191 comments

• Comment Link Sunday, 10 February 2013 08:51 posted by nelson_temple

  Intellectuals will continue to debate, as they always have, evolution. They don’t believe in God or believe there is a God so they will do all in their ability to prove what they believe is real. Those who believe in evolution will insist that evolution created the universe and all therein. Christians, and most other religions, will continue to believe it all came from God. I think most everyone believes in change, and if change is evolution then we all can believe in evolution, but evolution cannot create. When science can create a life form in a test tube, then they can win the debate. Of course it will take a test tube, a lab and a scientist and these things were not there in the beginning. So what did it evolve from?

• Comment Link Saturday, 09 February 2013 12:26 posted by Charlie Hand

  The proposition is simply true or false based on the definition of God. What was really debated was the definition of God.
  
  If, as the opposing team almost, but not quite, pointed out, your definition of God is a Holy God - that is, a creator of the Universe who is not part of the Universe (yet is free to act inside the Universe He created, or not), then the proposition is preposterous. Science can only refute assertions about the Universe. Such a God is outside the Universe.
  
  If God is defined as the supporting team defines God, some really big and powerful being within the Universe, who lives someplace we can't see, who has power to manipulate the Universe in supernatural ways, who "created" the Universe by scooping up a handful of Universe stuff from his back yard and forming it into our Universe, then the proposition is again unarguable. Clearly science refutes such a God.
  
  Science clearly refutes a God who is part of the universe.
  Science clearly cannot refute a God who is not part of the Universe.
  
  Mr. D'Souza was quite right in pointing out that athiests like to knock down fundamentalist theology and worldly Gods such as Neptune. Yes, science clearly refutes all forms of fundamentalism, and the God Neptune, because both Neptune and fundamentalism are worldly, not holy, concepts. Science has nothing to say about the holy, by definition.

• Comment Link Wednesday, 06 February 2013 05:10 posted by Aleksandr Makov

  I'm quite surprised no one asked for the scientific explanation of observable and reproducible placebo effect.

• Comment Link Monday, 04 February 2013 01:50 posted by we-according-to-me

  There is only energy (matter) in our universe; and at places where there is more energy than in the near environment, it will try to equalize itself, 'spread out'.
  
  There are a few 'Universal Laws'; one of them is the fact that energy has to equalize itself (The Second Law of Thermodynamics).
  
  Our universe is expanding at this moment, and thus energy has to fill up that bigger space (or as old-school taught 'tendency for disorder or entropy increase'); that's why many things around us disintegrates, tectonic plates drifting apart, planets moving further apart (in general).
  
  However, this 'overall tendency for disorder or entropy increase' is just a result of energy's reaction on the (maybe temporarily-) expanding universe and is not a Universal Law.
  The Second Law of Thermodynamics can sometimes result in 'order to increase; entropy to decrease'.
  
  For example: a river flowing down from a mountain can have a rock sticking out the water; behind that rock the water might flow upstream... but the overall trend is still that water flows down the mountain.
  Along the same lines, The Second Law of Thermodynamics can permit order to arise; but the over-all trend is disorder.
  
  Life forms; they display disorder PLUS order... but life still has to cope with the expanding universe and thus the 'overall tendency for disorder or entropy increase' stays in effect.
  
  Life forms display disorder PLUS order; all energy in our universe is part of one- or more cyclic systems. Each 'living thing' on earth is likewise a cyclic system.
  
  Life behaves like 'running around in circles'; you become tired but you're not getting anywhere! Yes, that includes human beings, our purpose in this world kinda sucks.
  
  For example: a tree is a 'cyclic system'.
  The trunk, roots and leaves are formed which is an increase in order.
  Evaporation of water while the sun shines on the leaves is dissipating energy; and just like a rotting tree gives an increase in disorder.
  
  Does this mean it all leads nowhere? No.
  Lo and behold; the scorching sunlight plus the scattered around water, soil nutrients and minerals are now gracefully circling around in what we call a 'forest' and all that energy (matter) is more equally spreaded out than before.
  Thanks to The Second Law of Thermodynamics.
  
  Approximately 3.9 billion years ago, around our Earth's equator there was much unequally divided energy/matter. Sunlight, water, hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, and nitrogen; all scattered around.
  Obviously, at that point in time and at that region, the 'activation energy' was reached for 'life' to begin.
  It took around 1.8 billion years for the first cells to form, and another 1.4 billion years before some simple animals appeared.
  
  This 'Wonder of Life' and our universe having a 'flawless design' is actually nothing more than many, many particles (energy /matter) following some simple laws and repeating those over a very long, long time.
  
  Denying this can lead to fruitless debate about divine intervention.
  
  
  Oh by the way; Probably the Big Bang never took place and neither will we ever reach the 'cosmic heat death'; our universe will contract after reaching an 'activation energy', then expand again etc.
  Why? Because it's all about 'cyclic systems' and nothing in our universe ever reaches extremes; not the speed of light, not a temperature of zero Kelvin.
  Movement never stops. Energy can not be destroyed.

• Comment Link Wednesday, 30 January 2013 22:23 posted by Adam T Burklow

  While a fantastic idea, this debate was a monumental failure in that it turned out to be not a debate of Science refuting God, but rather of Science refuting Christianity. Both opposition members are professed Christians, and both were there to defend the Christian ideal, while both proponents were given the task of attacking a set of 3,000 year old traditions and dogma which has become increasingly simple thanks to our advanced knowledge of life and the Universe. Agnostic theists like me are simply not moved by the arguments of Krauss & Shermer. Although I agree with them on most points, and I admit that Krauss is pretty funny, his arguments still end far from explaining the creation of the Universe or the creation of the first life. At present, Science has no answer for these two questions, and it is completely rational for me to think that there is or can be a transcendent being/reality, such as the absolute, which is beyond the realm of human comprehension. Until molecular biologists can create life in a lab, or new, more advanced telescopes can witness the instant of the beginning of the Universe, I will have to accept that there is something else, beyond our understanding, which has a stake in all of this…

• Comment Link Thursday, 24 January 2013 23:26 posted by Beth

  Science has refuted the catholic church but has proven there is a God over and over. In Gen 1 Moses, not at all a scientist, describes how the universe evolved under the direction of an eternal being. Read it, everything fits. First the universe...stars....earth...plant life...animals...then humans. If you are stuck because it refers to it being one "day" at a time...tell me how you refer to time next time you create life.

• Comment Link Sunday, 20 January 2013 14:32 posted by Balavidya

  Easiest thing in the world to prove that there is God. God is the Absolute Supreme Controller. In this manifest creation that we are experiencing, Time is the Supreme Controller of all animate and inanimate entities. Absolutely nothing is independent of the influence of time. Absolutely everything is subject to Time. Time is God. Q.E.D.

• Comment Link Friday, 18 January 2013 10:10 posted by JSA

  You should have had Stephen Barr Against. Dinesh D'Souza? Really?

• Comment Link Wednesday, 16 January 2013 19:43 posted by God

  Obviously science refutes god. All arguments for god are nothing but words. The crux of the argument is exactly the idea of imagined intention. Dinesh says that science can explain how the universe is but not "why" the universe is. This notion that there must have been considered intention in the design of the universe is clearly the result of humans being used to designing things and nothing more. It's like a male seahorse looking at a human baby and assuming that its father just gave birth to it, because male seahorses are used to giving birth. This way of looking at the universe reveals itself to be baseless when you think in the other direction. Consider, for instance, a lesser being, like a seahorse, thinking any thing at all. Just because we think about whether or not we're ready to be parents, does that mean seahorses do, too? Obviously not. The fact that we make things does not at all imply that we were made.

• Comment Link Monday, 14 January 2013 22:32 posted by Thomas Tilley

  I believe no one can prove or disprove the existence of God. The human mind created God and God made the ape human by giving it an awareness of its own existence. This is what was "created" and made an ape human. God is an awareness that we are human and that we live for each other. God, and our evolved beliefs, created this awareness in us. God has told us from above--the top of our heads--that we must have faith, hope, and love in and of what we believe; we believe in God. The question is: who or what may have made us aware of these beliefs. The same mind, through knowledge and progress, has not created anything since, but with knowledge has and is destroying humankind. The only thing humanly created is God and perhaps poetry, all else destroys humankind and the world it lives in. It is not the belief in God that causes wars; it is the religions humans have imposed on themselves to destroy the human mind-- God.