Atheists go on the high horse about science gives them factual knowledge of things we know exist, and they can prove anything with science. That's their concept of the counter to religion, as though science and religion are opposites. Part of that argument is set in terms of "I don't see any God out there but science can show us real things." I have an argument to counter this notion, even though I argue always that analogies don't prove, it is best illustrated with an analogy. I am not arguing from analogy I don't analogy prove it, what proves the argument is the logic of the case. But the analogy actually helps to clarify what is being argued.
Several things that science assumes are real or is investigating as probably real based upon theory, are not yet proved to be real. None of those can be seen. So the idea that if you don't see it it can't be real is not taken seriously by science. yet the worshipers of science still think in this primitive pre scientific way.
things that scinece accepts as probable but has no proof for:
string theory
dark matter
neutrinos
self regulated capitalist ecnomy
singularity and big bang
laws of phsyics
In physics, string theory is a theoretical framework in which the point-like particles of particle physics are replaced by one-dimensional objects called strings.(a)[1] In string theory, the different types of observed elementary particles arise from the different quantum states of these strings. In addition to the types of particles postulated by the standard model of particle physics, string theory naturally incorporates gravity, and is therefore a candidate for a theory of everything, a self-contained mathematical model that describes all fundamental forces and forms of matter. Aside from this hypothesized role in particle physics, string theory is now widely used as a theoretical tool in physics, and it has shed light on many aspects of quantum field theory and quantum gravity.(a)[2]
Contray to what atheists want to think, string theory has not been proved. It's not likely to be proved because we probably can't find any collider big enough to bash things together hard enough.[2] They are still working on proving and taking like they are getting closer,they have been talking about it as a reality for decades. So obviously science doesn't need to to see it to believe it either. Of course they always answer this by saying "you dont' understand" (the first thing to say) we can describes things with the theory and its reality. What's my point? I can describe reality with my ideas of God and it fits reality. This is true in relation to mystical experience and the nature of human psyche.
Then they fall back on the the idea that it's possible to detect the existence of scientifically valid things because they are real (becuase they are scientific) that means we have ways to detect them.
We can produce theoretical verification of God's reality in the same way that science produced theoretical verification of neutrinos before they had the proof. This was due to the theoretical way other particles behaved suggesting that they were being effected by the theoretical nutrios even though they could not be proved. We can do the same thing with God thorugh religious experience. The Co determinate argument:
Co-determinate: The co-determinate is like the Derridian trace, or like a fingerprint. It's the accompanying sign that is always found with the thing itself. In other words, like trailing the invisable man in the snow. You can't see the invisable man, but you can see his footprints, and wherever he is in the snow his prints will always follow.Because the effects of the experience can be traced and understood as that which would be produced by God, that which God promises if we understand certain sacred texts as promises of God, we can see these are effects of divine encounter. With this theoretical understanding, just like with the nutrino effecting other particles around it we can understand that God is effecting us in a long term positive way. thus we do have empirical confirmation at least on a theoretical level, science can't do any better on these harder aspects of reality such as the sub atomic.
We cannot produce direct observation of God, but we can find the "trace" or the co-determinate, the effects of God in the wrold.
The only question at that ponit is "How do we know this is the effect, or the accompanying sign of the divine? But that should be answere in the argument below. Here let us set out some general peramitors:
(1) The trace produced content with speicificually religious affects
(2)The affects led one to a renewed sense of divine relaity, are transformative of life goals and self actualization
(3) Cannot be accounted for by alteante cuasality or other means.
Argument
(1)There are real affects from Mytical experince.
(2)These affects cannot be reduced to naturalistic cause and affect, bogus mental states or epiphenomena.
(3)Since the affects of Mystical consciousness are independent of other explaintions we should assume that they are genuine.
(4)Since mystical experince is usually experince of something, the Holy, the sacred some sort of greater trasncendent reality we should assume that the object is real since the affects or real, or that the affects are the result of some real higher reailty.
(5)The true measure of the reality of the co-dterminate is the transfomrative power of the affects.
But we can provide reasons to believe that are just as equivalent and are analogs to the search for neutrinos.For at least 40 years scinece they could not detect neutrinos they had to go by the behavior of other particles and the theory of how neutrinos would effect them. I"m not sure if that has change but even if it is it was true for decades and it didn't stop scientists from taking it seriously.
Atheists will go on pretending that they can judge these things by the same standards as one judge scientific things. Yet they will not accept the analogy between this argument and the history of neutrinos.
A neutrino (/nuːˈtriːnoʊ/ or /njuːˈtriːnoʊ/) is an electrically neutral, weakly interacting elementary subatomic particle[1] with half-integer spin. The neutrino (meaning "small neutral one" in Italian) is denoted by the Greek letter ν (nu). All evidence suggests that neutrinos have mass but that their mass is tiny even by the standards of subatomic particles. Their mass has never been measured accurately.
Neutrinos do not carry electric charge, which means that they are not affected by the electromagnetic forces that act on charged particles such as electrons and protons. Neutrinos are affected only by the weak sub-atomic force, of much shorter range than electromagnetism, and gravity, which is relatively weak on the subatomic scale. Therefore a typical neutrino passes through normal matter...[3]
We have no direct proof of them, we have to assume they exist by their effect on other particles. This is analogous to God in that we can't have direct empirical proof bu we have probable effects upon humans, such as the effects of religious experience.
the only answer to this argument they have is to try and shame religion with the demonstrability of science to assert faith that scinece will one day find all of these things they can't find. That will probalby never be the case for laws of physics or the singularity or other univeres. Even if it is that doesn't really answer my argument. They are dealing with empirical matter, we should expect them to be demonstrable.
Their original argument is illogical to begin with because what they are really saying is "this area of study that is subject to empirical verification can be verified. So therefore we should not believe in God becuase he's part of this other area that is not empirically verifiable." That is not logical becuase if God is not empirically verifiable then we can't expect him to be verified empirically. The assertion that only empirically verifiable things can exist is silly.
Even more silly when we see that some things in empirically verifiable realm are not yet empirically verified but science is willing to assume their reality or plausibly of it anyway. Yet atheists want to rule God out on this basis when he's not part of the empirically verifiable domain.
sources
[1] "String Theory," Wikapedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/String_theory
(a) Sean Carroll, Ph.D., Cal Tech, 2007, The Teaching Company, Dark Matter, Dark Energy: The Dark Side of the Universe, Guidebook Part 2 page 59, Accessed Oct. 7, 2013, "...The idea that the elementary constituents of matter are small loops of string rather than pointlike particles ... we think of string theory as a candidate theory of quantum gravity..."
(b)
Klebanov, Igor and Maldacena, Juan (2009). "Solving Quantum Field Theories via Curved Spacetimes" (PDF). Physics Today 62: 28. doi:10.1063/1.3074260. Retrieved May 2013.
[2] David Albert, Interiview, Big Think, January 7 (2010) http://bigthink.com/videos/can-we-prove-string-theory
accessed 1/14/14
[3] "Neutrino," Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutrino
accessed 1/14/14
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