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LINK Atheism Is Inconsistent with the Scientific Method, Prizewinning Physicist Says - Scientific American

This guy thinks exactly like I do. He's an agnostic scientist in the same flavor as I am.

It's a good read if you want to understand why I also think atheism is unscientific, why scientism is bad, and why the "New Atheists" by and large do a disservice to discussions on science and religion both.

TheMiddleWay 8 July 10
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59 comments (51 - 59)

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1

Excellent Excellent interview!

Marcelo Gleiser Is one heck of a gutsy, intelligent physicist with deep awareness and reverence for the mysteries of reality. I once engaged with him on the Atlantic Monthly forum. Yes, he has the humility to actually exchange remarks with a nondescript stranger like myself. I was prompted to order one of his books, “The Limits of Science” or something like that. I am very happy that he is being honored and rewarded.

I am not anti-atheist in general. Though I don’t call myself an atheist I much prefer talking with atheists than trying to deal with strident religious fanatics of the fundamentalist persuasion. I hope many here will read this exciting and mind-expanding interview, atheist or not.

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"what is atheism? It’s a statement, a categorical statement that expresses belief in nonbelief.- Period. It’s a declaration. "

Sigh...
Anther "smart man" who declares his personal interpretation of a word - and is firmly against people making unfounded declarations...

If he could prove his personal interpretation is held by a majority of people identifying as atheists, that still would not be a justification for this sweeping statement.

People like him only serve to further slander the term atheist. Well done, to him and to you. Bravo!

"And to not understand that, to say that science has all the answers, to me is just nonsense."
Do know who agrees on that point? Every atheist I have ever known or heard speak.

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Sorry. Atheism is not inconsistent with the scientific method. Atheism demands evidence and science does also. Religion is static and never changing in doctrine. Science is ever changing.

I agree that atheism is not inconsistent with the scientific method, but I don't see how the simple null hypothesis of atheism makes any such demands regarding evidence and science. There seems to be relative trends and tendencies, but no demands at all.

@TheMiddleWay I suppose if null worked that way, you could rationalize those points.

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Science is always open for change when a new idea is discovered. However, religious people are 100% sure about something for which there is very little evidence. I think Christians (and others) are so wrapped up in being obedient, that they are afraid to ask questions because God might punish them.

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I get what he's saying.

First let's be upfront.

He says; "an agnostic would say, look, I have no evidence for God or any kind of god ...but that doesn't preclude that there isn't a god. An Atheist says he's certain that there is no god. That's not scientific reasoning."

Which, makes sense....to me....a science teacher and science thinker.

Whenever this discussion arises; I share this....I keep it on my desktop...

@TheMiddleWay I stand corrected...

Atheist has certain nothing except that they are not convinced there's a God or gods. The simple question is do you believe in a God or gods, if your answer is anything but yes, I have bad news for my diagnostic friends you are atheist. The term agnostic means without knowledge. The term atheist means I'm not convinced there is a God show me evidence and I will happily worship Him until then if you can't show it you don't know it what other fun question for Christians and I suppose that Jews as well if we are made in God's image then why are we not invisible.

@Lazarusstewart That's my point. You and I assume that atheism is not certain; the scientist in the OP argues that it is.

He's taking the term literally.

He's assuming that the Atheist IS certain....and thus isn't being scientific...which is a reasonable argument.

Again...I refer you to this chart; Where do you fit in? I'm an Agnostic Atheist.

I think professor Gleiser is only referring to "Gnostic Atheists"....those "convinced" or "Certain" there is no god. He's saying they're not scientific...they have no absolute proof that god doesn't exist...so they can't be scientific. It's a valid argument.

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So not believing in the tooth fairy is also inconsistent with the scientific method?

Dietl Level 7 July 10, 2019

@TheMiddleWay What if your parents are lying? And can you tell me again about that scientific experiment? How exactly do you prove that it doesn't exist? You think waiting in the night is enough?

Funny that you say that "I don't believe" is the agnostic position when the guy in the article said that was the atheistic position that he was against. I thought you and the guy think exactly alike?

@TheMiddleWay ok then. Bigfoot.

@Dietl exactly! I never told my kids I was the tooth fairy. And I'll never tell them I was. So as far as they're concerned, they can't be anything but agnostic concerning the tooth fairy.

@TheMiddleWay Now do the invisible, undetectable dragon living in my garage.

Absence of evidence does not mean evidence of absence but the burden of proof DOES NOT SHIFT. If a theist (or invisible dragon believer) makes a claim, they can either provide convincing evidence (or ANY evidence, really) else I can safely assume that they are quite bonkers and disbelieve their claim with near certainty...

@TheMiddleWay Those experiments don't prove anything. You know that, right? You are a scientist. You should know that. Is it possible that the tooth fairy didn't come because she had her day off and when you told your parents she happened to work again? Of course that it possible.

But let's say you proved somehow that your parents put the money under your pillow. Easy with a camera, whatever. Have you proved that in every instance your parents did this? Or that they did this in the past? What about other parents and children? Did you also prove that the fairy didn't come to them? Maybe she only visits children who were born at Christmas? There are so many possibilities. Someone who truly believes in the tooth fairy ALWAYS has a way out. Now here is the question. How did you not consider this? You write like you have not the slightest idea about the scientific method. How is that possible when you claim to be a scientist?

@TheMiddleWay that was way before cameras on phones.

@TheMiddleWay Because I feel it in my heart... Same as believers claim it is a "god".

@TheMiddleWay "disbelief in their claim doesn't make the opposite claim true"

Atheism makes no claim, atheism does not believe the claim that IS made.

@TheMiddleWay The Agnostic "creed" doesn't say a thing about belief. Yours might.......

@TheMiddleWay If I tell you that I can cure cancer with my magic but offer NO evidence, will you believe me? IF not you have made the claim that I cannot cure cancer with my magics. IT's magic, and only works a small percentage of the time, usually only on those who BELIEVE that they will be cured. Go on, then, prove YOUR CLAIM. I'll wait... eyeroll emoji

@TheMiddleWay "I need more than your "feelings" to speak of science..."

Yeah, duh? Methinks you've missed the point. Probably intentionally... again.

@TheMiddleWay So have you done all those experiments? Have you gathered any data concerning the existence of the tooth fairy? If not, shouldn't you be agnostic about it and likewise about every other mythical existence claim?

@TheMiddleWay "You'd have to prove that magic exists first.
If you do, I might.
If you don't, then there is no basis for your claim."

So, you expect me to keep the burden of proof but those who claim that "gods" exist get a pass on shifting the burden of proof onto atheists?

Do you not see the fault in your "logic" here, bub?

@TheMiddleWay Sorry, but can you give me a scientific study that is not done by a nine year old? I mean, are you joking? You don't take this point serious, right? I wonder why.

@TheMiddleWay So you have nothing to disprove the tooth fairy. You just dismiss it. You have no evidence except that you heard somewhere that she didn't do her magic at some particular moment, which of course is not anywhere near enough. The difference with your stone experiment is that there a falsifiable claim is made.

@TheMiddleWay Yes to disprove the kinetic equation all you need is to show that one object doesn't follow it. That is a way to falsify it. But when you show in one case that the parents exchanged a tooth nothing is falsified. She could still exist elsewhere while the KE would then be considered false and we would have to find a new law that describes motion. There is a tooth fairy claim that does get falsified and maybe that is your mistake. If you say the tooth fairy always exchanges teeth for money everywhere it is put under a pillow. But that is more than just the existence claim. The tooth fairy I am talking about is a real being that can't be at more than one place at the same time. It obeys the known laws of the universe and therefore can only exchange some teeth. Of course some parents lie because they don't think she exist so they take matters in their own hands. But sometimes somewhere a tooth is exchanged by the tooth fairy. That's the tooth fairy existence claim you don't take serious where you try to get a way with an easily disprovable strawman of a fairy that makes it so easy to get detected even though her ability to do her job depends on not getting found.

@TheMiddleWay I did not modify the definition at all. It is you who implied that she ALWAYS exchanges ALL the teeth. Otherwise your "experiments" don't work at all to disprove the tooth fairy.
It is so frustrating that you claim to be a scientist and can't tell the difference between a falsifiable and an unfalsifiable claim. A scientific law that describes motion is falsifiable. That mean that there is ONE experiment that could disprove it. ONE instance of an object's motion not conforming to the law (given that you rule out any other factors that might skew the outcome) disproves the law entirely. One experiment where it turns out that the parents exchange the tooth does only disprove a fairy that supposedly exchanges ALL teeth ALL the time. If you can't consede that point you are not worth continueing talking to. You one chance left. Either you consede that obvious point or we are done here.

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If you're doing science you should be governed by logic, and logic disproves God. There are many scientists who are deeply irrational, and you only have to look at Einstein's broken models of STR and GTR to see how shoddy most physicists' thinking is. Atheism is the end result of rigorous logical thinking and it is fully compatible with real science. These scientists who do voodoo instead of real science cannot be taken seriously.

There is a logical proof that god does not exist? I’d love to hear that.

@TheMiddleWay Relativity isn't broken (it's a real phenomenon and is accounted for rationally by Lorentz Ether Theory), but Einstein's theories of relativity are most certainly broken. STR generates an infinite number of contradictions which invalidate it, while 4D Minkowski models all generate event-meshing failures which can only be cured by bringing in a time additional to the "time" dimension to coordinate the unfolding of events for objects following different paths through Spacetime - that's why all simulations of GTR either have to cheat by bringing in that extra kind of time even though it's explicitly banned in the model or else they show up event-meshing failures (which almost always leads to those simulations being deleted and swept under the carpet). If you want to know more, read www.magicschoolbook.com/science/relativity

@TheMiddleWay, @indirect76 God's required qualifications are impossible for him to meet. He's the creator of all things, but he didn't create the perfect knowledge that he started out with. He's all-knowing, and yet he cannot know that he is God because there could be another being higher up who pulls all the real strings of power while keeping his existence a secret from the idiot "God" who has made an incorrect assumption. The higher-up being might not make the same mistake, so he may not claim that he is "God", and because he can't know if he is the top being or not, he cannot qualify as God. There are dozens of ways of disproving God, but only one is needed to do the job. The reality is though that no matter how disproved he is, lazy thinkers will always imagine that there's some magic way out by which some ridiculous God can still exist. Magic too is banned for God: it's only magic so long as he doesn't understand how it works. His supernatural status is bogus, based on nothing: there can be no supernature because any two systems that can interact are necessarily part of the same system. Any "God" being that might exist is not God, but just an apparently powerful alien being which cannot know if it has any real power at all.

@TheMiddleWay The precise experimental "confirmation" that it has is merely coincidence - when you untangle it into something 3D without the time dimension, replacing it with a Newtonian-like time, the irrational aspects of it are removed while the key mathematics remains in place, maintaining all the same predictions for the results of all the relevant experiments and observations, but once you've made that switch, you're then using Lorentz Ether Theory instead of Einstein's theories. The 4D Spacetime is nothing more than a contrived mathematical abstraction, and you can see just how contrived it is when you realise that light in such models reduces all its paths to zero length, thereby making every Spacetime in the universe (from side to side and most distant past to most distant future) zero distance away from every other Spacetime location. That is how warped it is.

Simulations have to add a kind of time not allowed in the models in order to coordinate the unfolding of events to avoid even-meshing failures, and this isn't just some artifact of using simulations: the real universe has to do the same thing, and that prevents it from being described correctly by STR or GTR.

@TheMiddleWay All the Gods with a capital G which are supposed to be all-knowing and almighty can be disproved using logic. Lesser gods (small g) cannot, just as fairies can't be disproved, but that's only because no interesting claims are made about them: they are not great authorities (the source of morality and goodness), but are merely beings which can break the apparent laws of nature while actually conforming to the real laws, just like with a virtual world where the people in a game can't break the apparent laws of nature for things in that world, but a programmer on the outside can cheat to make apparently magical things happen without breaking the real laws of nature which he lives under.

The possible existence of godlets should never be used as an argument for the possible existence of God with a capital G: there are very strict qualifications which he has to meet, and he cannot do so. The most powerful being that could exist is not worthy of the name God, so the honest thing to do is call it something else (like a powerful alien) and stop digging a dead God out of the grave.

@TheMiddleWay "For example, a god that is "all knowing" doesn't specify if this knowledge is across all space, all time, or all current knowledge, or all knowledge possible."

All-knowing is what it means: it doesn't allow any gaps. A some-knowing "God" has no authority as even what he thinks he knows could be woefully wrong. One of the biggest problems facing humanity is that people keep trying to impose their idea of morality on everyone else, taking that "morality" from ancient philosophers who tied their beliefs to a God in order to give them authority, and that authority if fake. It doesn't help when so many people keep backing up these bigots by making out that their disproved Gods haven't been disproved.

"At that point however, we are envisioning a being so far outside our realm of experience that to comment on it would be uneducated and misguided at best and hubris at worst"

Such a being must put on its own scientist's hat and work out what it is and what it knows. The answer is that it can't know if it's the top being and whether it has any real knowledge at all.

"Two, disproving using logic presumes there is one universal logic and that is not the case."

And this "God" being has exactly the same problem, not knowing it its logic carries any weight either. A "proof" using its logic might turn out to be nothing of the kind, so it is no better of than we are when it comes to working out what's what. "God" has no authority.

@TheMiddleWay "Well, now, a confirmation between SR theory and experiment of 1 part in 10^8 or GR and experiment of 70 parts in 10^6 [1] is more than just coincidence... it's the very nature of what it means for a theory to explain/model/predict nature."

Those same numbers can be attributed to LET (Lorentz Ether Theory), so they don't tell you anything about which of these rival theories is right. We can rule out STR and GTR though because of the points where they are broken: specifically in that they depend for correct functionality on a kind of time being added to them whose existence they ban outright.

@TheMiddleWay They are broken because they fail to acknowledge the fact that they depend on a kind of time additional to their time dimension in order to function correctly, and worse that that, they ban it outright. Then all their simulations smuggle it in while they deny that it is involved.

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