Craig,

HDK take the position that the universe is explicable with known science, making a God hypothesis unnecessary. They understand a God hypothesis is unfalsifiable, that faith and science are separate, that a null hypothesis is unneeded.

You expect science to accommodate a 'god of the gaps', like it did with the 'God particle' (until its existence was confirmed), but science has never posited the existence of a god to explain anything. Long should it remain that, "In doing so they (scientists) limit their possible explanations of the observations that religious people ascribe to a divine origin". That would be going backwards.

When things are done in the name of a god, they are done on behalf of a figment of imagination. That's fine until those things become nasty. I didn't get much response to my 'war and internment' treatment of the problem. Should those espousing extremism be interned as enemies of the State for the duration of the conflict?

Craig Minns,

I've heard analogies using the weirdness of QM to shoehorn the possibility of the existence of a god into otherwise rational debate, but never quite like this.

<<I'm not suggesting there is any reason not to engage deductively other than the fact that it is always going to be unproductive.>>

What do you mean by “unproductive” then? When most people say this, they usually mean that it’s no use trying to change the minds of theists (which is not always true); you were even talking earlier about theists and atheists using different forms of reasoning, which further suggests that this is what you’re talking about. But then you give an analogy in the very next paragraph that appears to assume that religious experience is a very real thing that transcends rational thought processes, thus rendering discussion unproductive.

<<Using a light microscope to explore QM is a perfectly reasonable thing to do if you have a deterministic (deductive) mindset, but it won't help you to understand why electrons don't behave like molecules.>>

What makes you think that similar could be said of religious experiences; that there is anything more to religious experiences than rational or naturalistic explanations? You seem to assume that religious experiences have their own mystical explanation, in the same sense that QM doesn’t obey our understanding of cause and effect, but provide no justification for this.

<<In speaking of a lack of evidence, what is being said is simply: "I don't believe your account unless you can show me something I can explain based on what I already know".>>

Rubbish. A religious experience is not a way of coming to “know” anything. Because even if the experience was a legitimate revelation, the person who experiences it would also have started from a position in which they did not possess sufficient knowledge on which to base the conclusion that the experience was in fact divine. Personal revelation is not a reliable pathway to truth and even if it were, how could you possibly make that determination without reason and evidence?

It always comes back to evidence.

Continued…

...Continued

<<I have expalined why that is essentially a poor approach and is not one that Krauss, for example would take in his work in physics.>>

Do you mean with your conflating of the different meanings of “faith” regarding hypotheses? An hypothesis is not a belief without evidence and it’s also not a complete trust or confidence in an idea. Both would be unreliable and unscientific starting points. Furthermore, theists are not investigating a belief, they’re already convinced of its truth and hold it in the face of evidence to the contrary.

Your analogy was wrong on every level.

<<My point on QM was analogy, not literalism.>>

Yes, I understood that. And my point was that the analogy was a misrepresentation of the line of reasoning and arguments of Dawkins, et al.

<<Your response, however, is a good demonstration of why trying to explain religious experience to those who are determined to be unconvinced is always doomed to failure.>>

My response demonstrated nothing of the sort. And how does someone - who is sceptical that their own unexplainable experiences are anything other than natural phenomena with rational explanations - explain religious experiences to someone who is of the same mindset in a way that is going to enlighten them? You yourself suggested that your default position, when you experience something unexplainable, is to assume a rational explanation.

You sound very confused.

<<What would give you the idea that theists don't know something that you don't?>>

I didn't say they didn't. This is a shifting of the burden of proof.

I was just curious as to why you entertained the idea (that theists might be privy to some special revelation) to the extent that you would label Dawkins', et al. disregard for the possibility as a "serious" error. I don't know that Russell's teapot isn't orbiting the sun, but I wouldn't consider my dismissal of the idea a "serious" error. This goes back to what I was saying about agnostics' error in assuming that the question of God requires more certainty than any other absurd idea. There's no reason it should.

My goodness, haven't you heard ?
Stephan Hawkins proved God does not exist !
God could not have initiated the big bang because before the big bang
there was no TIME !
Time only came into existence at the time of the big bang !

Luciferase, my own position is the same as you ascribe to Dawkins, et al. I do not expect science to accommodate any kind of God at all, as I have said repeatedly. Use of terms like "God of the gaps" is meaningless in the context.

My position is simply that the religious explanation satisfies a particular human need to explain things which is shared by science. I am prepared to accept that somebody else's explanation may use different words for concepts that we share and try to fit my own grasp of their meaning to their own usage.

Dawkins et al arrogantly refuse to do so and so they are left arguing about things they refuse to accept as even worth their time, which to be honest, is pretty damned foolish behaviour for people who are apparently intelligent.

When things are done in the name of QM they are similarly done in the name of a figment of the imagination and so we come full circle to where we started. Dark matter is another great mystery that we have no way of meaningfully explaining; it would be just as useful to call it "God" as DM.

Feynmann, in one of his famous Lectures on Physics made the point that the process of advancing science starts with the making of a guess to explain something that the scientist has observed and can't explain.

The lazy atheism of Dawkins et al doesn't approach the problem of the observations that lead to a religious explanation, it attacks the explanation on grounds that the explanation doesn't attempt to cover. It would be like attacking Boyle's Law because it explains how gases behave even though Boyle had no idea what gases really were.

It's pointless.

AJP, what I "seem" to do in your mind and what I "say" on paper, "seem" to be at odds.

No point in trying to go any further, I'd say.