Seth wrote:The problem is that if God, being a sentient and powerful entity, does not want to be tested by science, he will arrange things so that science finds nothing and will only reveal himself to the faithful.
God is not a natural phenomenon that can be induced to produce predictable results, if he exists, he's a thinking entity that does not have to react predictably.
So, unless God wants science to find him, science won't do so.
Of course this does not mean that God does not exist, because just because science cannot investigate something does not mean that thing does not exist.
Seems science has something of a conundrum on its hands.
Actually, if it cannot be demonstrated either by the evidence or by logical/mathematical inference, then there is no reason to accept it in the first place. Science does not advance the theory "god does not exist";
you are advancing the theory that one does, therefore it is
your responsibility to prove it, not to just stand it up and say "prove it wrong".
You have to prove it right, or the theory can be discarded without further consideration.
Counterproductively, all you're saying here is "I can't prove a thing and that means I'm right!"
Evidence doesn't work that way, and you're never going to win a convert (much less an argument) if that's your debate style. It's like if I were to say, "All neutrons are orange!" and then deflect all arguments against it by just saying "You've never seen one, so you don't know!" I'd be dismissed as a crank, and properly so.
So. This, fundamentally, is what you're up against. I put it to you that the idea that the world was created by a god or gods was no more than a primitive attempt to explain the world our ancestors saw around them -- in its way, saying that some god(s) did it was a scientific theory, but only in that it was an attempt to explain events. It wasn't a proper theory in that it did not make testable predictions, and does not conform to physical reality. We have much better observations now, much more comprehensive theories... and not
one single shred of concrete, repeatable, incontrovertible evidence that there's any such thing as a divine power of any variety.
And even if there were, such evidence would be utterly indistinguishable from that left by an extremely advanced extraterrestrial intelligence -- that is, we could not distinguish between a god and an alien, and given a choice between the two, Occam's Razor points us inevitably to the alien since that is the simpler explanation. It does not require adding anything undetectable to the universe.
If you want to have your theory that some sort of divine power exists taken seriously, then you have to find a way to first, demonstrate it, and second, differentiate it from the alien hypothesis. Finding ways to continually excuse the lack of proof is essentially an abandonment of your theory.
After all, it may well not be possible to prove a negative -- but it is entirely possible to
fail to prove a positive.
"The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't." -- Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
