• Question: do you belive in god

    Asked by anon-201746 to George on 6 Mar 2019.
    • Photo: George Fulton

      George Fulton answered on 6 Mar 2019:

      Such a difficult question. Philosophers have pondered over this for a long time. As a Scientist, I tend to only believe things that I can prove and disbelieve things I can disprove. The existence of god is neither possible to prove or disprove, so that makes things difficult for me anyway.

      Personally I do not believe in gods existence in the way that it is worshipped about on earth, but there are theories that we are living in a simulation which would indicate that there must be a controller of the simulation. Either way though, I find it difficult to believe that this simulator would care especially for us humans since the universe is so large.

      Having said that, I know quite a lot of scientists, both my age and older who do believe in God, so I might not hold the typical opinion for a scientist.

Comments

  • Photo: Andy

    Andy commented on :

    Personally no, but it’s no problem if people do. We seem to be able to science very well without needing to invoke a god… in fact, the whole mission is not to accept “that’s unknowable” as an answer!

    What we’ve seen through centuries of science — especially the study of the very big and very small, is that everything seems to follow rules, all the time. Things that used to be mysterious and miraculous are now largely understood. You can add a god to your mental model of how things work, but they have to be pretty hands-off: maybe they just started the universe running 13 billion years ago and have left it going ever since, but that’s not the sort of role that religions talk about! Religions are really run by humans and exhibit very human & political behaviours, and that includes knowing the kinds of stories that people find compelling.

    The most unpredictable thing in the world seems to be the human brain, so maybe there’s something “magic” going on there… but then there are so many species on earth, and logically it’s very likely that there are millions of others out there in the cosmos, that I’m not sure we’re special enough to warrant supernatural attention 😉 But who knows?