Tuesday 7 July 2009

Experimenting?

I'm trying to approach my doubts and explorations in a logical / scientific way... In science, if you have 2 opposing hyphotheses, then you could do some experiments where you test which one holds true in each situation. Imagine 2 hypotheses: "Salt will disolve in water", "Salt will not disolve in water". You could do some experiments with salt and water and see which was true. (OK, so actually neither is probably completely true, but salt does generally disolve in water, until it gets saturated... I think!).

Is it possible to do the same with "God exists" and "God does not exist"? I'm not sure it is, because what the "results" would be in each situation is not clear... e.g. Would you say "If God exists then there should be no suffering"? I wouldn't, but some could use this as evidence to prove / disprove God's existence... All very confusing.

I'm reading "The God Delusion" (Richard Dawkins) at the moment, and he acknowledges that we can't be completely sure of whether God exists or not, but that he believes the weight of probability tilts very much towards God's non-existence. I'm not sure I am clear enough on what the results of God existing would look like to reach this point... so I guess I'm an agnostic for the time being.