I disagree that science doesn't detect "any god". There are many high speed science guys that believe in some thing more. What scientist, and indeed many others, don't detect or agree with is some of the traits assigned to a god. I find it funny that some atheist don't like how they were treated or pick only the nasty bits from the holy books to prove there is no god or its an evil god.
Yeah, they "religion" got many traits that are "wrong", but that doesn't mean no god or gods of any type. In fact, "science data" supports the belief in some thing more as more reliable than the reverse. Observationally based only that is.
How we feel about it or what pollical change we are seeking is a different story. The only problem I have with some fellow atheist is having a political agenda decided what we should be saying for team unity sake. Just sounds to religious for me.
What a scientist believes is not what science has detected. Science “detects” by generating testable predictions, measuring signals that discriminate between hypotheses, and getting the same result independently and repeatedly. By that standard, there is no intersubjectively replicable detection of any deity—no instrument signal, no controlled experiment, no prediction that uniquely requires a god rather than known natural causes. Many scientists are personally religious; that’s a sociological fact, not evidence. Appeals to who believes what are arguments from authority or popularity, not data. Gravity waves were detected (LIGO signals predicted by GR), electrons are detected (cloud chambers, STM), viruses are detected (microscopy, culture, sequencing). Nothing comparable exists for a god.
If you want detection, you must operationalize the claim—state which divine trait makes a measurable, risky prediction that differs from the null. “A being outside nature” that leaves no testable footprint is, by definition, outside science. If a god answers intercessory prayer in a way that changes medical outcomes, that’s testable with randomized, blinded trials. High-quality trials have not shown consistent, replicable effects once bias is controlled. If a god suspends decay rates, moves planets, or encodes messages in the CMB with prime-number sequences, those are measurable. We simply don’t see such signals.
Atheism doesn’t rest on “nasty bits.” The core claim is simpler: extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and there isn’t any. Scriptural critiques highlight human authorship—historical context, contradictions, moral norms like slavery or herem warfare that reflect their time. That undercuts claims of perfect revelation, but even a morally flawless book wouldn’t prove a deity; it would be a book with admirable ethics. Evidence of divinity would still have to be empirical and independent of the text.
Agreed. Showing specific religions are wrong doesn’t prove no gods are possible. The rational position isn’t “proven no gods,” it’s “withhold belief until supported.” That’s how we treat all unfalsifiable possibilities—Russell’s teapot, invisible dragons, undetectable fairies. Possibility alone isn’t a reason to believe; evidence is.
This flips the record. Historically, phenomena once attributed to gods retreated as natural explanations succeeded: lightning (electrodynamics), disease (germ theory), epilepsy (neurology), species diversity (evolution by natural selection), planetary motion (celestial mechanics), and the early universe’s behavior (cosmology). That trajectory is one-way: gaps close without positing the supernatural. Invoking “something more” is a gap-filler; it gains credibility only if it produces predictions that beat natural models. It hasn’t. When people say “observationally, there’s something more,” they’re often reporting powerful experiences. Those experiences are real; their supernatural interpretation is not warranted. Neuroscience can induce “sensed presence” and unity experiences (temporal lobe activity, psychedelics, hypoxia), showing that the experience doesn’t require a supernatural cause.
Epistemology and politics are separate. Whether a god exists is a question of evidence and method. People—religious or atheist—sometimes build movements and agendas; that has no bearing on the truth value of a claim. The method that decides the god question is the same method that decides every other factual question: make a precise claim, derive a prediction that could fail, test it, replicate it, update.
What would count as evidence (and why we’d still be careful):
If repeated, blinded studies showed that specific prayers regrow amputated limbs at rates far beyond placebo, that would be strong evidence of agency beyond current biology. If telescope arrays repeatedly observed sky-writing in new supernova remnants encoding prime proofs announced ahead of time in a way no human could fake, that would be a striking signal. Even then we’d ask: is there a natural or technological cause we missed (unknown physics, advanced aliens)? We’d still follow the data. Right now, we don’t have anything like that.
Science hasn’t “detected a god” because no god-hypothesis has produced a unique, measurable, independently replicable signal that outperforms natural explanations. Personal belief by scientists isn’t detection. Critiques of scripture aren’t the basis of atheism; the lack of evidence is. “Something more” remains a possibility without evidential support. The intellectually honest stance is non-belief until a god claim is stated precisely, makes risky predictions, and survives rigorous testing. When that happens, we’ll all have a reason to update. Until then, there’s nothing to detect—and nothing detected.
NHC
