Philosophy Now Forum

by Rick Lewis

http://philosophynow.org/issues/99/Gadzooks

Gadzooks? It should have read Godzooks! since we've been treated to another issue on God.

Yes, exactly! "Gad" = God

The current French nickname for the English (the printable one, anyway) is les rosbifs, after the national dish of the folks north of the Channel, but back in the Middle Ages, they used to refer to the English as les goddams. This reflected the notorious English fondness for blasphemy. Regrettably, “God Damn!” wasn’t the only way in which foulmouthed English knights used the Lord’s name to let off steam. They also sometimes shouted “God’s Teeth!” or “God’s Truth!”, or yelled “Zounds!” (= “God’s Hounds” or possibly “God’s Wounds”) or sometimes “Gadzooks!” (= “God’s Hooks”, which either meant “God’s hands” or else was a reference to the nails used to fix Jesus to the cross).

This issue of Philosophy Now is about God’s hooks, meaning not hands or nails but the ways in which arguments about God can snare the imagination, can sometimes even change the direction of a person’s whole life.

What I didn't mention in the editorial (due to lack of space and lack of relevance) is that there was apparently a period when there was a sort of vogue for mispronouncing "God" as "Gad" when blaspheming. Don't ask me why - perhaps it was an attempt to tone down the impact of the swearing?

I have been purchasing my copies of 'Philosophy Now' from a local book store and was told that the latest copy had arrived on Nov. 4th. I sent my wife to pick up a copy and discovered that it was the Sept.-Oct. issue that was on the rack, I already have that issue, but this is really unacceptable for the magazine to be 2 full months out of date when I find it on the news stand. I would hope that the mailed subscriptions would be better, but am afraid to find out. If I would only receive Nov. Dec. in 2014 sometime? I would be completely out of date for any current discussion of an article. Is this just a subversive method to force people to subcribe rather than buying off the stand?

Rick,

I am Godsmacked!

thedoc wrote:I have been purchasing my copies of 'Philosophy Now' from a local book store and was told that the latest copy had arrived on Nov. 4th. I sent my wife to pick up a copy and discovered that it was the Sept.-Oct. issue that was on the rack, I already have that issue, but this is really unacceptable for the magazine to be 2 full months out of date when I find it on the news stand. I would hope that the mailed subscriptions would be better, but am afraid to find out. If I would only receive Nov. Dec. in 2014 sometime? I would be completely out of date for any current discussion of an article. Is this just a subversive method to force people to subcribe rather than buying off the stand?

Hiya Doc. The mag is always published towards the end of the first of the two months on the cover. Therefore the Nov/Dec 2013 issue has just been published and we are just mailing it out to subscribers at the moment. It is also on its way to UK bookshops and newsagents, and will be on the shelf there in the next 2-3 days.

However, I see from your IP address that you live in Florida (is that right?). Florida is many thousands of miles from here. The magazines destined for your local bookstore are on a truck right now on their way to a shipping company in Essex, England. The shipping company will load them into a big metal container, and after a suitable pause for reflection and the consideration of favourable tides, it will load the container onto a big ship and embark that ship upon the great waters. A week or three later, the big ship will dock in a port in Canada's Maritime provinces (I'm not sure which port), and the container will be lifted with a big crane from the ship onto a truck which will take it to a depot at the railroad station. It will then be carried by rail well over a thousand miles to the fair city of Toronto, where it will be transferred to a container park. There the container will be emptied and the pallets loaded with boxes of Philosophy Now will be transferred by truck to a warehouse on the outskirts of that city. There the pallets will be broken down and consignments of boxes will be dispatched by truck to news distributions companies all across Canada and the United States. When the individual consignments reach the news distributors, they will probably spend a few more days in warehouses before being delivered by truck to all the individual bookstores and news-stands supplied by that particular distributor - some of those truck journeys again will be very long, as some of the distributors cover very large areas of your vast country.

This is not the internet - this is real life. All of this travel by ship, train and several trucks takes a lot of time. I'm actually quite impressed that the copies of the Sept/Oct issue sent from here on around 22nd September reached your bookstore by 4 November. All things considered, that is pretty fast.

So doc, the short answer is no, it isn't a scam to get you to subscribe. It is called geography. If you want to help us fix it, so that we can get Philosophy Now magazine to you faster, then we really need you to either:

(a) Come up with an innovative new theory of fundamental physics which will allow us to eliminate some of the vast distances involved. Something involving wormholes through space-time, maybe.
or
(b) Indicate your eagerness to pay an extra $3 per copy so that we can dispatch the bulk copies to Toronto by air rather than by sea. That wouldn't eliminate the 3 weeks or so taken to transfer the mags from a depot in Toronto to your local bookstore, but it would reduce the overall transit time nonetheless.

However, I would recommend (c) instead: that you relax and rejoice in the fact that philosophy, unlike current affairs, does not go out of date quickly (or at all, some would argue).

p.s. This is why our edition for the US and Canada does not carry a date on the front cover, only an issue number.

Ok, the name of the magazine is PhilosophyNow, so it makes sense that it would cover the God inquiry from the philosophic perspective. The usual suspects, theists, atheists, and agnostics are rounded up and asked to provide logical arguments and evidence for their positions and so forth. A philosophy magazine doing philosophy, everything would seem to be in order, but....

What if the evidence collected over thousands of years is really saying pretty clearly that philosophy is a dead end street in regards to the God inquiry? Then what? After all, the arguments being presented here have been presented repeatedly for centuries, and nothing much has changed. Right?

If people had been jumping on pogo sticks for centuries in the hopes of resolving the God inquiry and had never succeeded, wouldn't it be reasonable at this point to suggest that they accept the results of their experiment and try something else?

Ah, it would depend on what their real goals are, wouldn't it?

If their real goal was to pursue the God inquiry, then yes, the logical thing to do would be to conclude the pogo stick experiment and move on to another more promising inquiry method.

On the other hand, if pogo sticking was their top priority, then so long as they are still bouncing up and down, it shouldn't matter much whether the God inquiry ever gets resolved. In fact, it would be better if it didn't, as then another inquiry would need to be found to keep the pogo sticking going.

What is the real goal of the authors in this latest issue of PhilosophyNow? Is it to pursue the God inquiry? Or to do philosophy? Do the authors know what their real goal is? Have they even asked this question?

Where is the evidence that the philosophy process they are engaged in is advancing the God inquiry? Have they looked for such evidence? Do they care whether the process they are engaged in is advancing their goal, or does that not matter?

Do the authors even know what the question they are attempting to address is?

Does God exist?

Have the authors considered what this question really means?

Does God exist where?

Clearly God exists in books, images, concepts, human culture, within the symbolic realm. The articles in this latest issue of PhilosophyNow are proof enough of that. There's clearly no need to debate whether the God concept exists.

The ancient question that's been asked for centuries really is...

Does God exist in the real world?

Are the authors actually looking in the real world? Or are they instead looking in the symbolic world, the realm of ideas?

If the authors are looking where they want to look, instead of where the God question asks them to look, are they actually interested in the God question at all?

thedoc wrote:I have been purchasing my copies of 'Philosophy Now' from a local book store and was told that the latest copy had arrived on Nov. 4th. I sent my wife to pick up a copy and discovered that it was the Sept.-Oct. issue that was on the rack, I already have that issue, but this is really unacceptable for the magazine to be 2 full months out of date when I find it on the news stand.

Please correct me if I'm wrong, as I may very well be, but isn't the magazine available on this site in digital form, instantly, and at an even lower price than the print version?

I thought Rick said he has offered a Kindle version as well, which would seem to be very convenient.

Um, maybe the solution here is to join the 21st century?

RickLewis wrote: Hiya Doc. The mag is always published towards the end of the first of the two months on the cover. Therefore the Nov/Dec 2013 issue has just been published and we are just mailing it out to subscribers at the moment. It is also on its way to UK bookshops and newsagents, and will be on the shelf there in the next 2-3 days.

However, I see from your IP address that you live in Florida (is that right?). Florida is many thousands of miles from here. The magazines destined for your local bookstore are on a truck right now on their way to a shipping company in Essex, England. The shipping company will load them into a big metal container, and after a suitable pause for reflection and the consideration of favourable tides, it will load the container onto a big ship and embark that ship upon the great waters.

p.s. This is why our edition for the US and Canada does not carry a date on the front cover, only an issue number.

Thankyou for that rather elaborate and poetic description of the shipping industry. As I have stated before I am very familiar with the printing business, and another interest of mine is model ships, but I don't just stop at finding plans for what they look like, I usually research the subject to find out how things work. Add that to my interest in model railroading and the way I tend to research things, your description fit right into what I already knew. At one time I spent some time on this site just watching the big ships passing.

http://www.pancanal.com/eng/photo/camer ... rafloresHi

FYI, I live in Pennsylvania, a little closer to Toronto than Florida.

RickLewis wrote:Yes, exactly! "Gad" = God

... or sometimes “Gadzooks!” (= “God’s Hooks”, which either meant “God’s hands” or else was a reference to the nails used to fix Jesus to the cross)...

possible etymology of bazooka? but not quite a slap from God's hands...

-Imp

Felasco wrote:Ok, the name of the magazine is PhilosophyNow, so it makes sense that it would cover the God inquiry from the philosophic perspective. The usual suspects, theists, atheists, and agnostics are rounded up and asked to provide logical arguments and evidence for their positions and so forth. A philosophy magazine doing philosophy, everything would seem to be in order, but....

What if the evidence collected over thousands of years is really saying pretty clearly that philosophy is a dead end street in regards to the God inquiry? Then what? After all, the arguments being presented here have been presented repeatedly for centuries, and nothing much has changed. Right?

If people had been jumping on pogo sticks for centuries in the hopes of resolving the God inquiry and had never succeeded, wouldn't it be reasonable at this point to suggest that they accept the results of their experiment and try something else?

Ah, it would depend on what their real goals are, wouldn't it?

If their real goal was to pursue the God inquiry, then yes, the logical thing to do would be to conclude the pogo stick experiment and move on to another more promising inquiry method.

On the other hand, if pogo sticking was their top priority, then so long as they are still bouncing up and down, it shouldn't matter much whether the God inquiry ever gets resolved. In fact, it would be better if it didn't, as then another inquiry would need to be found to keep the pogo sticking going.

What is the real goal of the authors in this latest issue of PhilosophyNow? Is it to pursue the God inquiry? Or to do philosophy? Do the authors know what their real goal is? Have they even asked this question?

Where is the evidence that the philosophy process they are engaged in is advancing the God inquiry? Have they looked for such evidence? Do they care whether the process they are engaged in is advancing their goal, or does that not matter?

Do the authors even know what the question they are attempting to address is?

Does God exist?

Have the authors considered what this question really means?

Does God exist where?

Clearly God exists in books, images, concepts, human culture, within the symbolic realm. The articles in this latest issue of PhilosophyNow are proof enough of that. There's clearly no need to debate whether the God concept exists.

The ancient question that's been asked for centuries really is...

Does God exist in the real world?

Are the authors actually looking in the real world? Or are they instead looking in the symbolic world, the realm of ideas?

If the authors are looking where they want to look, instead of where the God question asks them to look, are they actually interested in the God question at all?

I agree with a lot that was said here. In my opinion, it suggests a weakness with philosophy as a discipline, namely, that the discipline cannot really be quantitative like the physical sciences. Points of contention can therefore drag on for millenia without resolution. (Am I wrong here? Are there really quantitative or semi-quantitative techniques available but they would be ignored in this forum but not in a peer reviewed environment?)

At the same time, I feel it is our (the forum participant's) fault to gloss too easily over what philosophy does have to offer. E.g., from the paper by Professor Craig Lane in the thread "Does God Exist?"

"Summary:

In summary, we’ve seen eight respects in which God provides a better account of the world than naturalism: God is the best explanation of

(I) Why anything at all exists.

(II) The origin of the universe.

(III) The applicability of mathematics to the physical world.

(IV) The fine-tuning of the universe for intelligent life.

(V) Intentional states of consciousness.

(VI) Objective moral values and duties.

Moreover

(VII) The very possibility of God’s existence implies that God exists.

(VIII) God can be personally experienced and known."

I think the key point here is that at least item VIII is verifiable in a real world quantitative to semi-quantitative manner by any interested person(s) (great skills are not really required). Previously, I had even suggested that this might be a good social science school project.

In addition, I have always stated (if you read some of my appends) that God, based on humanities experience so far, will obviously not let himself be used as part of a physical science experiment (I.e. he won't play ball with regard to that). And clearly, based on free will, and therefore the need to have the spiritual and physical be separate, there should be no physical verifiability as we like to define it. But, God CLEARLY states in the Bible that he can be reached by anyone with the right attitude and predisposition. And I don't think he would give a hoot about who you currently are as long as you are willing to pick up the phone and start talking to him. He will then respond and engage with you on a personal level just as Prof. Lane suggests in point VIII.

It is therefore disingenuous to argue that God is not provable if you simply insist that the proof must exclusively be given on your own terms. I also pointed out many times that, in my opinion, God to many people would simply represent an inconvenience that they don't want to have to contend with. For that reason, the idea of God and the idea to reach out to him simply gets brushed off even if it means to simply try and engage in an objective experiment. Undoubtedly, this is because of the potentially inconvenient consequences for one's own lifesktyle, preconceived notions, and behavior, if it should turn out that he was found to be real.

Therefore, unless you are objectively willing to conduct such an experiment you don't have the right to complain about anything concerning the lack of evidence for God in your life or in the world. I suggest 6 to 12 month of engagement at minimum but for some it may turn into a lifetime. Absolutely, as with any experiment there is not a 100% probability for success. There is of course a strong attitudinal element involved to the experiment besides the intellectual one. A good starting point would be this:

"Before experience itself can be used with advantage, there is one preliminary step to make which depends wholly on ourselves: it is, the absolute dismissal and clearing the mind of all prejudice, and the determination to stand or fall by the result of a direct appeal to facts in the first instance, and of strict logical deduction from them afterwards."—Sir John Herschell.

The other point is, that as an experimenter, you have to understand your experimental object and, in this case, subject. You would obviously not be dealing with the analysis of a lump of coal. Your goals, outlook, expectations etc., have to be more along the lines of a psychologist, anthropologist, historian, and so on, since you are potentially trying to engage with an infinitly superior, loving, and wise being of great intellect that will, as you must be prepared to potentially find out, have his own input to your experiment. For all practical purposes, you can even assume that you are the one who will also become a test subject of the experiment.

How do I know all this? Well, I've been there as an agnostic/atheist and done that. I made a deliberate intellectual decision and commitment to run the experiment largely to get the promised benefits for which I had a need of in my life. And, in the long haul, it worked. One of the definite benefits you could obtain, even if, or especially if, you are British (according to Rick Lewis) is that
you would notice interior changes so that instead of continuing as a gruff and foulmouthed English foot soldier, you would join the ranks of the soft spoken gentry not given to constantly uttering obscenities. There are obviously a number of other beneficial experimental results feasible depending on how well you set up the experiment, learn the test procedures and protocol and use the appropriate tool set.

Undoubtedly, there are also those who have run this experiment unsuccessfully, as with any experiment. In that case, it is worth repeating after consultation with experts (clergy), and peers who were successful. If you are not successful or not interested, no harm done, just don't constantly denigrate those willing to, or undergoing, the rigors of the experiment.

Finally, back to the original questions, what does philosophical insight, learning, and technique have to offer with settling the God question at least with an agreed upon uncertainty and confidence level?
Is a universal agreement even possible if philosophy potentially is nothing but Gedanken Experiments and fancy vocabulary and semantics that even expert colleagues cannot agree upon? Would a level of agreement be possible simply based on logical arguments that are universally recognized as correct and beyond counter argument (similar to repeatable experimental results)? Would that type of agreement be possible in a professional environment but not in a forum such as this?

Excellent post, Qman. I frequently engage agnostic/atheists and typically have good exchanges.

I recently had an exchange with “Ned” over on the Philosophy of Religion thread. He used the tactic of defining his proof criteria so as to negate any possibility of positing the god concept thereby by “proving” religion is irrational.

Funny thing is he thinks he emerged victorious.

There don't seem to be any takers. So much for the professionals?

The way I see it, if two scientists hold opposing points of view, a consensus can eventually (see global warming) be worked out with more time, better data, better analysis, and by repeating the experiment. (Make sure ideologues and politicians don't get involved).

How about philosophy? When will there be a factual winning side and argument where consensus must exist barring outright dishonesty or simply incompetence (lack of skill) or ill will. As a non-philosopher, the closest method I have come across approaching that is the ground rule from philosophy 101 "you cannot prove something else using an unproven or unprovable argument" (which is violated most of the time here since primarily opinion and speculation is offered up as a pseudo philosophical argument). There must be other methods like that, which should then result in providing a winning argument or at minimum an agreed upon impasse. It's obvious that none of that is practiced or present in the PN fora by either dilettante or professional. So my original suspicion is therefore confirmed, namely, that philosophy, as practiced here (and perhaps everywhere), is nothing more than an ongoing coffee klatsch with the corresponding entertainment value. In a more professional environment this is simply more obscured with an elevated level of nearly incomprehensible semantics and better skills at obfuscation. Still no takers? I am eager to learn.

Is it therefore worthwhile participating in this unless it holds value as your substitute soap opera or action flick?

QMan wrote:

Felasco wrote:Ok, the name of the magazine is PhilosophyNow, so it makes sense that it would cover the God inquiry from the philosophic perspective. The usual suspects, theists, atheists, and agnostics are rounded up and asked to provide logical arguments and evidence for their positions and so forth. A philosophy magazine doing philosophy, everything would seem to be in order, but....

What if the evidence collected over thousands of years is really saying pretty clearly that philosophy is a dead end street in regards to the God inquiry? Then what? After all, the arguments being presented here have been presented repeatedly for centuries, and nothing much has changed. Right?

If people had been jumping on pogo sticks for centuries in the hopes of resolving the God inquiry and had never succeeded, wouldn't it be reasonable at this point to suggest that they accept the results of their experiment and try something else?

Ah, it would depend on what their real goals are, wouldn't it?

If their real goal was to pursue the God inquiry, then yes, the logical thing to do would be to conclude the pogo stick experiment and move on to another more promising inquiry method.

On the other hand, if pogo sticking was their top priority, then so long as they are still bouncing up and down, it shouldn't matter much whether the God inquiry ever gets resolved. In fact, it would be better if it didn't, as then another inquiry would need to be found to keep the pogo sticking going.

What is the real goal of the authors in this latest issue of PhilosophyNow? Is it to pursue the God inquiry? Or to do philosophy? Do the authors know what their real goal is? Have they even asked this question?

Where is the evidence that the philosophy process they are engaged in is advancing the God inquiry? Have they looked for such evidence? Do they care whether the process they are engaged in is advancing their goal, or does that not matter?

Do the authors even know what the question they are attempting to address is?

Does God exist?

Have the authors considered what this question really means?

Does God exist where?

Clearly God exists in books, images, concepts, human culture, within the symbolic realm. The articles in this latest issue of PhilosophyNow are proof enough of that. There's clearly no need to debate whether the God concept exists.

The ancient question that's been asked for centuries really is...

Does God exist in the real world?

Are the authors actually looking in the real world? Or are they instead looking in the symbolic world, the realm of ideas?

If the authors are looking where they want to look, instead of where the God question asks them to look, are they actually interested in the God question at all?

I agree with a lot that was said here. In my opinion, it suggests a weakness with philosophy as a discipline, namely, that the discipline cannot really be quantitative like the physical sciences. Points of contention can therefore drag on for millenia without resolution. (Am I wrong here? Are there really quantitative or semi-quantitative techniques available but they would be ignored in this forum but not in a peer reviewed environment?)

At the same time, I feel it is our (the forum participant's) fault to gloss too easily over what philosophy does have to offer. E.g., from the paper by Professor Craig Lane in the thread "Does God Exist?"

"Summary:

In summary, we’ve seen eight respects in which God provides a better account of the world than naturalism: God is the best explanation of

(I) Why anything at all exists.

(II) The origin of the universe.

(III) The applicability of mathematics to the physical world.

(IV) The fine-tuning of the universe for intelligent life.

(V) Intentional states of consciousness.

(VI) Objective moral values and duties.

Moreover

(VII) The very possibility of God’s existence implies that God exists.

(VIII) God can be personally experienced and known."

I think the key point here is that at least item VIII is verifiable in a real world quantitative to semi-quantitative manner by any interested person(s) (great skills are not really required). Previously, I had even suggested that this might be a good social science school project.

In addition, I have always stated (if you read some of my appends) that God, based on humanities experience so far, will obviously not let himself be used as part of a physical science experiment (I.e. he won't play ball with regard to that). And clearly, based on free will, and therefore the need to have the spiritual and physical be separate, there should be no physical verifiability as we like to define it. But, God CLEARLY states in the Bible that he can be reached by anyone with the right attitude and predisposition. And I don't think he would give a hoot about who you currently are as long as you are willing to pick up the phone and start talking to him. He will then respond and engage with you on a personal level just as Prof. Lane suggests in point VIII.

It is therefore disingenuous to argue that God is not provable if you simply insist that the proof must exclusively be given on your own terms. I also pointed out many times that, in my opinion, God to many people would simply represent an inconvenience that they don't want to have to contend with. For that reason, the idea of God and the idea to reach out to him simply gets brushed off even if it means to simply try and engage in an objective experiment. Undoubtedly, this is because of the potentially inconvenient consequences for one's own lifesktyle, preconceived notions, and behavior, if it should turn out that he was found to be real.

Therefore, unless you are objectively willing to conduct such an experiment you don't have the right to complain about anything concerning the lack of evidence for God in your life or in the world. I suggest 6 to 12 month of engagement at minimum but for some it may turn into a lifetime. Absolutely, as with any experiment there is not a 100% probability for success. There is of course a strong attitudinal element involved to the experiment besides the intellectual one. A good starting point would be this:

"Before experience itself can be used with advantage, there is one preliminary step to make which depends wholly on ourselves: it is, the absolute dismissal and clearing the mind of all prejudice, and the determination to stand or fall by the result of a direct appeal to facts in the first instance, and of strict logical deduction from them afterwards."—Sir John Herschell.

The other point is, that as an experimenter, you have to understand your experimental object and, in this case, subject. You would obviously not be dealing with the analysis of a lump of coal. Your goals, outlook, expectations etc., have to be more along the lines of a psychologist, anthropologist, historian, and so on, since you are potentially trying to engage with an infinitly superior, loving, and wise being of great intellect that will, as you must be prepared to potentially find out, have his own input to your experiment. For all practical purposes, you can even assume that you are the one who will also become a test subject of the experiment.

How do I know all this? Well, I've been there as an agnostic/atheist and done that. I made a deliberate intellectual decision and commitment to run the experiment largely to get the promised benefits for which I had a need of in my life. And, in the long haul, it worked. One of the definite benefits you could obtain, even if, or especially if, you are British (according to Rick Lewis) is that
you would notice interior changes so that instead of continuing as a gruff and foulmouthed English foot soldier, you would join the ranks of the soft spoken gentry not given to constantly uttering obscenities. There are obviously a number of other beneficial experimental results feasible depending on how well you set up the experiment, learn the test procedures and protocol and use the appropriate tool set.

Undoubtedly, there are also those who have run this experiment unsuccessfully, as with any experiment. In that case, it is worth repeating after consultation with experts (clergy), and peers who were successful. If you are not successful or not interested, no harm done, just don't constantly denigrate those willing to, or undergoing, the rigors of the experiment.

Finally, back to the original questions, what does philosophical insight, learning, and technique have to offer with settling the God question at least with an agreed upon uncertainty and confidence level?
Is a universal agreement even possible if philosophy potentially is nothing but Gedanken Experiments and fancy vocabulary and semantics that even expert colleagues cannot agree upon? Would a level of agreement be possible simply based on logical arguments that are universally recognized as correct and beyond counter argument (similar to repeatable experimental results)? Would that type of agreement be possible in a professional environment but not in a forum such as this?

Yes, it is a good post but unfortunately there are a few problems from my point of view:

The biggest hurdle we need to overcome is the idea that science and help prove the truth of the God or the Bible. As I explained to Immanuel Can- it isn't possible.

A case in point from your post: If as you say there is no "physical verifiability" then it is impossible to conduct any sort of scientific experiment. In other words, God cannot be proven true by the empirical evidence (social scientific or otherwise).

You are providing the answers before you have asked the questions. Another way of saying that you are starting with a self-evident truth and showing how the evidence fits the data. Yet another way of saying this is science works from the ground up while religions works from up to down.

And no I am not an atheist. I am a firm believer in both disciplines. What I am actually against is the degradation of the scientific methodology over a number of years.

Ginkgo:
Yes, it is a good post but unfortunately there are a few problems from my point of view:

The biggest hurdle we need to overcome is the idea that science and help prove the truth of the God or the Bible. As I explained to Immanuel Can- it isn't possible.

A case in point from your post: If as you say there is no "physical verifiability" then it is impossible to conduct any sort of scientific experiment. In other words, God cannot be proven true by the empirical evidence (social scientific or otherwise).

Qman:
Let's discuss the science and truth aspect at this time and not the existence of God.

What we need to address is how science, especially the soft sciences, e.g. psychology, arrive at valid results, which we may consider as "truth." Let's agree that as humans truth always means knowledge obtained with some degree of probability (mostly never 100%. Death is 100% certain).

Experimental results in science are preferably obtained by the scientist in what is denoted as a quantitative manner using quantitative variables. I do not mean to lecture, so bear with me. E.g., the resistance of an electric circuit is measured in Ohms, or air pressure in car tires in lbs/sq. inch. There are types of experiments in both, the hard and soft sciences, where only qualitative variables are available for measurement. E.g., when you go to a clinic because you have the flu, the doctor might ask you, how long have you had the symptoms, and on a scale of 1 to 10 tell me what pain you are in. He just used a technique of assigning an arbitrary pain scale in order to convert your qualitative perception into a quantitative variable. After you left and after he has seen several hundred more patients with the flu in the coming weeks, he may sit down and write a small scientific paper to be published in a medical journal concerning the degree of pain experienced by his patients as a function of days from onset of the flu. He will probably publish a nice quantitative numeric graph with a thorough statistical analysis giving confidence bounds for degree of pain for the individual patient and population tolerance bounds for the entire population of patients with the flu. This could be even more quantitatively complex, if he had also kept records for patients differentiating between the different flu types.

Here is another example, which actually happened to me. I went out to purchase a new vent hood for over my electric range, and I don't like noisy fans. So, I looked into the hood specification, and low and behold this is what I found. Hood noise is defined not by the quantitative variable of decibels but the qualitative variable of Sones.

Sones
In 1936, American psychologist, Stanley Smith Stevens proposed the sone as a psycho-acoustical measurement of sound. Generally, the idea was to establish a unit of measurement for loudness. A group of folks were played tones starting at the lowest level that can be heard (frequency of 1000 hertz and a sound pressure level of 40 decibels). People were tested individually and they judged the relative "loudness" of each tone. So for example a tone at 4 sones was perceived twice as loud as a tone at 2 sones.
Key to this description is that this measurement is subjective. Imagine your stereo volume sound control set at 4 (on an indicator level of 0-10). If you turn the treble say from 5 up to 10, without touching the volume knob, you'll find the music to be louder as a result of higher frequency.
Examples of Sone Levels
Sone
Level Source of Sound
0
Threshold of acute hearing
.02
Leaves rustling, calm breathing
.15-0.4
Very Calm room
1-4
Normal Talking at a distance of 3 feet
4
TV set normal volume at a distance of 3 feet
4-16
Passenger car at a distance of 33 feet
16-32
Major highway at a distance of 33 feet

From <http://www.abbaka.com/quiet-hood-design.htm>

And here is a final example and evaluation of the differences and benefits of using qualitative vs quantitative approaches in the psychological sciences. The conclusion is that BOTH methods can be used successfully with highly sophisticated scientific and statistical techniques as used in the hard sciences. This is perfectly natural since, as I mentioned before, hard science often encounters or is forced into (due to time constraints in testing, e.g.) the use of qualitative variables but nevertheless needs to make very predictive quantitative statements and conclusions for such test results.

Origins and methods
The philosophical bases of qualitative psychological research are found in phenomenology, ethnomethodology, and naturalistic behaviourism. Its research methods are derived from ethnography and anthropology.
In psychology, the research methods commonly classified as qualitative include:
• participant observation
• direct observation
• unstructured interviewing
• case studies
• content analysis
• focus groups
The data collected by researchers using these techniques consist of:
• the results of open-ended interviews
• notes of direct observation
• written documents (answers to questionnaires, diaries, program records, and so on)
After collecting data quantitative psychological researchers then organize them into themes, categories, and case examples. Their goal is to examine their data in depth and in detail without being constrained by predetermined analytical categories.
Most psychological researchers probably use both types of method. In particular, qualitative methods are widely used as exploratory methods; the results of qualitative analysis are used to design quantitative research which tests null hypotheses derived from the qualitative observations.

Status in psychology
The prevailing opinion in psychology is probably that both approaches offer important benefits, that rejecting one or the other means renouncing some of those benefits, and that the most useful debate is about the circumstances in which the two approaches may most profitably be used.

From <http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Qualit ... l_research>


So, what I hope I established here is that informative, valid scientific experiments can be conducted and results can be obtained and evaluated in ALL branches of the hard and soft sciences. Thus experiments indeed can result in the approximation of truthful knowledge that we as humans are limited to. How this relates to the truth about God would be next on the agenda if the discussion will warrant going there.