Predictions of Theism

Many people be it scientists or Theologians or just Theists and Atheists in general hold to the view that science and religion are as Gould put it “Non-overlapping magisteria” .I do understand why people hold and profess that view: It’s a political move. After all science needs funding and it needs its Supporters and if people perceive science as a threat to deeply held beliefs, instead of a tool to help our world then chances are people will become anti-science. We see it often that organizations such as BioLogos want to bridge the gap between evolution and Christianity.

I do love science and I applaude Theists who embrace science and support it.

Nevertheless I do think that the view that God has nothing to do with science is wrong. Let’s just look at what God is described as:

God is an omnipotent, omniscient, creative, all loving entity that created everything we see including us around us and seeks to have a relationship with us, since we are the crowning achievement of his work. These things might be revealed to us in a book that is inspired by him.

I think that is a broad definition of Theism in general, that I think we could all agree on.

Is this or is this not a scientific Hypothesis?

He created everything. That sounds pretty scientific to me! Based on this Hypothesis we can make various predictions and the more precise our definition is (based on the religion) the better our predictions get.

So what would we expect to see?

We would expect to see introcate design within organisms as well as within the Universe. We should also expect to see a balanced design. We shouldn’t expect to find certain organisms with profound disadvantages or bad designs, everything should be more or less equal with the exception of us of course, since we are special we should expect us to display profound and far superior design.

We should find exactly that, unless of course we assume that God used evolution which predicts an overall functioning design but of course some organisms with whom we split of earlier within the tree of life (fish, reptiles) should have certain disadvantages. Outrageously bad design should be found on occasion.

We should also expect, that it is displayed within his broader Creation that we are its purpose. I have argued on occasions, that if God existed the Universe should not, since merely an Earth is far more effective than a wasteful Universe. His creatitivity could be displayed on Earth as well and reveal him to be the genius he is.

Let’s say I’m wrong though. Le’s say a Universe is consistent with Theism. What we should see, is a Universe that makes it obvious that we are its purpose. We should see, that the Universe in its entirety displays usefulness to us and our existence. We should be able to go out there and be able to point out that, yes the sun is most definitely advantageous, so is the moon and so is this star and that star, as well Planet X and Planet Y etc. .

When we take it further then we should also expect profound wisdom in his word. We should see scientific wisdom way beyond ours, we should see a profound morality on display, we expect of course historical accuracy and we expect unambiguous precise language, that conveys the central messages clearly (an exception may be made in poetry).

I as an Atheist hold the view, that these predictions and others have come out wrong but that’s not my point: My point is, that we can in principle make predictions based on our hypothesis.

Of course there are Theists out there who contest this claiming that “God is mysterious, so we can’t understand him and can’t make predictions” but as I noticed, those people are oftentimes the same people who claim with absolute certainty, that God made this event happen for that reason and he/she was sent by God for that purpose etc. .

If God isn’t somewhat understandable then we can’t make these claims and if we do understand his nature albeit not completely, then he is, at least in principle, subject to scientific scrutiny, even though most people won’t go there.

Goodbye from yours truly,

Rene von Boenninghausen @Renevelation