LOL. Given the wide diversity of opinions offered here, which question would you like me to address? First come, first served.
Why not start with
the very first reply you got, and work from there?
The very first reply I got was from
@NoHolyCows, so here goes:
Spirituality
It has often been suggested that science has proven that God does not exist. The main thrust of this argument is that Science does not presume the existence of God and therefore we don't need the concept of God in order to explain the universe and therefore there's no God. Besides, look at the suffering and evil in this world. If God exists, why would He allow evil?
This paragraph conflates several distinct arguments and misrepresents each. First, science does not claim to disprove God—it operates on methodological naturalism, which means it explains phenomena based on observable causes. If science can explain the universe without invoking God, that weakens the need for a God hypothesis, but it doesn’t constitute disproof. Second, the problem of evil is not a scientific argument but a philosophical one: it challenges the coherence of a benevolent, omnipotent God in light of gratuitous suffering. Saying “evil exists” doesn’t prove there is no God, but it does make the traditional theistic God morally incoherent without a compelling theodicy, which theologians still struggle to provide.
I agree. I have somewhat misrepresented the argument and NoHolyCows is absolutely correct. What science is essentially saying is that there is no need for a God hypothesis, but several authors like Richard Dawkins have argued that God is thus a delusion. What I wanted to point out though is that science is much more successful with non-living things that it is with living processes (NoHolyCows disputed that later in their reply and I will also respond to that later). I also agree with the second point, that a "good" God shouldn't allow suffering. But He does, and suffering exists. It will take me a lot further into my case before I can address this question.
We have moved far from the world that our ancient forefathers inhabited. Back then, believing in the supernatural was self-evident. We need to see our world through their lens if we were to discuss the existence of God.
Why should we rely on the worldview of people who thought lightning was the wrath of gods and disease was caused by demons? Our ancient ancestors lacked the tools of modern science, and while their worldview was understandable given their context, it was based on ignorance—not insight. Progress means building on their questions, not freezing our answers at their level. To evaluate claims about reality, we need better methods, not older myths.
Because I became a Christian after around 50 years of being an agnostic. I became a Christian about 20 years ago and struggled with a lot of Christian doctrine (Yes, I am over 70 years old). I came to some surprising findings (to me anyway) about the Bible which I wanted to share and see if you agree, etc. I am hoping to build upon their questions as well as their answers. I think their questions are eternal, still burning within us. But the answers have changed and some of the answers we have today surprised me.
But if we want to quote their words and refer to what has been written in the Bible, I think we owe it to ourselves to ask what they might have meant when they wrote it. Did they understand it in a different way? If we understood what they wrote from their perspective, it may make more sense to us. I gave the example of the word "spirit" to illustrate this. We see "spirit" as some supernatural ghost floating in the air whilst to the ancient mind, it simply represented living things. Thus all living things had a spirit to the ancient mind. And praying to trees and animals is simply their way of paying respect to these living things. To the fact that they are alive and not just sticks and stones. Sure, we don't see things that way today, but if we keep this in mind, what they said may make more sense to us today.
One of the reasons I turned to Christianity was because the answers in the Bible made more sense to me than anything else I've read since I embarked on the journey.
The nature that science investigates is not the Nature we experience. Nature, to us, is alive - the plants and animals in it. Although science can tell us how milk, for example, is derived from grass, or bones from calcium, we are not yet able to replicate any of these natural processes. We cannot, for example, make milk from grass nor bones from milk. In repairing our teeth, the dentist does not have a paste that they can apply to the tooth to fill the hole that will dry into enamel.
This is false. Science absolutely investigates the Nature we experience—plants, animals, ecosystems, physiology, cognition. Saying we cannot “make milk from grass” is misleading: cows do that through biochemical pathways that we understand in great detail, and lab-based synthetic milk is already in production using genetically engineered yeast and fermentation. Similarly, the fact that dentists can’t regrow enamel yet isn’t evidence of mystery—it’s evidence of the complexity of biological materials. This is an argument from ignorance: “We don’t know how yet, so it must be something deeper.” But “not yet” is not the same as “never.”
LOL. I disagree. Science began with Newton's Laws and the study of how objects move. It never got to the point of explaining why ameobas can move without an external force whilst stones can't. I'm not even asking if we can recreate life. Sure, we have biology, but it doesn't really come near to understanding how living things work. We also have medicine, but medicine only works in terms of curing diseases and helping to keep the body alive. Indeed, in medicine itself, it is widely accepted that the true healing comes from the patient, and that the level of faith that the patient has in terms of recovery affects the possibility and rate of recovery. The most important thing for the patient to heal is to rest and let the body, in effect, heal itself. Significantly, you can worry yourself sick and perhaps even die because you believe you are going to die. Modern medicine has no cure from that, apart from trying to convince you not to worry and that you are not going to die (eventually, but not yet).
More importantly, this is not an argument I want get into because it is somewhat beside the point.
This is odd, don't you think? We can uncover the beginning of the universe, discover black holes, even create artificial intelligence but we have not penetrated even the simplest form of life.
There’s nothing odd about the fact that some problems (like origin-of-life) are harder than others (like cosmology). Human understanding progresses unevenly. But it’s false to say we haven’t penetrated life. We’ve mapped genomes, engineered microbes, cloned organisms, edited DNA, created synthetic cells, and built molecular machines. The claim that life is untouched by science is simply incorrect. What we haven’t done is completely recreated abiogenesis, but we’ve come far—and invoking mystery as a placeholder for spirit is premature.
On the contrary, I think it is decidedly odd. We can make claims about things that are far away and even about things in the past which we can't possibly touch and study in the normal way, but we have next to zero understanding about things that are right in front of us. I'm not talking about the origin of life, which is admittedly a difficult problem (although I'm not sure why since it's all around us). I'm just saying we can't make bones from milk, which our bodies do on a daily basis. Or make a dead chicken lay eggs. We have done a lot of work, I am not saying that we haven't. But they fall far short of the level of faith that we seem to have in it.
If you admit that life is a difficult question that may lie beyond the scope of current science, maybe we need to revisit some old texts to see if they have some answers we need to reconsider. We may even have to think in a different way to get answers to some of the questions about life that we have.
BTW: Music does indeed escape physics. Scientists are unable to explain why some sounds is music to some ears and not to others. If you have a good scientific explanation, do let me know. Saying that we know how sound works is a far cry from saying that we understand music. But again, this is beside the point.
The origin of the word "spirit" is spirare, which simply means to breathe. In other words, every thing that is alive is spirit. To rationally discuss this Nature, we cannot turn to science but to psychology, philosophy and religion.
Yes, “spirit” comes from “breath”—because early humans saw breath as the sign of life. But etymology doesn’t grant metaphysical weight. If we redefine “spirit” to mean “life,” we’re no longer discussing something supernatural. As for rational discussion: philosophy and psychology contribute greatly, but religion often makes claims that are not rationally defensible. If your view of life depends on unverifiable metaphysics, it’s not rational discourse. Science may not answer every question, but it’s the most reliable method we have for separating what’s true from what just feels meaningful.
Exactly. I am suggesting that to the ancient mind, the spiritual world is not something supernatural, but part of the reality they inhabit. The reason why, I think, we perceive that religion makes claims that are not rationally defensible to us is because we understand religion in a different way than believers do. According to the Internet (
https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2012/12/18/global-religious-landscape-exec/), 84% of the population in the world
today are religious - identified in the study simply as people who ascribe to a recognized religion. Several of our most prominent scientists are religious. After much study and research, I too became religious. I happen to be Christian because my research led me to Christianity and probably more importantly, the material I have most access to are in English (the only language I read) and they mainly talk about Christianity (both for and against).
Is this helpful? I feel like I'm running around in circles and not moving forward. And I wouldn't be at all surprised if NHC comes back with a reply, probably several, to defend his points and I will then have to reply as well. This is a very long reply to just one response which took a lot of my time and didn't help me develop my case. And there are a lot more arguments that readers have made. Most of us "free-thinkers" have our own set of beliefs which are very hard to argue against. The more intelligent we are, the more difficult it is to disprove. This topic has engaged some of the best minds we have and we're no closer to an answer that is widely satisfactory. I really don't want to get into a heated argument with anyone. We are all entitled to our views and I have no problems with yours (even when this thread is deemed "a poor man's ChatGPT overview of Christianity". LOL).
Still, it's an interesting topic to me and I want to share my thoughts and see where it takes me. Should I ask
@pood to be the arbiter and select a post for me to respond to each day (I'm planning to only do one post a day) or pose questions on behalf of the readers? Or maybe just answer the first response I get each day? If anyone has any suggestions around how we can moderate this thread, do tell.
BTW, I haven't covered everything I wanted to cover. There's a lot more to come.
