[marshmallow_12]

He means to say that science does not have the tools to reproduce the beginning of the Universe. If it's not reproducible it's not Science. Confident assertions non-withstanding, the Human mind is a slave to nature, in that can never hope to uncover it's deepest secrets and thus, it's true.....nature?

[michaelmrose]

By that definition science is entirely unreal because we can't reproduce an apple pie from scratch without first creating the universe. We explore geology including theories about the formation of the earth without making new planets.

What is supposed to be reproducible is the act of collecting and processing data to ensure that your conclusion isn't based on error, falsehood, or happenstance. What he is promoting is a basic misunderstanding of both science and logic.

People with preconceived anti science attitudes do this all the time. They face you down at high noon in their fancy duds, six guns ready at their hips sure of themselves and ready to kill and draw pearl handled.... water pistols.

They went looking for the correct answer to satisfy their religion not a commitment to truth and found cheaply manufactured baubles they are sure are deadly weapons because the very skills that would enable them to see it clearly would prevent them from looking for such easy answers in the first place.

[marshmallow_12]

let me rephrase; science has limited itself to understanding the laws of Nature. It can never tell us how the world -and thus life- came to be. I admit your argument was a good one. But not the anti religious points. Essentially atheists has declared Nature as the true god. In the rules he has imposed, he has left us with no choice. Science has hardly managed to do away with god, it has merely managed to exchange him as it were.

I will also argue that atheism is a religion. There is nothing more exciting than being able to throw off the rules of one god by replacing him with another who asks for nothing.

[michaelmrose]

Only theists conceive of God as an essential element and thereby perceive a god shaped hole in atheists world view? What religion does your cat practice for example?

Nature is like gravity it is a label we attach to things in order to communicate about some aspect of our mental models of the universe we share or imagine we share sufficiently to communicate theories about the underlying thing those models point to. It isn't in most cases not imagined to be a sentience modeled after ourselves but rather an abstraction around some aspects of everything in the overarching model.

Religion, Philosophy, Science are all systems of models of the world but they belong in different category based on characteristics in the same way that a trout, a dog, and an duck are all animals but they aren't all fish just because they all swim.

Religion especially western religion has classically been a pre scientific exploration of different theories about how the world came to be lacking virtually all actual understanding and focused on the idea that something much like man writ large was responsible for the universe and that the man who acted as conduit to the wishes off that man would derive some measure of that beings power mirroring primitive social structures and extending them skyward to the fanciful creations of our own mind. As if an ant had imagined the entire world was a giant burrow made by giant ants who could make their wishes known to lesser ants by way of the arrangements of your dogs droppings in your yard.

Science is merely a system for harnessing the same imagination but directed towards testing our fanciful explanations and building an increasingly powerful set of facts and models that are extremely likely to be somewhat true. We by the nature of our brains are builders of models and we must have them to exist and to progress but we don't need to build a system that glorifies the very flaws to which our minds are most heir to and exploits them. That is to say we haven't replaced God with nature we have simply built mental models of the universe that don't contain a first cause because we don't believe there is a conscious act at the center of it all.

Those of us who have wings know that a wing isn't a different kind of fin and a rocket engine isn't a different sort of wing and naked is not a style of pants.

There is no reason that we can't at the end of a long road have a pretty good idea how how life on earth came to be in the same way as we have a pretty good idea of how to continents came to be as they are. It wont be perfect but it will keep getting better every year as we learn more.

Your god was invented thousands of years ago so someone could claim to speak for him and attain status within his or her tribe without hunting more animals a trick that amazingly still works NOW. Throwing off the yoke of his adherents doesn't free one from the obligation of life, meaning, your family, or your fellow man. It is a harder obligation not an easier one. You incorrectly frame casting out comforting lies and facing down a terrifying truth as an easy way out but nothing could be further from the truth.

If a lie it is and I for myself call it a lie then adhering to it would be an unacceptable act of cowardice. If you truly believe it then to you it is courage to adhere to it but neither of our experiences is a lie and you definitely do not understand mine or any other alike.

[gher-shyu3i]

> Your god was invented thousands of years ago so someone could claim to speak for him and attain status within his or her tribe without hunting more animals a trick that amazingly still works NOW.

Another fallacy and incorrect assumption that's clouding the discussion. Don't group all religions together then toss them all out as equally invalid.

[l8rlump]

>neither of our experiences is a lie and you definitely do not understand mine or any other alike.

They're not talking about personal experiences, they're talking about objective truth, and of those there's only one.

[michaelmrose]

I'm talking about subjective understanding of objective truth. I of course think the objective truth is there is no God. The majority in America differ.

[mensetmanusman]

This article by an MIT prof might be interesting: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2021/03/miracles...

tl;dr At some depth, you ask questions beyond the scientific method itself.

[gher-shyu3i]

Your argument is a straw man.

[michaelmrose]

Instead of throwing out the names of logical fallacies as if they applied to this argument please explain how this is a straw man?

[marshmallow_12]

You are projecting your own understanding of how and what religion is, and then attacking it. That is a straw man

[michaelmrose]

In what way do may statements and reality diverge? Be specific with quotes.

For example

> science does not have the tools to reproduce the beginning of the Universe. If it's not reproducible it's not Science.

What followed in this thread wasn't a discussion of religion. The post you are directly replying to directly dealt with the charge that it is impossible to scientifically examine the beginning on life on earth because it wasn't reproducible and ergo not science based on your misunderstanding what reproducible means.

If you look again up thread you will see that religion was discussed in a different part of the thread. Did you mean entirely different statements were strawmen? If so what and again please be specific.

I have myself been very specific in the arguments I refuted so you can do the same.

[gher-shyu3i]

Where you implied that all religions are anti-science by nature, and that their followers are not interested in finding out the real truth.