Which experiment (test) should a scientist ask to check if God is real or not?

Question

If science will believe in something demonstrated by experience, which test should be necessary to prove God?

Answer 1

What you are asking is a really important question.

The people who have answered along the lines 'it is a belief, it is a matter of faith' are really saying that God (or god or gods) are just in the mind - just made up. That is just assertion and is not part of the scientific process.

However part of the problem in constructing a test or series of tests is getting the definition right. A lot of the time you find arguments that go something like: since there is no explanation for this it must have been God. This is logically equivalent to saying that because something isn't green it must be pink. Just because a phenomenon can't be explained, all that demonstrates is that there is something beyond current understanding (in the same way that not green simply implies not-green). There could be all sorts of apparently supernatural entities which have effects in the everyday world. I say 'apparently' because they too would ultimately be part of nature and no more unnatural than is a human's consciousness and ability to choose.

So the first problem is to be specific about which God you mean and what his/her/its characteristics are.

As far as I can see the only clearly unique property of a supreme being is the ability to create a universe. Anything less than that would not distinguish God from a very powerful entity within the current universe. How would human instrumentation be able to detect such an event and know it what it was?

There is also the little matter of Occam's razor, the principle in logic and science that the simplest explanation should take preference over a more complex one. Any test would need to rule out all other explanations that only rely on existing well understood phenemona.

If you change the quest to proving the existence of powerful, non-corporeal beings then I think there might be more of a chance of success e.g. praying for inexplicable physical events to happen and then them happening. It is important that the test event involves only physical measurements because we understand so little about the nature of consciousness that anything involving healing, for instance, could be explained just as plausibly by unexpected human powers as those from a 'higher' being. For instance, getting a planet moved would be a fairly convincing demonstration and easily measurable display of a higher power - but it wouldn't prove anything about the existence or otherwise of a supreme creator God.

Answer 2

Try reading this book


God Experiment, The
Can Science Prove the Existence of God?
Stannard, Russell

Over the centuries various attempts have been made to prove the existence of God and to demonstrate God’s action in the world. Russell Stannard, the distinguished physicist and author, looks at what modern science can bring to the discussion. Are the difficulties of “knowing” God the same difficulties physicists now confront in “knowing” the physical world?

Comparing the latest scientific theories and age-old religious thinking, Stannard produces some startling parallels. He examines creationism and the Big Bang, biblical miracles and quantum physics, and the idea of an omniscient God in the context of 4D spacetime. Written in a clear and lucid way, The God Experiment is a challenge to our assumptions about God, science, and our place in the universe.


Book of Distinction: 2004
Publication Date: December 2000
ISBN: 1587680076, $20.00, Hardcover
Illustrations: no
Publisher: Paulist Press

Answer 3

There are so many variables that need to be taken into consideration. If the need of camouflage is irrelevant, then why would the color change, other than the random variation. Nothing would be selected for if it wasn't a clear survival advantage. It's kind of like not considering all factors when claiming the health problems in people who smoke. Sure the smoking is not very good, but under closer analysis I think many more contributing factors could be blamed. Smokers tend to not care as much about their health, so they may not eat as healthy, or indulge more in other unhealthy things like drugs and alcohol. I agree with what you are saying about taking all variables into consideration. No offence to smokers, I'm simply using this as an example. Each to their own.

Answer 4

the deffinition of god is that we can not come to know his existance. For God said that he will not provide any proof that he exist, because then there is no need for faith, and with out faith he does not exist.

If you could find a proof that he exists, then he does not exist. It is only with no proof of his existance can you belive that he is there. Because he is omnipotent... we can never prove that he does not exist.

You see it is a funny thing... every thing else in science can not be proven true. Things can only be proven false, all you can have is a lot of evidence that suports the truthfullness of a theory. In the case of the ontological argument there is no way to prove that God does not exist. Because he is all powerful, if he does not want for any experiment to prove his existance he can make sure of it. (thus any experiment that "disproves" his existance can be attributed to his power forceing the results of the experiment)


Thus God can not be discovered through the scientific method. He thus has no place in science. AND if you belive that we can know all things (I mean adventualy ... even if it take a million years). And the scientific method is the way that we will learn everything, then God can not exist. (because he can not be scientificly known)

Answer 5

You cannot prove a negative assumption. Therefore a scientist can repeatedly fail to prove that God does exist, but this will never prove that he does not.

However, as far as empirical observations go, there is no proof God does exist, unless we are prepared to undergo a radical semantic change to what we generally accept "God" as meaning.

Answer 6

The best test is to learn as much as you can and then one day you will discover God really is real.
If by this time you still don't think so, then you will have to asked the real question.
Am I?
This is your test.

As you open one door of knowledge so you will discover more doors. Then you begin to realise the whole thing is beyond your ability to understand and yet you can't get to the answer you know is there.
'Beyond all understanding' is not in the holy book for nothing.

Answer 7

Snowy is wrong. A bee couldn't fly if it were a fixed wing aircraft. the scientist who said that forgot it could move it's wings when he did the calculation.

A for God, it would have to be replicable, and testable, with any outside influences removed. The pillar of salt would be a good one.

Answer 8

Your premise is faulty (while asking a good question). Belief in God is based on faith. I would suggest, therefore, that for believers, evidence is not needed and ultimately impossible to prove or disprove.

Answer 9

Scientists still havent worked out how a Bee can fly with its body mass and such a small wingspan, or how to cure the common cold, so proving the existence or not of god may be a tall order.....

Answer 10

God was designed by people to be completely unfalsifiable. Since He has no discernible effect on the physical universe, there's nothing we could ever measure; His only purported direct act is to have created the universe 6000 years ago. We know that the universe *wasn't* created 6000 years ago, but that it started 13.7 billion years ago in a big bang; but we still can't absolutely prove that God didn't in some way "make" the big bang happen.

As for the Intelligent Design nutter above ("physics dude"), probabilities in cosmology are largely irrelevant due to the anthropic principle, and everyone who thinks there's anything in ID might be advised to read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle.