In a book called “Dangerous Ideas,” an eminent scientist says that the probability that there is a God is very low. As a scientist, I object. How does one calculate the probability that there is or isn’t a God?
In scientific research, probability is calculated after one has gathered the data. The conclusion that something has such and such a probability is shorthand for saying that there is an X chance (for example 1 out of 100 or 1 out of 2 ), that the results one has found in the sample used for the research can be extrapolated to a wider group.
For instance, if I pull ten pennies and five nickles out of a sack of a thousand coins, it is possible to calculate the chances (or probability) that the entire sack is filled with twice as many pennies as nickles, and that there are no dimes and quarters in the collection at all. But what research data would a scientist analyze to determine the probability of God? Science has no conceivable way of calculating the probability that there is or isn’t a God. The question is simply outside the area of scientific competence.
Some scientists believe in God and some don’t. But scientists really should not try to use science to argue the case for or against the existence of God. Any more than one should use religion to argue that the theories of quantum mechanics or gravity or relativity or evolution might be right – or wrong.
I am quite convinced that any concept of God should be robust enough to survive the discovery that the universe is, for us humans, a shocking surprise. Faith in God does not require that we deny evolution anymore than we need to deny that the earth revolves around the sun.
Be the first . . . ah, what an invitation.
Terry, thank you for posing the issue with simplicity and clarity. These are more musings than systematic approaches to the issue.
“God” by definition as what/who is beyond the material universe transcends scientific investigation. But much scientific investigation is in some sense “secondary.” For example, the bombardment of atoms in cyclotrons (Can’t wait for the Hadron Collider) reveals the ‘traces’ of the evolving particles. I do not mean a literal analog here but if human minds have thought “God,” from traces perhaps there is in the created, evolving universe pan-entheistic traces with which we resonate.
Thomas Aquinas: Anything we say about the Divine we say analogically.
The Paradox of (Eastern) Mysticism: Anything we say about God is not God.
Perhaps that’s what religious thinkers share with scientific thinkers: awe and wonder; willingness to be surprised–to have your paradigm overturned!
My own thoughts run along the same lines as yours. “Anything we say about God is not God” – only a reflection of our struggle toward the light. And yes, I too think that the great religious and scientific thinkers both so often arrive in the same place of awe and wonder. And a sense of Unity, some Oneness that encompasses everything.
Well, In anomaly to computers, I feel that
-Science is more like hardware…
Cause we deal with physical things that we can see, hear, touch… (i.e. sense.)
-Spirituality is more like software…
Cause it’s beyond the understanding of many, and only a you cannot find much physical evidence to support it…
They actually cannot live without each other…
And GOD…
Well, he’s the electricity!
The driving force that runs us all…
I don’t believe in GOD (actually I’m an atheist) but I believe in some driving force that, maybe exists….
So, if we are spiritual as well as scientific at the same time (no reason why we cannot), maybe mankind will progress at a faster pace.
That’s all…
I too puzzle about the relationship of what seems like two very different but necessary dimensions. Hardware & software, science & spirituality, matter & energy, body & mind, time/space & infinity all seem to me to be analogies for the sense so many of us have that looking at the world from only a single perspective somehow is only half the story. But how the two different dimensions interact or possibly are really one dimension that only look like two dimensions in our limited human view is the mystery, don’t you think? Terry Herman Sissons
i agree with you all