Why you believe what you believe I

[brownjenkins]

Originally Posted by inked

brownjenkins:

"however, i accept mine as just a "theory" (i.e. it may or may not be true)... there is no "faith" involved... i'm calling it a guess

those of the religious persuasion tend to rely on faith (i.e. their stance is unprovable, but true in their minds)

that's a big difference"

you are going to have to clarify the difference between reliance on the "unprovable" and reliance on a "guess", Dude! I think it a distinction without a difference!

the key word is reliance

good science does not rely upon anything as an ultimate truth... everything is open to question

a good example is ptolemy's geocentric theory of the solar system... he relied upon the "truth" provided by the vatican that the earth was the center of the universe... and he came up with a theory that was actually quite good at predicting the movements of the planets known at that point in time, eventhough the "truth" it was based upon was completely wrong... later solarcentric theories were developed and found to be much more effective... theories that came about from those who were willing to discard accepted "truths"

this is the difference: admitting that god is unprovable let's one take the next step and realize that whether or not a creator exists at some point in our universe's history, be it 6000 years ago or 15 billion, inserting that creator is basically saying "science stops here, so don't bother looking any further"... something that is ultimately counter to what science is all about