Any other atheists here? Some frustration

[wmrs2]

No! There are no real atheist. Anyone who believes in absolute truth is not an atheist. Without absolute truth there are no premises for thinking, which means there is no logic which always depends on premises. An atheist by definition is a person who believes in no premises and can not think. None of us are like that. Get over it, thinking is what makes you human and in the image of God, like it or not.

[FirstBorn]

I was raised atheist and have for a while had a fling with the old religion of scandinavia. Never really past an agnostic point of wiev but still good fun and educational as for historic insight.

I do not deny absolute truth rather its definition. In all my observations dropped items fall, that makes it emprically true within my limited experience. Most will agree but its not an absolute truth, or so pictures from space stations will have me belive. Those again may just be propaganda and lies and so what. I can live with an X in the equation without filling in a made up entity as explanation.

Should there be a god and should he (obviusly HE im made in his image and im male) My observations indicate that he's kinda small minded and judgemental tending to pull pranks without considering consequenses (just like me). So im pretty much in for a bit of punishment for being him/me... No matter really ill demand trial by combat according to solid cristian tradition. Prolly get my ass kicked but itll take a while, the soul being immortal and all that.

[MMI]

No! There are no real atheist. Anyone who believes in absolute truth is not an atheist. Without absolute truth there are no premises for thinking, which means there is no logic which always depends on premises. An atheist by definition is a person who believes in no premises and can not think. None of us are like that. Get over it, thinking is what makes you human and in the image of God, like it or not.

This looks like drivel to me. I don't believe in god, and I deny the existence of any god.

I can think.

And that's the truth!

[leo9]

Anyone who believes in absolute truth is not an atheist.

It's not necessary to believe in a god to believe in absolute truth. There are other philosophical bases for such a position.

Without absolute truth there are no premises for thinking, which means there is no logic which always depends on premises.

Wrong. Plenty of philosophies have been constructed on the basis of conditional or locally valid premises. More importantly, that's the way real people really think most of the time: nobody waits to determine the absolute truth of the weather forecast before deciding to wear a coat. One of the ways humans can still beat computers is that we can take decisions based on uncertain or incomplete data, which hangs up brains based on pure logic.

Get over it, thinking is what makes you human and in the image of God, like it or not.

And your evidence for the nature of god is what?

[Wiscoman]

No! There are no real atheist. Anyone who believes in absolute truth is not an atheist. Without absolute truth there are no premises for thinking, which means there is no logic which always depends on premises. An atheist by definition is a person who believes in no premises and can not think. None of us are like that. Get over it, thinking is what makes you human and in the image of God, like it or not.

I know this is an old post, but I've just got to say this makes no damned sense at all.

[EDQ]

there is a derferance between "fath" and "religon"

[FirstBorn]

No! There are no real atheist. Anyone who believes in absolute truth is not an atheist. Without absolute truth there are no premises for thinking, which means there is no logic which always depends on premises. An atheist by definition is a person who believes in no premises and can not think. None of us are like that. Get over it, thinking is what makes you human and in the image of God, like it or not.

Seems the sport of the day taking a proper swing at this statement. Ill really try not to because i can tell someone is pretty adament about it.

"There are no real atheist" Theist being people "with a god" thus atheists being people without a god. You could state the one cannot be defined by missing a feature (ie god) and thus cant be atheist. Thats a semantic argument thou, based merely on theist being the norm.

"Anyone who belives in absolute truth" This may make sense as an argument if you belive you have the absolute truth. Beliving however contradicts the wery concept of absolute truth. Simply because if something was absolutely true noone could possibly dispute it. "Faith" or "belief" implies that you made a more or less educated guess along the way, so by definition you dont know whatever truth you belive. (pretty much your own statement on atheism comming back to haunt you)

"Without absolute truth there are no premises for thinking" Id say the excact opposite. Given the knowledge of what is absolutely true, thinking (that is considering things from more than one angle) would meen defying your knowledge of a true angle. Should said truth be religius in nature, thinking would be blasphemy.

"Get over it, thinking is what makes you human and in the image of God, like it or not" Now i may have misread my bible more specifically the book of genesis. Man may have been created in the image of god atleas according to your source. However man lost his innocence with that whole apple deal. General consensus in cristian society states that if your not thinking (or not thinking right) your innocent. Thats why the court will let you go if you succesfully plea insanity.
Thus thinking wasnt part of the creation, but rather something we stole and got punished for stealing.

This whole mess could lead to the idea that thinking is against god. That infact accepting whatever truth you found and never applying thought or motive to anything is the only way to fly.
However you could read the whole getting kicked out of paradise only to come back once your good enuff. As an incentive for learning everything about gods creation in order to please god.
That would make you a scientist, being a scientist again meens you have to question your basic theory. In this case the belief in absolute truth and god.

[SadisticNature]

Dawkins likes to present the idea that scientists question absolutely everything but this is not entirely true. Science, unlike mathematics is built upon a set of unquestionable axioms that constitute the scientific methods.

Most notable of these is empiricism, namely the belief that you can identify all the relevant conditions to an experiment and if you change an irrelevant variable (typically time or location), you can conduct the same experiment with the same results. This presupposes a divine entity has no control over the outcome of your experiments so in a certain sense you have axiomatized away god at least in the sense of a divine entity that intervenes in the world.

Personally I'm an agnostic, I see no good evidence for their being a god. I don't believe you can discover the nature of the universe without working from basic axioms however, and you do have to believe in those axioms in order to get started. If you aren't an empiricist, and don't believe in the scientific method you will not be able to do good science.

Similarly, If you don't accept basic axioms like the value of human life and that human beings have basic inalienable rights in a theory of ethics, your theory of ethics will allow all kinds of atrocities. The common argument that religion makes where accepting certain basic ethical principles implies belief in god is as deeply erroneous. Ethics is not the sole domain of the religion even though religion has influenced the code of ethics and morality throughout history. The vast majority of agnostics and atheists are moral people, and morality is certainly not the exclusive domain of the religious.

In general I find this topic is often way too hostile to be productive.

[SadisticNature]

When I say that the axioms are unlike mathematics I mean that they are non-intuitive.

The axioms of the real numbers are rather believable and you have to be willing to accept them in order to have addition or multiplication at all, the axioms of required for the scientific method have been debated for centuries by philosophers and are still not generally accepted as fact.

For examples see:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_number
or

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarski%27s_axiomatization_of_the_reals

[Thorne]

Most notable of these is empiricism, namely the belief that you can identify all the relevant conditions to an experiment and if you change an irrelevant variable (typically time or location), you can conduct the same experiment with the same results. This presupposes a divine entity has no control over the outcome of your experiments so in a certain sense you have axiomatized away god at least in the sense of a divine entity that intervenes in the world.

But this is an absolute necessity in any experiment or study of science. If you presuppose that an entity (ANY entity) can control or alter the outcome of your experiment, what's the point of doing it? The result is meaningless. You can never be sure of any outcome. It's only by assuming that there is NO such entity that the experiment has any meaning.

[FirstBorn]

Funny thing about the seeing an atom argument. I wrote it off as just grasping for straws when i first read the thread. But then encountered it again IRL from pesky doorbell people, usually ill have the common sense to send such people away before they gain momentum, but i was in the mude for a bit of BS so i gave them 5 minutes.

Stupid atom argument comes up.. Well to the best of my rather simple understanding of science the basic principal is hypothesis->theory->law.

That is you think of some idea, "like dropped items fall" thatd be your hypothesis. So you go test that in every way you can think of and others agree with your results. You now promote your hypothesis to a theory... Should you manage to prove that your theory and its mathematics work in every possible scenario you get to call it a law (ie law of gravity).

Now theres no such thing as the atomic LAW. Theres an atomic theory and it does offer models and guidelines as to how chemicals behave. Thus its just a general rule of how atoms and chemicals will most likely act. Models again being a visual representation made entirely to explain things. I dont have to know if atoms exists or if they look like the planet/core model or the goofy bubbely iso models. All i got is a general explanation that just so happens to be more accurate than religius writing.

Pretty much every single religius law (barely hypothesis by science standards) you can prove wrong or inaccurate in your backyard. But some of the more esotheric ideas such as the soul, heaven and hell. Well we will see about those once wer dead. Given the general inaccuracy of religius writing im kinda assuming therell be a surprise for everyone. Prolly just some crappy ingame graphics and the names of the dev team thou.

[SadisticNature]

My point isn't that its not necessary. My point is that Dawkins common arguments against god reduce to:

Assume there is no god (as per assuming the Scientific Method)
Therefore there is no god.

So aren't actually strong arguments against the existence of god.

[FirstBorn]

So aren't actually strong arguments against the existence of god.

Other than the fact that the devine entity insists on not showing up for lab tests.

Now id say assuming the scientific method by itself does not exclude the excistence of a god. But the room where gods could be hiding is shrinking as more and more of the natural world is explained and formulated by science.

Should science eventually bump into some entity fitting the description of a god it would obviusly be recognised as such. But at the moment god is a hypothesis with no experiments defiantely proving or denying existance.

Religius texts however (as far as im informed) have all been proven wrong. That does not finally prove that there is no god, it just says that no human is able to explain the nature and wishes of such an entity.

[Thorne]

Assume there is no god (as per assuming the Scientific Method)
Therefore there is no god.

No, the way it actually works is:
1. Assume there are no gods.
2. Do our models and theories about the working of the universe still apply?
3. Yes, they do.
4. Then there probably are no gods.
5. Is there any evidence to show that there are gods?
6. No verifiable evidence at all. Only wishful thinking and anecdotes.
7. Then, to the best of our knowledge, there are no gods.

So aren't actually strong arguments against the existence of god.

We don't need any arguments against the existence of gods, any more than we need arguments against the existence of fairies, or leprechauns, or golems, or any other such superstitious claptrap. The point is that there is no credible evidence that gods exist. It's not up to science to prove that gods don't exist: it's up to believers to prove that they do, in a testable manner.

[SadisticNature]

If your definition of truth is scientific truth then in order to prove god exists you would likely have to do a series of experiments that verify the presence of god. My definition of truth is scientific truth and on that basis I don't believe in god. However, this is still a matter of premises, you have assumed that the only form of truth is scientific truth, by which you have already asserted the non-existence of god through experimental invariance or other similar properties that postulate results don't happen through miracles or divine intervention.

As for the other point about accumulating evidence based on god not interfering, this is also problematic. You have already assumed a theory which requires the non-existence of god to set up an empirical framework in which experimental results can discover general laws about the universe. Any experiment within this framework cannot then provide evidence for the non-existence of god as it is already assumed.

[FirstBorn]

My definition of truth is scientific truth and on that basis I don't believe in god.

Truth by scientific standards have nothing to do with belief. Should a deity show up in testing idt be a fact thus eliminating the need for beliving in it.

Since no deity has cared enuff to show up as of yet, nobody knows of its existance and any argument for beliving in it is looking rather dodgy. But not definately proven right or wrong.

So if someone set up a god measuring experiment and was able to prove beond dispute that the result would be final and correct. Whatever result came out would have to be the fact wed all have to accept from then on.

Science doesnt work that way thou. When making an experiment you go by whatever you have handy at the moment and work on your current hypothesis. Proving a scientific theory or law wrong in whatever specific case your working, is just good as proving it right.

That is you may with contemporary equipment set out to measure gods non existence (if thats the theory you decide). But if the experiment is supposed to have any merit atall. Any unexpected result would then prove your first assumption about god wrong.

Beliving in god or intelligent life on other planets (any planet including earth in my case) Is well good for the beliver. But without any evidence thats all it is.

Soon as SETI picks up some alien x-factor program, or a deity decides to show up and set the facts straight. Science FACT will get in line and give it the thumbs up.

Belief however is still pointless.

[Thorne]

you have assumed that the only form of truth is scientific truth, by which you have already asserted the non-existence of god through experimental invariance or other similar properties that postulate results don't happen through miracles or divine intervention.

I assert (not assume) that there is only one truth. Something is either true or it is not. It is the purpose of science to ferret out that truth, and to inform us of the rules under which that truth applies. For example, pure water will boil at 100ºC and freeze at 0ºC (the temperature scale being a construct of human measurement, not of the universe itself) under standardized conditions. If you change the conditions you change the temperatures. Science tells us why this happens, and how it happens, and lets us calculate the new temperatures. And science shows that results don't happen through miracles or divine intervention.

As for the other point about accumulating evidence based on god not interfering, this is also problematic. You have already assumed a theory which requires the non-existence of god to set up an empirical framework in which experimental results can discover general laws about the universe. Any experiment within this framework cannot then provide evidence for the non-existence of god as it is already assumed.

That's not true! All the gods have to do is perform a miracle, something which defies the framework of natural laws. Cure all the children born with AIDS; regrow an amputated limb; make the water in our experiment freeze at 20ºC without altering the standard conditions. These things should be child's play for a being that can create the whole universe!

But regardless, the "truth" is that science, or anything else, cannot prove that gods do not exist. All we can show is that, except for that brief period of time at the very beginning of the universe, everything in the universe can be explained without having to resort to divine intervention. So if there are gods, they are irrelevant.

[SadisticNature]

How do you know that Water isn't supposed to boil at 90 degrees and every time god stops it from boiling till it gets to 100. This seems pretty unreasonable but its not provably false, and its certainly not experimentally verifiable. So here is an example of something that could be true if a divine being were to exist that could not be shown by science. This also covers the non-interference problem, as if some divine being interferes in 100% of the experiments scientific truth could be entirely wrong.

As for truth, type matters. If you go with a radical doubt approach, its difficult to know much more than your own existence, because you can't prove that you aren't being deceived about the world. You can't even prove that people other than you exist. This is covered extensively in Philosophy, largely coming from the work of Descartes, but revisited by others. Other, more rational approaches start from different axioms and derive different results. In particular, the scientific method itself requires certain axioms.

Furthermore, no one has proven anything beyond a reasonable doubt in science, new experiments change and expand on previous laws. Even something as basic as gravity could behave radically differently from what was previously thought for something as yet untested. For instance, the gravity between two objects whose relative velocity is greater than the speed of light. For all we know the theory of gravity might be a tiny special case of the general picture. No experiment has proven it to be the be all and end all, just like no "god measuring" experiment would have a final word.

As for the 7 step argument Thorne postulates, step 4/5/6/7 is invalid as you have already assumed no gods, and consistency of one assumption does not imply the inconsistency of another.

1. Assume there are gods.
2. Do our models and theories of the universe still apply?
3. Yes, they do.
4. Then there probably are gods.
5. Is there evidence for gods?
6. Gods exist by assumption 1 so in this theory absolutely.
7. Then to the best of our knowledge there are gods.

If one of these theories was inconsistent or created problems it would be easy to reject it, but both are valid so someone needs to devise an experiment to show one or the other to be incorrect before outright rejecting either. In other words, neither "God exists." nor "God does not exist." is a statement of science, much like neither "The flying spaghetti monster exists." not "The flying spaghetti monster does not exist." is a statement of science. When we reject these things as implausible we aren't using scientific evidence we are making hypotheses from the entirety of our entire life experience about the plausibility of something we can't verify.

If I believe P is not equal to NP, I'm not asserting that computer science shows P is not equal to NP, I'm expressing a belief about an unproven conjecture. The fact that no one has demonstrated an algorithm for an NP-hard problem in polynomial time, is not enough to reject P = NP, even if an arbitrary large time window is used, a proof is still required.

[Thorne]

How do you know that Water isn't supposed to boil at 90 degrees and every time god stops it from boiling till it gets to 100.

Because we (mankind) have developed the Celsius scale of temperature using the boiling and freezing points of water under standardized conditions. So any god who wishes to fuck with us can simply cause the water to boil at any random temperature while maintaining those standard conditions, thereby negating our own science. Simple enough, isn't it?

As for truth, type matters. If you go with a radical doubt approach, its difficult to know much more than your own existence, because you can't prove that you aren't being deceived about the world. You can't even prove that people other than you exist. This is covered extensively in Philosophy, largely coming from the work of Descartes, but revisited by others. Other, more rational approaches start from different axioms and derive different results. In particular, the scientific method itself requires certain axioms.

I'm not going to debate philosophy. I have no understanding of it, and no taste for it. To me, it's a jumble of nonsensical excuses for believing whatever one wishes to believe.

Furthermore, no one has proven anything beyond a reasonable doubt in science, new experiments change and expand on previous laws. Even something as basic as gravity could behave radically differently from what was previously thought for something as yet untested.

I have never denied this. Science develops theories, which are basically models of the universe as we know it! If the model fails, the theory is wrong and must be either corrected or discarded. New devices, new technologies, new information, all help to improve the focus, to sharpen the spear point of science, to more accurately explain the real world around us. No reputable scientist would claim that he knows everything, or that we've explained anything absolutely. All we can say is that our models are as accurate as we can make them at this time.

As for the 7 step argument Thorne postulates, step 4/5/6/7 is invalid as you have already assumed no gods, and consistency of one assumption does not imply the inconsistency of another.

1. Assume there are gods.
2. Do our models and theories of the universe still apply?
3. Yes, they do.
4. Then there probably are gods.
5. Is there evidence for gods?
6. Gods exist by assumption 1 so in this theory absolutely.
7. Then to the best of our knowledge there are gods.

I disagree absolutely! Statement 6, above, is just plain wrong. The assumption of gods does not constitute evidence of gods. It's about as silly as claiming that we know the Bible is the "True Word of God" because the Bible tells us it's the "True Word of God!"

I would reword statement 6 to say, "No, there is no such evidence." Then statement 7 must become, "Then there may not be any gods. Our assumption at #1 may be wrong. Let's assume there are no gods and see where that takes us."

In short, if there is no evidence that gods exist, and no difference between a universe with gods and a universe without them, then why bother with them? They are, if they exist at all, irrelevant! They make no difference at all.

[FirstBorn]

1. Assume there are gods.
2. Do our models and theories of the universe still apply?
3. Yes, they do, in absolute indifference to our assumption 1.
4. Then we cant tell if there are gods or not.
5. No evidence supports the existence of gods.
6. We belived in god back at 1 but nothing supports that assumption.
7. There is no devine influence, possibly because theres no god.

[SadisticNature]

Up to 4 your argument makes sense. However once you have asserted by assumption an axiom is true, you can either show it false by contradiction, or you have a model of the universe in which its true, so within that model 5 is certainly wrong. 6 is true, however the same argument can be made about assuming gods don't exist.

7. is a reach that doesn't follow from 1 to 6 at all. It isn't even provably true, as how would you identify divine influence if it were happening in 100% of experiments.

As for the temperature scale:

My point is the actual temperature we identify as 100 celcius may in fact be different from the true temperature at which water boils if some divine entity were causing the true laws of nature to be violated in all instances. In this case we would discover false laws based on the violations.


As for philosophy if you choose not to debate it that's fine, but truth has long been consider in the realm of philosophy by both mathematicians and scientists. Scientists discover truth about the physical world, these aren't the only types of truth.

You continue to misunderstand point 6.

My point is consider two models of the universe.

Model A is the model you gave before where the assumption is that no gods exists.

Model B is the model where god exists by assumption.

Neither model is inconsistent, so you cannot rule out either model as a state of the universe. The only way in which an assumption can prove anything about itself is a proof of falsity by contradiction.

In Model A god does not exist is a true statement by assumption, this isn't evidence however because in Model B god exists is a true statement also by assumption. If you wanted to show god does not exist, you'd have to show that model A is consistent, while model B is not.

Model A provides evidence for god not existing as within Model A the statement god does not exist is true. Model B provides evidence for god existing as within Model B the statement god exists is true. None of this evidence is useful however as it is all circular reasoning and as neither of these models is consistent assuming a statement doesn't result in its proof.

Con (AoS) -> Con (AoS + 'God does not exist')
Con (AoS) -> not Con (AoS + 'God does exist')

would say that if one assumes the axioms of science are correct then one is forced to conclude god does not exist. This means any argument for the existence of god would have to argue the scientific method was wrong. However these statements have not been shown and from a logical standpoint are not derivable unless there are axioms of science that imply statements about god.

If you propose to advance a rigorous argument I suggest you use Models properly. If you'd like I could suggest a formal logic text or a model theory book, I've studied both.

[SadisticNature]

The Ancient Greeks have no verifiable evidence of gravity, and thus should conclude gravity does not exist. Of course this is a false conclusion.

Absence of verifiable evidence is insufficient to conclude something is false. You'd need to be able to show its negation is verifiable to show anything about the truth of the existence of God.

It is perfectly fine to assume God does not exist for the purpose of doing science, and that's a perfectly rational position to take. However, it is not a proof, so you have not done enough to show the public that god does not exist.

[Wiscoman]

It is perfectly fine to assume God does not exist for the purpose of doing science, and that's a perfectly rational position to take. However, it is not a proof, so you have not done enough to show the public that god does not exist.

The burden of proof is with the claimant. If it were the other way around, we'd be disproving every crazy-assed thing someone came up with. Was John Wilkes Booth possessed by demons? Up to you to prove he wasn't. Was the Hindenburg brought down by a UFO? I don't know, prove it wasn't.

It's not up to skeptics to prove a god doesn't exist, it's up to believers to prove it does.

[steelish]

Not only can bumblebees not fly but kangaroos cannot jump. Same mathematical logic. Both of these concepts are based on inaccurate information and assumptions - the bee is a solid mass and not almost completely hollow, the kangaroo weighs and acts the same as a sack of potatoes when various adaptations to muscle make jumping a more efficient method of travel.

I'll dig out some more but I think it may need to be a seperate thread...

How about the anomaly of the Duck-billed Platypus? That creature defies all logic. An animal that lays eggs, yet produces milk and nurses it's young...

[Thorne]

As for the temperature scale:
My point is the actual temperature we identify as 100 celcius may in fact be different from the true temperature at which water boils if some divine entity were causing the true laws of nature to be violated in all instances. In this case we would discover false laws based on the violations.

It doesn't matter what the so called actual temperature should be. A being violating the laws of nature in all instances is identical in results to no being violating said laws. It's not a proof of divine intervention, though an assumption of divine intervention can be made if you wish. But why would you?

Model A provides evidence for god not existing as within Model A the statement god does not exist is true.

No, it does not provide such evidence. Assumptions are not evidence. If any evidence for the existence of gods were to be found it would falsify our assumption, thereby making our hypothesis false.

Model B provides evidence for god existing as within Model B the statement god exists is true. None of this evidence is useful however as it is all circular reasoning and as neither of these models is consistent assuming a statement doesn't result in its proof.

Again, the assumption of the existence of gods' does not constitute evidence of their existence.
In these two instances either hypothesis works. You can assume gods exist or not and the results are identical. However, there is no evidence of such existence, so the only reason for hypothesizing them is to make yourself feel better. Their existence, if it is true, has no bearing on the running of the universe.

the axioms of science are correct then one is forced to conclude god does not exist.

I'm not sure which axioms you are referring to here, but the only reason to conclude that gods do not exist is because there is no evidence of them. For the same reason we can reasonably conclude that unicorns do not exist, that there is no green cheese on the Moon, and no ancient civilizations on Mars.

This means any argument for the existence of god would have to argue the scientific method was wrong.

The scientific method is simply a tool used to verify the work of fallible human beings. Repeated experiments and observations, duplication by independent sources and peer review of data and conclusions. There's nothing to say that you cannot prove anything, just that you have to have the evidence and the data to verify it.

However these statements have not been shown and from a logical standpoint are not derivable unless there are axioms of science that imply statements about god.

I don't understand this at all. Are you saying that we cannot prove God exists unless we make God's existance an axiom? "God exists, therefore we have proven that God exists"? Which god? Your god, or Caesar's god, or Muhammed's god? All of them? None of them?

[Thorne]

The Ancient Greeks have no verifiable evidence of gravity, and thus should conclude gravity does not exist. Of course this is a false conclusion.

You're saying they didn't know that if you dropped something it would fall? That's a silly notion. Of course the Greeks knew about gravity. They didn't know what it was, and they certainly weren't able to quantify it, but that doesn't mean it did not exist.

Absence of verifiable evidence is insufficient to conclude something is false. You'd need to be able to show its negation is verifiable to show anything about the truth of the existence of God.

No argument from me here. I've said all along that you cannot prove a negative. I've never said that gods cannot exist. I've only said there is no evidence that they do and therefor no reason to believe that they do. There's no evidence that Neverland doesn't exist either. That doesn't mean Peter Pan will be dropping by tomorrow.

It is perfectly fine to assume God does not exist for the purpose of doing science, and that's a perfectly rational position to take. However, it is not a proof, so you have not done enough to show the public that god does not exist.

You misunderstand! I don't have to prove that he doesn't exist! Again, such a proof is impossible. If you want people to believe he does exist, then it's up to you to provide proofs of that existence.

[Midnytedreams]

But hasn't science in some way proven the existence
It is now known as a scientific fact that , matter is never and can never be destroyed only changed into a new state of being.

The religious believe this proves that when we die,our matter {soul} is released from our body.

No I am not religious zealot that believes it but a question should be raised all people of the world , going back to the first people here have believed in something. Even reincarnation is a transferance of matter. If science wasn't even known then , why did all people believe that you went somewhere... Even before religion this belief existed.

[SadisticNature]

If people want to use the existence of god to do science they'd have to prove the existence of god and then apply those properties. However, the onus of proof in other endeavors is rather different. I've never contended that using god to do science is sensible, or that assuming god exists for the purpose of verifying some scientific fact is useful.

For instance, in theology it would be a rather pointless to argue that you can't prove god exists, therefore you shouldn't study the divine at all. Similarly if you are studying Aquinas and metaphysics, arguing there is no soul will not lead to understanding of the philosophical implications.

Furthermore, there are countless examples where assuming something is true and studying the consequences is very useful, particularly but not exclusively if a contradiction arises leading to a refutation.

In any of these above, assuming the non-existence of god would be pointless and would curb discussion. Just because its correct for science doesn't mean it's correct in general. If something is not known to be true or false there are benefits to looking at the consequences of both truth and falsity often with a context dependence. For example P = NP? is an open conjecture. Looking at the implications of P = NP could potentially lead to a refutation of P = NP by contradiction. Furthermore if P = NP turns out to be true, having studying the consequences in advance, we would have a huge number of immediate results, and a surge in research. Likewise looking at P not equal to NP could lead to a refutation by contradiction, or new results that follow from P not equal to NP. In computer science the correct approach is to study both possibilities.

Since its so often the case that the correct approach is to study both possibilities, I don't see why in this particular case its wrong to study both possibilities calling one study Theology and the other study Science. Particularly since that is what eventually happened in the academic community.

[SadisticNature]

Scientists often believe in unproven conjectures. They have arguments and intuitions and posit theories. These theories are eventually tested. For instance Newton believed that without air resistance any two objects would fall at the same speed. This wasn't tested until well after his death, he had some evidence for it, and some evidence against it, but was able to pick a side without having conclusive evidence. All of theoretical physics is done by reasoned conjectures. The theory of relativity involves objects at speeds we are no where close to producing so can't be experimentally verified for large scales. Yet we still have conjectures, some of which are right and some of which are wrong. Dawkins has even pointed to an example in Biology where the two conjectures were polar opposites, and reasonable scientists held both positions until further evidence ended the debate.

If you present the world with a widespread correct proof that god does not exist you would reduce religions down to a few radical fanatics, determined to deny the truth. In the absence of further evidence however, I contend that both positions are reasonable.

[SadisticNature]

If you prefer replace gravity by the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, the point remains the same.

As for convincing people in either direction. If you want people to abandon a belief in A you have to show them good reasons for not A, in some cases an outright proof. If you want people to abandon a belief in not A you have to show them good reasons for A, in some cases an outright proof.

My point isn't that you should believe in god. My point is you can't argue its irrational to believe in a conjecture (God) unless you have strong evidence of its falsity, which by many peoples standards you do not.