re: #35 Nyet

BTW, science totally can study supernatural stuff as long as it is testable. The problem is only that even if there is something supernatural in this world, it surely is too well-hidden. ;)

That’s why I stress that we can only test specific events that overlap into the physical realm from a specific god. We can’t test for a god directly because he/she/it may be capricious enough to fuck with our heads. We can test for alternate explanations as we have through time and draw conclusions based on the results.

We don’t need a god for any of the physical phenomena that we observe, and every place that has been traditionally attributed to a god, like thunder, floods, etc. have been shown to have much simpler, more mundane explanations. There is no fingerprint from a god in any of it. Nothing unique that would point to a supernatural cause.

Given that what we expect and accept has to be plausible within the constraints of our knowledge base, and that knowledge base is continually expanding with more constraints being added as we learn, the possibility of a god is diminished. The places a god can hide are disappearing as we learn.

Now, the part where religion and science conflict is when religion becomes so obsessed with itself that the believers start rejecting the findings of science when it disagrees with their desired beliefs. They end up building their own science which draws people away from functional science.

Yes, there are scientists out there who are also religious and that doesn’t interfere with the quality of their science. However, there are also putative scientists who distort science to fit their religion and convince enough people in the real world that they are the ‘true scientists’ that there is an effective conflict.

Policies in the real world are not set by what humanity knows, but what individuals believe. There’s the rub.