Name: Anonymous 2007-07-06 15:00 ID:EI35vD5+
It is impossible to prove or disprove god because god neither exists nor fails to exist. It's like trying to prove the number e exists: chances are that you've never actually seen e in real life, you've only read about it in books. Of course, it would be silly to say that the existence of e is therefore infinitely improbable, since e doesn't go about existing or not existing anyway.
This is where /sci/ seems to be stuck, trying to prove/disprove the general concept of god. For the arguments to progress, you need to understand the relationship between god and religion. Religion tends to consist of three components: God(s), miracles, and practices. Miracles are what the religion claims to be god's manifestation on Earth: these range between things that happened naturally(ie the existence of the universe, people recovering from illness on their own) and magical stories of things that never really happened(ie Moses parting the Red Sea, God creating the world in a week.) Practices are the component of religion that says things like: love thy neighbor, thou shalt not murder, slay the infidels (often openly conflicting with itself.) Religion ties the three together using miracles to "prove" that their god "exists" and wants them to follow their religion's practices. The miracle->god->practice chain is normally non sequitur and is facilitated by a magic book (ie bible, qur'an) and/or a class of priests/prophets who are free to (mis)interpret the religion for the common people.
Religion is afraid of science because science can disprove the "miracles" with which religion "proves" its god is correct. However, neither science nor religion can prove/disprove a concept.
This is where /sci/ seems to be stuck, trying to prove/disprove the general concept of god. For the arguments to progress, you need to understand the relationship between god and religion. Religion tends to consist of three components: God(s), miracles, and practices. Miracles are what the religion claims to be god's manifestation on Earth: these range between things that happened naturally(ie the existence of the universe, people recovering from illness on their own) and magical stories of things that never really happened(ie Moses parting the Red Sea, God creating the world in a week.) Practices are the component of religion that says things like: love thy neighbor, thou shalt not murder, slay the infidels (often openly conflicting with itself.) Religion ties the three together using miracles to "prove" that their god "exists" and wants them to follow their religion's practices. The miracle->god->practice chain is normally non sequitur and is facilitated by a magic book (ie bible, qur'an) and/or a class of priests/prophets who are free to (mis)interpret the religion for the common people.
Religion is afraid of science because science can disprove the "miracles" with which religion "proves" its god is correct. However, neither science nor religion can prove/disprove a concept.