Quote Originally Posted by MMI View Post
Science is concerned exclusively with the natural and has nothing - absolutely nothing - to say on the matter of gods.
I agree, as long as the gods don't intervene in nature. Like creating things, for example. Or performing miracles. Or even appearing as burning bushes and chatting with their peeps.

Likewise, it is impossible to conceptualise the nature of gods, so it is impossible to disprove them by rationalisation.
Which means it would be impossible to know they exist, even if they did. And it would be impossible for any of us to know what they want, or what they might have done. Unless, of course, they intervene somehow. Which puts them under the microscope again.

If you don't believe in god, you can only support your stance by saying it is mere opinion based purely on faith and instinct.
Even if you DO believe in gods you can only use faith as the basis for your belief.

As for scientific theories of creation, they fail in one important aspect: they stop short of the moment of creation because they can find no scientific explanation for it.
They don't know YET! Doesn't mean they never will. And anyway, saying we don't know does not mean God did it.
And they jettison all known science in order to explain the Big Bang as far as they can understand it. Nothing can move faster than light ... yet the universe would not be as it is now were it not for the inflation period ...
I'm not sure what you're referring to here. As far as I know, no one has claimed that anything is moving faster than light. Yes, two galaxies moving in opposite directions at very high speeds may APPEAR to be moving faster than light RELATIVE to one another, but not relative to the center of expansion. But again, there is much we don't know about conditions at the instant of the Big Bang, and how the laws of nature as we understand them are affected. And again, lack of knowledge does not mean gods.

According to science there's not enough matter in galaxies for gravity to keep them together, and they should be spinning apart ... but for the effect of dark matter. Yet no-one can find any dark matter or say what it is, although it should be the most plentiful substance there is
"Dark matter" is just a term, a placeholder if you will, that scientists use to refer to unknown material which MAY be there. Or perhaps there are some peculiar, non-intuitive laws of nature which we haven't deduced yet. Or any of an almost infinite number of possible NATURAL explanations. And yet again, lack of knowledge does not equal gods.

Science does not even know what reality is in the natural world - we may only be reflections of (or in) a quantum mechanical universe. How, then, can it even begin to address questions about the supernatural?
I'm not equipped to deal with such philosophical questions. As far as I'm concerned they're nothing more than games for bored philosophers to play to keep themselves sane (or to drive others insane). Reality is what we can see, or measure, either directly or indirectly.

So yes, I'm perfectly willing to accept that we do not know everything, and cannot explain everything. But that does not mean it's OK to just make stuff up! Claiming that some kind of supernatural being is responsible for everything, just because it makes you feel good, is just not acceptable. That leads to chaos as everybody is then free to make up anything they like, without evidence or rationale, and claim it to be true, because they have "faith".