> some overly advanced spices (you can say "god-like")

You really can't. They're very different.

> It's not impossible from a scientific perspective for a planet to be terraformed and seeded with intelligent life by some overly advanced spices (you can say "god-like"). Or to create a simulation with intelligent life in it and to save some resources by starting 6000 years ago from a complex seed state rather than simulating 16 billion years of physics to see the intelligent life emerge or not.

True enough. But such a world would be very different from a world in which the bible was literally true, and a world in which the bible is actually literally true is genuinely scientifically impossible. You would have to redefine an unimaginably large number of things and you would still have a world full of impossible contradictions to the point that nothing could be said.

> Take any religious belief and you can build a scientific world where it is true.

You can't, because the beliefs are fundamentally unscientific and self-contradictory. There is no possible world in which the god that actually religious people believe in exists as they believe in him; there are possible worlds in which an entity with approximately the same gross physical properties exists, but such an entity is nothing like the actual religious god.

▲

alexey-salmin 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

> You can't, because the beliefs are fundamentally unscientific and self-contradictory. There is no possible world in which the god that actually religious people believe in exists as they believe in him; there are possible worlds in which an entity with approximately the same gross physical properties exists, but such an entity is nothing like the actual religious god.

Why not? I don't think it's likely and I definitely don't build my life under an assumption that this is true.

However I just can't see how this can be ruled out by scientific means. Our world doesn't have to follow any laws at all, this whole thing can be a bad dream of a sleeping giant.

	▲	lmm 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		> However I just can't see how this can be ruled out by scientific means. Our world doesn't have to follow any laws at all, this whole thing can be a bad dream of a sleeping giant. If you took that hypothesis seriously you'd still be able to apply predictions and laws. Giving up on trying to understand it is what's unscientific.

▲

IAmBroom 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> You can't, because the beliefs are fundamentally unscientific and self-contradictory.

You mean, like those silly science fiction stories where FTL travel is possible? Or time travel?

	▲	lmm 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		> You mean, like those silly science fiction stories where FTL travel is possible? Or time travel? FTL or time travel are not necessarily unscientific - we know that relativity permits CTCs to exist, they're something that can be explored rigorously and scientifically. Even for stories that adopt decidedly unscientific handwave versions, one dropped stitch won't necessarily unravel the whole garment, especially when it's not the focus - if you're telling a story about life on Omicron Persei 3, how one gets to Omicron Persei 3 may well be beside the point. But yes if a story is full of things like that, even for things that are the focus of the story, then it's not science fiction.