Pages

Monday, March 11, 2013

"Science Refutes God" Debate

HASSNERS.org highlights
HASSNERS.org comments

If you don't have time to listen to the 1 hour 48 minute debate, do listen to the 8 minute (4 x 2 minute) closing arguments from 1 hr 32 min. Spoiler Alert: Below I paraphrase these closing remarks.

The first closing speaker (1 hr 33 min) for why science does not refute god was Ian Hutchinson who has a book, Monopolizing Knowledge, which attempts to refute 'scientism'. Ian Hutchinson says that it is not possible for science to refute god because that is beyond the limits of the competence of science (viz. scientism), a metaphysical extrapolation. Don't confuse science with scientism, he says.

Michael Shermer was a Christian who was in a christian bubble at Uni. He talks about (1 hr 35min 30s) the confirmation bias (taking an irrational belief, then later on, rationalising it) and this shows that we create gods in our heads, which is not the same as there being an actual god, and, anyway, there is no evidence to support existence of any god. It is not possible for there to be a god, at least not a supernatural god. There is no way we could know of a supernatural god because he would be outside space and time. Because god would have to be able to interact with material stuff and therefore if a god was shown by evidence to exist, because he was in some way effecting the material world, he would reach in to stir the particles, then science could measure this cos that is what science does, then he would turn out to be a natural god and thus become part of science, and that would be the end of the god concept.

Dinesh D'Souza (1 hr 37 min 50s) talks about Darwins loss of faith. Sciences explanations coexist with god.

Lawrence Krauss (1 hr 40min) Gods were created (sun, earth moon) to explain physical events. The rise of science means we don't have all these 10,000 gods. We are all atheists of 9999 gods. No need for supernatural shenanigans or capricious beings. Laws of nature allow predications and we can control nature. There is no evidence of purpose. Why questions are ill-posed because they presume purpose. "we want to believe" (Fox Moulder) but 'the easiest people to fool are ourselves' (Richard Feynman). Science refutes that there is a purpose and thats why Science refutes God.

Twitter handle: @IQ2US, https://twitter.com/IQ2US
Twitter hashtag #scivgod https://twitter.com/search?q=%23SCIVGOD

Debate result: 1 hr 47 mins.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Monopolizing-Knowledge-Ian-Hutchinson/dp/0983702306/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1362965080&sr=8-1

No comments:

Post a Comment