[mukto-mona] Article 11 : Does science make belief in Allah/God obsolete? It depends, argues a sceptic...

Article 11 : Does science make belief in Allah/God obsolete?   It depends, argues a sceptic... Science does make belief in an Allah/God obsolete, by making obsolete the fiction, the so-called reality of an Allah/God ; however, it depends on how far we are able to push the definition and sphere of science. On this question of belief in God, the answer is that the science, in practice, has not been able to make the belief on such a fictional deity obsolete. Surveys conducted in 1916 and again in 1997 found that nearly 40 percent of American scientists said they believe in God, so obviously the inventions of science have not made belief in an Allah/God obsolete for this sizeable group. However, it is not just a failure of science but the real cause is the persistence of the religious institutions, their evil organisation and their poisonous propaganda. The cause of such a belief in an Allah/God is neither the hypocrisy of the hundreds of millions of practising Protestants, Catholics, Jews, Hindus, Muslims and members of other faiths who both believe in a fictional Jehovah, God, Bhagwan, or Allah as well as fully use the « non-religious » or secular scientific inventions. Even on one of the most contentious issues in all of science—Evolution—a 2005 Pew Research Centre poll found that 68 percent of Protestants and 69 percent of Catholics accept the theory, despite themselve and their religions. Of course, the reality does not bend to the psychology of belief. Millions of people believe in astrology, ghosts, angels, ESP, and all manner of paranormal phenomena, but such belief does not make such things real. Mormons believe that their sacred text was dictated in an ancient language onto gold plates by the angel Moroni, buried and subsequently dug up near Palmyra, New York by Joseph Smith, who then translated them by burying his face in a hat containing magic stones. Scientologists believe that eons ago a galactic warlord named Xenu brought alien beings from another solar system to Earth, placed them in select volcanoes around the world, and then vaporised them with hydrogen bombs, scattering to the winds their souls (called thetans, in the jargon of Scientology), which attach themselves to people today, leading to drug and alcohol abuse, addiction, depression, and other psychological and social ailments that only Scientology can cure. Clearly the veracity of a proposition, the solid reality of things and life is completely independent of the number of people who believe it. On the matter of an Allah/God's existence, the answer to the question is that, rightly, science has made such a thing called Allah/God obsolete. You may argue this depending on how far you extend the sphere of science into the so-called space of theology. If we apply the methods of science to understanding all of nature, where would such a God be and how would we detect Him or verify His actions? That's the problem. An Allah/God is described by most world religions as omniscient and omnipotent, the creator of all things visible and invisible, an Intelligent Designer capable of constructing the universe, Earth, life, and all of us. If scientists go in search of such a being—called the Intelligent Designer—how could we possibly recognise such an omnipotent and omniscient Allah/God which in reality is just a fiction, an imagination that occurred in the dull minds of ignorant ancients ! The fact that the cosmos is very big and the space between the stars is vast, the probability of making contact with a mythical Allah/God who reclines on his throne in some 7th sky is not there, as the sky or skies do not exist.                                                                           Now Consider something as relatively simple as DNA. We can already engineer genes after only 50 years of genetic science. To our bronze-age ancestors who created the great monotheistic religions, the ability to create life was God-like, however, today it is a quality of human intelligence (see the sheep Dolly intelligently created in a laboratory of Cambridge, UK by the very human scientists) ; therefore Allah/God is clearly and really redundant and obsolete. By pursuing a course of scientific enquiry to its natural extension of examining the nature of the so-called supernatural deity, what we will find : just that in the beginning, snake, lion and elephant etc. were gods, embodiment of supernatural powers ; today they are not. Then came the Sun, the Moon, the Sea etc. which were yesterday supernatural but today they are part of our discovered nature. If today we can engineer genes, clone mammals, and manipulate stem cells with science and technologies developed in only the last half century, the supernatural Allah/God of 50 years ago is today the discovered and discoverable non-theological part of nature. So the sphere of ignorance and supernatural is shrinking while that of discoverable nature and the scientific inventions is expanding. Science traffics in the natural, not in the supernatural. The only creator that science could discover would be the nature itself, an entity that exists in space and time and flows as well as is constrained by its own laws, called the laws of nature. Nature flows of its own rythm, it needs no mover ; nature has been evolving through its own internal dynamics since time immemorial, it follows its own laws ; if everything and everybody needs a creator and if we were to imagine, concocte an intelligent designer, a supernatural Allah/God, then who would have created such an Allah/God…. ? Our morals, our ethics, our laws are the bye-products of our social dealings, essentially the social necessity for our individual and collective well-being, our life. Religions never created any ethic or morality ; ethics and morality, social and political institutions, whether good and bad, were already there ; religions only picked up and re-introduced them on the name of some fictional Allah/God with the added horror of punishments, to fortify their political power. Slavery was already there at the begining of Christianity and Islam ; none of the these two religions proscribed slavery, they just accepted it as they accepted nearly all the good and bad traditions of their time ; slavery was made unlawful only by humans, not by Allahs or Gods… !     ------------------------------ ---- In the interest of civilisation, all articles in this series, as well as all articles in the yahoogroup/humanist_ international may be reproduced or published in any language. Does science make belief in Allah/God obsolete ?                                                                                                                                    Article 1: Necessarily, it does - declares a physicist…. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ humanist_international/ message/114 Article 2: Yes, of course  - claims a psychologist… http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ humanist_international/ message/115                                                                                                                                                 &nb sp;                                                              Article 3 :  No, and yes - ponders a Christian Priest…                               http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ humanist_international/ message/116                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         Article 4 :   Absolutely - says an eminent scientist…..                                       http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ humanist_international/ message/117 Article 5 : Of course –responds a humanist philosopher....                              http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ humanist_international/ message/118 Article 6 : Not Really - says a biologist…..                                                                                                                                         http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ humanist_international/ message/120 Article 7 :  No, but it should, argues an Atheist…..                                    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ humanist_international/ message/122 Article 8 : Not claims a priest…..                                                                     http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ humanist_international/ message/123 Article 9: No, declares a rationalist Philosopher....! http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ humanist_international/ message/126 Article 10: it is debatable ; thinks a physician....! http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ humanist_international/ message/127

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