Social Science, Natural Science and the Search for God
 

It seems that many people are searching for God and then saying there is no empirical evidence to support his existence...Why is it that they give so much weight to the Natural Sciences and totally disregard the evidence from the Social Sciences?

Re: Social Science, Natural Science and the Search for God
 

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It seems that many people are searching for God and then saying there is no empirical evidence to support his existence...Why is it that they give so much weight to the Natural Sciences and totally disregard the evidence from the Social Sciences?

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Is social science "Unnatural Science"? If so, there is your answer. If not, there is your answer.

luckyme

Re: Social Science, Natural Science and the Search for God
 

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It seems that many people are searching for God and then saying there is no empirical evidence to support his existence...Why is it that they give so much weight to the Natural Sciences and totally disregard the evidence from the Social Sciences?

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Social science can be useful for learning what people believe in, but not for judging the accuracy of such beliefs.

Re: Social Science, Natural Science and the Search for God
 

The social sciences can be used strongly to support the notion that religion is nothing but cultural ideals.

If anything you could use social science to lead the strongest case against (generic) religion, and this isn't because this science is better than that science, it is just the way it is currently.

Re: Social Science, Natural Science and the Search for God
 

But what about the empirical evidence that we have from Social Work cases where often the strongest families are the ones with religious values...And schoolteachers when citing values that help students name church participation and other religious activities as very beneficial...Isn't this Social Science evidence?

Isn't their end result evidence here? Evidence as the result of a process...

Re: Social Science, Natural Science and the Search for God
 

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But what about the empirical evidence that we have from Social Work cases where often the strongest families are the ones with religious values...And schoolteachers when citing values that help students name church participation and other religious activities as very beneficial...Isn't this Social Science evidence?

Isn't their end result evidence here? Evidence as the result of a process...

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It's not very good evidence, but what value you're claiming it has is evidence for 'religion' not for what is believed in.
As you've summarized it, it assumes a lot that is unproven and unprovable so it doesn't contribute to your point.

luckyme

Re: Social Science, Natural Science and the Search for God
 

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But what about the empirical evidence that we have from Social Work cases where often the strongest families are the ones with religious values...And schoolteachers when citing values that help students name church participation and other religious activities as very beneficial...Isn't this Social Science evidence?

Isn't their end result evidence here? Evidence as the result of a process...

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If this were true for multiple religions, it would obviously not be good evidence for any particular religion being true, merely that religious involvement in general has social benefits.

Re: Social Science, Natural Science and the Search for God
 

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But what about the empirical evidence that we have from Social Work cases where often the strongest families are the ones with religious values

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No.

Bible belt has highest murder rates
Christians, baptists have highest divorce rates

Child molestation goes without saying.

Re: Social Science, Natural Science and the Search for God
 

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But what about the empirical evidence that we have from Social Work cases where often the strongest families are the ones with religious values...And schoolteachers when citing values that help students name church participation and other religious activities as very beneficial...Isn't this Social Science evidence?

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The phrase "correlation does not prove causation" ring any bells?

Religion does indeed help some to become good little sheeple, and good little sheeple tend to enjoy a high rate of "success" in the world, since they don't rock any boats or get into trouble.

More positively, it's one way, but not the only way, to teach various good-for-the-whole-tribe skills. Religion covers the how but not the why of a lot of things.

However, none of that has much bearing on whether god actually exists or which religion is actually correct... for those questions, the social science evidence hasn't been much help.

Re: Social Science, Natural Science and the Search for God
 

m_theOry, the bible belt article makes no connection to religion at all...so we're unable to establish a religious connnection...It could be poverty or some other demographic driving the murder rate...Religion is not even mentioned in the article...As for the second article they didn't explain how the divorce rate sampling was handled...There are very high divorce rates in the Soviet Union an atheist country...

Re: Social Science, Natural Science and the Search for God
 

Splendour,

Ok, show me the 'empirical evidence' that religiousness is correlated to 'strong family values'.

Re: Social Science, Natural Science and the Search for God
 

Well I'm not sure if I can give a study...I am asking a question...Couldn't social sciences be just as valid an avenue of assessing the existence of God as Natural Science? Once I had an elementary school teacher tell me that religious values went along with other core values in molding students...Sociology and Psychology groups do conduct empirical studies...and what they are doing is gauging groups of individuals...It would be an alternate route to gauging if God/Religion has a tangible effect rather than just trying to physically quantify him...There are a lot of things in the physical world that can't be seen, but they can be inferred from the end result...Maybe the same is true in the spiritual...The bible likes to liken God to light...how do we know if God's light isn't to us the way that sunlight is to plants which produces photosynthesis...

Re: Social Science, Natural Science and the Search for God
 

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Well I'm not sure if I can give a study...I am asking a question...Couldn't social sciences be just as valid an avenue of assessing the existence of God as Natural Science? Once I had an elementary school teacher tell me that religious values went along with other core values in molding students...Sociology and Psychology groups do conduct empirical studies...and what they are doing is gauging groups of individuals...It would be an alternate route to gauging if God/Religion has a tangible effect rather than just trying to physically quantify him...There are a lot of things in the physical world that can't be seen, but they can be inferred from the end result...Maybe the same is true in the spiritual...The bible likes to liken God to light...how do we know if God's light isn't to us the way that sunlight is to plants which produces photosynthesis...

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how is it possible that........you and ironlaw are.......two different........people?

Re: Social Science, Natural Science and the Search for God
 

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Once I had an elementary school teacher tell me ..

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to qualify as evidence, an elementary teacher must tell you something 3 times and once in writing. When you get to high school you'll find spell that out quite clearly.

luckyme

Re: Social Science, Natural Science and the Search for God
 

Hey I didn't know I had a cyber twin!