General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Dear Religion, While you were debating what chicken sandwiches were okay to eat,... [View all]Scootaloo
(25,699 posts)Okay. At least we can agree, there's no objective evidence for god. Any god, goddesses, demons, devils, angels, djinn, ancestor-spirits, unicorns, fairies, gorgons, hippocampi, or "grey" aliens.
And yes, I'm lumping your personal deity in with elves and Martians because there's exactly as much evidence in either, and there are religions that regard elves and martians as being on par with whatever you believe in. You don't get to be special.
So. There is absolutely zero evidence supporting the existence of say... invisible pink unicorns with two horns. Do scientists shrug and go "oh well, we can't say either way!" Fuck no, they don't. They apply logic (Assuming they have time to spare for this shit.) And logic says that if something exists, there is evidence of its existence. Invisible pink two-horned unicorns are animals, presumably. So they eat, they shit, they die, they move, they make noise, all of this would leave circumstantial evidence. If invisible pink two-horned unicorns exist, we would have some samples of that existence that could then be examined for authenticity. You know, like Bigfoot.
So, let's take god. If god exists, then it is a being or object within the universe. If it is deeply involved with humanity (in particular, one bronze-age tribe in the near east and their descendants) then surely it's going to be fairly close-by. its frequent appearances and literal hands-on involvement with the earth is going to leave evidence that points towards "something else" doing so. And while we're at it, we can't play favorites with just the Abrahamic god! We're going to have to test Greek people to see how many of them are descended from swans, for instance. We should also dredge the baltic sea to find njord.
When science is confronted with something that has absolutely no evidence, the reaction isn't "50/50 chance." The reaction is "99.99 repeating chance of 'no'" with each subsequently discovered parcel of evidence knocking a 9 off the tail end. This is because everything that exists leaves evidence behind. This is simply a facet of reality.