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