Can God Be Proven or Disproven Through Science Empirically?

Reasons peopele use science to argue against the existence of God

• Should be able to see God• Should find evidence of God In life, nature, the universe• Religion is the worst thingThat has happened to man

Victor Stenger

Richard Dawkins

Christopher Hitchens

Tor Egil Forland

Intro to Science

• Science is systematic studyOf the universe• Hypothesis is a purposedExplanation to a questionThat has limited evidence• Scientific method• Science is not belief

Isaac Newton1643 – 1727

Albert Einstein1879 – 1955

Galileo Galilei1564 – 1642

Leonardo da Vinci1452 – 1519

Reasons People use science to explain that God exists

• It takes Intelligence to make things– Genome Structure– DNA, RNA– Protein Binding

• Natural Processes Have difficulties on there own– Homochirality

• It takes belief in something – Plurality of Universes

Hugh Ross

Fazale Rana

Science Cannot Explain God or that He Doesn’t Exist

• It took the most cutting edge technology • just right environment • many thousands of hours of research and development for scientists to

get to a desirable outcome. – Are these Proofs or beliefs based on data?– Are beliefs empirical because one uses data to back up beliefs?

• Inductive arguments neither prove or disprove empirically

Argument For God

• There is ‘x’ in the world (motion, causation, contingency).• Present ‘x’ in the world is based on past ‘x’.• The world is such that an infinite regress of ‘x’ cannot

explain current ‘x’.• Therefore, a ‘y’ not subject to ‘x’ (Unmoved mover,

Uncaused cause, Necessary being) is needed if• ‘x’ is to be explained.• This ‘y’ is what we call ‘God’.

Argument Against God• Complexity is either incremental or ‘irreducible’• Incremental complexity arises as the cumulative result of basically

simple processes• ‘Irreducible complexity’ is complexity that simply occurs and cannot

be explained by basically simple processes.• The more complex an ‘irreducibly complex’ object is, the more

improbable it is.• God must be more complex than the universe• God designed is maximally complex.• God must be thought of as ‘irreducibly complex’.• As a maximally complex object of irreducible complexity, God is

therefore maximally improbable.

Deductive Arguments For and Against God Falter As Well

• Inductive arguments, by their nature, only give one probability for a belief• Deductive arguments offer the possibility of certain knowledge

– God is either necessary or absurd from the very nature of things

• The problem is these premises and definitions inevitably involve assumptions

Conclusion• Religious zeal causes the debate from both sides.• Science can’t answer what love ,hate; good evil are either.• Science is not the tool to answer the questions:

– Does God exist– Why am I here

How to choose the right tool?

How to choose the right tool

• Look at all the evidence– Use all the tools!• Science, Nature, History Religion etc…