Scientific Explanation?

I liked what D’Souza said about atheists trying to establish science as the the only source of truth and access to reality. They go far as to claim that everything outside of science is irrelevant and even absurd. It's this same philosophy that has totally infiltrated our school systems.

Science, indeed, gives us pretty good explanation as to how things work. Science though, give explanations at one level while ignoring explanations on another level.

For example, there is a pot of water on the stove. If someone to pose a question "Why is this water boiling?"

The scientific answer would go something like this: The water is boiling because the temperature is excess of a hundred degrees, when that happens it has an effect on the molecules, and those molecules begin to react in a certain way and that's why the water is boiling. And that is a perfectly good scientific explanation.

But here is another explanation as to why the water is boiling, Because Dan wants to have a cup of tea. That is an explanation on a different level then a scientific explanation and yet it is completely valid and moreover, the scientific explanation itself, would be incomprehensible if you didn't put into the context as to why the pot got on the stove in the first place, because Dan is trying to make himself some tea. That's why the set of events have been set into motion that cannot be described scientifically.

So what we illustrate by this example is the scientific explanation is true as far as it goes but it doesn't go all that far. It doesn't give a full account of the phenomenon at hand. When we are looking at the big questions that we face in life. Why do we have a universe? How did we get life out of non-life? Why do we have consciousness, morality?

What's the scientific explanation as to why we have a universe?

"We don't know the answer to that one."

What is the evolutionary or scientific explanation for how we got life, not how we got life form 'A' from life form 'B', but how we got life in the first place?

"We are working on that one we really don't know."

What about consciousness, if you think of human consciousness, you have all typed of living creatures, bacteria, amoebas and so on they are living, but they are not conscious, what is the evolutionary benefit to consciousness? Consciousness takes a lot out of us, a lot of the energy of the living animal is devoted to the brain and consciousness, why do we need it? What adaptive advantage does it confer?

"We have absolutely no idea."

So the point is, in some of these domains science is trying to figure it out and in other domains the question itself lies outside the boundaries of science. In both case the new atheist, in some sense, is trying to claim for science far more then science can actually deliver.

D’Souza goes on to say "Science is an attempt to understand the natural world in a natural way. Science then in that sense is restricted to natural explanations for natural phenomena. If a natural explanation is inadequate then science stops."

Atheists keep saying "you believe based on absolutely no evidence that there is an after life"

D’Souza responds "you believe based on absolutely no evidence that there is no after life."

No one has any scientific knowledge about whether there is an afterlife. Once we are at death the scientific explanation is at an end. There is no empirical test that we can perform that can tell us whether there is an afterlife , or not.

We both don't 'know' on the bases of faith. There is no scientific high horse that atheists can sit on.

Is there scientific proof of God?

No, because science is limited to the provinces of natural explanations. But there are things in science that can legitimately point beyond science to provinces of metaphysics.

For example, almost all of science is based upon the question that every effect has a cause. Science asks what is that cause. We have a material object, the Universe, and the universe has a beginning but the question is does it require a cause, if it has a cause is it a natural cause or a supernatural cause?

It turns out the natural cause is not a very good explanation because the universe itself includes all of nature so if your saying that nature had a natural cause you are almost saying that nature caused itself out of non-nature. There was once no nature and then nature produced nature itself? Seems far fetched.

One can draw legitimate and reasonable inferences out of Science that it is pointing to something bigger, A Creator. But I don't think there is any scientific proof in the sense."