
Science Increasingly Makes the Case for God (2014) - QuercusMax
http://www.wsj.com/articles/eric-metaxas-science-increasingly-makes-the-case-for-god-1419544568
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moab
I will let Lawrence Krauss, who is thoroughly more qualified to speak about
what science "says", do some talking:
[http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/astrobiology-made-
cas...](http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/astrobiology-made-case-god)

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1_2__3
Why is an article with only a tenuous connection to techn from an author who's
written seriously about miracles existing showing up on HN?

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rgbrenner
for those who can't get past the paywall... the article says 'since we haven't
found life in the universe in the past 30 years, god must exist'. you may now
ignore the article.

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tomp
For me, the far more probably conclusion is "therefore the Matrix is real".

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otto_ortega
Currently there is no conclusive way to prove either if God exist or not...
But I tend to agree with what's described on the article, there are some
points on the counter-argument that seem flawed.

"This approach, of course, involves many fallacies. It is clear that many
routes could have led to the same result." Yet that doesn't mean that those
routes have a greater probability than the ones they are currently accounting.

"However, we now understand that the process of natural selection implies that
evolution is anything but random." yes, but isn't the proposition of
intelligent design that evolution was the mechanism through which a superior
intelligence shaped life on earth?

"Is it a miracle that the planet produced animals as complex as, and yet as
different from, humans, dolphins, and cicadas, each so well 'designed' for its
own habitat?" No, but the fact that this planet give place to such a process
as natural selection may well be one..

"Living systems allow greater dissipation [of energy], which means that the
laws of physics might suggest that life is, in some sense, inevitable." then
shouldn't be the presence of life the rule and not the exception around the
universe?

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godelski
So let's assume there are even the septillion lifeforms. And let's assume
there are trillions that are sentient and advanced enough to use radio,
haven't destroyed themselves, etc.

Why haven't we seen them?

Well there's a lot of reasons:

1) Finding radio that isn't directed is hard to distinguish from the enormous
output from a sun. (Why would you broadcast more powerful than your sun unless
you're trying to communicate outside?) This is the big one.

2) The distances are incredible. See the map here [1] and just what a 1000 ly
radius is. Outside that extremely small region those aliens would not only
have to have been broadcasting for over 1000 years. We've really only been
broadcasting for about 100 years and we're already speculating communication
beyond radio.

I can keep going on more reasons but these two alone should be enough reason
for anyone to realize that we haven't been listening for nearly long enough to
make stupid conclusions like this.

[1]
[http://www.atlasoftheuniverse.com/milkyway.jpg](http://www.atlasoftheuniverse.com/milkyway.jpg)

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anondon
Click on the "web" link at the top of the page which takes you to a google
search. Then click on the link to the article.

If google is the referrer, the wsj lets you read the article.

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wbillingsley
I always find these quite refreshing to read. Something to be clear about is
that it's not a brand new argument, nor a "scientific argument for God" or
irrefutable argument per se; it's providing a more casual everyday suggestion
about God using some data that happens to come from science. Particularly, it
points out the unlikeliness of life, which can be a sign if you are open to
there being an agency behind it (in a "God's been leaving hints" kind of way),
but if you're not would always be ascribed to the "unthought-of-yet
explanation".

Which is why it's also not so surprising that Kraus wrote a follow-up for the
New Yorker complaining that evidence of a gap isn't evidence for God as we
can't dismiss the "unthought-of-yet" material explanation, or that there might
be reasons for those odds to be smaller. (Those kinds of rebuttal pieces
inevitably come across as Scrooge bah-humbugging the sunset in response to
someone's casual remark that God's got a pretty cool set of paints...)

Science is an engine for providing material explanations for phenomena; it has
no "there is no material explanation for this" option. This has not changed in
thousands of years (though we only somewhat-formalised science as a field of
endeavour more recently, empirical testing as a form of epistemology goes all
the way back to "is this berry poisonous?"). So much so, that you'll even find
bible verses talking about it:

Hebrews 11:3 By faith we understand that ... what is seen was not made out of
what was visible

John 3:8 (NLT) Just as you can hear the wind but can't tell where it comes
from or where it is going, so you can't explain how people are born of the
Spirit.

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pbiggar
Couldn't get around the paywall, but I found a New Yorker article that
disputes the WSJ: [http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/astrobiology-made-
cas...](http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/astrobiology-made-case-god)

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jquip
Sometimes, we forget that, as biological beings, we are, by environmental
conditioning, limited in our reasoning abilities toward non-linear thinking.
What constitutes absolutism of thought and to infer that we have absolute
reasoning? We know that many imminent scientists, including Einstein, were
disposed toward intelligent design, agnosticism, and not atheism. Stephen Jay
Gould says, “...facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a
hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world′s data. Theories are
structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts." For all the evidence
and reasoning, we still have not proven or disproven, at least not with enough
scientific rigor, that God exists. Even holding an agnostic view seems to be
better than saying that we have disproven Intelligent Design. Until then,
being predisposed to one of the polar claims ought not to be treated with
contempt.

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eugeniub
And someday I might read about this case behind the paywall.

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grzm
Click the "web" link under the submission title. You'll be presented with
search results that should provide a way around the paywall.

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tree_of_item
Doesn't work.

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grzm
Some people have had success using an incognito window.

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mfrykman
To get around the paywall, google search the article URL and go through the
search results.

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williamstein
Date is "Dec. 25, 2014"

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EndlessElif
Anybody have a cached version or something to get around the paywall?

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dvfjsdhgfv
TL;DR: God must exist since at this stage of human development we can't detect
other forms of life.

This kind of argument is really very hard to defend.

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micahasmith
since when does WSJ read like a Jehovah's Witness pamphlet? sheesh...

