Scientific evidence for the existance of God.

http://www.leaderu.com/real/ri9403/evidence.html

This isn't evidence. The argument is that because our theories of the universe neatly describe it God must exist. Of course our theories are neat, we've spent 300 years developing them. Mathematics was invented to describe the universe so we really shouldn't act all surprised when it does. Besides, Douglas Adams went through all this in the Hitchhiker's Guide - if you can prove God exists then he can't.

Originally posted by DeepThought
This isn't evidence. The argument is that because our theories of the universe neatly describe it God must exist. Of course our theories are neat, we've spent 300 years developing them. Mathematics was invented to describe the universe so we really shouldn't act all surprised when it does. Besides, Douglas Adams went through all this in the Hitchhiker's Guide - if you can prove God exists then he can't.

In other words...

"I won't believe in God because you can't prove it and if you do prove it, I can't believe in God! So there!"

Do I even need to comment on the absurdity of that?

Originally posted by Darfius
In other words...

"I won't believe in God because you can't prove it and if you do prove it, I can't believe in God! So there!"

Do I even need to comment on the absurdity of that?

It's called a joke, I don't deny that you may be right - I just find it unlikely.

Originally posted by DeepThought
It's called a joke, I don't deny that you may be right - I just find it unlikely.

Any particular reason why?

Interesting link, to be sure. But for a different take on the situation, read some of Lee Smolin's writings.

I just searched for Smolin on the Net, and found this:

http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/smolin_susskind04/smolin_susskind.html

Originally posted by Paul Dirac
Interesting link, to be sure. But for a different take on the situation, read some of Lee Smolin's writings.

I just searched for Smolin on the Net, and found this:

http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/smolin_susskind04/smolin_susskind.html

Great stuff, Paul. Thanks. I'll comment when I'm done.

One guy is postulating that black holes provide an environment for the formation of new universes, but I agree with the other guy in that the best theories show black holes as retaining, not losing information.

The other guy is a proponent of string theory, and believes in a multiverse, which still doesn't get around design, as there's no reason the multiverse would spawn different universes to produce one like ours. Also, where did it come from? Seems like scientists got to say the universe was eternal until it was proven wrong, so they push it one up.

Anything to avoid God, I guess.

A man didn’t understand how televisions work, and was convinced that there must be lots of little men inside the box. manipulating images at high speed. An engineer explained to him about high frequency modulations of the electromagnetic spectrum, about transmitters and receivers, about amplifiers and cathode ray tubes, about scan lines moving across and down a phosphorescent screen. The man listened to the engineer with careful attention, nodding his head at every step of the argument. At the end he pronounced himself satisfied. He really did now understand how televisions work. "But I expect there are just a few little men in there, aren’t there?"

Originally posted by Darfius
One guy is postulating that black holes provide an environment for the formation of new universes, but I agree with the other guy in that the best theories show black holes as retaining, not losing information.

The other guy is a proponent of string theory, and believes in a multiverse, which still doesn't get around design, as there's no reason the mul ...[text shortened]... eternal until it was proven wrong, so they push it one up.

Anything to avoid God, I guess.

I think you're more likely to do anything to come to the God conclusion than that scientists will do anything to avoid it.

Originally posted by AThousandYoung
I think you're more likely to do anything to come to the God conclusion than that scientists will do anything to avoid it.

They conviently forget that some of the greatest scientific minds were put to use for centuries trying to prove His existence. Newton, Pascal and quite a lot more. Science has come to the conclusions that :
1) it can explain the universe without God in the equation
2) if God exists He doesn't exist in our universe.
3) science has no way of obtaining data about God ( see 2)

also from a different viewpoint:
if an all powerful god doesn't want to be " proven" then He won't be,

Originally posted by Darfius
Any particular reason why?

Well, you get all sorts of logical problems, and creating Lucifer with exactly that personality was ineffable by anyone's standards.
I seem to remember a story in the Old Testament about them trying to build a tower ...
The basic difficulty with this kind of science vs. religeon debate is that if you try to do an experiment to see if God exists then if he doesn't you get a no and if he does he can mess up the experiment so you get a false negative, the experiment is useless because you can't interpret the results. Positive results are no better as then what you've detected can't be god as being undetectable is part of the job description. Even direct experience is no use since you can't distinguish a divine visit from a schizophrenic episode.
For most of what we do scientifically it doesn't matter whether God exists or not, either he made it or it exists of it's own accord - either way the 'it' in question behaves consistently so we can build up a theory to describe it and hopefully do useful things. God doesn't enter the equation, because most of the time you are interested in how things work, not why they exist in the first place.
We are at a point where we can explain the creation of the universe without recourse to a god, but that doesn't mean there isn't one, just that there doesn't have to be which is what you'd expect.

Originally posted by Darfius
One guy is postulating that black holes provide an environment for the formation of new universes, but I agree with the other guy in that the best theories show black holes as retaining, not losing information.

The other guy is a proponent of string theory, and believes in a multiverse, which still doesn't get around design, as there's no reason the mul ...[text shortened]... eternal until it was proven wrong, so they push it one up.

Anything to avoid God, I guess.

M-theory is regarded as the best hope for a consistent theory of quantum gravity. The idea is that the universe we see is a membrane like structure embedded in a 10 dimensional containing universe they dubbed the bulk. Different membranes in the bulk can have different fields on them and different numbers of dimensions, and there are vast numbers of them so you have a lot of chances to get ones that can support life.
The universe (or bulk or whatever) starts off small and vanishes again almost instantly. From the point of few of someone inside it however it undergoes inflationary expansion which generates lots of mass and energy and you end up with a big thing that lasts for billions of years with galaxies and things.
Basically our theories seem to let universes be 'created' for free.
But you still haven't dealt with the problem of how god creates himself (or herself or itsself) - saying god must exist because otherwise we can't explain our own existance simply shifts the problem to one of divine autogeneration.

Originally posted by DeepThought
M-theory is regarded as the best hope for a consistent theory of quantum gravity. The idea is that the universe we see is a membrane like structure embedded in a 10 dimensional containing universe they dubbed the bulk. Different membranes in the bulk can have different fields on them and different numbers of dimensions, and there are vast numbers of th ...[text shortened]... e we can't explain our own existance simply shifts the problem to one of divine autogeneration.

Horava and Witten started with M-theory in eleven spacetime dimensions, compactified on a 6-dimensional Calabi-Yau space, leaving four space dimensions and time.
This Horava-Witten world is not a cosmological model, but this picture has been applied to cosmology with interesting and controversial results. The latest version of braneworld cosmology is the giant brane collision model, also known as the Ekpyrotic Universe, or the Big Splat.

for more info

http://superstringtheory.com/cosmo/cosmo5a1.html