Science Cannot Prove That God Does Not Exist

In several posts, I have pointed out that it is impossible for science to prove that God exists, just as it is impossible to prove that God does not exist. The reason is that the object of scientific inquiry is the material world, and God is not part of that world and is therefore beyond the reach of science.

In a previous post, I criticized a book that attempted to do the former, from the perspective of believers. In this post, I will criticize another book that attempts to do the latter, from the atheist perspective. It is M-E: The God Within, by Joseph R. Abrahamson.

Although the author claims to rely on the principles of logic and the scientific method, he makes significant errors that indicate his lack of in-depth knowledge of these disciplines. The argument he presents as proof that God does not exist, although not explicitly stated in the book, can be deduced from reading it and can be summarized as follows:

Is scientific research well done?

Tabby Cat
Oliver-Bonjoch, CC BY-SA 3.0

Sometimes, while reading items published by journals such as Science News, it looks like some research currently being carried out is platitudinous. Either it leads to the discovery of things everyone knows, or time and efforts are spent to investigate in fields that no one cares about. We know that many researchers are anxious to publish, and they must justify somewhat the funds they receive, but up to that point?

Let’s look at a very recent news (April 2019):

Cats recognize their name. A study suggests our feline friends can tell the familiar sound of their name from other words. A paragraph of this news adds: As for whether or not a cat understands what a name is, well, only the cat knows that.

Anyone who has had a cat (I had one half a century ago) knows that cats recognize their name. Was it necessary to do a research about this, probably spending public money, to discover something that everyone knows?

The celebration of Christmas

Earth lighting in the winter solstice

The time of the winter solstice was the occasion for major celebrations by nearly all ancient peoples. It represents the time when the sun, after losing height for six months, begins again to recover its upward movement. The ancients had always the fear that some year the sun could fail to recover, and would continue down until disappearing forever, a catastrophe for humanity.

In the Roman Empire, the Saturnalia played that role, for Saturn was the god of agriculture and the recovery of the sun was a sine qua non for the success of the next harvest. Also, just by that time the sun entered the sign of Capricorn in the zodiac, which was astrologically linked with the planet Saturn. The festival, which began on December 17, lasted for several days, until the 23rd. During these days, banquets were held, gifts were distributed, and masters served their slaves.

One of the traditional deities of ancient Indo-European peoples, Mitra, had a varied fate, according to the particular people we are talking about. Thus, in Vedic India he was one of the chief gods, along with Varuna and the other asuras, but came to play a secondary role, almost demonic, when in Hindu India prevailed the devas, another group of gods including Siva and Vishnu.