Science without Religion is lame

[Chido-Wan Kenobi]

I don't like discussions that revolve around semantics and word games, so let's be clear about this:

1. "Magic" means - at least in my humble understanding - a collection of phenomena that DO NOT follow natural laws, like the First Law of Thermodynamics (example: the Philosopher's Stone) or the Law of Gravity (example: a flying carpet).

If you show a scene from "Avatar" playing on an Ipod Touch to an Amazon tribesman, he may easily THINK it is magic. But this is a result of the lack of sufficient knowledge. Send the same tribesman to MIT and get him a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering (it could happen!), and he will eventually understand enough of the technology to conclude that it is not magic after all.

To summarize, if an event APPEARS to be magical but can be explained away by deep enough science, it is truly NOT magical. To be magical, that event MUST NOT be susceptible to scientific explanation, either NOW or 100,000 years in the future. If it's based on science, it can't be magical; if it is magical, it can't be based on science.

2. I don't believe that a true scientist would weaken the distinction between religion and science by messing around with the "magic vs. technology" argument. I've read direct quotations to this effect from Carl Sagan and Stephen Hawkins; I consider myself a scientist (although quite a few notches below those two), and I certainly do not feel that ANY religious belief is compatible with true science.

Unfortunately, our understanding of the Universe is still incomplete, and Theists will use this fact to conclude that as long as we don't really know everything there is to know, we might as well accept Jesus as our savior. Trembling hearts (Asimov's term) enjoy the idea that they share their ignorance with educated people.

Well, I don't think so. Science and Religion are simply orthogonal (Ms. Palin: if you're reading this, it means that their dot product is zero)

So there...