Since Science is a process not a position this is obviously wrong.
Science can actually virtually kill the foundation of many a belief: lamarckism, the possibility of perpetual machines with ordinary every day materials, the mormon ideas regarding the history of america, flatearth believers, literal fundamentalist creationists, the belief that in modern days supernatural miracles are abundant.
Those beliefs rests on assumptions, or hypotheses as the evidence against these accumulate to vast levels the likelyhood of them being true falls in the minds of most informed individuals.
Are you saying you have proven this? Where is your proof? I don't see it.
If I claim president Bush said something or Obama said something, I do not see why the burden of proof rests on the one questioning my claims. It should actually rest on me, and
IT DOES NOT MATTER IF THE CLAIMS ABOUT SOMEONE OR SOMETHING ARE OLD OR BELIEVED BY MANY. Right now there's a man going around America claiming to be jesus christ. Despite this idea being, as far as any one can see nonsensical, he has gained strong following especially across Latin America.
Now this is a man in modern days, where massive amounts of technology exists to disprove any claims of miracles, and where strongly backed churches with massive media influence cannot shut him down. This happened now, why not in the past? In fact countless pseudo-churches are popping out and have popped out all over America, founded by people claiming to be 'prophets' of the lord and claiming to be able to perform supernatural miracles. All of them have gained various levels of followers, and many actually claim to directly have experienced supernatural miracles from these quacks.
It is clear that even amongst modern day people, substantial numbers hold ridiculous unsubstantiated beliefs such as the president being a muslim, the earth being flat, creationism, etc. In the past we had individuals who were biologically virtually identical, only without the benefit of science or modern media to disprove claims of the supernatural, only word of mouth and eyewitness testimony to go on. In a world of ignorance and mystery, how could these people be any more resistant to acquiring false beliefs than significant chunks of modern day populations?
In sum, the bible makes extraordinary claims about 'God', and in turn its believers spread these extraordinary claims. It rests on them to provide evidence for why these claims are truly divine, just as any claim regarding a politician, a government, an event, a celebrity, etc requires evidence and can't be taken on faith. Faith is a privilege, it must be earned, it is not a default state towards the claims of strangers. It rests on those making these extraordinary claims to provide extraordinary evidence, not on the skeptics questioning them.
As today we know that for millenia man has stubbornly held countless erroneous superstitious and mystical beliefs, we know that false beliefs, and false prophets, psychics, fortune tellers, and all sort of scam artists and cons have success with substantial portions of the population. In some religions like scientology or the mormon faith we have some evidently questionable foundations coming into being in more recent times, we see them as evidently ridiculous, what makes the Jewish or Christian faith with its equally strange claims, any different? That they are older, came much earlier? That they have more believers? Or was it simply a myth that propagated easily as false beliefs tend to do in significant chunks of the population.
The rational idea is that locally there has been undetectable or no change in the physical laws, in modern days the supernatural is nonexistent nor has it seemingly left any measurable trace in the past. If this is so, then between the following: A.) A false belief akin to scientology or mormonism spreading earlier as these two have shown is quite viable for evidently false beliefs in modern times occurred in the distant past. B.) Supernatural parlor tricks to impress a few men to start strange rituals took place while an all loving being ignored and continued to indefinitely ignore countless suffering innocents. A. makes sense and perfectly meshes with modern day knowledge and does not require extraordinary claims of violation of physical laws, while at the same time not containing evidently contradictory claims.
All the evidence? What evidence? Your argument has no rational reasons or evidence.
Let me put it this way, besides the inconsistencies and more reasonable, down to earth ,explanations for the various texts. (I assume we can all agree that the greek gods, and egyptian gods, and the incan gods, and the mayan gods, are all in all likelyhood false for starts?). Many of these texts claim that specific deviations from physical laws, laws that have held up in thousands of experiments, took place for questionable purposes. Things like Noah's ark have been brought into question, genesis accounts too, also there are suggestions that many of the claims regarding the kings of israel seem to be great exaggerations. We can even take more recent claims like some in the new testament
regarding prayer, faith and miracles happening.
There is also the fact that the WORD OF MEN seems to not mesh too well with the LAWS THAT GOVERN THE HEAVENS. For example natural selection is merciless, countless suffering has occurred because of it, not only that but its product a rational mind is one that will tend to question things and lead to a substantial percentage of the population not accepting things without sufficient evidence. It is but an inevitability. The idea that a being with the characteristics ascribed to God, would handle and depend for his desired and highly sought connection with each human on some ancient unsubstantiated texts(that won't even reach a good chunk of the pop. before death), providing a vast pool of competing texts along(various religions), borders on the absurd.
When the laws of the universe mercilessly inevitably lead to the needless butchery, suffering, torture and rape of countless innocents. How can one accept that a God that does not intervene to ease the suffering of so many, would deem it necessary to intervene by performing some token parlor tricks to impress a few men? He leaves them with insufficient evidence to convince any serious skeptic. All for what? for what ridiculous purpose?, so that they worship him by performing strange rituals and repetitive uttering some phrases?
Then people come on the "Evil and suffering is necessary". Oh but evil and real suffering is
NOT PRESENT IN THE LIVES OF ALL HUMANS. So the real question is why is evil and suffering necessary for some but not others? But let's be honest here some have grown in privileged environments with young disease-free healthy family members, and suffered quick short painless accidental deaths in their teens, twenties, etc. These individuals that did not witness any real significant suffering, were their lives actually "less worthy" did God somehow fail to pump their lives full of evil and pain? or were they privileged not only materially but spiritually by God such that they need not experience real suffering(disease, severe physical pain, loss of loved ones, betrayal, etc)?
If a deist believes that God was directly involved in the creation of the world... and the
LAWS THAT GOVERN THE WORLD, IT IS SEEN LEAD TO SOME INEVITABILITIES. THEN THESE LAWS AND THEIR IMPLICATIONS WOULD BE THE DIRECT EMBODIMENT OF DIVINE WILL, and the fact is these ruthless laws and their inevitable outcome does not mesh well with many a religious text.
When the LAWS OF MEN LIE IN CONFLICT WITH THE CELESTIAL LAWS that govern the universe... the laws of men cannot hope but to crumble, like the feeble things they are, before that which cannot be broken.
Edited by Cameron, 11 September 2010 - 06:00 AM.