god thread, number 3 Options

[*disco infiltrator*]

So, it seems that everything talked about in another thread leads to religion.

So here we are!
Debate the existence of God and which one's right and stuff.

I would post links to God threads 1 & 2, but you can't search for three-letter words.
(2 got to 50 pages, think we can beat it?!?)

Er, I'll start.
I'm atheist. Prove me wrong.
By prove, I mean state facts that have been backed up by solid evidence. I have yet to see that happen in all 70 combined pages of threads 1 & 2.

[*mipadi*]

I'll start off by saying that I place a heavy emphasis on science; I am a computer science student, after all. When I want to explain something, I pull out my ruler, or protractor, and measure angles, calculate sines, cosines, tangents, radians, and what have you, and draw a conclusion. My studies and research is based mostly around math and science. So naturally, I believe that yes, the wind can be measured with tools, and explained scientifically. Clearly wind is caused by pockets of high-pressure air moving into pockets of low-pressure air. I certainly can explain why one pocket is of a higher pressure than the other. And I can certainly ascribe visual indicators—leaves blowing, trees bending—to wind.

Having said that, if I may play Devil's advocate for a minute, it's certainly easy to see how a religious person could argue this point. Could he not say that the wind itself is caused by God, and every "scientific" indicator, from trees bending to measuring the excitement of the atoms that make up the air (i.e. temperature) is willed by God?

And there we have the crux of the problem: All the application of logic in the world is not going to shake a believer. I don't believe in God because I invest a lot in tools of science, and God doesn't make sense to me. I don't believe what I noted the believer would tell me—I think that's a load of garbage. But it's very easy to see how the faithful can undercut scientific principles. And that is why we have a problem: The tools of science cannot penetrate faith, and faith cannot shake the tools of science. So what is the point of trying to apply the tools or beliefs of one discipline to another?

As I noted, I very much believe in science, and I once made a similar argument to a friend of mine who is currently at working on a philosophy thesis. As he pointed out to me, religion and science are both ways of examining The Truth—and The Truth, ultimately, is defined by one's own perceptions and experiences, which makes it highly subjective. (He had a further interesting discussion, but not being a student of philosophy myself, and having no interest in philosophy, aside from the narrow study of symbolic logic, I didn't care to remember all of his precise details and arguments.)