The form of reasoning and the type of evidence accepted is the same as with Newton’s theories or Darwin’s, he says.
Darwinian evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne took after someone writing at the Deseret News who argues that faith and science both play a role in fighting COVID-19. Neurosurgeon Michael Egnor is (we could have called this one) not impressed:
An objection commonly raised is that “scientific theories can only involve the natural world and cannot demonstrate the existence of supernatural entities.” But that’s incorrect. The Big Bang, to take an example, was not an event in the natural world. It was a singularity, which means that it is undefined and undefinable both mathematically and in conventional physics. Similarly, a cosmological singularity — for example, a black hole — is also a supernatural entity. That just means it is outside of nature. We never observe black holes just as we never can observe the Big Bang. We can only infer — by inductive reasoning — the existence of supernatural entities such as black holes by their effects in the natural world.
This inductive reasoning is precisely what proofs of God’s existence do. We cannot observe God in this life because he is not part of this world. He is supernatural. But we can observe his effects in the natural world just as we inferred the existence of the Big Bang and black holes by observing their effects. It is the same sort of reasoning.
There is one difference though: the evidence and the logic pointing to God’s existence is overwhelmingly stronger than the evidence and logic supporting any other scientific theory in nature. Aquinas’s First Way proof of God’s existence, for example, has exactly the same structure as any other scientific theory. The empirical evidence is the presence of change in nature. Because infinite regress is logically impossible in an essentially ordered chain of changes, there must be a Prime Mover to begin the process and that is what we call God.
Michael Egnor, “Here’s why an argument for God’s existence is scientific” at Mind Matters News
Takehome: We can observe God’s effects in the natural world just as we inferred the existence of the Big Bang and black holes by observing their effects.
See also: Jerry Coyne just can’t give up denying free will. Coyne’s denial of free will, based on determinism, is science denial and junk metaphysics. (Michael Egnor)