Yeah believing God did it doesn’t improve our understanding of the details of biology, but the point here is the reality of the universe. You can believe in God and study the universe. The point here is that if God actually did it, then we should give credit where it is due. But that doesn’t stop us from being able to study medicine, physics or engineering. Some people prefer to explains things using God and others want to explain things without God, but if he does exist, then we should be conscious of that.
I also want to make a point here: when judaism is celebrating the year 5772, that could just mean that they are celebrating an event, but not necessarily the beginning of the earth. For example muslims have the hijra calendar which is in the year 1433 now. This calendar started when the muslims migrated from makkah to what is now known as medina 1433 years ago at the time the Prophet Muhammed was alive. Basically the earth existed and the humans existed well before the start of any formal calendars.
Not very well. Eventually people tend to either give up religion or give up science. They contradict each other too much.
Occam’s razor is commonly misunderstood to mean “the simpler of two answers is usually the right one”, but that’s not really what it was about.
It’s actually better paraphrased as “when creating an explanation, use the fewest amount of new assumptions possible”
So “Life evolved through the process of natural selection” is a better explanation than “Life evolved through the process of natural selection except God was secretly guiding it in a way so subtle that we’d never be able to detect it nor ever make changes that could not have happened naturally anyway”
Studying how things work in the universe, and then describing them, and then adding “But… God did it” does not add anything to our understanding of the universe. It’s equivelant to saying “But… leprechauns did it”
If we can explain these things entirely through natural processes, and not only do we not require God, but in order to believe God was involved you would have to think that he acted with such subtlety that we could never detect that God was involved, it adds nothing to our understanding of the universe, and becomes quite implausible as an explanation. Basically a never ending series of special pleading.
That there are gifts under the tree Xmas morning is a given. According to Science, Mom and Dad are responsible for the presence of the presents. The Santa-ists insist a supernatural being, Santa, flies all over the world in one night and distributes toys to every household.
Describing how this happens in a way that Santa creates the concept of gifting, and nudges parents for hundreds of years to slowly develop a more and more efficient method of wrapping and presenting said gifts is as inelegant a concept as suggesting a Supreme Being “created” evolution and let it run it’s course according to the Laws of Science.
When will Creationists enjoy Church and Sunday School, instruct their children in the charming stories and Parables in the Bible, and let schools teach Science without trying to throw both concepts in a blender. Religion has nothing to do with Science, and Science will never bear out these Mythologies; and Science has nothing to do with Religion and is useless in explaining the ideas forwarded by Religion.
I’m not, by the way, opposed to Creationism being taught in public schools, and certainly not for the reasons involving the “separation of church and state” implied in the First Amendment; as long as it’s taught as Mythology … Comparative Religion. Don’t teach it as Science, as an alternative to Science (there isn’t one), or worst of all, as “working with” Science, corrupting both philosophies.