[learc83]

>I would think so. How can you say, "I'm a scientist, I'll construct experiments and observe results to understand reality," and then go believe that there's a dude in the universe that's omnipotent and omnipresent...

Thousands of scientists throughout history have been conducting experiments while simultaneously holding a belief in God.

To take an example from our own industry, how do you feel about Donald Knuth. Do you discount his work because of his faith?

>...without a shred of observable evidence?

We all make presuppositions. You assume that your senses are basically reliable. You make this assumption because it is useful, and without it everything you do would be meaningless--yet you have absolutely no way to prove it.

Each of us makes assumptions about the nature of the universe. You have no right to judge someone else because you believe your presuppositions are less ridiculous than his.

[Smudge]

Thousands of scientists throughout history have conducted research while simultaneously holding beliefs in any number of things. It would be fallacious to discount their scientific work because of this fact, at least as long as they held to scientific principles of reasoning. But the fact that they were scientists does not lend credence to the additional, unfalsifiable claims they may have made about the universe.

Furthermore, just because an assertion (e.g. "there is a God") cannot be proven (or disproven) does not mean it should be free from scrutiny. The claim that one has "no right to judge" a belief due to lack of evidence is an argumentum ad ignorantiam. Lack of evidence is a perfectly valid reason to be skeptical.

There are two presuppositions you compare: "I think, therefore I am" and "There is a God." Both require at least a very fundamental assumption, but only one has any basis in what we might typically refer to as "evidence."

[learc83]

>But the fact that they were scientists does not lend credence to the additional, unfalsifiable claims they may have made about the universe.

I never said it did. Did you read post I was responding to? I was attacking the premise that one can't be both a scientist and a believer in God with the evidence that there have been many scientists who believed in God.

In fact your sentence here:

>It would be fallacious to discount their scientific work because of this fact

is exactly my argument.

>Furthermore, just because an assertion (e.g. "there is a God") cannot be proven (or disproven) does not mean it should be free from scrutiny.

Never said it should be free from scrutiny. I have no problem with you criticizing my beliefs. What I do have a problem with is the OP asserting that my beliefs make me a poor scientist. And the very specific assumption that belief in God renders one unable to perform scientific inquiry. You seem to agree with me, as does the evidence.

>There are two presuppositions you compare: "I think, therefore I am" and "There is a God." Both require at least a very fundamental assumption, but only one has any basis in what we might typically refer to as "evidence."

Two options to explain the beginning of the universe and why it doesn't violate causality.

A. Causality came into existence with the beginning of the universe and so was never violated.

B. An eternal God exists separate from the universe he created

There is absolutely no physical way to prove either one. Which one is simpler or more likely is completely subjective.

You can't choose camp A with no supporting evidence, and then decide that you are more rational or superior to people in camp B because they lack evidence.

[Smudge]

Yes, apologies. I misunderstood your meaning. I also think we interpreted dhechols's post slightly differently. (I did not assume he was actually making the argument that "one can't be both a scientist and a believer in God" -- I thought he was just hinting at a cognitive dissonance between being a scientist and holding a faith, which is a slightly different line of discussion.)

Your other point:

> "You can't choose camp A with no supporting evidence, and then decide that you are more rational or superior to people in camp B because they lack evidence."

Whoever said I chose camp A? This line of reasoning excludes the possibility of an option C (or D, E, F, etc). Again, argumentum ad ignorantiam. You are shifting the burden of proof and appealing to ignorance. ("There is no proof, therefore they are both equally subjective.")

How about, instead, "there is no proof, therefore we don't know or claim to know." Seems more rational than any of the other options, at least to me.

(Sure, nobody's 100% rational, so we could keep picking these arguments apart all night. I'm happy to agree on a simple "we don't know" for anything not empirically based on the evidence of the senses.)

[superk]

A. Causality came into existence with the beginning of the universe and so was never violated.

B. An eternal God exists separate from the universe he created

I think the issue that most skeptics have with "B", is not that it is being presented as a possible explanation to the existence of the universe as you have written here, but that there are folks that say they know and talk to this dude, and he tells them we need to pay their organization money (or fill in whatever other ridiculous religious dogma you want here).