An Exampel of Atheism hitch hiking on scinece

 Atheism is has a very precarious relationship to scinece. A good many people who love scinece are atheists, and more than that, people who don't know much about scinece but become atheists cling to scinece as the proof (the protection against the angry God). The problem is while atheists think of scinece as an extension of atheism scinece is actually neutral. Science is not atheist and it's only function is to learn about the workings of physical world. Science is not in the business disproving God that is totally outside it's domain. Atheists, however, have basically come to rely on science to take the place of God in their world view. They think of scinece as an extension of atheism and they psychologically depend upon it to guarantee that their hatred of religion and religious people wont blow up in thier faces when they die. These ideas are evident very clearly in the following dialogue that I had on T web.

near the bottom of the thread "Atheism, the adventure of faith."  Opponent is "Tassman" his post to me is no 103, my answer, which is below is 104.

his orignal statment that p-ed me off was:

You, with your advocacy of fringe science, feel yourself to be in a position to argue with Hawking do you?

Originally posted by Tassman

You, with your advocacy of fringe science,

Meta:translation: science that the atheist ideology does not approve because it doesn't support the ideology. To these guys Alan Sandage is fringe scinece.

feel yourself to be in a position to argue with Hawking do you?

No. Me with my Ph.D. (ABD) in history of ideas I sure as hell am prepared to argue with Hawking on matters concerning God and religion. He as a scientists steps outside his domain every time he uses the word "God." Nevertheless I don't see him around anywhere. I'm arguing with you aren't I, Dr. Hawking?

Who cares about the “god of the bible and how this is relevant to M Theory? Or anything else if it comes to that!

so you admit your view point is based upon begging the question, emotional dislikes for God, and poisoning the well hu?

Certainly M-Theory is not yet complete, but the underlying structure of the mathematics has been established and is in agreement with not only all the string theories, but with all scientific observations of the universe. As well, it has passed tests of internal mathematical consistency which many other attempts to combine quantum mechanics and gravity had failed.

that's not what the guy form Columbia University says.* Now you can call him names all you want, dismiss him as "fringe scinece (meaning he doesn't back your ideological world view) but you really think you can call a major physicists who is respected and teaching at Columbia "fringe?"

this is an example of the fallacy of guilt by association.

*some fringe thinkers disagree with atheist ideology
*this guys disagrees with one important approbation of atheist ideology
*therefore, this guy is a fringe thinker.
guilt by association

To date 'M' theory looks highly promising and is of great interest to those who care about truth and knowledge more than protecting a besieged deity from even further irrelevance.

those who care about truth. well I don't care about truth do I? that's because your definition of caring about truth is "agree with my ideology." that's how we know atheists is an ideology, becuase they always talk like that. They laud scinece like it's a holy sacred endeavor when you disagree with their views (even if you back it up with major scientists) you are transgressing on the holy sacred ground of science, the great god scinece! Guys in white lab coat vestments giving the benedictions with Eucharist in petri dish and the wine in a test tube.

break it down

"M theory looks highly promising" that translates to "proven fact" in his world view. But the major science from Columbia says it's not prmosing. [b]the real issue that you are forgetting is the quote form HAWKING himself! says he's given up on fining the grand theory.


"more than protecting a besieged deity from even further irrelevance."

who is defending the besieged? Anytime anyone brings out evdience against the scientific backing for atheistic arguments they immediately resort ot the labeling trick "he's on the fringe, he's not a real scientist he's a radical." That's evidence of besieged man. read Kuhn. that's a totally defensive circle the wagons kind of strategy.

I am just asking questions, my questions with panic, paranoid, defensive insults.

he practically said "the only people who care about truth are on my side. That is not the sort of thing a confident person says.

And all of us emerged from our mother’s womb as helpless infants, so what do the humble origins of mature adults or a mature discipline like modern science have to do with anything at all?

Now he's trying to write poetry.

Your broad-brush pontifications over atheism are nonsense. Atheism is merely the belief that god’s don’t exist. It has nothing to do with ‘cause and effect’ and everything to do with the lack of evidence.

who the heck is pontificating? The truth seeker speaks. All others are evil subservient or truth.

How ridiculous you and your presuppositions are.

well now that we are on the subject I think you are genius. you must be the greatest thinker scinece Hawking himself. No one ever thought to lump their opponents in with fringe groups or call their view points names, what a stroke of genius! But that's what I would expect from the only man in the world who loves the truth! ROTFLOL

How does adding an unverified and unverifiable god into the ‘mix’ benefit, in any way at all, our understanding of ‘gravity’ or any other law of nature?

If it's unverified (and I'm sure it is unverified) how does speaking of it at all add to our knowledge of scinece? if it is the case that speaking of is not scientific and it's not the scientists job to say unscientific things then: WHY THE HELL IS HAWKING SPEAKING OF IT??? He's the one that brought up God? If it's true that god is not verified and that prohibits him from existing and means that we can just rub the memory of every believing in God form the human mind, why does Hawking need to make this amazing revelatory observation about Gravity in order to say we don't need God? He should be able to just "God is unverified" and that's the end of it.

It's pretty bleeding obvious you don't know what's going on because the publisher uses this as a big selling device and all the atheist are getting happy about it (such rational creatures) but if it's true that talk of God is unscientific then Hawking is speaking not as as a scientist hu?

If he's speaking unscientifically do we have to pay attention? I mean if he said "Corn flakes are great!" does that mean its an official scientific fact that corn flakes are great? The great scientist said it and everything he says becomes a scientific fact right?


On the other hand if God is not a scientific question in the first place, why do you need scientific validation? science is not capable of ruling God out because God is beyond the ability of humans to understand. Thus God is amenable to science. That means we should not expect to find scientific evidence about God--at least not directly

How can invoking an imaginary deity to make to make the natural laws work by divine fiat be anything more than a god-of-the-gaps concept?

OH OH OH I know this, I know this, pick me! Let's see hu...could it be...duh...that's the point? Could it be because the real point is Hawking is begging the question? why is he bring up a non scientific issue and claiming to be able to decide it with scinece?

If it's not a scientific question then scinece is not the tool. Of course calling it "imaginary" to begin with that's not more of begging the question it? That's the great genius telling those of us who love the truth what truth is.

Why is belief in God automatically God of the gaps? Because atheists can on ly thing by their little scientific shield that protected them from having to do real thought. so they can't think in non scientific ways (they can't think scientifically well because that would require being less biased but whatever). Thus they expect that all believers have to have God of the gaps arguments. Of course that' just a function of not bothering to read theology so they don't really know what believers think.

Gravity is, along with ALL the natural laws and constants, based on the ‘principle of uniformity’ which is is a hypothesis based on observation and experience which makes predictions and can be tested.

But that doesn't us why it works does it? NO. Those observations are based upon observing the universe. They are not based upon observing things that makes the laws work. They are not based upon observing the origin of the universe, so they give us no clue as to how laws can exist, weather they are prescriptive or merely descriptive, if they the latter how do the laws make a universe happen that is not around to describe yet?

Nothing in scinece can tell us how there happen to be physical laws or why they work.

what we really need is a global approach not the phony ideological motivated pseudo science of reductionism.

E.g. the constancy of the speed of light is falsifiable, but so far has been verified and the same is true of all constants and laws so far discovered in nature - and most likely always will be. They have been highly productive and gods are not necessary- as Hawking says re the origins of the universe.

All you are saying is "my ideology works because it's based upon something that works." You are, however, extrapolating from the bit that works to the ideological bit that doesn't explain anything. IN fact you can afford to even try and answer my questions seriously because that would be admitting that the ideology is not scinece it's just a sham hitching on the back of scinece.

Non of that answers the questions I asked. None of it rules God out. If we assume that God is the perceiver that makes the universe work what you just described is perfectly explained by that; God is the universal mind the physical laws are the workings of that mind in its' act of engagement with the world, which is its thought.

We need global knowledge to answer these questions. Global knowledge means philosophy, logic, experiential epistemic judgements, phenomenology, and science. We should not ever try to decide the question of God through scinece because it wont work.


*Guy from Columbia University, Peter Woit an established physicist who  is conducting a war against M theory on the premise that it has no proof. M theory = multiverse and is tied in with theory of everything.

Stephen Hawking and Peter Woit, bouth statements on Woit’s blog, “Not Even Wrong” 9/7/2010 URL: http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/ visited 9/13/2010.

[vi] Ibid.

[vii] Peter Woit, Interview, “Is Sting Theory Stringing us Along?” Big Think Electronic magazine. (Jan 18) 2010. URL: http://bigthink.com/ideas/18234 visited 9/18/2010