by Kolbitar » February 9th, 2007, 4:22 pm
::Science explains the reasoning behind everything--> there is no testable or empirical evidence to suggest anything supernatural exists--> thus there is no reason to believe that a God exists.
No, no. Science first assumes, as a hypothetical, that the universe works -- and will work -- a certain way. There is no testable or empirical evidence to support that assumption, for no matter how often the past has conformed to our assumption, the continuing assumption itself is inductive -- the steady pattern of laws to which we expect things in motion to conform as well as the steady pattern according to which we expect things to come into and go out of existence is not self-evidently certain; and, though the assumption can be deduced from what we know of the facts of the universes past, the inherent inability of the scientific method to claim knowledge (apart from our will) that this assumption will continue to hold is also present in that deduction.
Let me offer an analogy. I think we're all familiar with the game Sorry. The gist of the game is to move four pawns from Start, step by step, around a square board to the Home position. To begin one must draw the proper card (a 1 or a 2) in order to make an entrance from Start onto the area of play. Now, there are various rules to the game according to which cards you draw. For instance, if you draw a 2 you can either move a pawn from Start onto the board, or move a pawn already on the board two spaces, then you get to draw again; or if you draw an 11 you can either move eleven spaces or switch the position of one of your pawns with that of another player; or, say you draw a 4, you must then move backwards four spaces. Now, these rules are arbitrary rules -- there's no reason that a 3 could not be the card which let's us go backwards three spaces instead of four, or a 5 could not be the card which allows us to switch places, or a 7 which gets us out of start. The sum total of these rules, as you can see, make up the hypothetical, the if-then, which governs the game of Sorry.
Ok, so imagine we are the pawns in the game of Sorry but we have no recourse to viewing the cards drawn which fix the rules—but in some mysterious way we know that cards are, in fact, drawn. Let’s also say a vast amount of time has elapsed, so that we have made a number of observations according to our experience as pawns. We know, from past experience, that when we make an entrance onto the board we either start directly in front of the Start position, or we are suddenly lifted above the board only to take the place of a different colored pawn and send him back to his Start position—and that this relocation has occurred, in the past, on every square (the only constants are 1.) that pawns are relocated where a different colored pawn was resting, and 2. ) that when there is more than one different colored pawn on the board, the relocation always takes place nearest to the entering pawns Home). We deduce from this that there’s a card, (which we’ll call Card x) that allows us to enter the board in front of Start, and that there’s a separate card (Card y) which allows us to enter the board by being pulled toward the closest pawn to our Home – I deduce that they’re different types of cards because sometimes there are different colored pawns on the board and I still only wind up directly in front of Start. I likewise deduce that there’s a card, Card z, which makes me go backwards four spaces—so I’ll call it Card 4. However, I’m unsure if Card 4 is a different type of card from Card x or Card y – for those govern my movements from start, not from the board, and one card could have rules for both, depending. In such a way I could deduce quite a number of laws which govern the game – even the purpose of the game.
The laws of Sorry are, in principle, the same type of hypotheticals as the laws governing (so we assume) the universe. You might have noticed that I, as a pawn, could only deduce certain laws of Sorry if the persons playing the game followed the rules every time. But I can see no reason why the game of which I’m a part must follow these rules every time. My deductions, therefore, only hold for my past observations. I cannot rationally say, according to scientific observations, that they will continue to hold. Let us say the game of Sorry was, up to this point, only played by an elderly couple who saw no reason to break the rules of Sorry. However, they’ve now given the game to their grandchildren, and pawns are currently moving every which way. As you can see, the pawn had no right to say he knew that the game must always be played by the rules he deduced from past observations. Neither, rationally speaking, do scientists. The weight of their conviction rests in their will. Whoaaa… now maybe we have some motivation, some eyes to see and ears to hear, for digging deeper into our past “observations” and "deductions" in order to find a reliable metaphysical principle which can lend our conviction a rational basis!
I'd like to proceed, but we must first agree on the limits of the scientific method which I've attempted, here, to illustrate...
In sum, the very basis of science (it's working hypothetical), according to the scientific method, is not rational -- has no reason for belief. If it's true that "there is no reason to believe that a God exists" according to the scientific method, it's just as certain that there's no reason to believe in the working hypothetical of science (which drives the scientific method--for if you didn't believe the laws of nature would continue to hold, you wouldn't bother doing science) according to the scientific method.
The man who lives in contact with what he believes to be a living Church is a man always expecting to meet Plato and Shakespeare tomorrow at breakfast. He is always expecting to see some truth that he has never seen before. --Chesterton
Sober Inebriation:
http://soberinebriationblog.blogspot.com/
The real reason is, as Montaigne put it, "because he was he, because I was I", and that goes for God as well.
