Jesus was a nice fella, wish i could have met him

Science is not wrong, scientists can make mistakes.

Having imperfect human beings behind the scientific method will leave space for mistakes, but that is the best we have and at least there is correction and verification and inventions that demonstrate beyond any doubt that we have stumbled upon a fact of reality.

Religion only tells you to shove the idea of a god into everything no matter what.

If you don't trust a data, or a study, go out there and study and test those investigations yourself. New people coming to these fields of study are doing that all the time, it is a method of understanding of reality where people face accountability for their mistakes and the falsehoods get exposed, unlike the proponents of the idea of a god who only offer apologetics.

Religion and the idea of a god offer nothing to be corroborated and falsified.

Reality is not a choice. Just because we are searching for answers to details about the inner workings of reality that doesn't mean you have a free pass to choose whatever you like and feel right and gives you comfort as is the idea of a god, if you pretend to care about truth.

Science gives us the only concrete understanding of reality, we can predict and manipulate reality through the knowledge we get from science. When we use our knowledge of how matter works, for example, and make it do the stuff we want it to do, and predicts it's behavior, and recreate that behavior, that is the most honest signal we have stumbled upon a truth of reality.

We live in free countries, if you want to delude yourself into thinking your god is real, then suit yourself. The idea of a god has no space in honest conversations about the nature of reality because god apologist have offered nothing for corroboration and falsification.

I am going to ask you then:

1) Do you think that there is a method more worthy of trust when you seek to understand reality other than science and mathematics? What is that method?

2) If the above question is yes, why is that method better than the scientific method? How does that method avoid the "mistakes" of science according to you?

3) Is there a god 0D0? Through what process did you falsify the idea of a god so that you prevent yourself from making the mistake of accepting the god-thing's existence when in reality said god's existence could really be a lie? You seem to be hung up on how science has made corrections about things, so you should care whether a god is real or not, if you believe in a god.

How would you know what you read is true? What if science is wrong about being wrong?

You know that right? You know that you are grouping up all scientists on the planet into the same category as a food scientist who is on the fence about if a glass of wine at night is good for you or not, you're not talking about nuclear science, medical science, aviation science, rocket science or a massive number of other fields... you are talking about the scientist employed at hello magazine to do a talk about the calorie gains from margarine.

You have grouped together a group of people so large you now effectively have a child scribbling on the wall with crayons in the same group of artists as Michelangelo and you are constantly pointing to the child's scrawl shouting about how you've found proof that artists can do bad work, it's truly tragic.

Down this path of logic you are following is the point where someone will point you to a priest who raped alter boys, then using your logic of "if one of them got something wrong, they're all wrong" to show you that all followers of that religion fall to the mistakes of an idiot. Grouping on a global scale across so many fields just doesn't work, can't believe this needs explaining.

Your married with kids and you haven't worked out the meaning of life yet??

I wish I could get that many replies as I got here when I'm posting about PS4 goodness.

Because the PS4 is good, it would just be agreement with your points for the most part, unlike this thread.

The most disappointing thing about this thread is finding out Superman is a science skeptic.

I knew there was a reason why I always liked Batman better :X

We dont exactly know that he did.  Even christian's proceed through life on giant assumptions that an all powerful god, that created everything, would have to send his son to die a horrible death for his creations, as opposed to just....  making it so.  If this is true, whats in the bible, this is at best a simulation that god is playing, that doesnt make a whole lot of sense.  

You're right that there are people who misunderstand or abuse science. The "Word of Truth" approach you mention, where people invest themselves into some belief and then close themselves off from further evidence or thought, is disastrous. Especially dangerous is the doctrine of "faith," which directly invites (or compels) people to do that very thing.

However, it seems to me that religion requires that sort of "Word of Truth" mindset, or at least encourages it, whereas science is precisely that force fighting against it. When you level the charge against science that, "Well, scientists have been wrong before," you're missing the point. That scientists have been wrong before is exactly how science is supposed to operate. We don't lock ourselves in with one understanding, one "truth," one dogma, but we work continually to better our understanding of the world and ourselves. We show ourselves to have been wrong about things, time and time again, and this is how we manage to do better. It's a slow and imperfect process, perhaps, but it's the best we can manage thus far.

You can contrast this against religion, which routinely claims to discover capital-t Truth -- a universal Truth for all people and all time -- and then fights (often literally) to keep other people from questioning those Truths or arguing against them or considering other possibilities. Religion does not allow for the kinds of corrections science demands. Science admits it when it has gotten something wrong; religion embraces its errors and enshrines them into (again, sometimes literal) law.

God doesn't exist in the same way that fairies don't exist, unicorns don't exist, etc. It's not as though scientists have gone out of their way to prove that God doesn't exist, no. ("Proving negatives" has a negative connotation anyways, though I'd say it can be done in a sense -- see Carl Sagan's The Demon-Haunted World and his discussion of "The Dragon in My Garage" for details.)

What science has done instead, from the beginning, is to work out causes for all of the things that "god" was initially evoked to explain. At some point, people thought you would find god if you climbed Mt. Olympus, but eventually people did and they did not find Zeus waiting there. As human knowledge has grown, our ideas about god have been pushed back further and further into what's sometimes described as "god of the gaps," where our present conception of "god" is really just a reflection of our current ignorance. A sorry state for the great spirits which once were held to move the sun across the sky, carry the Earth upon their backs, etc.

So you're right, it's not as simple as "God doesn't exist because science said so." It's more like, we haven't found God in all of our searching/investigating, or any good evidence for any god, so there's no good reason to believe that any god exists. Like fairies and unicorns, if we discover some god tomorrow hiding in a burning bush somewhere, then it might be sensible to believe that it exists (whatever that "god" might actually be), but until then, I'll remain "atheist" to gods and fairies and unicorns and so forth.

I recognize that it's a bit of a tangent, but is this really your take on the history? The Christian religion made the Roman Empire stop slavery -- but then the state brought it back after the Church lost influence? It's an... extraordinarily complex topic, I'll grant, so it's hard to say things are simply one way or the other, but this idea of Christianity as some moral or social improvement over pre-Christian Rome is, I think, at least questionable.

Not only complex, but also controversial, and it seems to me that people have been making efforts over the last several decades to redeem the Christian world -- and maybe your opinion is a product of that -- but let's look:

Slavery did not end in the Roman Empire with the advent of Christianity. It's true that Christianity helped raise the status of many slaves (as all believers were considered equals in the eyes of God), and women, and etc., but at the same time, the Bible does not condemn slavery (and can be seen as implicitly supporting the institution) and slavery survived the Christian conversion of Rome.

Economic realities did change over time, so much European slavery was eventually supplanted by the institution of "serfdom," though slavery itself persisted into the modern age. (And while serfdom may be seen as a kind of "improvement" over chattel slavery, it's no great shakes itself.) Christianity did not fight against this development, either, and can be seen as having a hand in it. When Christian political influence was at its peak, we call it the Middle Ages -- and these were no shining light of racial tolerance or social grace. Were they better or worse than Rome or Greece? Better in some aspects, no doubt, and worse in many, many others. But the emergence of Europe from the Middle Ages into the Renaissance and then Enlightenment, and so forth, was not primarily the Church's doing. Rather, the Church fought tooth and nail against many of the reforms that we now take for granted.

Were there relatively enlightened Christians along the way, and did people sometimes do great things in the name of Jesus/God/the Church? Absolutely. History is a complicated topic, and people are, as always, individual. But to act as though Christianity was some sort of general benefactor for the world I think is just an utter distortion, because there were just as many (or more) atrocities also in the name of Jesus/God/the Church. Christianity was certainly no Khaleesi-esque freer of the slaves; that's simply wrong.