Scientific Proof of the Existence of God

Ghoti posted this link in another thread that I thought was worthy of it's own thread.


"Scientific Proof of the Existence of God": http://www.wie.org/j11/goswami.asp

Not again.

If you have already exhausted the subject in your mind, feel free to read/post any one of the other, far more important threads.

This is for those of us who are still looking for answers.

Oh FFS! No more... Please?

Nope. Not again. Read the article.

-Ghoti

When I closed my eyes the forums ceased to exist. When I opened them they came back. Isn't that weird ?!

*Takes the cap off a Sharpie -- then inhales deeply* Aw, all better.

If you have done something right, no one will be sure you have done anything at all,

It's not particularly scientific, and reads like another case of wanting a certain conclusion and bending the facts to fit, to me. An interesting philosophical idea, but it seems to me reality is what doesn't go away when you quit believing in it.

Well, Goswami's work is more sophisticated than the last several "proofs" you presented, Kevn, and for that, I congratulate you. Goswami is doing what a number of scientists have done over the last thirty years: dabbling in the religious and philosophical implications of the scientific method, and what science has shown us about "the Big Questions". (Others who have done this? Alfred North Whitehead, Carl Sagan, Heinz Pagels, Thomas Kuhn, etc.)

Nonetheless, Goswami's speculations remain an attempt to reconcile mysticism and supernatural "first causes" with materialist science using a holistic philosophical approach and Aristotelian logic. And as such, it's a philosophical "proof" and subject to interpretation and argument - it's not a scientific "truth" subject to verification through repeatable experimentation.

Doesn't mean it isn't true; doesn't mean it is. What it means is this: it's interesting, and fun to speculate about.

If you distort the meaning of existence enough, invisible pink unicorns and flying spaghetti monsters can also exist.
God can be trivially proven to exist if we accept that it exists as a concept.
It doesn't imply that there is some conscious ethereal being that permeates the universe and somehow created it, or that a silly 2000 year book has anything to do with it.
Besides, the existence of supernatural entities is not the point. If the man himself descended from heaven in a beam of light and kicked me in the nuts to prove his existence, I would still be against BLIND FAITH. Especially of the 2000 year old book variety. Why the fuck would anyone believe in that thing over any other book in existence.
I'd rather believe in Tolkien. Maybe animals once spoke and people were capable of magic and all that crap.

Interesting theory. Kind of Schrodinger's Cat on steroids. "I think, therefore you are." It offers no proof of god however, and to claim that it does shows that people will start with a preconceived idea and cherry-pick their science to fit that preconceived idea. This is psuedo-science mixed with mysticism and philosophy. Interesting for sure, but it proves nothing. Quantum effects have not been demonstrated outside of the quantum universe. If this view is true (that nothing exists without an observer) then god would only exist beause we thought of him. He would be a human invention. Which, come to think of it, is an accurate description of the nature of god. Then again, if nothing can exist without an observer, then you could say that god had to exist in order to bring everything else into being. So where did god come from then? Chicken or egg?

Anyway, this Amat Swami guy is a member of the cult of Ramtha, a woman who claims to channel a 35,000 year old warrior from Atlantis, and behind the movie "What the Bleep Do We Know" which is pure psuedo-science. Many of the scientists who were interviewed for the film complained bitterly upon its release that their statements were edited to change their meanings and used completely out of context. It's rubbish.

I'm rather partial to eggs myself

Exactly. Instead of this forum doing some speculating, though, I knew I could count on certain folks to simply shout it down. Dogma is dogma is dogma.

I'm not going to argue any points here, because that's all that goes on... arguing, not discussion.

Anyone who finds the article interesting should read his very well-written book: The Self-Aware Universe.

-Ghoti

Dogma n.
A doctrine or a corpus of doctrines relating to matters such as morality and faith, set forth in an authoritative manner by a church.



Please keep your dogma on a leash.

Yeah, I have to go with 'egg' as well. I come to this conclusion because modern theory holds birds (including chicken, I'd assume) are evolved from dinosaurs... hence you don't need as chicken to make the first chicken egg.

-Ghoti

Flying spaghetti monsters don't exist? Thanks Eggy for ruining my day. This is almost as bad as the day at 8 years old that I found out that the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus, um, oh wait, I don't want to ruin THAT for anyone else.

Sorry, I find membership in a cult in which a woman claims to channel a 35000 year old warrior from Atlantis (in a husky hollywood elizabethan accent no less), to be all I need to know about this particular "scientist." It's an interesting philosophical rumination. It has no scientific value whatsoever.

This just sounds like the anthropic principle to me.

With some added corollaries that contradict the possibility of proof (the need for someone to be aware of the universe or it won't exist). A bit difficult to test that, perhaps?

As for the quantum mechanics tie-in: this I find a bit unwise. The very 'principle' of Heisenberg is really more of a question - a codified admission that nobody knows why or how the quantum states change as they do.

Once quantum mechanics is well understood, there will be some new, poorly understood physical mechanism that will become the font of all mysticism. So it was with radio waves, so it will be with entangled particle states.

While there might be some cosmic proof someday, I don't think this is it.

Ya? Well, you're dead wrong.

Newton was a numerologist, an alchemist, and a Cult of Isis afficianado. Didn't detract from his Principia, and doesn't cause us to use quotation marks around his "profession", either.

Kepler believed that the ultimate kinetic force in the cosmos was Divine Music. Didn't detract from his work on orbital mechanics, and doesn't cause us to use said-same quotation marks.

Brahe was a drunk who lost his nose in a knife fight in a bar. He's still the greatest observational astronomer who ever lived.

Einstein wasted most of his life attempting to work within the framework of a classical physics driven by God - after his own work discounted classical physics as a grand framework, and ushered in quantum physics and substituted probability for first causes. Sad man, sad career after 1930. We honor him, rightly, as perhaps the most profoundly influential human being of the 20th century.

I don't care for Goswami's mystical POV, nor for the liberties that the film took with science or the scientists it used. But nothing in a person's life "tells me all I need to know" about that person's work, ideas, or possible contributions. To add a reference from another thread - that's bigotry of another sort, and the sort of thing that has gotten prior threads on this subject out of control and shut down.

Anyone who's had a 2-yr old brother knows that flying-spaghetti monsters can and do exist.

At least get the facts straight.

The supposed channel is JZ Knight. She supposedly channels the '35,000 year old atlantean warrior' Ramtha.

Ramtha appears in the movie "What The Bleep Do We Know? ", this is true. However, the movie was privately funded by the film makers, not by "Ramtha's School of Enlightenment".

'Many scientists' means one scientist. The person you are refering to is Dr. David Albert. Yeah, I'd be pissed off too if I spent hours explaining to someone how their theories don't hold water, only to have the film edited to make it appear I was buying into the theories.

Despite Chip's clear authority in such matters, I encourage anyone with an inquisitive mind to watch the movie for some very thought-provoking material.

-Ghoti

What I find interesting is some actually appear to be afraid of these kind of topics, as is evidenced by the clear attempt to derail this thread and others like it, almost as if should people believe it, it will become reality.

Who knows, but it is very interesting to see how some find such distain for those who seek to understand our environment beyond what can be verified with the tools in hand.

Trying to redicule those who seek deeper understanding, with comparisons to believing in the tooth fairy, makes one wonder, what is there to fear? Why redicule those with whom one disagrees?

Maybe we will figure it out, maybe not. But it won't be found by people who refuse to investigate every possibility.

Your points are well taken, Seth, but I need to set you straight on Einstein. He was an atheist.

"It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it." [From a letter Einstein wrote in English, dated 24 March 1954. It is included in Albert Einstein: The Human Side, edited by Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffman, published by Princeton University Press.