From: hjort@ohstpy.mps.ohio-state.edu
Newsgroups: alt.atheism,talk.religion.misc
Subject: Re: Vatican Finds Galileo 'Not Guilty'
Date: 11 Nov 92 15:51:19 EST

In article <1992Nov9.160214.16969@news.cs.brandeis.edu>, aaron@binah.cc.brandeis.edu (Scott Aaron) writes:
> In article <1992Nov9.033803.24861@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu>, jcopelan@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (The One and Only) writes:
>>No, what science says is that the supernatural is not necessary to explain
>>anything in the universe.  I see that you didn't answer my question.  How
>>much more simple can I make it.  You also ignored and edited out the most
>>important part of my post which was: Why do you suppose the supernatural
>>exists at all?  What reasons do you have to believe this?  First you invent
>>the supernatural then you say that we can't experience it. If the effects of
>>God's actions can not be known or experienced in the natural world, then how
>>do you know they exist in the first place?
> 
> My point is very simple.  If (please note that I am making a proposition; you
> apparantly missed the word before) supernatural actions exist, then they are 
> beyond the ability of science to explain.  Take creation for an example.  
> Science says that everything evolved via physical laws from a Big Bang event 
> in the finite past.  Fine.  But God could still have created the universe at 
> some other point in the past (take your pick of proposed times) and there 
> would be no contradiction of the theory; the universe still appears to have 
> evolved via physical laws from a Big Bang event in the finite past.  The 
> theory does not exclude the possibility of a divine creation yesterday because 
> the theory assumes that everything came from processes governed physical laws.
> I'll say it again, it is very simple.  Science cannot disprove God nor are
> religion and science in opposition; they deal with totally different subject
> matter.

I think you are making an assumption much bigger than is required by science.
The purpose of the "no supernatural" assumption is that as scientists attempt
to pin cause A on effect B, they design two types of experiments, one where
they have to identical setups, except only one has cause A. Also done would
be experiments that leave A constant, but change other things to see if B
changes. The "no supernatural" assumption just means the scientists don't
need task prophets or mystics if any supernatural conditions are changing
which might screw up the experiment. Now, for a scientific proof, you
would need a theory which predicts that God will preform some observable
action. Set up and run experiments that observe this action, and rule out all
other (non god) causes. Now if this fails (i.e. can't pin the action on God)
then that just proves the theory incorrect, but if the results conform to
the theory, then that is good scientific evidence that God as defined by
your theory exists. Once scientists all over the world have repeated this
many times over the years, "God exists" will become as much of a fact as
"the force of gravity exists".

The problem lies in the fact that God (or any other supernatural phenomena)
is defined to be undetectable unless the "will" behind it wants to cause
some detectable effect. Under such a condition, you could only say "God
will do <blank> observable action, but only if He wants to." In this case
if the observable action is not observed, then no conclusion can be made,
as God may not have felt like cooperating that day. (Note, if you could
find a mind reader who can read God's mind, you can find out if God
wants to, and thus make it possible to falsify the theory). However,
this problem does not make it impossible for science to attempt to prove
the existance of something supernatural, only that the scientists will fail
unless the supernatural entities cooperate.

I hope this helps explain what sort of assumptions science requires to be
science. :)

[Discussion if lack of evidence is evidence against deleted]

					-Hans H Hjort