It's the difference between a truth that you have sought out evidence for, studied and deduced for yourself, versus "truth" which springs into being at the whim of superstition. If you were an investigator and found substantial and compelling evidence that a criminal had murdered someone, only to have someone proclaim that they learned in a dream that your suspect was innocent, which "truth" would you believe?
That's my whole point! One can dream up all kinds of possibilities about what came before. None of them have any more validity than the others.That is true, I suppose, but I'm not sure how it advances your argument. If it is your suggestion that before the Big Bang there was a period (I will use the term even though there weas probably no such thing as time) when all that would be was caused pending release then your assertion is no less unfounded, ludicrous and insupportable as is the eternal existence of a deity.
That depends on the religion. There are fundamentalist Christians here in the US, and elsewhere around the world, who proudly proclaim that their beliefs are based upon the reality of the Bible, which they proclaim to be the divine word of God. Anything which contradicts their Bible is therefore untrue. Evidence means nothing to them.I cannot know in the sense you demand it: it is a statement of faith. Religions happily admit that their beliefs do not rest upon proven fact, but upon some other basis instead, such as revelation, perhaps.
As an article of faith I have no quarrel with that statement. The problem I have is that, should science some day be able to peer through the veil of the big bang and find out exactly what came before, the religious will change their image of God, redefining his existence, rather than giving up. It's basically the same battle that religion and science always have.I agree that, if God has to be created, there is a problem over who or what created Him, but the causa causae problem actually does not exist for religions, only for science. God is not constrained by time. He is eternal. He precedes the Big Bang and everything that went before it.
I suppose there's some merit in this statement. Because I certainly do think that science can eventually learn just about anything. And I also know that science does not know everything yet. But if we are ever going to find the gods, it will be science which does it, not superstition.You are making assumptions too, equally unfounded, based on your belief that there is a scientific answer to everything, and faith that it can be found.
And how do we know that these beings are imperfect? How do we know that Satan is not the True God and Yahweh is his imbecilic brother? Yeah, that's right. Faith. We just know. Because God tells us so.God can be supernatural without being perfect. In fact, He could even be supernatural and thoroughly imperfect. I am thinking of supernatural beings such as Satan, the Daevas, Paantu, and so on.
Quite true. But you neglect to point out that one of the biggest blocks to science was in trying to rationalize the physical with the supernatural. It's only with the gradual development of the scientific method that we've managed to throw out the supernatural and advance the world's knowledge of the natural. And we went from the first powered heavier-than-air flight to putting a man on the moon within a person's lifetime, less than 60 years.Science was once a poor discipline, founded on thoroughly shaky principles that, for millenia, held back its own development.
What answers did religion provide, other than "god did it"?Religion supplied answers science could not.
Religion was able to withdraw? Rather they were forced to withdraw, and they are going down fighting. And what makes you think there is a reason we are here? Just asking the question, "Why are we here?" assumes a creator with a purpose. If you remove the concept of a designed universe, the question is meaningless. We are here. Period. There is no why.As scientific knowledge grew, religion was able to withdraw to its proper spheres of influence, which was to explain why we are here rather than what we are made of and how we work.
And again you make the assumption that there is some ephemeral "Truth" which transcends the natural world based upon nothing but your need for such a truth to exist.Science can continue to grow and religion, though perhaps more focused on particular answers than before, can continue to develop in its search for Truth.
And I cannot rule out the possibility that there is a jolly old elf living at the North Pole who delivers toys to good children every Christmas. And I have evidence for mine! NORAD tracks his sleigh on radar!I cannot rule out the possibility that after Armageddon, or in whatever new order your preferred religion proposes, the people living in their new Eden will have transitioned from mere mortals to supernatural beings who are no longer bound by laws of nature.
I wouldn't lie to you.