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I think it's strange that every time a scientific discovery occurs one of the first reactions to it is, "Well, that about wraps it up for religion, eh?" Follow

by hnal943 17y ago

I think it's strange that every time a scientific discovery occurs one of the first reactions to it is, "Well, that about wraps it up for religion, eh?" Followed by dismissive comments about how religion is completely different from science because it's "faith-based" (read: irrational, unconcerned with the facts). Certainly, it's possible to come to different conclusions based upon the objective evidence. That doesn't mean that one of the conclusions is irrational and the other is rational. In fact, I don't think there's any less faith involved in concluding that the only way life could have originated on earth is via panspermia (and that therefore, there is no God that matters) - all because we found an amino acid in space.

trapper 17y ago
Over the last hundred years the probability most assign to the existence of an omnipotent god has decreased dramatically. Most rational people will come to the conclusion that there is such a vanishingly small chance of a god existing that there is no point believing. That's thanks to science.
- three14 17y ago
  That's kind of a bizarre way to put it. Science has very little to say about the probability of God. Science has removed some old proofs of God - the watchmaker proof in particular, by providing alternative explanations for the existence of life. Science itself has come almost nowhere towards placing a probability on the existence of life given the universe we live in, using only known physical processes. It's completely plausible to say that, given a modern version of evolution, and all the time and planets and matter in the universe so far, the odds of creatures at least as intelligent as humans is one in a million. Or a trillion. Who could possibly know otherwise? There are, after all, thousands of unknowns in any such calculation. If, in a few centuries, someone did accurately calculate that the odds were one in a trillion, would you say that science gave "a vanishingly small chance of a god existing?"
  - trapper 17y ago
    "Science has removed some old proofs of God - the watchmaker proof in particular, by providing alternative explanations for the existence of life." Said more eloquently than I.

by hnal943 17y ago

trapper 17y ago

Over the last hundred years the probability most assign to the existence of an omnipotent god has decreased dramatically. Most rational people will come to the conclusion that there is such a vanishingly small chance of a god existing that there is no point believing. That's thanks to science.

three14 17y ago
That's kind of a bizarre way to put it. Science has very little to say about the probability of God. Science has removed some old proofs of God - the watchmaker proof in particular, by providing alternative explanations for the existence of life. Science itself has come almost nowhere towards placing a probability on the existence of life given the universe we live in, using only known physical processes. It's completely plausible to say that, given a modern version of evolution, and all the time and planets and matter in the universe so far, the odds of creatures at least as intelligent as humans is one in a million. Or a trillion. Who could possibly know otherwise? There are, after all, thousands of unknowns in any such calculation. If, in a few centuries, someone did accurately calculate that the odds were one in a trillion, would you say that science gave "a vanishingly small chance of a god existing?"
- trapper 17y ago
  "Science has removed some old proofs of God - the watchmaker proof in particular, by providing alternative explanations for the existence of life." Said more eloquently than I.