Open challenge to atheistic science

Mohammad Shafiq wrote: I have put forward an open challenge and anybody who believes in the adopted paradigm of physical sciences where existence of God is not possible could participate in the debate.

That's a pretty exclusive group - close to empty, in fact. What about others who would argue that the adopted paradigm does not rule out God?

Hubris and obfuscation might be enough to establish a name in the fields of theology and/or philosophy, but in the physical sciences it only invites ridicule or pity. 

Einstein took a very different approach. He made straightforward predictions that could be tested independently and publicly, using standard equipment.

No doubt he was sure from the start that he was onto something big, but still he managed to appear humble at all times. His contribution was not widely appreciated until a few of his more strikingly unusual predictions were validated empirically, by a community of professional sceptics.

Because it works, relativistic physics is now at the heart of many established technologies which would be hard to explain any other way. As Matt Browne noted above, relativistic time dilation must be corrected for in the GPS devices we now take for granted. Better known, perhaps, is the fact that energy from nuclear fission was predicted mathematically (from relativity theory) well before it was ever observed.

If you want to overturn something as convincing as that, then re-interpreting observations from a few published experiments will only go part of the way � peer-reviewed or not.

Perhaps Dr Mr Khan could deign to make an a priori prediction that (a) conflicts decisively with the established theory and (b) may be tested in the conventional manner.

That is the real challenge facing any theoretician.

nospam001 wrote: If God never violated natural laws then there could be no miracles, only remarkable coincidences. And what use is a miracle without at least one witness? e.g. Miracle of the Sun.   On the other hand, a lot of Christian theodicy (eg Plantinga) points to the relative scarcity of such good old-fashioned 'in-your-face' miracles. These days, it seems that God is more inclined to intervene mysteriously and indirectly, so as not to 'give the game away'. Revealing Himself would only make Faith unnecessary, which rather defeats the point. Even the most unworthy souls would start believing, fervently. But then, if everyone is special, no-one is. Which is why the tsunami of 2004 was made to look as if it had been caused naturally, by geophysical forces. No direct evidence of God's handiwork.   The same reasoning is relied on by creationists to explain away empirical observations that don't 'fit'. You could call it divine 'evidence tampering', but for a higher purpose. Let's face it, God is pretty clever. And whenever the end justifies the means, why would He not violate His own laws?

Indeed, I don't believe in miracles that violate natural laws. I don't believe in divine tampering. When we say God is pretty, we use human thinking. Yet God is beyond our comprehension. By the way:

"In casual usage, miracle is seen as any event that is statistically unlikely but beneficial, such as surviving a natural disaster, or simply a wonderful occurrence, regardless of likelihood, such as a birth. Other miracles might be survival of a terminal illness, escaping a life threatening situation or 'beating the odds'."

Humans can actually "walk" through a door without opening it thanks to quantum tunneling. Magic. Now try to calculate the likelihood of such an event. It is 0.000 ... 001 and all that ... stands for wouldn't fit into the space of our current universe.



Edited by Matt Browne - 04 December 2012 at 4:09am

The Creator of laws knows how to cause virgin birth even under the same natural laws. Let everyone ponder on as to how the initial cell with so much of complexity which might take another a few thousand years to unravel came into existence by natural laws; even if we accept evolution.

yes.. is everything ok?