Dawkins: If God exists it is scientific fact

[bjorn]

Related to the "Melanie Phillips blasts Richard Dawkins" discussion, RD has now entered the building.

And even if he is deeply apologising for misquoting Phillips, he is not apologising for any deistic delusional remark.
richarddawkins.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=80390&sid=071ac0ebe1fd29fac724269ec7886162&start=75#p1953432

If there really is a creative intelligence at the root of the universe, even if only a deist god who no longer does anything, it would be a MASSIVELY significant fact about the universe: a scientific fact. It would constitute a totally different world view to the atheist world view. It is not that I am emotionally hostile to the idea of a deistic god. If any evidence for a deistic god existed, I would be fascinated and intrigued. But I think the idea is false, for good reasons, and since I am a scientist I care about that, even if a deistic god would have no implications for, say, morality.

Notice his tactic: a "MASSIVELY significant fact about the universe" equals a scientific fact.

By loading the dice in this way, he sets the whole discussion up in such a way that he will not accept any non scientific angle or argument. If God can't be found more or less directly by empirical science, he can't be found at all as all other epistemologies are blah blah.

As far as I can read him.

[jamierobertson]

Science + duff philosophy = duff science.

WHY, oh why does this not sink in to these people?!??!?

[humphreyclarke]

If there really is a creative intelligence at the root of the universe, even if only a deist god who no longer does anything, it would be a MASSIVELY significant fact about the universe: a scientific fact. It would constitute a totally different world view to the atheist world view. It is not that I am emotionally hostile to the idea of a deistic god. If any evidence for a deistic god existed, I would be fascinated and intrigued. But I think the idea is false, for good reasons, and since I am a scientist I care about that, even if a deistic god would have no implications for, say, morality.

Well let’s see. If there were a creative intelligence behind the universe you might expect the following

1) That the physical universe would conform to seemingly transcendent mathematical laws

2) That these totality of these laws would comprise a structure that is both ingenious, elegant and beautiful and somehow intelligible to complex beings

3) That these laws would bestow a considerable level of order onto the cosmos

4) That these laws would be mysteriously ‘fine tuned’ in order to bring complex life forms into existence, along with structures like the human brain, a mindbogglingly complex organ with 100 billion neurons working in harmony.

5) That the universe, including time and space came into existence in one act of creation and was guided through a precise process from something the size of a quark into a vast cosmos with something like 100 billion galaxies.

6) That the complex beings who emerged in the universe would experience the mysterious phenomena we call consciousness, an apparently objective moral standard and mostly believe in a supernatural reality which is the source of meaning, virtue and value.

Luckily we don’t see any of those things so we must be living in an ‘atheist cosmos’.

[unkleE]

May 5, 2009 9:51:58 GMT humphreyclarke said:

If there really is a creative intelligence at the root of the universe, even if only a deist god who no longer does anything, it would be a MASSIVELY significant fact about the universe: a scientific fact.

This is interesting. If God's existence is a scientific fact, then it must be able to be measured. How does he propose to do that? I would hope that, having come to the point of considering, however fleetingly, the possibility that a god might exist, he would also see that either the usual definition of science as based on measurement in this space-time universe needs significant adjustment, or, more likely, that there must be other ways of knowing things than science.

Well let’s see. If there were a creative intelligence behind the universe you might expect the following ....... Luckily we don’t see any of those things so we must be living in an ‘atheist cosmos’.

I've tried this approach with several internet atheists, and they were uniformly not impressed. Mostly they argued that these facts are as likely if there is no God than if there is, a claim that boggles my mind. It tends to reinforce that we more often assess arguments according to our preconceived opinions than vice versa.

[thegreypilgrim]

What an odd category error.

Is the necessity of free will for moral responsibility a scientific fact?

Is the objective reality of moral values a scientific fact?

How would a scientist study "intrinsic value" (and by that I mean, studying intrinsic value "in itself" - not how it came to be an aspect of our cognitive evolution, or how it functions in a sort of game theoretical approach, or any other "application" of it to some other issue)?

It seems to me that if such things as those above were true, then they would be pretty massively important. But to refer to them as "scientific facts" seems to be pure nonsense. Much like referring to the number 7 as "blue".