Can science really disprove somethings existence?

[achilles12604]

Usually the argument goes something like this . . .

Theist: God exists.

Science: How do you know?

Theist: 1) origin of the universe, biblical history, personal experience, origin of life, etc

Science: And how do you know that the universe didn't just pop into being without God. Your personal experience doesn't count as evidence, and history can be wrong.

Theist: Well what makes you think God doesn't exist.

science: I am totally unable to detect any sign of him at all and science is the best method we have for detecting and studying things in the universe.

You don't need to answer. My point is very simply that bible thumpers and science thumpers sometimes have similar issues regarding their claims of total knowledge. Neither can truly get the whole picture alone.

But what picture is this? Lets say there is more to this world than science knows. How do we know this? What methodology do we deploy? And the point I’ve been banging on about over several threads the last few days is the only correct method for addressing reality is naturalism because only naturalism can meet the full set of criteria: prediction, verification, falsification and assigns a clear definition to all the signs it deploys in its answers. Any explanation that fails to meet this benchmark is intellectually vacuous. Regardless of the depth of conviction of any given non naturalistic belief.

However I detect that this point is not lost on you achilles because you make great attempts to rationalise your belief system, and I know you think that what is supernatural is only what science does not yet understand. That is easy for a full blown naturalist to admit. What we cannot admit is that the theist can fill in the gaps.

I guess this is where some degree of theistic faith comes in. Hey that gives me a thought. Is faith provable by science? For example, would science be able to determine someone's beliefs? If science is unable to determine someone's beliefs and faith, does that mean that the person's faith does not exist?

My questions for discussion.

Is science able to determine someone's beliefs without being told? Another possible question to clarify this point is can science prove that someone who is now dead, had beliefs while alive?

If silence is maintained and a person's beliefs can not be determined, does this mean the beliefs do not exist?

[achilles12604]

I moved this from the other thread. I hope you don't mind.

Great topic Achilles, and as usual your willingness to put up your personal quest as part of it is admirable and a sign of maturity.

Thanks.

I guess this is where some degree of theistic faith comes in. Hey that gives me a thought. Is faith provable by science?

Depending upon what you are trying to prove then yes, to some extent. If you were given a lie detector and some sodium pentathol http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_thiopental then a scientist might be able to determine if you really have faith or not with a fair degree of certainty whether or not you were lying about your faith.

I should go and modify my post to be a little more explicit. I am comparing the existence of faith with the existence of God. To put this into perspective, we could drug the person and force him to reveal his faith yes. But we can not drug God to force him to prove his existence. So while you point is logical, it isn't valid given the confines of the experiment. I will go make the necessary corrections.

How would science prove or disprove that a dead person had faith while alive?

[achilles12604]

You're being silly.
I think you really need to define what you mean by "faith" here. If science cannot read your mind then your mind does not exist? Or is the implication that if science can't determine if you are lying then God exists?

Not at all. I never implied anything like this because science would be able to cut open the person's head and find the brain. It would be able to test the brain to determine it's function. There is a huge difference between someone's beliefs and someone's brain when it comes to science. This is of course the entire point I am trying to make here.

And as for me implying that god exists simply because science can not determine a person's beliefs, of course I am not. I am however attempting to thwart yet another commonly used and illogical argument from the non-theist perspective. I have seen teriffic debaters on this forum, when asked why they do not believe in God say something like,

"Science has never been able to get any sign of him." or "science doesn't need God to explain things anymore because we have figured them out."

My goal here, is not to prove God. No, claiming that my argument here proved God's existence would certainly be faulty thinking. My goal here is to de-rail a very commonly used, and totally irrational argument which I have battled against ever since I have been debating.

[byofrcs]

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However I detect that this point is not lost on you achilles because you make great attempts to rationalise your belief system, and I know you think that what is supernatural is only what science does not yet understand. That is easy for a full blown naturalist to admit. What we cannot admit is that the theist can fill in the gaps.

I guess this is where some degree of theistic faith comes in. Hey that gives me a thought. Is faith provable by science? For example, would science be able to determine someone's beliefs? If science is unable to determine someone's beliefs and faith, does that mean that the person's faith does not exist?

My questions for discussion.

Is science able to determine someone's beliefs without being told?

If silence is maintained and a person's beliefs can not be determined, does this mean the beliefs do not exist?

Is the person themselves even able to determine their belief if they maintain silence ? The instance they attempt to remind themselves of their belief (even if it is in silence) then there will be brain activity.

As with any memory or program - you have to do something to see what it contains or does. Imagine the belief as a series of bits on a disk drive platter. Unless it is read then we would not know it exists.

So the person would have to think their belief back into temporary existence else neither the person nor "science" would know it existed anyway.

I would suggest that a suitable pattern of brain activity would be associated with certain beliefs (though that is just a theory of mine at this time though I think it has fairly good grounding) and thus using functional magnetic resonance imaging may be able to say that the belief exists. fMRI is in very early stages as far as I known and to analyse the images from a subject you would need a baseline set of results from other people to compare with.

With science there is little that is certain (you need maths for that and that isn't really a science per se) but it hinges on probability. Thus though the person may maintain silence (audible) that they try to not think of their belief to maintain their silence the existence of the belief could in all probability be measurable (ref: Dostoyevsky and the White Bear).

With Atheists obviously we have no belief in God and so there is no White Bear for us to not believe in the same brain sections may be stimulated by other thoughts but we interpret these in different ways. Still confused as to why one way needs so many Tax breaks !.

[achilles12604]

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However I detect that this point is not lost on you achilles because you make great attempts to rationalise your belief system, and I know you think that what is supernatural is only what science does not yet understand. That is easy for a full blown naturalist to admit. What we cannot admit is that the theist can fill in the gaps.

I guess this is where some degree of theistic faith comes in. Hey that gives me a thought. Is faith provable by science? For example, would science be able to determine someone's beliefs? If science is unable to determine someone's beliefs and faith, does that mean that the person's faith does not exist?

My questions for discussion.

Is science able to determine someone's beliefs without being told?

If silence is maintained and a person's beliefs can not be determined, does this mean the beliefs do not exist?

Is the person themselves even able to determine their belief if they maintain silence ? The instance they attempt to remind themselves of their belief (even if it is in silence) then there will be brain activity.

As with any memory or program - you have to do something to see what it contains or does. Imagine the belief as a series of bits on a disk drive platter. Unless it is read then we would not know it exists.

So the person would have to think their belief back into temporary existence else neither the person nor "science" would know it existed anyway.

I would suggest that a suitable pattern of brain activity would be associated with certain beliefs (though that is just a theory of mine at this time though I think it has fairly good grounding) and thus using functional magnetic resonance imaging may be able to say that the belief exists. fMRI is in very early stages as far as I known and to analyse the images from a subject you would need a baseline set of results from other people to compare with.

With science there is little that is certain (you need maths for that and that isn't really a science per se) but it hinges on probability. Thus though the person may maintain silence (audible) that they try to not think of their belief to maintain their silence the existence of the belief could in all probability be measurable (ref: Dostoyevsky and the White Bear).

With Atheists obviously we have no belief in God and so there is no White Bear for us to not believe in the same brain sections may be stimulated by other thoughts but we interpret these in different ways. Still confused as to why one way needs so many Tax breaks !.

I seriously doubt that there is a specific brain pattern for beliefs. So feel free to support your point and I will retract mine. Silence only goes as far as silence and does not include thought.

So what of it? Can someone determine what beliefs someone has or had based on brain patterns? Are there different brain patterns for different religions? Are these patterns different if someone is a fundi or a liberal? Do atheists have brain patterns and if so are they the same as a theists?

You show me that people have specific brain patterns for beliefs and that atheists no not have these patterns at all and I will gladly conceed my point.

[QED]

I'll have to dig out something I was reading in New Scientist the other week about FMRI studies of people undergoing various perceptual tests.

But here's another answer to your question (which still strikes me as a bit odd) -- a forensic examination of a corpse will reveal any number of beliefs held by the deceased -- e.g. belief in marriage, pharmacology, dentistry.

You show me that people have specific brain patterns for beliefs and that atheists no not have these patterns at all and I will gladly conceed my point.

You seem to be shifting the goalposts here, to begin with you wanted to know how science could identify something totally "invisible" that was nonetheless extant and hit on conscious thoughts as an example. Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging of the brain will reveal "thoughts" in action -- even if we cannot (yet!) read those thoughts. Our inability to identify atheistic thoughts from theistic ones isn't dictated by any known principle, and until such time as it is we ought to assume that it is something buried in complexity rather than something unknowable in principle.

[achilles12604]

I'll have to dig out something I was reading in New Scientist the other week about FMRI studies of people undergoing various perceptual tests.

But here's another answer to your question (which still strikes me as a bit odd) -- a forensic examination of a corpse will reveal any number of beliefs held by the deceased -- e.g. belief in marriage, pharmacology, dentistry.

True enough. But this discussion was started on the premise of faith. So when I say belief, I don't mean that they believed in wearing clothes.

You show me that people have specific brain patterns for beliefs and that atheists no not have these patterns at all and I will gladly conceed my point.

You seem to be shifting the goalposts here, to begin with you wanted to know how science could identify something totally "invisible" that was nonetheless extant and hit on conscious thoughts as an example. Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging of the brain will reveal "thoughts" in action -- even if we cannot (yet!) read those thoughts. Our inability to identify atheistic thoughts from theistic ones isn't dictated by any known principle, and until such time as it is we ought to assume that it is something buried in complexity rather than something unknowable in principle.

I didn't try to shift the goal posts. The were shifted for me and I simply asked for evidence supporting his position. As for the inability to distinguish different thoughts, I guess this deals with my challenge to Byofrcs. But it does not directly answer my original point. Can science prove, or test a person's faith simply with analysis and data gathered through the scientific method without being told by the person? If the answer is no, which it is seeming to shape up to be, then can science ligitimently claim that anything untestable by science probably doesn't exist?

[QED]

I didn't try to shift the goal posts. The were shifted for me and I simply asked for evidence supporting his position. As for the inability to distinguish different thoughts, I guess this deals with my challenge to Byofrcs. But it does not directly answer my original point. Can science prove, or test a person's faith simply with analysis and data gathered through the scientific method without being told by the person? If the answer is no, which it is seeming to shape up to be, then can science ligitimently claim that anything untestable by science probably doesn't exist?

Which is why I fired-off about principles. As an example of something extant that can't be detected by science I think "inner thoughts and beliefs" are poor examples. Poor because we know of no principle that says these things must transcend the physical sciences, in which case we can only safely assume that they remain obscure through lack of adequate investigation. This is certainly how it looks to be -- the fact that FMRI exposes brain activity gives us good reason to anticipate the future decoding of thoughts given the right tools and techniques.

[achilles12604]

I didn't try to shift the goal posts. The were shifted for me and I simply asked for evidence supporting his position. As for the inability to distinguish different thoughts, I guess this deals with my challenge to Byofrcs. But it does not directly answer my original point. Can science prove, or test a person's faith simply with analysis and data gathered through the scientific method without being told by the person? If the answer is no, which it is seeming to shape up to be, then can science ligitimently claim that anything untestable by science probably doesn't exist?

Which is why I fired-off about principles. As an example of something extant that can't be detected by science I think "inner thoughts and beliefs" are poor examples. Poor because we know of no principle that says these things must transcend the physical sciences, in which case we can only safely assume that they remain obscure through lack of adequate investigation. This is certainly how it looks to be -- the fact that FMRI exposes brain activity gives us good reason to anticipate the future decoding of thoughts given the right tools and techniques.

And people are also researching multiple dimensions which allows for the possibility of one day finding God or other "supernatural" (defined as outside of the natural) things. Saying "science might answer it one day" is on par with "Jesus might come back one day". I am totally open to the possibility of science one day investigating God.

But then again that is a side argument to my OP. If science is unable to EVER find a person's beliefs, does this mean that they do not exist? Hypothetically say science will NEVER determine the beliefs of a person. Would this cause beliefs to stop existing? Would they start existing when science was able to pin point them?

[Furrowed Brow]

There is a huge difference between someone's beliefs and someone's brain when it comes to science. This is of course the entire point I am trying to make here.

I’d agree. But I suspect for a completely different set of reasons. I also suspect a conceptual error here. As QED pointed out. How do we know that the Jon Doe we are investigating “believed in marriage”. Well we look for a wedding ring, maybe investigate his estate to find out if he was married. What we look for are the same things we would look for if Jon Doe was alive. Physical behaviour and traits that show that Jon doe believes in marriage. Belief not then being stored in the head, but out there in the world and culture around us.

How does the living Jon Doe know he believes in marriage: he is married, he says things to himself like “I believe in marriage” etc. In other words he inspects his own behaviour and words.

I'm going to make the assumption that you believe in marriage achilles. To verify this I suspect you will relfect on your behaviour and things you have said. What else would you inspect to answer this question?