The Magic of Atheism?

[mediamogul]

They need that gap. It's the last place they have left for their god to hide in. They can't have anyone closing it with knowledge!

Oh obviously they can't. I mean that in both the rhetorical and literal sense of the statement, too. We're at the scientific point in history where the universe itself is starting, just starting, to be understood in its rudimentary fashions. Scientific progress has closed the gap steadily but surely, like an inexorable juggernaut. First the proof that the earth has no foundations, that the sun does not rotate around it but vice-versa, and that the earth was round. Then the proof of precipitation and climate and what causes it, the concept of evolution and the slow but steady piecing together of the puzzle to the point we can already see the entire picture except for a few small details that we're still trying to find the pieces of. After that came the study of biology, the discovery of the dinosaurs, of genetics, and the human genome.

Bit by bit, every assertion religions have made have been proven false with empirical evidence, bit by bit it chisels away at their chapels and churches and monasteries and mosques. Now we're entering the territory of god-like forces; black holes, anti-matter, relativistic travel. The last bastion of the religious man's "but what if...?" last-stand part of their debates.

The most amazing thing to me is that all of those incredible achievements of modern science have happened essentially within the last hundred years. Imagine what another hundred years could bring us. Too bad I may not be around for the unified theory. The reality of time travel does scare me a little bit. I do have to admit.