simulatedworld
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I do understand your point and agree to a large extent. There are fanatics on both sides of the issue. You do have scientists saying without a doubt that God does not exist.
I think this is a result of mistaken understanding of the context in which scientists say this.
You need to define what "God" is before you say something like that. When scientists declare that God doesn't exist, they are referring specifically to the conception of God as a literal, conscious and self-aware entity who actively manipulates worldly events based on prayer.
It's pretty obvious that this idea is bullshit, but you can make up your own "vague spiritual force" definition of God if you want--you just stretch and pull and poke and refine until all the inconsistencies come out, at which point you're left with something so far removed from the actual popular definitions of God today that, personally, I think it's a stretch to call it "God" at all.
Basically, I just get tired of hearing "spiritual" people respond to criticisms of God with, "OH YEAH WELL IT DOESN'T DISPROVE *MY* GOD!"
Well, if God is your big toe that's fine and good, but your God in that case is not what 99% of people are referring to when they say "God", so really you're just playing semantics.
Scientists don't claim to be able to 100% disprove these arbitrary vague spiritual force ("God is just like, uhh, the whole like, thing of everything in all of us...dude!") theories of God because those are not what the vast majority of believers in God purport to believe in. That's simply not what they're talking about.
The vast majority of religious people today, when they say they believe in God, actually do believe in a conscious and self-aware entity with a moral agenda who actively imposes those arbitrary moral directives on humanity. THAT is what "God" means in a realistic context today.
You have more theologians saying without a doubt that a God does exist. The fact is no one knows. So far with what we have it's an unknowable answer. Science changes everyday. We find out new things all the time, what my teacher was saying was that at some point she thought science and religion would meet somewhere in the puzzle.
The fact is the entire discussion of God is meaningless until you actually decide what "God" means. Your teacher was probably just saying something to appease everybody in your class regardless of position on this sensitive issue.
Many would say the same about religion. Mystery and the unknown has often been considered a very significant and essential part of religious life and thought.
Wow, somebody should tell that to...I don't know, the entire southern half of the United States of America?
You'll also find some who, though they may not claim to know everything, claim that everything that can be known must be knowable in the scientific way. So they do claim something like that the entire knowable puzzle is as they see it at the least.
Well when you get down to the actual definition of knowledge, that's true. Scientists recognize that there is no such thing as absolute truth or fact without some kind of predefined external condition in a closed system.
For instance, it's scientific fact that 2+2=4, but only because we invented that system ourselves and predefined the conditions of what "2" and "+" and "=" and "4" mean. That's all arbitrary predefinition on our part, so we can make definite, 100% objective statements about it since it operates within a closed system of our own design.
Religion, on the other hand, does not operate within a closed system and claims that it can have direct knowledge with objective truth on all kinds of issues that are clearly totally unsolvable.
I'm sorry, but the religion=science parallel is just really poorly conceived and fleshed out even worse.