re: #1013 ludwigvanquixote

This is good, but I think you need to find a way to fit in that pronouncements that religious texts make concerning the empirical world subject themselves to empirical falsification just as much as extra-empirical pronouncements made by scientists are subject to the charge of lack of evidence. The major cases in point are the contentions that 1) the universe and earth is just a few thousand years old, a contention empirically refuted the red shift coefficient of the Big Bang echo radiation and by a number of different radiometric dating methods which not only mutually corroborate, but are independently corroborated by such external sources as tree rings and ice pack cores, and that 2) that all the many millions of species were created independently and as is in the space of a few days, a contention that is not only refuted by the differential ages of and species in the fossil record, but also by comparative studies of DNA in general, and artifactual retroviral DNA in particular, that demonstrate beyond rational statistical doubt that terrestrial organisms share ancient common ancestry.

That is, unless they’re willing to postulate a duplicitous deity that would deceive humanity and inscribe falsehoods in the Book of Nature by salting both soil and genes with false evidence.