Perception & the practice of claiming Science disproves God

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Sciborg_S_Patel

Dismissing God

(Seems like this might connect with Strassman's theoneurological model and Kastrup's article about how materialists hijacked science.)

Debates between theists and atheists often hinge, naturally enough, on advances in cognitive neuroscience and evolutionary biology. Here I contend that such advances, though relevant to the debate, cannot license deductively valid arguments for or against theism. I contend further that the central role of probability in evolutionary theory grants no inductive strength to arguments for or against theism. The Kolmogorov axioms of probability and the mathematical definition of a stochastic process suitably model mutation and selection; using this fact to conclude for or against theism requires, in either case, a leap of faith.

So the story outlined above, in which science is systematically uncovering all the secrets of nature, and leaving less and less room for God to hide, is not only immodest, but a complete misunderstanding of the scientific enterprise. Science is a species-specific enterprise, which proceeds under the restrictions of the cognitive and perceptual endowments of one species among millions on earth. The most striking results of this enterprise appear to inform that species of some of its own limitations. These results crop up not only in science but also in mathematics, where we have discovered hard limits to our methods of proof: there are unprovable truths.

If science isn’t eliminating places where God might hide, hasn’t it at least made God unnecessary, replacing the creative role once assigned to God with the creative power of chance? This is a common assumption, but one that fails to understand the modern theory of chance.
 
Thanks for the links! Seems to me it's a leap of faith either way if we accept our perceptions as being inadequate to the task of transcending our subjective experience.

That said, I'll definitely go through the material you posted.
 
Why should we accept that? If we accept that, every belief, even a mundane belief, is a leap of faith. Why do you only apply it to belief in God?

Well Hoffman is saying what we see are icons representative of greater reality.

As such our mundane beliefs are about the consistency and regularity of our reality, whereas belief in God is about something beyond icons.
 
Good thread, Sciborg. I've been reading Hoffman's papers more and more since the thread about the Interface Theory of Perception.

Will add more once I read through the links you and Jim_Smith have provided.
 
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