Why the existence of God isn’t a scientific question

An earlier comment suggested the possibility that if a god “turned up,”- i.e., appeared in some form that we humans could recognize, then it would be possible to determine using the scientific method to prove that he existed.  But it wouldn’t.  Because there are no forms under which a god could appear that we could be scientifically certain was divine.  Think about it:  how would God have to appear to convince scientists that it was a god and not a natural form?

In fact, millions of people believe that God has indeed already become manifest in several different ways.  The most obvious manifestation is creation itself.  Believers argue that everything has a cause, and if you keep going back, you ultimately have to reach a First Cause.  This First Cause, for many people, is God.  Many also believe that this God didn’t just create the universe, but continues to be involved in it, punishing and rewarding those who obey or disobey his commands.  Others  think that, having set the process of creation in motion, God now lets it proceed without further divine interference.  

The claim that there must be a first cause sounds like a rational argument.  Why isn’t it considered scientific? At the risk of doing violence to philosophical thought, one simple reason is that it is not based on empirical evidence.  Faced with our universe, the scientist does indeed ask “how did it get here?” and has provided one possible answer in the form of the Big Bang.  Some religious thinkers have argued that learning about the Big Bang is like seeing “the face of God.”

But the scientist doesn’t say it is God that has been found.  He and she instead asks questions like  ”What caused the Big Bang?”,, “have Big Bangs happened before?  will they happen again?”   “what is the history before the Big Bang?”.  Scientists themselves may personally believe in a Creator God, but they do not use the scientific method to find him.  They use the scientific method to find causes which reflect the natural laws of the universe.  They are not looking for a divine First Cause outside the natural world.

Another significant manifestation of God for many is Jesus who they believe was indeed truly God in human form.  Throughout the last two millennia, millions of people have lived and died in the firm belief that this is so.  The problem, from the scientific point of view, is that there is no empirical way to determine whether or not Jesus was God’s son in a way that other humans are not.  Again, there are many scientists who are committed Christians.  But there are no scientists who can say that they believe in Christ because they have proved this to themselves through an application of the scientific method.

Fundamentally, the problem is that the scientific method doesn’t actually look for proof that something is true, but that it isn’t true.  It’s the principle of falsifiability that is based on what is called “the rejection of the null hypothesis.”  What this means in less fancy language is that science looks for evidence that proves that something can’t be true.  The conclusion that something must be true is based on the evidence that the opposite possibility has been proved to be wrong.

For example, a drug company wants to know if a particular medicine it wants to market will have undesirable side effects.  To test whether headache might be a side effect, the null hypothesis is “this medicine will not result in headaches.”  It gives the medicine to a selection of volunteers, and if it is followed by headaches, the company rejects the null hypothesis, and agrees to publish a warning that a side effect of the medicine may be headache.  If nobody gets headaches, the company can only say “we have found no evidence that it causes headaches.”  As we know, once a medicine is on the market, it is quite possible for evidence to emerge which does indeed result in the rejection of the null hypothesis which was that the drug has no known side effects

The problem with testing the hypothesis “There is no God” is that there are no conditions which we might observe which would prove that either that there must be a God, or alternatively there cannot be a God. Some people say that evil and suffering in the world is why they say there isn’t a God.  But other people look at the same evil and suffering and say that it is God’s punishment for our sinfulness, or that a greater good will come from the suffering, even if we don’t understand how.

In other words, there is nothing that might happen that would prove scientifically that God does or does not exist. 

And that is why the question of God is not a question that can be ever be answered by applying the scientific method.

It is a question of faith, not one for science.

My problem with the g-word

Ever since a friend sent me the book An Unknown God by Tony Equale, I’ve been pondering the problem of using the word “God” to describe – well, to describe God.

Theologians from almost every perspective are in unusual agreement that we humans cannot comprehend God.  Or at least the God which is given credit for creation and for what happens to us both here on earth and after we die.  God, they all agree, is an unfathomable mystery.

Despite this near theological unanimity, however, Western thought has managed to create an image of God which has the advantage of being eminently recognizable but unfortunately for me both unbelievable and not particularly admirable.  It seems to me to be a god with an outrageous, often uncontrolled temper, whose vindictiveness lasts for eternity, and who curses the offspring of those who displease him for unending generations.  To finish it off, it is a god who is finally appeased by the torture and murder of his only son by the very creatures who have so displeased him.

I appreciate that for many, my description is an unfair caricature.  But I am not trying to ridicule the beliefs of people who recognize this God as the one in whom they believe and which has helped them live more meaningful, fulfilled, loving lives.  For many years, it is an approximate description of a God in whom I believed and to whom I dedicated my life.

Although this approximation of God no longer inspires me to live a life of dedication and service, I cannot say accurately that I am an atheist or even an agnostic.  It is not that I don’t believe in God.  Rather, that I don’t believe in this God so often seen in Western thought as the only possible true God.

My problem when someone asks me if I believe in God is that neither “yes” or “no” exactly communicates what intuition of God I have.  Nor do I have a single neat word that encapsulates my thinking.  Yet at the heart of the universe I feel there is something profound, ineffable, even sacred, something ultimately beyond my capacity ever to know completely.

Sometimes I think all I am seeing is the universe as it exists in itself in all its mystery.  Other times I sense there is something deeper, something out of which meaning emerges, that makes being ultimately something good, rather than bad or merely neutral.

This sense of something “more than” gets stronger, although no less clear, as I grow older.  I would call it God if even I myself sometimes did not trip up with this image of an irascible being presiding over the universe which he created but which he now finds so disappoints all the hopes he had for it.  That God I do not think exists except in the minds of men.

But I believe there is another reality which I myself most often sense through people, in music, and in the explorations of science.  

It is what I would call god.  

If I didn’t have so much trouble with the g-word.

Grapefruit and osteoporosis

It’s a conundrum.  Research is now suggesting that grapefruit might increase bone health and so reduce the risk of osteoporosis.

Grapefruit is also one of those delights of dieters that requires more calories to burn up than it actually contains.

But research also suggests that grapefruit might be implicated in a slightly increased risk of breast cancer  in post-menopausal women

I have osteoporosis and two sisters who have had breast cancer.  And will probably die still hoping to lose “just five pounds.”

So I’m going for two grapefruit a week.  More or less.

Life’s decisions are tough.

9/11 still resonates

Yesterday a friend forwarded a Power Point Slide Show of recently declassified photos of 9/11.  (If I can figure out how to do it, I will post them here, but so far the task has eluded me.)

One image is of people climbing out dozens of windows in order to jump. One particularly devastating photo includes a shot of an infant being dropped out the window to what must certainly have been death just seconds later.  

The slide show begins and opens with the admonition not to forget, which somehow grates for me.  How can one forget?   Forgetting doesn’t seem to me the issue:  how to respond in the most effective, meaningful way that adds rather than detracts from the human spirit seems to be a much greater challenge than mere “not forgetting.”

By inexplicable coincidence,the friend who forwarded the slide show works on the 26th floor of a New York City building.  Yesterday, there was a loud bang, all the electricity went out, and they were told that a bomb had just exploded five floors below.  The building was evacuated by the stairwells.

The strange thing, though, is that this incident does not seem to have been anywhere in the news.  I’ve trawled Google and cannot find any reference to it either.  Perhaps it wasn’t a bomb that made the hole in the building that could be seen from outside.  There was no smoke.  Only a gaping hole.

Perhaps whatever happened really was not news-worthy.  Perhaps the explosion wasn’t a bomb but a boiler or some similar non-event.  These days I find I’m as suspicious of silence as I am of spin.  

And the secret service has offices in the building.

Addendum:  Someone just sent me thestory published in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle.  If it was something more than an electrical fire, it’s being well disguised.

Beyond this blog

There are two comments following my post “The positive benefits of not being sure” on March 24th.  Each are by people who also have blogs with wordpress, and both are wrestling with questions that also fascinate me.  I find them intensely exciting.

If questions about the possible nature of a possible god, the relation between religious belief and scientific discovery, whether moral values are rooted in the natural world, what happens after we die, or what we should make of this amazing spectacular universe within which we find ourselves, I suggest taking a look.

Tony Equale’s blog belongs to the author of An Unknown God.   His grasp of the history of Christian thought, and particularly of the western concept of God at the core of modern Christianity is outstanding.  His view is that our modern Western idea of God has created an unnecessary and destructive rejection of the world of matter, seeing it as basically unholy if not actually evil, while elevating a separate world of “spirit” as pure.  He offers what is for me a liberating reuniting of the human species with the world within which we were created and of which we are intrinsically a part.

ThinkingMakesItSo is a blog by Chris Lawrence who, as I pointed out in an earlier post, is asking whether doubt is preferable to belief.  He begins with a case for doubt that suggests that belief in some circumstances is fundamentally immoral.  Don’t be put off.  It’s a convincing argument.  Right now he is exploring various books written in response to Dawkin’s The God Delusion.

Both blogs reflect a level of philosophical sophistication that is greater than mine, and although it is of great interest and value to me to write about these issues, I strongly suspect that the readers of this blog will find my amateur forays pretty boring. 

Which doesn’t mean I will refrain from ever waxing eloquent here.  I’m sure I’m incapable of keeping strict silence over issues that matter that much to me. 

But for a really informed debate, take a look at the other bloggers.

The magic of letters

Several weeks ago I began a search to find some key numbers related to our economic crisis.  I’m looking for a set of numbers in trillions, in billions, and in millions, in order to help myself – and everyone else for whom these amounts simply dissolve into a huge black hole of unimaginable proportions – give these vast amounts some sensible meaning.

Because, of course, differences between trillions, billions, and millions is hugely important.  If the bail out package for AIG had been 163 million dollars instead of the 163 billion dollars which it actually was, the impact would have been trivial.  On the other hand, it was not 163 trillion dollars either, an amount that would have bankrupt the entire global economy several times over.   

I’m having a little trouble with my next collection of numbers, though.  I have collected several suggestions for significant amounts in trillions 
 and for billions posts for March 5th and 8th . But there seem to be so many candidates for significant amounts in the millions that I am overwhelmed.

So I need a little more time to pick and choose the ones that will be most significant as critical anchors around which to hang all the other millions.

In the meantime, here is a story which a dear friend told me today about his response to algebra as an eleven-year-old.  When faced with equations like “a+b+3a=?” or “a-b=c” he was aghast.  

How can you add letters, he asked?  Letters are for making words.  

And although today he understands numbers well enough to handle his own accounts and investments, he still thinks letters are for making words.

And that’s what he does with them.

The positive benefits of not being sure

Someone recently stumbled onto this blog and as a result introduced me to his own blog ( http://thinkingmakesitso.wordpress.com/).  It’s much more cerebral than mine, which is why I am reading it.  I’m starting at the beginning and planning on going to the end, but already I’m borrowing one of his ideas:  is doubt, he asks, better than certainty?

I’ve never asked that question before in quite such stark clarity.  Yes, I know that Luther said that doubt was an essential component of faith.  Yes, I know the very word “faith” makes it clear that beliefs arrived at through faith cannot, by definition, by proved.  Yes, I know that the very title of this blog suggests that I value looking at things from more than one point of view.  

And I know that for most of my life, as soon as someone tells me that something is absolutely positively non-negotiably true or proven, I immediately start looking for arguments that it might not be so.

But is doubt in some ways intrinsically better than certainty?  

Well, I suppose there are some things it is better to be certain about.  I think it’s better to be certain that genocide and child abuse and involuntary slavery and deliberate betrayal for personal gain are wrong.

But the list of things about which I am absolutely certain without any shadow of a doubt under all conditions is very short.  I’m not absolutely certain there is a God, I don’t think murder is never justified, I think loving someone isn’t always constructive, and that neither Newton’s theory of gravity or Einstein’s theory of relativity are exactly right.  

In fact, almost everything I think is subject to doubt.

This doesn’t make me uncomfortable.  What makes me uncomfortable is people who possess non-negotiable certainty and who are determined to force others to live by their principles.  This is often the attack levelled at people holding various religious convictions, but history doesn’t limit this kind of arrogant certainty to religious ideas.  The history of the 20th century is bloodied with theories which are explicitly atheist.  Religion doesn’t seem to me to be the problem.  The fear of doubt looks to me to be the more fundamental problem.

For me, doubt makes life much more interesting.It’s the impetus that keeps me learning.  And not being sure keeps me from being too insufferably arrogant.

And that, I am sure, is a relief to a lot of people who know me rather well.

Did I really want to know this?

I come from a family riveted by cancer, and its capacity to cut life short has marked every one of my mother’s ten children.  The cancer didn’t stop with my mother.  It struck down her father, brother, her husband, his parents, a daughter, and several first cousins.  Another one of my sisters is in remission.

We don’t seem to carry a specific cancer gene but are rather one of those many families who seem simply to be more vulnerable to a variety of different cancers.  So I tend to notice research reports about cancer, especially those suggesting ways of reducing its incidence.

So you would think I would be pleased to read the results of a the biggest study of women’s health in the world, which has been tracking the health and lifestyles of 1.3 million women over the age of 50, and which has just announced that it seems to have identified a key cancer agent.

It’s alcohol.

And it’s not just binge drinking.  Even drinking in moderation is linked to increased cancer.  For instance, one small drink a day is associated with a 1% increase of of breast cancer.  Three small drinks a day, and the incidence is increased over 3%.

As many as one out of every eight cases of breast, liver and oral cancers are associated with alcohol.

The authors of the research report are not telling women to give up drinking.  ”The risk of one small drink a night is small,” they say. 

But if you are in a family at high risk for cancer, or if you want to clamp down on cancer risk in whatever ways are possible, not drinking at all isn’t a useless strategy.  ( http://www.millionwomenstudy.org) 

My own decision is to stop at one drink a week, to keep my weight under control, and to exercise at least 30 minutes on most days.

But I’m going to die of something.  Whatever it is, I hope it’s fast.

And hopefully not too soon.

English Mother’s Day

Today is Mother’s Day in England, sometimes called “Mothering Day,” so as not to discriminate against those mothers who are not biologically-speaking a mother to the offspring in question.

It’s probably iconoclastic to recall today of all days my existential objection to motherbhood offered to the dinner table when I was about 12, but much to my surprise, I must admit that I quite possibly have been more of an iconoclast than a peacemaker most of my life.  

Anyway, at 12 my struggle with the meaning of life took the shape of the question  ”Is that all there is to life?  you grow up, have children and die?”

As the undoubted beneficiary of someone who did indeed think that growing up, having children, and dying was sufficient meaning for her life, I have moderated my evaluation of motherhood somewhat.

But only somewhat.  I had hoped to have children, but lost the baby.   I was obviously disappointed, but in retrospect, I am not one of those women who, now that it is too late, wish I had had children.  I don’t.  

In fact, I still feel that, for me at least, to have dedicated my whole life to raising children without having any other serious goal or interests would have been suffocating.  And as I look around, it seems to me that for many – though not all – it is for other women too.  Women have minds and talents and insights that go beyond raising children.  And for many of them, not to use them is deadening.

What children need – indeed, what husbands and wives and families in general need – varies hugely.  What is right for one family isn’t right for another.  What is deadly for some women, some children, some husbands, is liberating for others.

I am someone who needed to work, to think, to worry about issues beyond my immediate family.  I needed that more than I needed children.  So I celebrate mother’s day with gratitude for those mothers who are truly mothers, but without regret that I’m not among them.

Even if it might not be exactly politically correct in every group to say so.  And I am terribly grateful that my own mother didn’t feel that way.

Unconnected surprises

The only things the following have in common is that I would never have thought either was possible:

The Roman Catholic Church is issuing De-baptized Certificates to adults who are requesting them on the grounds that they were baptized as non-consenting babies, and now that they can consent, they don’t.  

I wonder about the theology of this.  I’d been taught that Baptism was one of those non-reversible events.  But perhaps the reasoning is that it never took effect in the first place, so they have their Original Sin back.  Or perhaps the emphasis now is not on the removal of Original Sin, as it was in my days, but on membership in the community.  So people who are opting out of the community can get a certificate of withdrawal, as it were.

The second surprise is that there are states in America where it is illegal to collect the rain water that falls onto the roof of ones house or on ones own land.  Harvesting rain water in barrels to use to water a vegetable patch or flush the toilet is forbidden.

The law says that farmers and water companies have paid for this water and property owners are obligated to let the rain water run off unimpeded into streams and rivers.

Apparently the law is being challenged in a Colorado court.