Well, thanks for assuming, but I went to 12 years of Catholic school.  I probably know more about the Bible than the vast majority of people who claim to believe in it.  And what does "explains things that we thought could only be explained by technology" even mean?  Could you give an example?

Yes, from my knowledge of the Bible it does not explain the world as it is now as it does narrate a really quite intetresting history of how the world came to be, and teach people how to act without being a thrwat to society.

Darn I am a biologist.  Right in center.

Maybe God already gave me something to prove otherwise?

See, now we need a distinction between what people think religion says and what religion actually says.  Or perhaps, people using religion to further their own agendas (last part).

The idea of a God is an omnipotent, omniscient being.  He is all powerful, he is all knowing.  I mentioned in passing that the Catholic church already ran across an apparent contradiction of God (can't remember what it was or I'd have linked it, but I think it was a couple hundred years ago even) and decided that since He's God he can do whatever he damn well pleases, because he's all powerful, and this includes proof or disproof of him existing or not existing.

I think we're pretty much in exact agreement on that.

Yeah, I agree that omniscient/omnipotent is usually part of all the major religions, I meant the part about "It's not so much that the sandwich has no qualities of existence-it's just that we aren't permitted to observe any of them."  Most people don't profess a belief that God is literally unprovable like that.  They think they see "evidence" of him all over the place.  At best, they would say he works mysteriously, not that he works in ways that are by definition unable to influence anything in the real world.  This latter interpretation is the one that's only popular in philosophy and not regular believers.

Did you ever see a painting of a painter who paints a painting of a painter who paints a painting of a painter, who paints a painting of a painter who paints a painting of a painter, who paints a painting of a painter who ...

Same thing isn't it?

Still, while from that perspective it sounds plausible that reality is something similar to an onion, metaphorically speaking, it's highly unlikely.

The fact that biochemical and electrochemical reactions are all there is to our intelligence and being what we are along with some physics which make the universe what it is may seem impossible to grasp for some people, but for me personally it's much more plausible than some great maker.

But of course it's much more easier to say that one doesn't need to prove such a being exists because one simply believes in it's existence, and that it must have some greater plan when something terrible happens, rather than accepting that one is nothing special and there is no greater purpose to hisser own extistence.

Truse but who maid the painter? Either he was born as a result of complex biochemical processes or somebody made him. Nothing can ever truly occur in a vacuum, which is why there would need to be infinite layers.

Yeah. Either that or there is no painter at all, and the painting was created due to some complex process.

First, just because you went to x number of years to catholic school or the individual that stated that they read the bible (which usually means that that person has only read either a few passages or a couple of chapters) DOES NOT mean that you are the end all knowledge in that area.

Just as if I STATED that I've worked in Quantum Mechanics for the University of Cambridge for 10 years DOES NOT mean that I am the end all knowledge in Quantum Mechanics!

Both of those agruments are committing a fallacy of appeal to flattery. 

By you insinuating that you know basically everything about the bible and that no one can tell you anything new under the sun MAYBE I should start claiming the science part and say since I doubt anyone individual here has worked at a prestigous university for that time period CAN NOT show me anything new under the sun as well.

Or MAYBE since you have an exhaustive knowledge of the bible I should come to your house and work for you since you claim to be a scientist with an open mind and all.....

Now all that is asinine and me just being sardonical.  Yet it still holds true as a Scientist and a Mathematican that I still have an open mind to look into areas in order to find answers or to find more questions.  Both are acceptable.

Einstein once said "The man who claims to know everything and can not be taught anything new IS an idiot."

The bible also says something to that extent in Ecclessiasties.

This is what he said: 

And you said:

 wonder how you went from his statement to yours. Never did he say he knew everything. C'mon and be polite and lets try and understand what people are saying.

I apologize for that syntex mistake. I can no longer edit it though.  I still present a valid point though.

There is an insinuation there BUT I will concede and apologize.

well im gonna add my 2 cents before this thread starts a war .

im a man of science AND faith. i believe in a god, maybe not anyone elses god but a god none the less. there will never be a time when every last thing is quantified so we cant prove if there is a god or not. the point of religion is to inspire and remind us to be the best ppl we can be, not to condem those who disagrre with it (though thats become the common practice). you shouldnt be nice cause your scared to burn in hell, you should be nice b/c you like making ppl smile or making others feel good.

last point. god doesnt have to be a man or a women or either for that matter, god could be simply a conciousness. but since we'll never know and man kind as a whole is bent on quantifying every last thing it doesnt matter. religion is what you make of it, how you interpret it, and how you act b/c of or inspite of it.

besides whats the fun in knowing everything anyway?

PROTOCEPT00 WRITES:

Your article is very thought provoking as are the comments. The question of an Almighty God is so very fascinating. I found this statement to be the most profound...can you imagine God Himself moving through us? That's what I believe with all my heart, mind and strength and it keeps me going, hopeful, joyful and peaceful.

PROTOCEPT00 WRITES:

Science is Almighty God's handiwork. God is the Author of both natural and supernatural truth and there is no contradiction between them. Both proceed from God in their respective orders. That there is an opposition between them today originates either in the error of scientists who put forth unprovable hypotheses as undoubted facts, or in the mistakes of theologians who teach their own false opinions as Gospel truths.

A moment's reflection should convince that we are surrounded with great mystery in this world and the universe. Mystery btw, is in no way peculiar to true religion.

Science may make continual progress and tell us of countless new facts, but the how and the wherefore of them is utterly beyond its range.

Take for example, science tells us that the earth without support of any kind circles around the sun once a year and we know the rate, etc,. and that it never departs from the imaginary line traced for it by Divine geometry. Or that the sun is x amount of times heavier and more voluminous than the earth, and that the moon is held to its orbit by earth's attraction, and contantly brought back to its course, and we know all kinds of facts about the sun's gravitation, and the traveling speed of a ray of light...OK...but when science attempts to explain these facts, it can do nothing but coin phrases which only veil the ignorance of their framers. Newton put it this way: "I know the laws of attraction, but if you ask what attraction is, I really cannot tell."

In fact, man only comprehends what he himself has made. He can understand perfectly the mechanism of a watch, a computer or an airplane becasue it is his own work.

But his finite mind cannot comprehend the mysteries of God's world either of natural truth or supernatural truth. Perfect comprehension and intelligence belong to God alone.  

Reading the Bible!!  That's blasphemy!

For me, God certainly exists. Just like when Beethoven composed his 5th symphony, the 5th symphony came into existence. The first time a man tought of God, God came into existence. God is what people use as some sort of dust bin: they throw in stuff they don't understand and then say that He did it. Of course, that IS an explanation. It's just a very bad explanation from a practical viewpoint. You can't do anything useful with such kind of explanations, other than comfort yourself in times of emotional stress.

So for me, God is a very real thing: it influcences how people behave and think. Question remains what God is, exactly. For me, it's for sure not the creator of the universe or anything. In the end, religion (and for a large part also philosophy) tells us a whole lot about how people think and very little about the actual universe.

*bites tounge*

I may add: in some respect, Science has become some sort of replacement for God in our new society. A fundamental flaw in the human way of thinking, is that we want to explain everything. Even if we really have no way of explaining things. Like when you want to hammer a nail in the wall, but you only have a screwdriver and you attempt to use that instead. If people can't find a good explanation, they'll use a bad one. Bad, in this case, means unpractical and unconstructive. You can explain lightning by saying that it's Thor banging on the clouds with his hammer, but that still doesn't get you anywhere. You still don't know when lightning occurs or where it will hit.

Scientist tend to face the same problems. Often, they're expected to give explanations to certain phenomena (for political ends, for example) while they actually don't have a real answer. That usually doesn't stop them from giving that answer, though and that usually gives a lot of problems in the end. The problem with science is: we have a pretty good grasp at the fundamental rules of the universe, but we have no real ways to exploit that knowledge to analyse big scale, real world problems. The mathematics quickly get way to complicated for that. You cannot explain how a plant grows by using quantum physics, simply because the problem is too complex.

Still, our society needs some sort of authority to base itself on. Most people cannot accept that sometimes there are no explanations that are entirely statisfactory but we refuse to say "I don't know". That's when we reduce ourself to religion (God did it) or sloppy science. It's a pitfall that most scientist are prone to, I'm affraid. And I have seen it, I study physics myself. Even within the framework of scientific facts (which should always be treated with doubt), scientists are easily seduced into making bold statements that simply do not hold up against scrutiny. And in that regard, science has become the new religion: always giving answers, much too often believed and much too little doubted.

Disproving God is impossible by all scientific methods. Many scientific theories are based upon evidence, but equally important is the lack of contradicting evidence. A theory is sometimes only considered "proven" by the common-man's perspective when it has not been disproven over a significant amount of time.

For example, the physics that dictates the workings of our Universe could vary by astronomical constants on a local scale, ie relativity is different across different portions of the galaxy. This is very valid theory and very hard to disprove. A physicist will say "well, all measurements of the cosmos indicate that our universe has a certain set of static astronomical constants". The other physicist will say "But have you tested each and every point in the Universe for this compliance?"

Well, obviously we can't measure this with current technology, so his theory still stands not disproven, even though most physicists agree that the constants do not change across our Universe.

Many theories exist on this basis, such as the infamous String Theory. I dare anyone to go ahead and try to reject the String Theory on these boards. If you successfully do, you will be famous. This is because while String Theorists can't yet measure the vibrational components of energy that is the basis of their theory to prove it to you, you also can't measure the lack of these, and thus the burden is on you as well as them (because they will continue to believe it unless proven otherwise!).

More examples of this include the Flying Spaghetti Monster, if you are familiar with this.

I believe in a certain religion. Equally important is that I realize that I can try to prove the effects of God's existence through many unrelated, esoteric claims and that science will never be able to be applied to disprove God because of the omniscience clause in most dieties prevents the use of our limited measurement and analytical skills (ie you somehow find out that God isn't present in this Universe. Someone can just say that he messed with your equipment to test us).

This nature of religion makes it totally dissociated from science in terms of analysis but not necessariy in terms of existence. What it really comes down to is a balance of faith and science. As a scientists, I believe in evolution. There is no reason that my God could not have used it as a mechanism to craft organisms. But some people are not ok with this and get very jumpy when science might contradict some dogmatic belief created around their religion.

So all of this means, in my opinion, that I shouldn't be a douche and try to push religion on people who don't believe because religion is a loophole through science that bypasses the entire logical process. Equally so, I think agnostics, athiests, and people of different faiths should respect each other's beliefs, because you can't disprove someone elses faith and you will just waste your time. Religion should stay out of the theory side of science, but people should consider both realms.

The religion argument will go on forever. People will hate each other over it. Kill over it. Craft governments, lifestyles, and cultures around it.

Just try to be a better person and respect others for what they believe, the kind of person that their beliefs make them, and how they balance these two realms in everyday life. I would rather marry a caring athiest than a literal-biblical, judging, inflexible christian. In the end it comes down to what you do with the religion (or lack of religion) you believe in, and how it makes you a person.

Just be a good person.

/endrant

You should look at what I was responding to.  I only brought up that I went to Catholic school because the poster I was replying to said "You should try reading the bible", as if I knew nothing at all about it and had only read a bunch of anti-religious literature.  I wasn't saying that I know everything there is to know about religion (I don't, nor do I care to).  I was just saying it's not a good idea to assume that atheists are just people who are ignorant of religion.  I'd say it's actually the opposite in the U.S. - most people who decide to call themselves atheists do so because they spent a lot of time in their childhood learning enough about their family's religion to start finding holes and asking questions.

This is the kind of thing religious people talk about a lot, but I feel like this is a huge misunderstanding about the way science works, and the way people use words like "prove" or "disprove", and especially "theory".  A theory is not a random guess, or a hypothesis.  In science, a theory is a very solid model, highly agreed upon by near-unanimous consensus, supported by all available evidence.  All scientific theories are rigorously tested by the scientific community before they can ascend to the status of "theory".  Theory is the top of the food chain in science for large models.  You don't "prove" a theory; a theory can't graduate and become something "more true" or better proven than a theory.  It's unfortunate that scientists use the word "theory", because it also has a second meaning that many people confuse it with: a guess.  A scientific theory is not the same thing as a guess.

So a scientist could not say there are different astronomical constants and have that be an actual Theory.  A theory needs to have a large body of supporting evidence, peer review, and agreement by consensus that all evidence available points to the theory holding true against all applicable domains and tests.  There is absolutely nothing that points towards relativity being weird at different spots in the universe; in fact, there is a huge amount of data that says that it's impossible for it to work like that.  Space-time is a fabric, a unified thing, if it were actually a bunch of separate space-times (which is what it would have to be if different laws of physics were in different sections), then the entire universe would look much different.

Some of this argument is basically "Russel's Teapot" (see wikipedia).  He said that he could claim that there was a teapot floating around a planet ten billion light years away, and that since no one can see that far, no one could disprove him.  Some of this confusion comes with the word "disprove".  First, let me go back to science: in science, it's not enough to make something up and have it hard to disprove.  Science does not work that way at all.  See The Scientific Method or wiki "science" in general to understand how ideas are advanced in science.  Usually the word "disprove" is used (in science, and in many cases) to mean the act of showing that something previously thought proved is actually false.  Scientifically speaking, you can't "disprove" something that has never been assumed proven.  You don't need to - science does not deal with random ideas that have no basis in reality.

There's a problem too where some people think "disprove" means "convince me that I'm wrong", and that's entirely a social problem.  I could say that the sky is green, and you could sit there yelling at me saying that it's blue all you want, but I could still say you haven't "disproved" that it's green just because I can be as stubborn as I want to be.  Scientifically, nearly every definition of god has been "disproved", but people keep changing the definition or covering their ears and saying that it's not true.  There's really not much that can be done about that.  If we take "disprove" to mean "convince a hardcore christian", then it has nothing to do with logic, science, or physics.  It's only psychology.

This, at least, I can agree with.  However, I still think religion is part of the problem.  As long as people think that there is some ultimate moral authority telling them what to do, who conveniently never actually says anything and has to have his commands relayed by politicians and priests, people will use this as a crutch to not have to think through their own actions.  Actions should be thought through carefully, with consideration towards what effect it will have on other people.  People should determine the moral worth of an action based on compassion, reason, and careful analysis.  Too many people (not all, of course) simply take their orders from religious authority and walk away with a clean conscience without ever putting any thought into the actual effects their actions have on others around them.  That's the main problem I have with religion - the entire reason it exists is as a shortcut for dealing with moral quandries and guilt.

Many of the main battles on the religious front in the U.S. today are in fact about stopping careful analysis or learning about the state of the world.  Christianity is trying to shut down biology in schools because evolution isn't convenient to them.  They are trying to shut down sexual education because it makes them uncomfortable.  They are trying to shut down access to free media because they worry about what people will do if they hear non-Christian points of view.  They are constantly trying to ban, censor, and discredit information that might hurt their faith.  This is not the way to lead a moral life - the only way anyone can make a truly moral decision is to try to be as well-informed as they can about what is going on, and then decide what course of action to take.  Purposely blinding yourself to outside information and refusing to learn is, to me, as immoral as willingly choosing to hurt others.

Makeshiftwings,

You are entirely right about the theory common misconception, and perhaps I wasn't being clear when I used the word theory. It seems whenever I try to argue my colleagues about how evolution is true, they spout the "it's just a theory!" argument, to which I promptly facepalm and try to explain that a theory is, exactly as you said, highly supported. It is misused all the time by people who are not familiar with scientific methods. Thus, I tend to use it as more of the commonplace meaning, as I have given up on using it as it was intended.

Although I used the astronomical constant as an example, it is actually a subject up for much debate. Stephen Hawking has grappled with this problem several times, although there is a consensus (as I mentioned) that the numbers are the same throughout our universe (avoiding singularities). It should be noted that while theories and Laws are very evidence supported, they can still be disproved (ie Newton's Laws by Einstein, although many call it a "corollary" instead of a total reconstruction...). But you do demonstrate my point - Religion doesn't have enough supporting evidence to be a strong, scientific argument, and neither do people who try to counter religion. It doesn't exist in the same plane as science. I believe string theory, despite its beautiful math, should be lumped into this category of faith as well, at least until they get the LHC ready and can actually qualify string existence (or absence). 

I do disagree with you when you say that every definition of God has been "disproven". I will say that they haven't been proven, either. No one is capable of doing either, and so to each his own.

You are right, religion does contribute to many problems. However, religion also gives people a moral basis and justification for good deeds. Not to say that athiests do not have a moral basis, but when you actually get down to philosophy of their moral basis, it doesn't exist.

I took a philosophy course last year and tried to rationalize good moral behavior by athiests, but my professor kept countering. From my understanding of that argument, it usually comes down to the concept of selfishness and gene-preservation. Although I don't want to believe that this is true, I haven't heard a counter the philosophical reasoning behind this moral behavior (although I'm sure one exists). Religion does give many people a good moral doctrine to follow, however. This isn't always a bad thing.

Bad things occur when idiots try to wield religion as a tool of mass indoctrination (Advent lol), and spout twisted beliefs that "God" told them. I have no respect and only digust for these people. Would we be better without religion? Who knows. But I guarantee you there will never be a world without it. Humans naturally try to question the origin of the universe and the meaning of their existence, and some people will always conclude that a religion holds the answer.

One thing that irks me about all these "God vs cience" threads..

At some point, someone brings up the Bible.."just pick up a Bible and read it.." etc..

The Bible is the holy book of 1 religion, 1 of the predominat 3, out of HUNDREDS of religions in existence. Even IF God were to exist, assuming he is the one portrayed in the christian Bible is a bit arrogant.

in response to "pick up a Bible", pick up a Koran, pick up a Torah, pick up the Bhagwat Gita, study Buddhism, study Shinto, Study the mythology (religion) of the Greeks, Romans, and Egyptians and the multitudes of other religions and god views out there.