Graham Y,
Your Wikipedia link does not seem to contradict what I was trying to say, in particular that “hostile comments were made (only) by local (Catholic) clergy”. I am old enough to remember those who - like some contemporary fundamentalists - opposed statements like “Darwin was right on evolution, ergo God does not exists” by attacking the premise instead of the implication.

>>Science is really just reason applied to the world<<
This is is more or less the definition of what the Germans call Wissenschaft, in distinction to the more narrow “Naturwissenschaft”, i.e. natural science, which is what in English “science” usually means. With your definition also mathematics, philosophy, economics, anthropology - and if you like also theology - are “science”, although the corresponding Departments are not found in the Faculty of Science (except for mathematics). Admittedly, if you subscribe to sociobiology (E.O. Wilson) then the distinction between science and humanities is blurred.

>> I can't see how we can say that science can't be used to understand God<<
I suppose it can, if you equate science with any “application of reason”. I objected only to God seen as the subject of a “project” of (natural) science.

The “the problem of pain and how to reconcile this with the idea of a good god” is what theodicy is all about. Again, books have been written about it, because it is a paradox that has occupied many thinkers, Christian or not, over centuries. It is more complicated than e.g. Russell’s paradox which also cannot be that easily resolved, and mathematicians have to live with it .

I do not think you can “argue out” a religious believer into a non-believer or vice versa. However - ignoring the zealots on both sides of the divide - you can enrich other people’s world-views by comprehensibly presenting, if not explaining, your own position. So in that sense I agree with you.

Grim,
Thanks. Indeed, I have not “addressed the paradigm that humans have laboured under”, as well as many other things. As I said, my brief responses to Graham’s questions were necessarily superficial

Dear Grim,

Possibly a God exists, and creation is still going on. It is spiritual arrogance to posit humanity as the finest fruit of creation. We can be replaced by a more advanced form of life that has a more rational approach to life and regards technology as a means to an end rather than an end in itself. That form in turn can be superseded. Creation can continue until life on earth ends with the heat death.

However, considering that a large number of people called Buddhists have an intense spiritual life without needing either the concept of God or a soul it is obvious that neither concept is integral to spirituality.

If we can have perfect knowledge of the 'why' of the Cosmos we may no longer need to create God or gods.

When we do the wrong things that we know to be wrong it may be a survival mechanism. We are prey if we always do what is expected of us. Predators count on that. What we know to be wrong may be actually what is right since it is unexpected.

Our literature, morality and art very much depends on the fact that our species has two sexes.

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/09/unorthodox/?ref=opinion contains:

"As if that wasn’t enough strangeness, here’s one other peculiar detail. Many ciliates have more than two sexes (or “mating types”) and some — Stylonychia mytilus, for example — have as many as 100. This doesn’t mean that 100 individuals have to gather for sex to take place. Rather, it means that you can mate with anyone not of the same mating type as yourself. In principle, it gives you more choice: with more mating types, more individuals are eligible mates."

Assuming a God, soul and two sexes limits us.

Truly, we are all prisoners of our own preconceptions.

Thanks Graham Y and George for putting some sense and balance into this topic.

to All,
In shooting you have to focus on the target to have any chance of hitting the target consistantly. All seem to be focused on the opinions and words of man. If God is the target you will never even see the target focusing on the creation for they are only sign posts.
Desmond The Word of God clearly says that Jesus a descendant of King David, is the creator. John 1-3. John 1-1 says that he was God. So if you want to find God focus on Jesus. As he no longer is here on earth we only have his recorded word and the Holy Spirit given on the Day of Pentecost after Jesus ascended to heaven, to focus and rely on. Do not take my word for the answers for God does not have grandsons {religious
knowledge}, only sons {relationship}.
Richie 10

Notwithstanding the fascinating theological debate, I'm still waiting to read stevenlmeyer's response to the requests from a few of us as to which "implications" of evolution are problematic for the so-called "Left".

So what you're saying is that the Catholic church is an evidence-based organisation?

You have to be joking. This is the organisation that has done more to debunk science and hold back the march of progress than any organisation in history.

The lastest example of it's scientific bankrupcy is the elevation of Mary McKillop to godhead status, based on the evidence that a woman with terminal cancer was healed when she prayed to a figurine of the said divine Miss McKillop.

Not only do these people not understand science they don't understand logic.

Anyone who bases their understanding of nature on the nonsense in the Jewish Book of Faery Tales is dreadfully ignorant. Anyone who brainwashes children with the dreadful philosophies of Yahew and Paul is committing a fraud worse than a ponzi scheme.

Frank Blunt