I'm attacking science as THE way of knowing rather than A way. I agree, science is the best way of meaningfully modelling the immediately knowable phenomenal reality we actually experience but irrelevant and inapplicable to the metaphysical subvenience at which God would exist.
btw how did uneducated bronze age sheep herders get to be the authority on which the religious believe the world functions? do you really believe some invisible guy in the sky picked up a handfull of dirt and turned that into man? Genesis 2 7And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this." Albert Einstein
so in the bible god had no problem demonstrating his power by murdering people at will but now he is so far removed that no scientific test can detect him? Seems to me that Christians worship the incredible shrinking god. I mean at one time it was supposedly capable of flinging thousands of billions of galaxies into existence with a mere thought. By the time of Noah, it was reduced to flooding an insignificant speck in the cosmos. By the time of Moses, its best trick was moving a tiny portion of a minor sea aside for a short while. By the time of Jesus, it has to send a delegate on its behalf who leaves behind only rumors that he was able to turn water into another beverage, or render himself extra buoyant. Now it counts as a miracle if a water stain grows mold that kind of looks like a bearded face which could be claimed to resemble this supposed delegate.
Excellent post. Funny. If you authored this I salute you. But I still believe. I should clarify here that I think of the biblical version of God as metaphor but not necessarily untrue. I suppose I'm basically pantheistic-panentheistic but don't believe God and nature are necessarily either coextensive or separate or in any other way related in a manner that can make any sense to us. At the deepest level of existence even concepts like energy, order, force would be meaningless if there any way for us to be knowing beings at that level. As far as cosmological ID goes I believe in it but don't think that "intelligence" as we experience and understand it is really a useful idea when applied to what I regard as the divine essence of the world. I agree with Nietzsche (atheist) that belief is entirely a matter of choice and based on nothing provable. I just like to argue with atheists: 1) because they usually give good argument 2) because they are wrong. BTW even when God was flinging galaxies around "he" wouldn't have been detectable by way of scientific testing (so I believe).
i dont have a problem with you believing as long as you keep it to your self . people believe all kinds of crazy stuff. where the religious types get into trouble is when you proclaim that things written in a 2000 year old book by uneducated sheepherders are fact and that the finest minds science has are wrong. you insult the intelligence of thinking people. i think this old christian knew what he was talking about: Often a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other parts of the world, about the motions and orbits of the stars and even their sizes and distances,... and this knowledge he holds with certainty from reason and experience. It is thus offensive and disgraceful for an unbeliever to hear a Christian talk nonsense about such things, claiming that what he is saying is based in Scripture. We should do all that we can to avoid such an embarrassing situation, which people see as ignorance in the Christian and laugh to scorn." [St. Augustine],
'A way of knowing' is deliberately formed and generally intended to mean A way of not knowing. No sound basis to attack science. It's not only science that is irrelevant and inapplicable to that metaphysical. Everything is. Purposely placing imaginary concepts permanently beyond and outside the range of knowable scientific experience and understanding, and rationality, is called make-believe. Notice though how it's always necessary for religious belief to use understanding, but only up to the very point where it suddenly conveniently, subjectively and irrationally dumps it all, to claim things like God. Theists are just wronger.
Proof you can lead an ET atheist to science by you can not make him think. I have given you quotes and links to the science many times on these threads. cosmologists and physicists have set up computer models of the universe. They have learned that if you tweak the numbers just a little bit the universe goes flying apart or implodes. It is their understanding of the laws of physics which make almost all top scientists conclude our universe appears designed. Now you can counter that appearance with speculation about a multiverse... basically as far as most top scientists are concerned you have a choice... almost infinite universes or an infinite being. If you don't like the choice... learn some science and create a new theory and get lots of peers to agree with you.