Hi All,
I am new to this forum.

I keep going back to this question whenever I read Richard Dawkins or watch discussions between atheists and religious persons.

Given that the existence of God can neither be proved or disproved on scientific terms, is the question over the existence of a supernatural God important?

Curious to find out what others make of this question.

That depends on whether you think it's a Philosophical question or not.

If you think that what people consider important is, in fact, important then of course the question of God's existence is an important one; it's a fact that plenty of people, theist and atheist, spend time arguing about God's existence. That is, it's a question which matters to both groups. It seems reasonable to suppose that something mattering to a person is at least a necessary condition of it being important to that person; and, prima facie, it seems a sufficient condition too.

It is, of course, an entirely separate issue as to whether the question of God's existence ought to be considered important; and it is here that some atheists and theists will diverge. I say some because it's important to realise that for some genuine theists (and by that I mean those with a spiritual religiosity and not merely a ritualistic adherence to a tradition) the question of God's existence is almost as much of a non-question as it is for some atheists.
Why? Because just as for some atheists the question is itself pointless because they believe that God cannot possibly exist, a theist may consider the question pointless because either they too consider the answer to the question beyond reproach; or, as may often be the case, the question just isn't a reason for why they are religious. Rather, the answer to the question helps put into context their theistic belief.

While this might seem somewhat contradictory, that is only because much talk occurs in which people (theists included) conflate religious belief with belief in God. In my experience, people who are spiritually theistic come to a belief in God for a multitude of reasons and through a kaleidoscope of personal experiences through which they have come to perceive a new/different sort of value in existence. Sometimes this leads them to spirituality, sometimes to monotheism, sometimes to other varieties of theism like Panentheism. The point is that the question of God's existence or the belief in God isn't a very good way to characterise religious belief because while such a belief can be axiomatic in a coherent religious worldview, it is not always (and, I'd argue, isn't often) a component in a story while accurately explains how the persons religiosity was achieved/acquired in the first place.

I think that as some people are prepared to inflict and/or suffer hardship, pain and death in defence of their answer to the question, it is an important question. But, as you say, there is no scientific proof of the existence of god, so we are dealing with people with faith, rather than knowledge. If god exists as they insist, then it doesn’t seem that his being real makes any difference to the sort of arguments that people would have if, as many other people assume, god doesn’t exist. Whether or not god actually exists is less important than whether people think so, at least in the world that we can be sure(ish) of.

Should we consider the more general question,

"Given that the existence of X can neither be proved or disproved on scientific terms, is the question over the existence of X important?"

?

Hi all!

I wonder whether science itslef should be a criteria for determining what is philosophically important or significant. And more generally, we might ask what makes a given subject important on philosophical grounds.
This being said, this discussion made me think of a talk I watched a few days ago. It's aimed at a mainstream public but it's nevertheless really interesting. It is by the philosopher and founder of the school of life (and former priest ;)) Mark Vernon about the importance of the agnostic spirit in western thought and philosophy.
http://iai.tv/video/h...
I thought it somehow could contribute to this discussion...

Will:

Not sure I agree with the conclusion there. If the premise is that God's existence or non-existence makes no difference to what sorts of arguments people have, then it doesn't follow that therefore whether God actually exists or not does not make a difference in a wider sense. If God exists then it does, indeed, make a very big difference to the universe and innumerably many other things not limited to the sorts of arguments people have or would have.
It also doesn't follow that if you are dealing with someone of faith then you are not dealing with someone of knowledge: there's always the possibility that their knowledge is a combination or composite of faith and what others might consider archetypal sorts of knowledge (e.g. empirical knowledge). The idea here is that, logically, faith needn't negate archetypal kinds of knowledge; the problem, if there is one, may occur if faith is the sole basis for belief.


Emily:

"I wonder whether science itslef should be a criteria for determining what is philosophically important or significant"
And what are the 2nd order criteria for choosing science as a 1st order criterion of what's Philosophically important/significant? If they are themselves scientific then isn't that a question-begging sort of argument? Likewise, if the 2nd order criterion does not end up being scientifically based then why should the 1st order criterion which determines what counts as Philosophically important/significant be scientific?
Alvin Plantinga talks quite a bit about how Scientism in the form of some kind of Logical Positivism turns out to be "self-reflexively inconsistent"; which is just a fancy way of saying that the criteria that it specifies things should satisfy in order to count as meaningful cannot be met by the Logical Positivist theory itself. One can generate the same sort of litmus-test mutatis mutandis with knowledge and the such-like by asking whether the criteria or theory that one puts forward for what may count as knowledge can itself meet the criteria laid down by that theory; a practical example would be to ask whether the theory which states that knowledge = Justified, True Belief (JTB) is itself a Justified, True, Belief. If it isn't then it counts as being self-referentially inconsistent.

This of course presupposes that choosing science as a 1st order criterion isn't itself a sort of category mistake, which it may well be.
It's interesting to consider that the appropriate symmetry might not be between Science on the one hand and faith on the other; but rather, it seems to me that the appropriate symmetry is with faith and science on the one hand and Philosophy on the other. Why? Because Science requires falsifiability and in that very specific sense it involves a deal of faith: if not in individual theoretical or hypothetical commitments then at least in the project of Falsificationism. To my mind, Philosophy does not involve this sort of faith because Philosophy contains exactly the kind of tools needed to provide a non-regressive, non-question-begging justification of a topic (or proposition, if you will).
As a caveat, this is not to suggest that just any Philosophical account must have this sort of advantage and character by virtue of being philosophical; rather, it is to say that such an account is possible given the theoretical apparatus available in Philosophy; something that is necessarily not available in Science due to the requirements of Falsificationism. As an additional caveat, I have not committed myself to saying that it is not possible to have 2nd-order criteria which are themselves scientific; I just think that to have such criteria one will have to deal with the self-reflexivity litmus tests and problems with question-begging arguments and justificational-regresses.

Thanks for that link btw, it was genuinely interesting.

Since we can’t tell whether or not god exists, what difference does it make to us whether or not he does?
Luis is quite right that faith needn’t negate archetypal kinds of knowledge, but as we are talking about people with a theistic belief, I am intrigued by the suggestion that if faith is not the sole basis for belief, it might be supported by empirical knowledge.