> Alright, thousands of years ago, and even now (although a lot less prevalent), there were many relgions based on fable-like stories. Things like the sun was a bird who flew across the skies, and that men held locusts in caves and released them at certain times, and things of that sort. These things can be disproven. I think that this is one of the main reasons that Christianity, Islam, and the like have replaced them in many parts of the world. While these earlier religions could be proven to be wrong, Judaism and such cannot be.

I think there is more to it than that. I'll go into why below, sort of.

> Then comes the next step. Although Judaism, Christianity, Islam, etc. can't be proven wrong, they also can't be proven true. Basically the arguments between believers and non-believers are settled not on scientific evidence, but on faith or lack there of. This is where I think the next "religion" may take over. Science. I think that science is a religion of sorts, and unlike the previous two forms of religion, science cannot be wrong, because it's ever changing, and based on the scientific evidence that we would use to prove other religions wrong.

I would like to point out that your last line there makes on large assumption: You assume that other religions ARE wrong. This is a common problem in the scientific community when trying to disprove the existence of God or such other things: They start with the assumption that God does not exist, make some premises based on the assumption, and use those premises to prove that God does not exist, which is, of course, circular. You have not done that here, and any reasonable scientist does not do it either, but I thought I'd rant for a moment about it because it is one of my pet peeves. Anyway, my point is that if any religion is true, then science cannot prove it wrong. By stating that you believe that science will eventually prove religion wrong, your argument displays a hint of closed-mindedness which you might wish to avoid--you may believe that religion (in general) is wrong, but stating that science will eventually disprove religion is a bit of a strong statement which should probably have some more weight of evidence behind it. Anyway, I realize that this is probably not what you intended with that statement (especially since you start your next paragraph with a disclaimer to that effect), but I thought I would point it out anyway just in case.

A couple of specific things you mentioned: You say that "the arguments between believers and non-believers are settled not on scientific evidence, but on faith or lack there of." I beg to differ. Being an engineer as well as a Christian, I feel that my faith MUST have a basis in science as well as gut feeling, and I have not been disappointed in my search for scientific support for my faith. Off hand, I can suggest two books to read if you want some science for Christianity: "The Case for Christ" and "The Case for Faith", both by Lee Strobel. I have read more than half of the second and discussed topics from the first (and plan to finish reading TCfF ASAP and start TCfC soon after) and I found that the scientific basis for most of the arguments in them was sound. I was also pleased to see the large lists of references for each subject in the books--if you read the book and feel that some topics need further discussion, you can always check out the source materials. I did feel that some of the arguments were not developed fully in these books, but I have seen some of them described more fully in other sources, and could look them up if I needed more information.

A second comment: You say that "science cannot be wrong." I know why you say that, but I don't think I can agree.

Science DOES get things wrong; it simply has mechanisms in place for correcting itself. Constantly updating your viewpoint to acknowledge new information does not make you right; it just means that you acknowledge your mistakes.

Another thing: I don't think that science is drawing us away from religion; in fact, in many cases, it does quite the opposite. I hear stories every now and then about astronomers and physicists who study so much that they come to the conclusion that there MUST be a God because nothing else can explain some of the things they have learned. I know this is not a convincing argument, but it does happen. Personally, I find that the more we learn about the way things work, the more we are guided towards the existence of a creator. Reading the books I mentioned and the books they refer to might help to explain this more fully, if you're interested.

One more thing that I would like to point out is that the books I recommend DO take the Christian stance, and so you might consider them to have bias. I certainly could not disagree with that, but then, almost any work on the subject is going to have an inherent bias in it, and I feel that it is good to get a dose of both biased sides in order to have a nice balanced view on ANY subject. One problem I see a lot is that people hold the view that religions (I use the term generally in this case) are false, but they have only ever heard arguments which are biased towards that side--not a good way to make a rational decision on something. Anyway, that's my reason for suggesting those books (and many others).

> Again, remember, I'm not saying that any religion is right and any other is wrong. I honestly don't know. Basically what I'm saying is that I think that in a few hundred years there will be a much higher percentage of people who believe in things other than what the majority does now. And then maybe a thousand years after that or so, something will replace Science as the least arguable religion. Anyways, I really don't know what I'm talking about anymore, and I'm sure neither of you do either, so I'm going to stop.

You think you're bad? I ended up rambling on about stuff that didn't even address your post for the most part--I just wanted to get it all out somewhere, and it seemed vaguely relevant here. :-)

> Wes - "Why is it that all my posts are always so incoherant and stupid? 'Because you're incoherant and stupid.' Oh. Well. That makes sense then."

Don "I don't think Wes is incoherent and stupid--in fact, I thought that a lot of this made a lot of sense. I went through a similar line of thinking myself a few years back, so I can see where this comes from" Monkey