Science Kills God; God Gets Even

Originally posted by JS357
CS Lewis: “Men became scientific because they expected Law in Nature, and they expected Law in Nature because they believed in a Legislator. In most modern scientists this belief has died: it will be interesting to see how long their confidence in uniformity survives it. Two significant developments have already appeared—the hypothesis of a lawless sub-nature, ...[text shortened]... 8020211/Is-the-age-of-scientific-discovery-ending.html

Maybe "Goddidit" will outlive science.

Great post, JS.

Originally posted by JS357
CS Lewis: “Men became scientific because they expected Law in Nature, and they expected Law in Nature because they believed in a Legislator. In most modern scientists this belief has died: it will be interesting to see how long their confidence in uniformity survives it. Two significant developments have already appeared—the hypothesis of a lawless sub-nature, ...[text shortened]... 8020211/Is-the-age-of-scientific-discovery-ending.html

Maybe "Goddidit" will outlive science.

"Not when we’ve discovered everything about the world but when we’ve discovered everything that’s open to us to understand.”

In other words, science will/has exhausted its scope of discovery to the degree we are able to comprehend it?

Originally posted by FreakyKBH
Great post, JS.

Who is the idiot who downvoted this?

Originally posted by FMF
I am not responsible for what the "atheistic world view" supposedly "declares".

If i have ever once declared such questions "illegitimate" in all my years of posting here, please point it out.

No one said you invented atheism, but if you hold to its tenets, you are holding to the premise that all of 'this' is ultimately meaningless.

Originally posted by FreakyKBH
No one said you invented atheism, but if you hold to its tenets, you are holding to the premise that all of 'this' is ultimately meaningless.

I am not an atheist, as you well know. I don't think life is "meaningless" at all. We have discussed this directly several times. If you want to talk about atheism and the supposed "meaninglessness" of life, talk to an atheist about it.

Originally posted by josephw
[b]"Not when we’ve discovered everything about the world but when we’ve discovered everything that’s open to us to understand.”

In other words, science will/has exhausted its scope of discovery to the degree we are able to comprehend it?[/b]

You are the great simplifier. Why should we expect to entirely map the universe onto part of it, that being the human brain?

Originally posted by FreakyKBH
Shall we simply take your word for it?

That's up to you. You could also try reading the next sentence.

The scientists to which Lewis referred absolutely did this very thing.
Shall we simply take your word for it? Care to present evidence for your claim?

Nothing like today.
Not even close.
Not so. There are actually far more scientific advances/discoveries made each year today than in previous centuries.

Partially true, but fundamentally wrong.
Had the folks of CERN who benefited from the LHC been able to walk up to a chalk board and provide conclusive support or denial of the Higgs boson or any of the other supersymmetric theories, such very high energies would not have been required.
Sometimes chalk only gets you so far, it appears.
But that applies equally well to almost all atomic physics over the last century. This is nothing new.
The only reason why CERN is so big and expensive is because the phenomena being studied requires high energies - not as claimed because the phenomena is 'so far removed from our natural sensory range'.

The fact of the LHC's required existence--- when sophisticated and progressively higher means of detection and/or simulation are required for substantiating base ideas--- by itself bespeaks of an increasingly narrowing field.
Not true. If the particle in question required less energy, it would not suddenly mean that the field was broader.

Originally posted by twhitehead
That's up to you. You could also try reading the next sentence.

[b]The scientists to which Lewis referred absolutely did this very thing.
Shall we simply take your word for it? Care to present evidence for your claim?

Nothing like today.
Not even close.
Not so. There are actually far more scientific advances/discoveries made each year ...[text shortened]... article in question required less energy, it would not suddenly mean that the field was broader.[/b]

That's up to you. You could also try reading the next sentence.
Which next sentence?
The one from your original post which has no direct or indirect connection to this topic?
Or the next one from this post, which also has no direct or indirect connection to this topic?

Not so. There are actually far more scientific advances/discoveries made each year today than in previous centuries.
That requires a large amount of qualifying.
How are today's discoveries weighted in light of ones which occurred in previous centuries?
Ranking all known discoveries, would you venture to claim the discoveries since 1914 are more profound or groundbreaking than those between 1814 and 1914?
Or would those between 1714 and 1814 be considered more groundbreaking?

Not true. If the particle in question required less energy, it would not suddenly mean that the field was broader.
You're missing the point.
Because we've covered so much of the ground at this point which can be covered, we are reduced to becoming increasingly specialized.
The size and energy used by LHC are both impressive, but isn't it also impressive, this thing we're sniping at each other through?
Computation today is amazing.
Telescopes today, too.
Our forays into the micro world are equally amazing.
These (and more) are now required for study and analysis of nearly all our fields, thus supporting the claim.

Originally posted by twhitehead
That's up to you. You could also try reading the next sentence.

[b]The scientists to which Lewis referred absolutely did this very thing.
Shall we simply take your word for it? Care to present evidence for your claim?

Nothing like today.
Not even close.
Not so. There are actually far more scientific advances/discoveries made each year ...[text shortened]... article in question required less energy, it would not suddenly mean that the field was broader.[/b]

quoting:

Freaky: The scientists to which Lewis referred absolutely did this very thing (expected Law in Nature, and they expected Law in Nature because they believed in a Legislator.)

TW: Shall we simply take your word for it? Care to present evidence for your claim?

The following mentions some influential scientists and mathematicians who attributed the laws of physical nature to God.

Excerpt:

"What are laws of nature? For the Middle Ages, natural laws had been universal moral rules established by God. The injunction against murder, recognized by all cultures, was a typical example of a natural law. The concept of a physical law of nature was completely absent. That came only as Christian thinkers extended God’s legislative power to the natural world. As philosopher and scientist René Descartes (1596-1650) expressed it, “God alone is the author of all the motions in the world.”

For its time, this was a radical claim. Following Aristotle, medieval scientists had imputed immanent tendencies to physical entities, saying for example that objects went into motion because they were seeking their own natural resting place. Nature had thus enjoyed a considerable degree of autonomy.

In the new science, however, natural objects had no inherent properties, and it was God who directly controlled their interactions. In much the same way that the Deity had instituted moral rules, he was now seen to have enacted laws that governed the natural world.

“Nature,” observed Robert Boyle, “is nothing else but God acting according to certain laws he himself fix’d.”

The fact that God was the author of these laws meant that they shared something of his nature. Descartes, for example, argued that because of their source, natural laws must be eternal and unchanging. He went on to justify his law of the conservation of motion by appealing to God’s immutability. Nature was constant because God was immutable.

This provided a crucial foundation for experimental science. In the words of Newton’s predecessor in the Lucasian Chair of Mathematics at Cambridge, Isaac Barrow, experimentalists “do not suspect that Nature is inconstant, and the great Author of the universe unlike himself.” Only because they assume that God’s decrees are unchanging do they expect the consistent results of a number of experiments to hold true ever after.
The Mathematics of Nature

The idea of eternal and immutable laws of nature, vital to modern science, found a close ally in mathematics. A distinguishing feature of science, as many hapless students have discovered to their regret, is its mathematical character. But this had not always been so. This change, too, emerged from theology.

To medieval thinkers, the marriage of mathematics and natural science would have been an illicit and barren union. Following Aristotle, they held mathematics to be a product of the human mind. For this reason mathematics was not thought to provide true descriptions of reality: useful descriptions—yes—but not true descriptions.

Astronomers, regarded as practitioners of a mathematical science, were thus thought to trade in useful fictions. Their models were capable of predicting the positions of heavenly bodies but were not thought to provide a true physical account of the cosmos.

This very issue led to Galileo’s fateful encounter with the Inquisition. He insisted that the sun-centered system of Copernicus was more than a useful mathematical device—it was an accurate physical description. Galileo’s novelty, then, lay in his championing not of a new astronomical model, but of a new model of astronomy.

Mathematics could provide a true account of the universe only if it were more than a human construction. Galileo, Kepler, Descartes, and Newton made the bold assertion that mathematical relations were real only because they were convinced that mathematical truths were the products not of human minds, but of the divine mind. It was God who had invented mathematics and who had imposed mathematical laws on the universe. Like Scripture, the “book of nature” had also been written by God, and, as Galileo insisted, this book was “written in the language of mathematics.”

Descartes cited the inter-testamental book, Wisdom of Solomon, to support his contention that God was a mathematician, “Thou hast ordered all things in measure and number and weight” (11:20). Newton subsequently described the cosmos in terms of an “infinite and omnipresent spirit” in which matter was moved by “mathematical laws.”

Crediting God as the author of mathematics was thus a crucial step in asserting the reality of mathematical relations, and this enabled the subsequent application of mathematics to the field of physics."

https://www.christianhistoryinstitute.org/magazine/article/god-of-math/

The source is Christian but the claims about these scientists and mathematicians are reasonable.

Originally posted by JS357
quoting:

Freaky: The scientists to which Lewis referred absolutely did this very thing (expected Law in Nature, and they expected Law in Nature because they believed in a Legislator.)

TW: Shall we simply take your word for it? Care to present evidence for your claim?

The following mentions some influential scientists and mathematicians who attributed ...[text shortened]... The source is Christian but the claims about these scientists and mathematicians are reasonable.

Saved me the time, but the material is abundant and the topic nearly impossible to miss for even the casual observer.

Originally posted by JS357
The source is Christian but the claims about these scientists and mathematicians are reasonable.

Sorry, but they do not support C.S. Lewis' claim. Sure, many scientist in the past have attributed discovered laws to God. That is not the same thing at all as saying that they only looked for laws because they believed God made laws. Not even close.

Originally posted by FMF
I am not an atheist, as you well know. I don't think life is "meaningless" at all. We have discussed this directly several times. If you want to talk about atheism and the supposed "meaninglessness" of life, talk to an atheist about it.

I imagine though, that if it "walks like a duck", and "quacks like a duck", and "looks like a duck", then it's probably a duck. You can excuse us for becoming confused in this case.

Originally posted by twhitehead
Sorry, but they do not support C.S. Lewis' claim. Sure, many scientist in the past have attributed discovered laws to God. That is not the same thing at all as saying that they only looked for laws because they believed God made laws. Not even close.

...they only looked for laws because they believed God made laws. Not even close.
It seems as though you're confused.
Lewis didn't say what you think he said.
He said:

Men became scientific because they expected Law in Nature, and they expected Law in Nature because they believed in a Legislator.

Here, Lewis is saying (among other things) that man began his observation of his surroundings in trust that answers would be forthcoming, that those answers would be logical since he intuited a logical One.

Originally posted by twhitehead
Sorry, but they do not support C.S. Lewis' claim. Sure, many scientist in the past have attributed discovered laws to God. That is not the same thing at all as saying that they only looked for laws because they believed God made laws. Not even close.

Your "Sure, many scientist[s] in the past have attributed discovered laws to God." is good enough for me. Except I would add "and undiscovered laws."

I don't know if Lewis said it was the only reason they looked for laws.