Originally shared by Ethan Siegel
“The truths of the Universe are written out there, on the Universe itself, and are accessible to us all through the process of inquiry. To allow an uncertain faith to stand in as an answer where scientific knowledge is required does us all a disservice; the illusion of knowledge — or reaching a conclusion before obtaining the evidence — is a poor substitute for what we might actually come to learn, if only we ask the right questions. Science can never prove or disprove the existence of God, but if we use our beliefs as an excuse to draw conclusions that scientifically, we’re not ready for, we run the grave risk of depriving ourselves of what we might have come to truly learn.”
If we find out that we truly are alone in the Universe, whether there’s no other life, intelligent life, or spacefaring life, there’s no doubt that makes us special. But does that make us divinely chosen? Or, even more to the point, does that mean that the Universe was designed to give rise to human beings; with us in mind as the end goal? That isn’t necessarily a question we can know the answer to, but it’s something we can approach with science. In particular, we can ask three separate questions:
1. What are, scientifically, the conditions that we need for life to arise?
2. How rare or common are these conditions elsewhere in the Universe?
3. And finally, if we don’t find life in the places and under the conditions where we expect it, can that prove the existence of God?
The questions themselves are interesting, but what science has to say about all of them might be the most interesting thing of all.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2017/01/20/can-science-prove-the-existence-of-god/