Science can't touch god

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Apologists sometimes insist that evidence-based arguments against god are ineffective because "science can't touch god." It might be true that scientific approaches have no epistemological access to God, but only if such a god has characteristics making him immaterial, untestable, and non-interactive with the natural world. In other words, an untouchable God is one that has no discernible effect on the natural world.

Counter Apologetics

  • This argument requires that God is not physical and has no physical relationship to the universe. The necessary absence of possible evidence for a god defined as "untouchable by science" makes it especially difficult to advance the proposition that a generic god or a god with any particular characteristics actually exists. Untouchable by science means inaccessible by anyone; how does the theist demonstrate the rationality of believing in a God that is inaccessible?
  • It is essential to recognize that science comments on the natural, an has nothing to say about the supernatural. Despite the claims of many apologists, scientific approaches have not proved the existence of any supernatural gods. In fact, supernatural seems to be a catch-all term for things that do not exist (or are believed to not exist) in the natural world; once they are shown to exist, they are acknowledged as part of the natural world! Science clearly cannot touch vague, immaterial notions about the existence of a deity, but if science does manage to touch it, it becomes no longer a vague, immaterial notion.
  • This argument is similar to stating, "My god might exist because you can't prove it doesn't!" In this case, the atheist might suggest that the theist consider every other religion ever conceived -- Hinduism, Islam, Pastafarianism, Catholicism, Christianity, or any one of numerous ancient religions that have come and gone. If the theist recognizes that this argument does nothing to support the existence of these other deities, why does it support the existence of his or her own god? At the very least, this points out that the argument does not help him or her select among the competing versions of the "untouchable god".

v · d Common objections to atheism and counter-apologetics
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