(October 31, 2013 at 11:08 am)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote: This strikes me as the strongest support imaginable for non-theism. Until and unless theism can point to a phenomenon or group of phenomena for which no naturalistic explanation is possible, it leaves theism as an unreasonable belief.It still leaves an out. How do we know that a naturalistic explanation of any particular phenomena will ever be possible? The progression of knowledge hasn't stopped people from grasping for any gaps that remain. We may never answer every question, and that will leave opportunities for people to make up answers and build entire belief systems around them.
Then again, it seems to me that most of the remaining gaps allow for only the most vague expressions of god. The beginning of the universe, or the beginning of life on Earth, things that are not as easily studied and verified. Or images of religious icons on a piece of toast or a kitchen tile, or a cloud formation that "looks like an angel." We need more of that walking on water stuff, or feeding thousands with a few small fishes and a loaf of bread. Or curing paralysis with a command. And please, lets have something a bit better than Bigfoot-style levels of evidence, as well.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould
