it is impossible for a being to be both omnipotent and omniscient, since an omniscient being must know what it's like to be powerless, but an omnipotent being cannot ever be powerless. If arguments like that work then God is an impossible being and we know he doesn't exist. The alternative method is to say that the world as it appears to be is incompatible with the existence of God; for example, if God existed then there wouldn't be suffering, but there is, so he doesn't exist. Both of these kinds of argument seem perfectly reasonable to me and to constitute at least plausible candidates for "evidence of absence" of God.

So in answer to your question, I don't think that any of the candidates you suggest should be on the list of Entities For Which There Is No Evidence Of Absence.

Demonstrate the validity of a Dualist viewpoint please.

Gladly, if you explain exactly what you mean by "Dualist" (and "validity", come to that) and why it's relevant to this issue.

That's irrelevant to the point I was trying to make, which is that you can't prove such a theory to be false. Whether anyone could rationally believe in that theory is neither here nor there; the point is that it is an example of a theory which we would normally think it is rational to reject even when we cannot prove it false.Well if it falls foul of the principle that meaningful theories must be falsifiable then I see no problem.
What difference does that make? My point was simply that it would not be inconsistent to believe them and at the same time believe in the validity of the scientific method for the investigation of the physical world. The question whether either of these beliefs would itself be justifiable is distinct.The inconsistency arises when the scientific method becomes increasingly able to explain 'spiritual' phenomenon in purely physical, materialistic terms. The existence of a 'spiritual reality' as well as the physical one is looking increasingly unlikely. And that is before you question what it means for such an alternate existence to really be separate from physical reality if it can interact with it.
Also cute, but your reasoning is flawed, because it could plausibly be argued that we do have good reason to suppose that most of these things don't exist, in addition to lack of reason that they do. For example, the Tooth Fairy is unlikely to exist because such a creature is intrinsically improbable; it is hard to imagine how a creature could exist that zips about collecting children's teeth, or why it would do so, or how it could have arisen.I might say the same of God.
Now if there were something like that which is not intrinsically improbable, but for which there is no evidence either way, then I think it would be rational to suspend judgement. In the absence of evidence, assumption of non-existence is as unreasonable as assumption of existence; one should assume as little as possible either way.Here I will agree, I see no reason to object to the existence of aliens as they are certainly possible, and may be discovered, or disproven in due course.
In the case of God, plenty of people have argued that there is evidence of his absence, and that in two main ways:
Well, the omniscient/omnipotent argument I dislike as it is a pure wordgame. I prefer a variation on the second: as Dawkins puts it, the idea that the whole universe (a place in which complexity arises out of simple beginnings) was created by God (the simplicity was created by complexity) is entirely contrary to the way the universe works.

There is also the glaring issue of having to explain how God can exist a priori if the universe can't.
So in answer to your question, I don't think that any of the candidates you suggest should be on the list of Entities For Which There Is No Evidence Of Absence.Is it me or did you just rule out God?
Gladly, if you explain exactly what you mean by "Dualist" (and "validity", come to that) and why it's relevant to this issue.When I say 'valid' I mean consistent with scientific observation. Dualism is the idea that there exist entirely separate spiritual and physical existences. I pointed out the increasing flaw in this viewpoint above.

Well if it falls foul of the principle that meaningful theories must be falsifiable then I see no problem.

That principle has been comprehensively trashed since the (brief) period when it was in vogue among logical positivists, though. Indeed the increasingly evident implausibility of that principle was one of the major factors behind the demise of logical positivism. For example, the claim that the world popped into existence only ten minutes ago seems to me to be a perfectly meaningful claim, even though it's ludicrous; it's certainly distinct from the rival claim that the world has existed for billions of years. If we think - as we surely do - that one claim is reasonable and the other is ludicrous, then we must agree that there is a difference between them, even though it is impossible to prove that one is false and the other is true. And the mere fact that you ask why my imaginary lunatic believes it, even in the absence of evidence, suggests that you also consider it a meaningful though deluded claim.

The inconsistency arises when the scientific method becomes increasingly able to explain 'spiritual' phenomenon in purely physical, materialistic terms.

I don't see how that follows at all. Of course science has been able to explain all sorts of things in purely naturalistic ways that were previously "explained" by appealing to supernatural causes; such as lightning and so on. But how does that make it inconsistent to believe in both the scientific method and spiritual things? For the last two centuries at least it has been commonplace among theologians that there are no miracles, in the traditional sense of the term at all; that all physical events have natural, physical causes; and that there is no supernatural "meddling" in the world at all. But you can believe that without giving up belief in the spiritual; you need only give up belief in a meddling spiritual world. I suppose Schleiermacher would be the grand-daddy of that sort of view.

Besides this, there are also many theologians who simply re-define spirituality to refer not to some ghostly realm above the sky but to our attitudes to the physical and social world we see about us. On this view, to be "spiritual" is simply to live in a certain way and have a certain attitude; it has nothing to do with how we relate to some extra-physical reality. Don Cupitt is the most well known theologian of that school today. And if he's right then "spirituality" is completely immune from any scientific or pseudo-scientific arguments that there may be against traditional theistic metaphysics, because spirituality doesn't depend upon accepting such metaphysics - or any metaphysics at all.

The existence of a 'spiritual reality' as well as the physical one is looking increasingly unlikely.

It may be unlikely, but I don't see that that's got anything to do with science. I just don't see how science can say anything about the subject. Science is about the physical world. The most it could tell us on this subject is that the physical world is self-contained and everything in it can be explained fully without referring to anything outside it. So it wouldn't shed any light at all upon the existence or otherwise of other things; it wouldn't be able to provide any evidence one way or the other.

And that is before you question what it means for such an alternate existence to really be separate from physical reality if it can interact with it.

That's an interesting point, although I suppose that at least in principle there's nothing wrong with saying that two things are distinct but connected. I can interact with you but we are quite separate and distinct. Similarly, perhaps spiritual and physical things could interact but be separate and distinct - although of course explaining how that interaction would occur is notoriously difficult.

Still, don't you think there's something inconsistent about saying that (a) any genuinely spiritual realm would have to be completely cut off from the physical realm, with no interaction between them, and (b) studying the physical realm can provide evidence for or against the existence of the spiritual realm? That's like saying that the history of eighteenth-century French politics is completely unconnected to the structure of volcanoes on Mars, while insisting that studying the one can tell us something about the other.

I might say the same of God.

Well, that was exactly my point, so I'm glad you agree with me. I thought you were saying, before, that the mere absence of evidence for God was enough to draw the conclusion that he doesn't exist. But if you're now saying that there is positive evidence for his non-existence, then that's the point I was trying to make.

Well, the omniscient/omnipotent argument I dislike as it is a pure wordgame.

I don't know why you say that; what makes it "a pure wordgame", and why is that a bad thing? Don't you think these words mean anything? How is the Dawkins argument any less of a "wordgame"?

I prefer a variation on the second: as Dawkins puts it, the idea that the whole universe (a place in which complexity arises out of simple beginnings) was created by God (the simplicity was created by complexity) is entirely contrary to the way the universe works.

That seems a poor argument to me. By definition, God is something distinct from the universe; to say that the hypothesis that he created the universe is inconsistent with the way the universe works is thus rather irrelevant. You might as well say that it is in the nature of clockwork toys to be run by clockwork, and conclude that a human being cannot make such a toy, because human beings are not run by clockwork. Obviously that would be daft because there's no reason why the origins of a clockwork toy would have to conform to the pattern of the internal workings of that toy. Similarly, I don't see what would be wrong with saying that the universe was caused by an external agent in a way different from the ways in which the internal workings of the universe run. I think there are much better arguments against God than that.

There is also the glaring issue of having to explain how God can exist a priori if the universe can't.

Yes, well that's one of them. I don't know if that's insuperable though; it simply depends upon how you define God. For example, if you take a Leibnizian strategy of identifying God with logical space, then the necessary existence of any logical truths (including possibility) entails that God necessarily exists. The difficulty then lies in getting from that rather abstract notion of God to something more interesting.

Is it me or did you just rule out God?

Yes, there's evidence against the existence of all of those entities, including God. Of course that mere fact doesn't in itself mean he doesn't exist. My point was that when people deny the existence of any of the entities on your list, including God, it is generally not simply because there is an absence of evidence for their existence; it is because they think there is good reason against their existence. That's the case whether they're right or wrong in their conclusions.

When I say 'valid' I mean consistent with scientific observation. Dualism is the idea that there exist entirely separate spiritual and physical existences. I pointed out the increasing flaw in this viewpoint above.

Well, as I said, I don't see how belief in spiritual existences is inconsistent with scientific observation. If you can give me examples of scientific experiments or well-founded theories that give good reason to suppose that such spiritual entities don't exist then I'll be interested to hear them. But I don't think there are, because by definition, scientific observations cover physical things only.

Before I start, I'll point out again that I only made that post because everyone was saying "yes". I also said "yes". But I wasn't using compatible in the same way as I am using it now. Anyway....

Your argument is poor, because why must anyone suppose that the scientific method is the only or best way of determining objective truth? To believe in science requires only that you think it's the only or best way of determining scientific truth, perhaps defined as truth about the physical world.
By "physical world", you mean the world that we can experience? As in, if something lies in the physical world, we can detect its presence? And if something (say, spiritual) is fundamentally undetectable (e.g. by definition, or by some peculiarity of nature), then it is not of this physical world, and isn't 'determinable' through scientific method?

But if something is fundamentally undetectable, then it fundamentally cannot have any influence on our physical world. In which case, what's the point in its existence?

It's like telling you there's a man who always stands behind you -- you can't see him, you can't touch him, and he can't influence you in any way. So would it matter if he was there or not?

(I'm italicising "can't" to show that it's fundamentally impossible for him to interact with you in any way.)

But there's no reason why someone can't accept that while also thinking that there are other sources of different kinds of knowledge, such as knowledge of logic or mathematics.
Scientific method is used in the absence of logic or mathematics. It's really an extension of inductive and abductive reasoning. But if one can define spirituality in terms of either of those then I'm willing to hear it.

Similarly, I could believe in the scientific method as applied to the physical world but also believe that God has revealed truths about non-physical things such as the existence and nature of the spiritual realm. There is no inconsistency in such a belief.
God as in a physical being or a spiritual being? If physical, then it would be inconsistent to trust in his existence without applying scientific method (since one who trusts physical truths via scientific method would only trust in a physical God's existence via scientific method).

If God is purely spiritual, then it's circular reasoning.

Moreover, such a belief might not only be consistent but be rational too. If I find myself experiencing what appears to be supernatural revelation on a regular basis (perhaps beliefs or notions just pop into my head), and some of this revelation concerns (say) things that are about to happen, and subsequent events invariably match the revelation, then I might well be rationally justified in concluding that this apparent revelation is reliable. And I might well be rationally justified in concluding that other things it tells me - such as claims about supernatural things - is also true.
Remember we're talking about someone who applies scientific method to the physical world, as you defined earlier. Someone who does that might be justified via scientific method in trusting his visions to predict the future, but not in extrapolating that to untestable hypotheses related to the supernatural.

One can conclude that only if one supposes that absence of evidence is evidence of absence. But it would be a mistake to suppose that.

Besides, if you think that the scientific method is really the only means of determining objective truth, and you also think that the scientific method can tell us nothing about "spiritual" matters, then you should conclude that we can't know either way. You can't conclude with a definite "no".
Yeah, exactly -- scientific method tells us not to assume that spiritual things exist, whereas spirituality assumes that spiritual things exist.


That's also a pretty wild assumption. You can't prove that the world is older than ten minutes; you can't prove that your parents love you; you can't prove that we're not living in the Matrix. But it doesn't follow that it is unreasonable to believe these things.
For Last Thursdayism/Matrix, you can say that a newly created world is fundamentally indistinguishable from a world that was created 4.6bn years ago. In science, if something is fundamentally indistinguishable, they are identical, and interchanging them doesn't make a difference. So the difference between the Matrix world and a 4.6bn year old world is purely semantic. There's no substantive difference, so who cares whether it was made last thursday, or 4.6bn years ago? At least that's what science tells you to think.

For love, you can prove it in as much as anything can be proven. We can define love as a series of actions, or a set of behaviour. If a person exhibits that behaviour, he's in love.


You seem to overlook the possibility that someone might prefer to believe only what can be proven true, but in the absence of definite proof, is willing to plump for only what seems to be most likely to be true. That's an example of how one might reject the notion that one should believe only what can be proven, yet still be interested in science.
It's an example of a God of the Gaps. Moreover, it only addresses what is not currently proven -- i.e. things that might some day be proven but at our current level of scientific advancement haven't been. However, even this weaker condition is inconsistent within a scientific framework. As you've said in your first paragraph, scientific method can be applied to prove true anything in the physical world, i.e. anything that we can interact with. Someone who believes that would not require spirituality to fill any gaps. And as I've said in my first paragraph, if we can't interact with something, it might as well not exist.

In short, only physical things matter, only physical things can be proven, and the best way of proving physical things is scientific method. There's no room for spirituality here, because accepting that X is caused by spiritual stuff is to deny scientific method.

Besides, science only "proves" theories in the old-fashioned sense of the word "prove", which is "test"; the more tested a theory is the better it is (assuming it stands up to the tests), but no theory is ever 100% final and watertight. Moreover, "provenness" is a matter of degree. Some theories are more proven than others. But you seem to want to divide claims up into two distinct camps, those that are "proven" and those that are "unproven", and restrict belief to the former camp. But there is no such hard-and-fast division. There is no black and white, only shades of grey.
There may not be black, but there's certainly white. As in, there may not be 100% proof for anything, but there are certainly things that haven't been proved. Further, there are things that cannot be proved.

What I'm trying to say is that neither in science nor in everyday life do we restrict our beliefs to what can be "proven" in the modern sense of the word. Perhaps we believe what best fits the evidence, which is what scientists do, but that is not the same thing as proof.
I think you're taking proof too literally, in that case. Either way, what evidence does "spirituality" fit?

Perhaps, when you talk about the undesirability of believing something without proof, you actually mean believing something without any reason to believe it at all; belief that is completely arbitrary and irrational. I'd agree that such belief would be wholly undesirable, but I know of no good reason to suppose that belief in "spirituality" must be like that.

The gist of what I'm saying is, if spirituality lies within the domain in which scientific method can be trusted, and one trusts scientific method, then it should be put to the test before we start believing in "spiritual" things. And if spirituality lies outside the domain in which scientific method can be trusted, then it lies in some domain that cannot interact with us. If it can't interact with us, then it has absolutely no impact on our lives whatsoever.

Good post Mise, you've said a lot of what I would have.

I'd particularly like this question answered:what evidence does "spirituality" fit?As I suspect the answer is 'none'.
That principle has been comprehensively trashed since the (brief) period when it was in vogue among logical positivists, though. Indeed the increasingly evident implausibility of that principle was one of the major factors behind the demise of logical positivism. For example, the claim that the world popped into existence only ten minutes ago seems to me to be a perfectly meaningful claim, even though it's ludicrous; In what way is it meaningful? Does it tell us anything useful? Can we verify it? Can we in fact tell the difference in any way whatsoever? The answer to these questions is a resounding no. Which makes me question why you think it is meaningful? Yes the words are simple, but this does not give them meaning.
...For the last two centuries at least it has been commonplace among theologians that there are no miracles, in the traditional sense of the term at all; that all physical events have natural, physical causes; and that there is no supernatural "meddling" in the world at all. But you can believe that without giving up belief in the spiritual; you need only give up belief in a meddling spiritual world...So you insist that the 'spiritual' realm is entirely isolated from physical reality? How then do you infer that it exists? How can it affect you in any way?
Besides this, there are also many theologians who simply re-define spirituality to refer not to some ghostly realm above the sky but to our attitudes to the physical and social world we see about us. On this view, to be "spiritual" is simply to live in a certain way and have a certain attitude; it has nothing to do with how we relate to some extra-physical reality. Don Cupitt is the most well known theologian of that school today. And if he's right then "spirituality" is completely immune from any scientific or pseudo-scientific arguments that there may be against traditional theistic metaphysics, because spirituality doesn't depend upon accepting such metaphysics - or any metaphysics at all.Either way you look at it here, you are either talking about the God of (rapidly shrinking) gaps, or admitting that spirituality is merely a human habit of interpreting a purely physical reality. The former is unsound reasoning, the second an admission of defeat.
...Science is about the physical world. The most it could tell us on this subject is that the physical world is self-contained and everything in it can be explained fully without referring to anything outside it. So it wouldn't shed any light at all upon the existence or otherwise of other things; it wouldn't be able to provide any evidence one way or the other....and yet those who describe themselves as 'spiritual' tend to think they have knowledge of some other realm...
That's an interesting point, although I suppose that at least in principle there's nothing wrong with saying that two things are distinct but connected. I can interact with you but we are quite separate and distinct. Similarly, perhaps spiritual and physical things could interact but be separate and distinct - although of course explaining how that interaction would occur is notoriously difficult.You and I are merely seperated by distance in space. We consist of the same kind of matter and are virually identical in a number of ways. There are a vast array of ways in which we could interact, indeed we are doing so now. I think that's fairly obviously different and this assertion that the physical and spiritual can interact condradicts what you have already said.
Still, don't you think there's something inconsistent about saying that (a) any genuinely spiritual realm would have to be completely cut off from the physical realm, with no interaction between them, and (b) studying the physical realm can provide evidence for or against the existence of the spiritual realm? That's like saying that the history of eighteenth-century French politics is completely unconnected to the structure of volcanoes on Mars, while insisting that studying the one can tell us something about the other.Yes. And the inconsistency is entirely yours from where i'm sitting. My position is that given a) we would be unable to do any more than guess about this other realm and we would have to admit that it could have no possible influence or meaning to us, or b) the 'spiritual' realm is merely a subset of our empirical reality.
I don't know why you say that; what makes it "a pure wordgame", and why is that a bad thing? Don't you think these words mean anything? How is the Dawkins argument any less of a "wordgame"?Well, the words 'Omniscient' and 'Omnipotent' are pretty nebulous in meaning, so I find it hard to see how we can build a robust aregument around them - it's like dividing infinities in maths.
That seems a poor argument to me. By definition, God is something distinct from the universe; to say that the hypothesis that he created the universe is inconsistent with the way the universe works is thus rather irrelevant. You might as well say that it is in the nature of clockwork toys to be run by clockwork, and conclude that a human being cannot make such a toy, because human beings are not run by clockwork. Obviously that would be daft because there's no reason why the origins of a clockwork toy would have to conform to the pattern of the internal workings of that toy. Similarly, I don't see what would be wrong with saying that the universe was caused by an external agent in a way different from the ways in which the internal workings of the universe run. I think there are much better arguments against God than that.Your analogy is a poor one tbh; the same simple mechanics that run clockwork toys apply to you.
Is God separate from the universe? I keep hearing he isn't...
Yes, well that's one of them. I don't know if that's insuperable though; it simply depends upon how you define God. For example, if you take a Leibnizian strategy of identifying God with logical space, then the necessary existence of any logical truths (including possibility) entails that God necessarily exists. The difficulty then lies in getting from that rather abstract notion of God to something more interesting.A definition of God as existing as part of a 'logical space' in which anything that might exist does exist is a highly debatable one. This is the same logical space as on in which there is a dog on my desk because there might be a dog on my desk. There is no dog my desk. And this also begs the question of whether God is indeed logically possible. A question it is hard to answer in the clear absence of a coherent definition.
Well, as I said, I don't see how belief in spiritual existences is inconsistent with scientific observation. If you can give me examples of scientific experiments or well-founded theories that give good reason to suppose that such spiritual entities don't exist then I'll be interested to hear them. But I don't think there are, because by definition, scientific observations cover physical things only.Name me some spiritual entities and i'll address them specifically.

All right, these arguments are much better than the ones you both gave before, I think. So thank you for making them. In fact you've argued me into an undesirable corner. So after reflection I'll try what seems to me a more fruitful tack.

By "physical world", you mean the world that we can experience? As in, if something lies in the physical world, we can detect its presence? And if something (say, spiritual) is fundamentally undetectable (e.g. by definition, or by some peculiarity of nature), then it is not of this physical world, and isn't 'determinable' through scientific method?

But if something is fundamentally undetectable, then it fundamentally cannot have any influence on our physical world. In which case, what's the point in its existence?

It's like telling you there's a man who always stands behind you -- you can't see him, you can't touch him, and he can't influence you in any way. So would it matter if he was there or not?

(I'm italicising "can't" to show that it's fundamentally impossible for him to interact with you in any way.)

I was too ready to concede that a "spiritual" being necessarily can't interact with or influence "physical" things. On reflection I don't really see why this need be the case. I see nothing incoherent about the notion of a spiritual being which, although wholly non-physical, can influence physical things. Certainly we can't imagine how it would do so; but then we don't really understand causation even between physical things either. So there's no particular reason to rule spiritual-physical causation incoherent.

In which case, I can easily imagine a spiritual God who meddles in physical things. In such a scenario, God himself might be outside the realm of scientific investigation, but the effects of his actions wouldn't be. They could even be examined using the scientific method. So to adapt your analogy, it would be like having a man behind you whom you can't see or hear, but who can influence you.

Remember we're talking about someone who applies scientific method to the physical world, as you defined earlier. Someone who does that might be justified via scientific method in trusting his visions to predict the future, but not in extrapolating that to untestable hypotheses related to the supernatural.

Certainly such an extrapolation wouldn't be using the scientific method. But would it be going against the scientific method to do so? I don't really see why.

For Last Thursdayism/Matrix, you can say that a newly created world is fundamentally indistinguishable from a world that was created 4.6bn years ago. In science, if something is fundamentally indistinguishable, they are identical, and interchanging them doesn't make a difference. So the difference between the Matrix world and a 4.6bn year old world is purely semantic. There's no substantive difference, so who cares whether it was made last thursday, or 4.6bn years ago? At least that's what science tells you to think.

No, science doesn't tell you to think that. Science simply says that there is no discernible difference between two such theories, and that they are therefore identical as far as prediction goes. So for the purposes of scientific investigation they can be treated as identical. It doesn't follow from that that they really are identical, and to assume that it does is to go beyond the scientific method itself. The difference between a young world and an old one is not purely "semantic" (I wish we could ban this word "semantic" from any discussion not about linguistics; it seems like a catch-all damning word that can mean pretty much anything). There is a real difference between these hypotheses, and the difference is simply that according to one the world is very old and according to the other it is very young. That's a difference even in the absence of different phenomena, and science doesn't dispute that.

For love, you can prove it in as much as anything can be proven. We can define love as a series of actions, or a set of behaviour. If a person exhibits that behaviour, he's in love.

That's rather a behaviourist thing to say, and it's open to the standard objection to behaviourism, which is that it can't accommodate the possibility of pretence. Someone can act as though they're in love without actually being in love. But this isn't really relevant to what we're meant to be talking about.

It's an example of a God of the Gaps. Moreover, it only addresses what is not currently proven -- i.e. things that might some day be proven but at our current level of scientific advancement haven't been. However, even this weaker condition is inconsistent within a scientific framework. As you've said in your first paragraph, scientific method can be applied to prove true anything in the physical world, i.e. anything that we can interact with. Someone who believes that would not require spirituality to fill any gaps. And as I've said in my first paragraph, if we can't interact with something, it might as well not exist.

In short, only physical things matter, only physical things can be proven, and the best way of proving physical things is scientific method. There's no room for spirituality here, because accepting that X is caused by spiritual stuff is to deny scientific method.

Simply using the phrase "God of the gaps" is not enough to damn a theory. Now I agree that someone who believes in the scientific method will apply that method to all physical phenomena, but I don't quite see why such a person must then reject any "spiritual" explanations for those physical phenomena. Let's assume for a moment, for the sake of argument, that there is in fact a non-physical God and that some physical phenemona are directly caused by this God. A scientist studies some of these phenomena and finds that they are inexplicable on purely physical grounds; or, perhaps, she finds that the simplest explanation for them which takes into account all the available data is that they have a non-physical cause. Now I don't see how that conclusion is going against the scientific method; on the contrary, it could be reached via the scientific method.

In fact there's a parallel to this within modern science, in the multiple-universe theory to explain certain quantum events. As I understand it, the behaviour of some sub-atomic particles is hard to explain without recourse to the theory that either their behaviour is completely uncaused or it is caused by particles in completely distinct universes. So here we have an example of phenomena in the (observable) physical world, and a hypothesis, formed on the basis of observation of these phenomena, according to which there is another, completely distinct, "realm" which somehow meddles with our own. If this is legitimate scientific reasoning, then I don't see why - in principle - it shouldn't be equally legitimate to infer the existence of spiritual entities or realms that interact with our own, should evidence be found which is best explained in that way. Of course the difference is that the multiple-universe theory postulates other realms which are basically of the same kind as our own, just numerically distinct, whereas the hypothesis of God or other spiritual beings postulates realms that are different in kind, not just number. But I don't see that that really makes much difference. If they can be postulated at all, they can in theory be postulated on the basis of observable events.

I think you're taking proof too literally, in that case. Either way, what evidence does "spirituality" fit?

I can think of lots of possible evidence that it could fit. I suppose the simplest example is something like mediumship. If a medium were to have an experience which appears to them to be an encounter with the incorporeal spirit of a dead person, and if as a result of this encounter they acquired knowledge which they could not have had otherwise (say, something that only the dead person could have known); and if these experiences proved to be repeatable by other mediums in similar conditions, then that might seem to be good evidence that something genuinely spiritual was going on. Whether such evidence actually exists is of course another matter.

I'd particularly like this question answered:As I suspect the answer is 'none'.
In what way is it meaningful? Does it tell us anything useful? Can we verify it? Can we in fact tell the difference in any way whatsoever? The answer to these questions is a resounding no. Which makes me question why you think it is meaningful? Yes the words are simple, but this does not give them meaning.

The question whether a statement has meaning doesn't have anything to do with whether (a) it tells us anything useful, (b) it can be verified, or (c) whether we can tell the difference. Indeed, the statement "A statement has meaning only if it can be verified" itself cannot be verified, so this criterion of meaning is actually self-refuting.

I would say that a statement has meaning iff it is capable of being true or false. And I would define a true statement as one that "matches" reality, and a false one as one that does not "match". What "match" means is a notoriously difficult thing to define, though.

So to say that the moon revolves around the earth is meaningful not because it can be verified, although it can, but because it is capable of being true, tht is, it is possible for a situation to exist in which the actual moon actually revolves around the actual earth. To say that the moon doesn't revolve around the earth is also meaningful because it is possible for a situation to exist in which the actual moon doesn't actually revolve around the actual earth.

Similarly, the claim that the world popped into being ten minutes ago is meaningful because it is possible for such a situation to be the case. That seems to me to be completely distinct from the question whether that claim is verifiable, falsifiable, or useful.

So you insist that the 'spiritual' realm is entirely isolated from physical reality? How then do you infer that it exists? How can it affect you in any way?
Either way you look at it here, you are either talking about the God of (rapidly shrinking) gaps, or admitting that spirituality is merely a human habit of interpreting a purely physical reality. The former is unsound reasoning, the second an admission of defeat.

I'm not insisting anything about the existence or non-existence of spiritual reality, I'm simply arguing that belief in it is not, in itself, incompatible with a scientific viewpoint. As I said above, I think I was wrong to accept the claim that any spiritual realm must be entirely isolated from the physical one; you are right to say that acceptance of this claim would make the spiritual realm completely irrelevant to us (although of course it wouldn't follow that it didn't exist).

However, as I also said above, talk of "God of the gaps" isn't very enlightening; you cannot rule out of court the possibility of phenomena which are best explained by appeal to non-physical causes, even if such phenomena haven't been uncontroversially identified. And to turn "spirituality" talk into talk of the physical realm isn't to admit defeat - at least, those who do it would say it isn't. They'd say that religion was wrong to posit the supernatural in the first place and that at heart spirituality has always been about this world, not some mythical pie in the sky. You can call that defeat of supernaturalism if you like, and so would they; but they would deny that spirituality must be a form of supernaturalism. In which case, what we're really arguing about is how to define "spirituality".

Well, the words 'Omniscient' and 'Omnipotent' are pretty nebulous in meaning, so I find it hard to see how we can build a robust aregument around them - it's like dividing infinities in maths.

Simple - you just agree on a definition. For example, "omniscient" is usually defined as "knowing everything that can be known", and "omnipotent" is usually defined as "able to bring about any logically possible state of affairs". If everyone involved in a discussion can agree on a meaning of these or other words it doesn't really matter how many other meanings are possible.

Your analogy is a poor one tbh; the same simple mechanics that run clockwork toys apply to you.

I don't see that that makes much difference. Say that the mechanics underlying clockwork didn't apply to me; say I ran on completely different principles. Would that, in itself, prevent me from making a clockwork toy? Irrespective of the analogy, my point was that Dawkins - at least as you represent him - seems to be supposing that if there is an external cause of the universe's existence, then that cause must display similar patterns to those found within the universe. Or something like that. But that seems an odd assumption to make. Say that in fact it is true that, within the universe, processes generally go from the simple to the complex. Does that make it impossible for the universe as a whole to be brought about by a process that goes from the complex to the simple? If so, why? This is the case even if we accept his pretty contentious (though, to my mind, reasonable) claim that God, if he exists, is complex.

Is God separate from the universe? I keep hearing he isn't...

Classical theism would say that he is. Of course there are other versions of theism that disagree, such as process theology, panentheism, monism, and so on. But whether these exactly count as theism is open to dispute.

A definition of God as existing as part of a 'logical space' in which anything that might exist does exist is a highly debatable one. This is the same logical space as on in which there is a dog on my desk because there might be a dog on my desk. There is no dog my desk.

No, but (so the argument might run) there is certainly a possible dog on your desk; this is simply another way of expressing the fact that it is possible for your desk to have a dog on it. I mean "possible" in the modal sense of something that could have happened, had the universe been slightly different, as opposed to the sense of something which could still happen. A possible object or state of affairs is not actual, but it still has some kind of ontological status; and (it might be said) that status simply is the mind of God. To my mind, if you want to define God in that way, the argument might work; but it's not a "God" that anyone would really recognise or find very interesting. It's rather like defining God as the physical universe and concluding that he exists - the conclusion would be obviously right, but at the cost of triteness.

And this also begs the question of whether God is indeed logically possible. A question it is hard to answer in the clear absence of a coherent definition.

You mean it raises the questoin. And you're right that the question whether God is logically possible is very convoluted - the argument about omnipotence and omniscience that I gave earlier is meant to address it. However, there are plenty of definitions of God; simply pick whichever one you please.

Name me some spiritual entities and i'll address them specifically.

All right then. God, defined as a non-physical entity who knows everything that can be known, is able to bring about any logically possible state of affairs, and always chooses the morally best thing to do. Then let's imagine angels, defined as non-physical entities that are self-aware but which lack "perfections" of the kind normally attributed to God. Then let's imagine ghosts, defined as self-aware beings just like angels, except that they are what remains of human beings who have died; their consciousness remains, immaterially, even though the body is dead. As a corollary to that we'll also imagine souls, defined as the non-physical part of a human being which is the "self" or conscious part, distinct from any part of the body, although interacting with that body, and which may survive the death of the body.

So God, angels, ghosts, and souls. Remember that the idea is to cite scientific evidence against their existence. I'm actually really curious to see what you'll come up with. I suspect that you'll find ghosts and souls easier to deal with than the other two, but maybe I'm wrong.

that a "spiritual" being necessarily can't interact with or influence "physical" things. On reflection I don't really see why this need be the case. I see nothing incoherent about the notion of a spiritual being which, although wholly non-physical, can influence physical things. Certainly we can't imagine how it would do so; but then we don't really understand causation even between physical things either. So there's no particular reason to rule spiritual-physical causation incoherent.When you admit the influence are you not placing your spiritual things firmly within the empirical realm? If the influence is detectable (and it must be otherwise we would not be aware of it) then it must be measurable and subject to analysis in some manner.
No, science doesn't tell you to think that. Science simply says that there is no discernible difference between two such theories, and that they are therefore identical as far as prediction goes. So for the purposes of scientific investigation they can be treated as identical. It doesn't follow from that that they really are identical, and to assume that it does is to go beyond the scientific method itself. The difference between a young world and an old one is not purely "semantic" (I wish we could ban this word "semantic" from any discussion not about linguistics; it seems like a catch-all damning word that can mean pretty much anything). There is a real difference between these hypotheses, and the difference is simply that according to one the world is very old and according to the other it is very young. That's a difference even in the absence of different phenomena, and science doesn't dispute that.But the 'young world' theory actually goes against all the appearances of age within the universe. A theory of ultimate origins would then have to explain how the universe could come to exist in it's present state, rather than explain this by the billions of years of change since the Big Bang, explain why it has the appearance of age and explain why we have memories. That's quite a lot more explaining you have to do IMO.

That's rather a behaviourist thing to say, and it's open to the standard objection to behaviourism, which is that it can't accommodate the possibility of pretence. Someone can act as though they're in love without actually being in love. But this isn't really relevant to what we're meant to be talking about.Can an actor fool an MRI scanner? For 24 hours? I'm guessing not, in which case a rather the difference between being in love and acting in love may well be empirically determinate.
Let's assume for a moment, for the sake of argument, that there is in fact a non-physical God and that some physical phenemona are directly caused by this God. A scientist studies some of these phenomena and finds that they are inexplicable on purely physical grounds; or, perhaps, she finds that the simplest explanation for them which takes into account all the available data is that they have a non-physical cause.Yes but 1)this does not happen. And 2) it would merely place miracles firmly within the realm of empirical science.

In fact there's a parallel to this within modern science, in the multiple-universe theory to explain certain quantum events. As I understand it, the behaviour of some sub-atomic particles is hard to explain without recourse to the theory that either their behaviour is completely uncaused or it is caused by particles in completely distinct universes. So here we have an example of phenomena in the (observable) physical world, and a hypothesis, formed on the basis of observation of these phenomena, according to which there is another, completely distinct, "realm" which somehow meddles with our own.Evidence is that the behaviour is entirely uncaused and that there are no 'hidden variables', i.e. there is no completely distinct, "realm" which is meddling with our own to produce this behaviour. Put simply, this seems to be the causal nature of our universe, and it behave along purely statistical lines.
I can think of lots of possible evidence that it could fit... Whether such evidence actually exists is of course another matter.It could, but it doesn't.
The question whether a statement has meaning doesn't have anything to do with whether (a) it tells us anything useful, (b) it can be verified, or (c) whether we can tell the difference. Indeed, the statement "A statement has meaning only if it can be verified" itself cannot be verified, so this criterion of meaning is actually self-refuting.Yes but that statement is a method of analysing our language for what is useful and not an attempt to describe reality. Your objection seems to me to be a little like objecting to someone's maths because you didn't like their grammar.
I'm not insisting anything about the existence or non-existence of spiritual reality, I'm simply arguing that belief in it is not, in itself, incompatible with a scientific viewpoint. As I said above, I think I was wrong to accept the claim that any spiritual realm must be entirely isolated from the physical one; you are right to say that acceptance of this claim would make the spiritual realm completely irrelevant to us (although of course it wouldn't follow that it didn't exist).No, but we are always discussing this in a framework where someone insists it is relevant because they have some experience or knowledge or other. That puts us in a specific conversation that refutes, or rather ignores, the state of our scientific knowledge.
However, as I also said above, talk of "God of the gaps" isn't very enlightening; you cannot rule out of court the possibility of phenomena which are best explained by appeal to non-physical causes, even if such phenomena haven't been uncontroversially identified. And to turn "spirituality" talk into talk of the physical realm isn't to admit defeat - at least, those who do it would say it isn't. They'd say that religion was wrong to posit the supernatural in the first place and that at heart spirituality has always been about this world, not some mythical pie in the sky. You can call that defeat of supernaturalism if you like, and so would they; but they would deny that spirituality must be a form of supernaturalism. In which case, what we're really arguing about is how to define "spirituality".I quite agree, but in that case they would have to admit that their world is open to examination. They don't.
Simple - you just agree on a definition. For example, "omniscient" is usually defined as "knowing everything that can be known", and "omnipotent" is usually defined as "able to bring about any logically possible state of affairs". If everyone involved in a discussion can agree on a meaning of these or other words it doesn't really matter how many other meanings are possible.Omniscient is not possible. See the uncertainty theory.
I don't see that that makes much difference. Say that the mechanics underlying clockwork didn't apply to me; say I ran on completely different principles.I think that's a rather bigger deal than you might imagine. Remember that we are talking about the basic physics underlying our universe here, how are you going to rewrite those when you manufacture your toy? And if you are subject to those rules, surely everything about you is as well? What raw materials are you going to use?
Classical theism would say that he is. Of course there are other versions of theism that disagree, such as process theology, panentheism, monism, and so on. But whether these exactly count as theism is open to dispute.That's half the problem isn't it? Every other guy has a different idea. To me that merely demonstrates the weakness of the start point.
It's rather like defining God as the physical universe and concluding that he exists - the conclusion would be obviously right, but at the cost of triteness.Some people do this, then they turn to their New Testament and pretend they were right all along. Most irritating. And I don't think that having an Ontological status (as you put it) is quite on the same level as actually existing.
You mean it raises the questoin. And you're right that the question whether God is logically possible is very convoluted - the argument about omnipotence and omniscience that I gave earlier is meant to address it. However, there are plenty of definitions of God; simply pick whichever one you please.Atheists can't do this. It just gives the respondant the opportunity to reply 'that's not my God you're talking about'.

I'll have to reply to that last bit tomorrow.

@Plotinus: I think it's a good idea at this stage, since all your responses (and all of my possible responses to your responses) seem to be floating around the same issue, to summarise a little.

I think it's fair to assume (even if we don't accept) that the following are "True" in an objective, universal sense, and take it from there:
1. While scientific method can't determine with 100% certainty "physical truths", it can determine physical truths to a reasonable enough extent that we can call the results of science "physical truths".
2. It is possible for Spiritual beings such as God to interact in our Physical realm, in defiance of those "physical truths" (e.g. God inexplicably moves an electron closer to a positive charge than it otherwise would do if left naturally).
3. Spiritual events such as mediumship, otherwise inexplicable by science (and we're assuming that there is some fundamental reason why science cannot explain these things, rather than it simply being a technical issue), can be attributed reasonably to the existence of and interaction with a Spiritual realm.
4. We don't necessarily "know" any of the above 3 "Truths".

The problem I see here is that there's no "Spiritual" analogue for the scientific method, i.e. there's no good way of determining "spiritual truths". And there's no way of determining whether it was indeed God that moved the electron, or whether it was some undiscovered force of Nature (one that sits nicely inside our current scientific framework).

I suppose this brings us back to the question: Is it reasonable to believe in something that lacks proof. That is, is it reasonable to believe that God moved the electron, when there is no evidence to suggest that, and cannot be any positive evidence to suggest that it was God, and not some unknown law of nature.

Well, I've been thinking about Last Thursdayism vs a 13.6bn year old universe. I think the reason we think it unreasonable to believe that the world was created yesterday is because all physical evidence concludes that the universe was created 13.6bn years ago. If we cannot trust that evidence, then there is very little that we can trust, and we are forced to conclude... well... nothing -- we can't say that we know anything, which is clearly not only undesirable, but unreasonable. So it's quite unreasonable to believe that the world was created yesterday because it would require us to dismiss (or at least be universally sceptical about) all physical evidence, and by extension, all of the physical world.

The point is, we do believe things without proof, because it's more useful to do so.

Which brings us back to the matter above -- is it reasonable to believe that God moved the electron, or that there is some more Earthly cause for the electron to move. Well, we'll never know whether God moved the electron or not. That's clearly not very useful, or enlightening, it doesn't add anything to our understanding of the universe (or of spirituality), and so I'd be inclined to dismiss it for the same reason we dismiss the notion that the world and all evidence to the contrary was created yesterday. On the other hand, if the electron did move due to some law of nature, we can know about it, and we can investigate it. That seems useful and enlightening, and knowing it would add to our understanding of the universe. So I'd be inclined to go along with it.


In all honesty, I think the reason we believe that the world was created 4.6bn years ago is because of the physical evidence, regardless of the finer philosophical points of whether that "evidence" is trustworthy.

When you admit the influence are you not placing your spiritual things firmly within the empirical realm? If the influence is detectable (and it must be otherwise we would not be aware of it) then it must be measurable and subject to analysis in some manner.

Not at all. The effect could be measurable and analysable, but it doesn't follow that the cause has to be. If I stand on a bridge and drop a stone into the river, any fish that are prone to scientific analysis might examine the stone and what it does, but they cannot examine me. Similarly, why can't there be a non-physical entity that influences physical events? Those events would be analysable, but not the entity itself.

But the 'young world' theory actually goes against all the appearances of age within the universe. A theory of ultimate origins would then have to explain how the universe could come to exist in it's present state, rather than explain this by the billions of years of change since the Big Bang, explain why it has the appearance of age and explain why we have memories. That's quite a lot more explaining you have to do IMO.

I don't see how this addresses the point, which is that there is a difference between the two theories. In fact you seem to have conceded that point if you think the adherent of one theory needs to explain more than the adherent of the other theory. If that's so then they can't be identical.

Can an actor fool an MRI scanner? For 24 hours? I'm guessing not, in which case a rather the difference between being in love and acting in love may well be empirically determinate.

I'm sure you're right there, but you initially said that love could be defined as "a series of actions, or a set of behaviour". The results of an MRI scan aren't actions or behaviour on the part of the supposed lover.

Yes but 1)this does not happen.

I don't know how you can be so certain of that. But in any case, that's irrelevant. We're not talking about whether there is scientific evidence for the existence of spiritual entities; we're talking about whether belief in the latter is compatible with adherence to the scientific method. If you accept that, in a situation like the one described, a scientifically-minded person could, without inconsistency, believe in spiritual entities, then that's all that needs to be established; whether any such situation does arise is a completely different question, and one that no doubt we could go on to discuss once we've settled the first one.

And 2) it would merely place miracles firmly within the realm of empirical science.

And why would that be a problem?

It could, but it doesn't.

Again, that's just a dogmatic assertion on your part; I'd say that there's plenty of evidence like that, although I wouldn't necessarily say it's good evidence. But as I said, this point is not all that relevant to the problem at hand anyway.

Yes but that statement is a method of analysing our language for what is useful and not an attempt to describe reality. Your objection seems to me to be a little like objecting to someone's maths because you didn't like their grammar.

I don't understand what you're saying here. You appealed earlier to "the principle that meaningful theories must be falsifiable". Now that I've shown that this principle is incoherent, you seem to be saying that it's not a principle at all, but still something useful. This makes no sense to me. Either the principle is true or not; if it's not true then it's worthless. And it's not true.

No, but we are always discussing this in a framework where someone insists it is relevant because they have some experience or knowledge or other. That puts us in a specific conversation that refutes, or rather ignores, the state of our scientific knowledge.

It certainly engages with the state of our scientific knowledge - I don't see that it must ignore it and it certainly doesn't refute it.

I quite agree, but in that case they would have to admit that their world is open to examination. They don't.

You mean people like Don Cupitt? I think they do.

Omniscient is not possible. See the uncertainty theory.

You're going to have to give a bit more detail than that. How does uncertainty theory make omniscience impossible?

I think that's a rather bigger deal than you might imagine. Remember that we are talking about the basic physics underlying our universe here, how are you going to rewrite those when you manufacture your toy? And if you are subject to those rules, surely everything about you is as well? What raw materials are you going to use?

You seem to be changing the argument here. I thought the claim was that the belief that God created the universe is false because such a creation would follow a different pattern from how things within the universe normally function. My clockwork-making analogy was meant merely to show that the principle upon which that argument rests - that something's cause must display all the same patterns as its subsequent operation - is false. You haven't said anything to counter that. The analogy between me making a clockwork toy and God creating the universe is obviously imperfect, given that, yes, the toy and I do obey the same fundamental laws of physics, and I cannot create something ex nihilo. But that doesn't prove that God has to obey the same fundamental laws of physics as his creation - or indeed any - or that he cannot create things ex nihilo; indeed, by hypothesis, God is not bound by constraints of this kind. Saying that we are bound by them doesn't disprove the theistic hypothesis; you would have to show that it is somehow logically impossible not to be bound by them. Which is harder, and a quite different sort of argument from the one you attribute to Dawkins.

That's half the problem isn't it? Every other guy has a different idea. To me that merely demonstrates the weakness of the start point.

You might as well say that the diversity of opinions within science demonstrates the weakness of that! Is punctuated equilibrium true? No-one can be certain, but that doesn't make the theory of evolution weaker. Similarly, the mere fact that different people have different views of the divine doesn't, in itself, argue against the reality of the divine.

And I don't think that having an Ontological status (as you put it) is quite on the same level as actually existing.

Of course not, but I didn't say it was; I was talking about non-actual possibles.

Atheists can't do this. It just gives the respondant the opportunity to reply 'that's not my God you're talking about'.

Atheists can do anything they want! If someone else complains that they're not talking about their God then just ask them to explain the difference and consider that one instead. What does it matter?

I think it's fair to assume (even if we don't accept) that the following are "True" in an objective, universal sense, and take it from there:
1. While scientific method can't determine with 100% certainty "physical truths", it can determine physical truths to a reasonable enough extent that we can call the results of science "physical truths".
2. It is possible for Spiritual beings such as God to interact in our Physical realm, in defiance of those "physical truths" (e.g. God inexplicably moves an electron closer to a positive charge than it otherwise would do if left naturally).
3. Spiritual events such as mediumship, otherwise inexplicable by science (and we're assuming that there is some fundamental reason why science cannot explain these things, rather than it simply being a technical issue), can be attributed reasonably to the existence of and interaction with a Spiritual realm.
4. We don't necessarily "know" any of the above 3 "Truths".

Right, this all seems pretty reasonable to me. Although I'm not sure that divine interventions of the kind described in (2) would be "in defiance" of the scientific truths established in (1). Rather, they would be anomalies in the patterns described by the truths established in (1).

The problem I see here is that there's no "Spiritual" analogue for the scientific method, i.e. there's no good way of determining "spiritual truths". And there's no way of determining whether it was indeed God that moved the electron, or whether it was some undiscovered force of Nature (one that sits nicely inside our current scientific framework).

Couldn't there be indications, though, even if not proofs? If we're talking about one electron making a sort of Epicurean swerve in conformity with no known physical law, then I'm sure you're right that there would be no reason to attribute this to divine intervention. But if it were, instead, an enormous blazing message appearing in the sky in every human language, saying "Love your enemies" or something, in a way inexplicable on any known scientific theory, then the divine intervention theory might seem more reasonable - since that theory could explain why the anomalous event resulted in an apparently meaningful message, while any alternative would struggle to do so. That would be even more so if this happened regularly, with a different comprehensible message each time. Surely there would come a point at which everyone bar the Dawkins amongst us would think it more reasonable than not to conclude that something supernatural was going on.

If we accept that then the question isn't whether there could be reason to suppose that an odd event was supernaturally caused, it's simply what sort of reason you'd need and how much of it before it would be rational to conclude that there is a supernatural cause. And that will be affected by how plausible you think theism or similar theories to be in the first place. For example, if you think that theism is an intrinsically extremely implausible theory - even before examining any evidence - on the grounds that a being such as God probably couldn't exist in the first place, then you're going to set the bar extremely high. If you don't think that then the bar will be that much lower.

I suppose this brings us back to the question: Is it reasonable to believe in something that lacks proof. That is, is it reasonable to believe that God moved the electron, when there is no evidence to suggest that, and cannot be any positive evidence to suggest that it was God, and not some unknown law of nature.

Well, as I say, I don't see why there couldn't be positive evidence that something was caused by God (or whatever), even if we accept that such evidence can never be proof. But then proof is hard to come by anyway, in most spheres.

Well, I've been thinking about Last Thursdayism vs a 13.6bn year old universe. I think the reason we think it unreasonable to believe that the world was created yesterday is because all physical evidence concludes that the universe was created 13.6bn years ago. If we cannot trust that evidence, then there is very little that we can trust, and we are forced to conclude... well... nothing -- we can't say that we know anything, which is clearly not only undesirable, but unreasonable. So it's quite unreasonable to believe that the world was created yesterday because it would require us to dismiss (or at least be universally sceptical about) all physical evidence, and by extension, all of the physical world.

Ah, but Last Thursdayism includes the claim that the universe appears as it would if had really been created 13.6 billion years ago. Perhaps the Last Thursdayists believe that the universe is the work of a practical joker deity who wants us to think the universe is a lot older than it really is. Any apparent evidence of age would therefore actually support this theory, just as it also supports the theory that the universe really is ancient.

The point is simply that when we choose a hypothesis to explain evidence, we don't do so merely on the criterion of whether the hypothesis explains the evidence or not. It's a commonplace among philosophers of science that for any finite body of data, there are infinite possible hypotheses that explain those data - just as for any set of points on a graph, there are an infinite number of lines (and equations that express those lines) that pass through them. This is why there are criteria such as the principle of parsimony to whittle them down.

The point is, we do believe things without proof, because it's more useful to do so.

Right! The question is - is that rational? Is it compatible with adherence to the scientific method? And are spiritual beliefs fundamentally different from other unproven beliefs in that regard?

Which brings us back to the matter above -- is it reasonable to believe that God moved the electron, or that there is some more Earthly cause for the electron to move. Well, we'll never know whether God moved the electron or not. That's clearly not very useful, or enlightening, it doesn't add anything to our understanding of the universe (or of spirituality), and so I'd be inclined to dismiss it for the same reason we dismiss the notion that the world and all evidence to the contrary was created yesterday. On the other hand, if the electron did move due to some law of nature, we can know about it, and we can investigate it. That seems useful and enlightening, and knowing it would add to our understanding of the universe. So I'd be inclined to go along with it.

We might not know that God caused some event; but as I said, I don't think that it follows that we can't have some reason (perhaps even good reason, in theory) to suppose that he did. After all, when religious people attribute an event to the hand of God, they don't do so completely arbitrarily; they have what at least they think is some reason to see God at work even if they accept that one cannot be certain. In the case you describe, what if the scientific investigation yielded no explanation for the event? Would we be entitled to assume that the event was caused by some natural law which our science is not yet able to discern?

In all honesty, I think the reason we believe that the world was created 4.6bn years ago is because of the physical evidence, regardless of the finer philosophical points of whether that "evidence" is trustworthy.

You realise, of course, that this entire thread was created ten minutes ago by a capricious demon? Now that might explain a lot.

an example of a theory which we would normally think it is rational to reject even when we cannot prove it false.

Theories that aren't falsifiable are flawed for a reason..

There is an infinite amount of them! If you support one, you have to support them all.

This leads to contradictions. This is why we reject unfalsifiable "theories" (musings would be a better word).

I need to go back a read a bunch of the lengthy posts, but I still would like to chime in on my 2 cents worth. I think that that yes the two are compatible. I believe that our human nature is what makes the two seem incompatible. I cannot empirically prove that God exists, but I can certainly know in my 'heart' that He does. The scientific method alone cannot explain every thing around us that we observe, or do not observe. The scientific method alone cannot control all of the variables, and thus cannot necessarily prove anything beyond 'all' doubt. On the other hand, neither can religion or spirituality. I personally think that you need both. In that way, they are not only compatible, but it is necessary that they are compatible. -- I'm no philosopher, and I am not a scientist either. I suppose we just have to accept some things on faith based upon what the evidence leads us to believe.