Science and the Illogical

Philosophy Forums Religion and Spirituality
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The Scientific and Deist Assumption

The Enlightenment wiped out much of the reality of a supernatural world and Materialism essentially finished off the residue. The only existing reality then became the physical world of sense experience, reason and human consciousness. The world of make-believe or the supernatural simply became fairy-tale. A cynic of God might say that the belief in God is arbitrary because of a lack of facts. This is true only to the point as a belief in God is based on Faith and not facts, but this truth does not make a belief in the Material or Science any less illogical.

Kurt Gödel proved in his paper, “On Formally Undecidable Propositions of Principia Mathematica and Related Systems” that logic as a means of coming up with final, incontrovertible answers is inadequate. He showed that logic cannot supply absolutely certain proof of even the most basic propositions of simple arithmetic. What would seem like a logically unarguable answer turned out every time to be based on an assumption which could be proved only by making a further assumption. Each time the process started over unremittingly—we assume that the assumption is correct, if and only if the assumed answer is what the first assumption intended to end with.

If human beings, like other matter, are confined by walls of space and time, then questions about life after death and God appear to be nonsensical. But how do we know that this space-time box confines us entirely? In order to maintain seriously that we are totally confined within a purely physical universe, a person must believe implicitly one of two things. One can decide that he or she knows all the facts of the Universe and that there is no shred of evidence on the contrary and this is obviously an absurdity. Or, one can assume that he or she knows the essential nature of the world itself (Kelsey, n.d.).

Since this cannot be demonstrated by logic, one can only maintain this truth by faith and assumption. It is ironic that this faith is the same type of faith that has come into question regarding a Theist’s faith in a higher power. If a person does not know the essential nature of the world or hold the knowledge of the universe, then it is impossible for that person to hold onto logic and science with anything other than faith.

Truth is based on assumption and expectation. We assume that what we have scientifically proven is true only because these things are indefinitely constant and expect that the end result will be as similar as possible to what we obtained on prior occasions i.e. two plus two will always equal four, unless at some point it equals three. It is the expectation that this equation will always equal four that we pronounce it true. This assumption is based in as much on faith as the assumption that God is true is based on this similar faith.

The burden of proof, regarding a higher power, is not left to the believer, but to the cynic in this instance. God exists until Science scours the entire universe, the supernatural universe and everything above and beyond and proves that there is no such higher power(s) that have influence over the natural laws of the universe. Science is then inadequate if it is unable to find the supernatural. Simply not believing is not longer acceptable.

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As a theist, I have a concern about this: Even if it’s true that science is inadequate to answer questions about God, which I happen to believe as well, more is needed for the theist to be justified. A proper belief, like theism, need some sort of demonstrable link to something else we believe. If the whole set of supernatural beliefs is a noetic ‘island’ with no bridge to science, perceptual experience, or logic, then it seems it can be done away with, right?

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I agree that Theism needs a proper component to justify it, but the justification, from my perspective cannot be one of logic or of empiricism because both lack the adequate emotion, for lack of a better word, to make it valid. I struggled to come up with anything that could demonstrate this link, which my brother pointed out when reading the initial post. There is nothing a Theist can use to demonstrate a link or connection to anything else under the field of human-understanding. In my belief, Theism is like no other system known to man.

Theism is only irrelevant from an Empirical standpoint. But, since Theism does have a direct link with human experience—in the literal sense—then it is difficult for me, personally, to discern whether or not it is worthless in its ideal. I think Theism is infinitely more beneficial than Empiricism, because I have seen too many things that science couldn’t possibly explain or justify with its logic.

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Actually I don’t see how you came to such a conclusion. The burden of proof is both on the believer and the non believer.

Not believing is as acceptable as believing.

From what you say God comes out only as possible, not necessary.

Secondary I don’t think that you can transform a critique of Godel to the principia into an attack of science which works with very different systems. Ofcourse similar crtics have been moven by many postmodernists yet I don’t think I can support the mechanics of your argumentation.

Also this part assumes truth purely as a corrispondence. Yet this is not obvious.

Let’s take for example a constructionist. He may very well claim that for him the word God has no meaning. Maybe like the first wittgenstein he will claim that he doesn’t know which are the conditions of truth for a sentence like “god exists” thus having no reason for including him in her system.

And this happens without having neither to claim to know everything in the universe, nor having faith.

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I think this is ultimately why I reject "The God of Philosophers" or Deism, if you'd rather.  Defining nessicary qualities of God, and discussing him critically is a useful part of any theology, of course.  But even if our qualities and concepts surrounding God are extremely likely, practical, and sound, God still remains [i]theoretical[/i], the problem with that being that as a theory, God isn't needed to explain anything. 
The point that I'll argue, that seems to be overlooked by many philosophers of theism, is that specific religions and their claims must be a nessecary part of the study. That is to say, if God spoke to Moses, if Gabriel spoke to Mohammed (take any example you want), then we [i]have[/i] our link to empiricism through history.  It is, after all, religion that is mostly responsible for the idea of theism being carried forward to the present, and without religion, the undefeatable argument from the skeptic will be,  "Sure theism is sound, coherent, and appealing. But why suppose it in the first place?"
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I am not arguing the necessity of God. I am arguing that empiricism is based as equally on faith as the belief in God is. With this in mind, if it is illogical to believe in God, then it is illogical to believe in the validity of empiricism—without question. I am also not transferring Gödel’s argument to attack science; I use it to attack logic. Logic is as much a series of never-ending assumptions as faith is. And if you do not question Logic then you are blindly following a philosophy of the material world—this same line is used to attack theists who follow God without question.

Excluding ideas that are foreign and contradictory to a system is inherent to the system’s ability to counter any of these contradictions. It would be ridiculous to add four and two together and end up with eight. That process is multiplication; and although this example is flawed, in that multiplication is a component of mathematics the point is still there.

But, empiricism does not simply exclude the idea of the supernatural from its system, empiricism denies the existence of the supernatural based on its own system. It is incorrect to define the existence of a foreign system by using the definitions of another system. We can’t explain the concept of color to the blind, so to speak. So truth is a correspondence between not only two people, but within the machine of the system itself. There is absolutely nothing wrong with excluding an idea from a system, but it is wrong to use a particular system to define the validity of a totally divergent system.

My argument still remains valid in light of this. A person who excludes a particular idea from his or her system does not need to know all, but a person who claims that a contrary system is not at all possible does need to know everything in order to make his or her claim valid and not just sound.