shakran

Perhaps your post needs more editing, but so far it boils down to "religious people have faith that their beliefs are true. Atheists do not."

Not to be pushy, but. . .we all know that


You answered your own question. Different types of knowledge require different levels of proof. Faith-based knowledge doesn't require much, if any proof. I have faith that my wife doesn't cheat on me, but when you get right down to it I have no proof of that because I don't have her under 24 hour surveillance. I cannot therefore scientifically say that she does not cheat on me because I have not tested that theory.

Same thing with religion. You can have the knowledge of faith - i.e. you believe that your god exists, however you cannot have scientific knowledge of that god because there is no way to test your faith-based knowledge scientifically. It would be awfully nice if we could dump a couple of chemicals in a beaker or hold a piece of litmus paper up to a church to verify the existence of god, but we cannot.

In short, theism certainly can go hand in hand with science. Religious people who justify their dismissal of the theory of evolution as "not glorifying god" are shortchanging god. Look at it this way. Any idiot can make a chair. Only a genius can make a chair that then goes on to produce more chairs, each one an improvement over the last. Any idiot omnipotent being can make a life form, but only a truly great one can come up with a life system that improves itself over time without intervention. You want the glory of god? You want an example of how smart he is? Assuming he exists and created all this, then evolution is a pretty big example of his genius. I wouldn't have thought of it.