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comment by StephenBuckley
StephenBuckley  ·  4374 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Do physicists believe in God?

I'm always surprised when someone says (as was said in this video) "There's no evidence for it" in response to the question "Do you believe in God?"

It seems like a fundamental misunderstanding of the word "belief." If you know that someone is true or you know it's false then you can't believe in it. To believe is to step beyond the confines of your experience- something almost inherently unscientific. It is, in a sense, the only use of imagination besides prediction- to use what you know to say, "There are things I don't know, and I can imagine this being one of them" without trying to use the result to, say, power a car or win an argument or solve a math problem. It just seems like they all gave perfect answers to "Is there evidence God exists?" and none of them addressed or thought about belief at all. Not one bit. Kierkegaard is probably spinning so fast in his grave, we could use him to solve all modern energy woes.

And I say this as someone who uses his imagination quite a bit and doesn't believe in much of anything!