in general, hindu eschatology resembles the big bang/crunch. the cycle of expansion from a single point only to collapse to another single point and another expansion. these cycles are billions of years apart. (also some idea - that's too fuzzy to recall in detail - about matter changing and slipping into an alternative dimension might be a model of the great beyond)

will use Russell Bertrand - although not a poet, have read poetry that echos this thought (not gonna search) almost verbatim - when he said, “The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.” this was pretty much summed up the Dunning-Kruger Effect. (https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/355363-one-of-the-painful-things-about-our-time-is-that)

the other you noted. meditation is healthy. of note, Sufism tends to focus on intense focusing, in music and song...and some of the musicians are peachy keen https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-QRivHR0c28

and the poetry is beautiful (EX: Rumi). so religion has spawned some good things, too.

in short, religion is no more destructive than the person implementing it. do believe in ideas. whether it comes from a white cassock or lab coat. such is the freedom to keep a mind free.

or take it up w/René Descartes*. he seemed to be better at it than I.

*Descartes died when he was run over by a horse-drawn coach. This is where the saying "Don't put Descartes in front of the horse."

BTW: Earle song?

I can never read the name René Descartes without Monty Python's Philosophers Song starting up in my head.

Kant, Hume, Descartes, Hobbes and now.... Cookie Monster.

You can't prove the existence of another observer, adhering strictly to logic. You can choose to acknowledge them as observers, but you can't prove it (Descartes). Your senses can (and presumably have, if you dream or see an optical illusion ever) been deceived.

@Trancecoach holding a doctorate doesn't make you capable of understanding the scientific literature. If you held a bachelor's degree in one of the three sciences you'd stand a lot better chance of being able to understand the literature than someone who had a doctorate in say Art History. I would actually refer back to the Dunning Kruger effect and suggest that holding an unrelated qualification might lead you to overestimate your abilities.

And for someone who says that they *are* capable of understanding the scientific literature (and therefore the scientific method and approach), you dismiss "scientific consensus" as not being "scientific evidence". I don't understand what you mean here, but i think that's because you don't understand what scientific proof is.

I think it's a fundamental mistake that you're making. Scientists propose theories. Those theories that most accurately describe the situation and are most rigourously investigated are the ones that are accepted as being the case, and when things are found that are not correct, adjustments are made to the theory or other theories are proposed. There is never ever, ever.... EVER.. absolute evidence of anything in the way in which you request it, and that's your fundamental error, and stems from you not understanding the scientific method.

We have a lot of scientific consensus about gravity, but we do not have "scientific evidence" in the way you describe it. The evidence is ALL of the science that is done, ALL of the experiments ALL of the conclusions, positive and negative, and the consensus of the scientific community is reached and refined based on that research and ongoing research. There is no one document anywhere that constitutes "proof" that gravity is how we think it is. Not even all of the documents do that. They merely indicate to us what is most likely to be happening according to all of the knowledge and ingenuity that we've built up over the years.

I don't appreciate the scatter gun method you've used by posting all those links. You said in your latest post here that people try to confuse the issue by redirecting your request for "evidence" - the type that doesn't exist - towards other issues that you deem contentious. Yet you have almost drowned me in what appears to be about 15 different links to pages that seem to show singular examples of individuals that deny climate change. (Again, there are so many, and so many quotes, and no actual specification of what you are disagreeing with me about, that i can't rightly assess any of them.)

My point here is twofold - 1) don't try to be confusing like you accuse your opponents of, i.e. throwing as many links as possible to extend the argument to other points and 2) if that isn't what you were doing, could you perhaps condense your 15 links and selected quotes into a smaller point; that point being what it is about my previous posts you disagreed with?

Here are my points for you, simplified:
1) Scientific consensus does not mean "THIS IS HOW THINGS ARE" - it means that, on balance, according to everything we know and the opinions of those that are in the know, this is how we think things are until we know better.
2) There is no such thing as "scientific evidence" in the way you use the term; the only absolute proof is the one Descartes spoke about; the only thing you can know for sure is that your consciousness exists.
3) It is very easy to be misled by articles such as the one you linked from "the libertarian republic" website. This is also true of the last link you recommended for my research; you used that book to support your opposition to my assertion that human-caused climate change is not a matter of debate in the scientific community. Yet the same author was involved in the Copenhagen Consensus which lists as 6th most worthy of investigation (for the benefit and future of mankind), i quote; "R&D to Increase Yield Enhancements, to decrease hunger, fight biodiversity destruction, and lessen the effects of climate change"

I think that out of courtesy you should select one link which backs up whatever it is that you wish to refute, because it's not a good use of my time to have to go through each individual link, find out what you disagree with me about, and then spend time looking into it.

So, we disagree on one of the following:
1) The scientific consensus is that human-caused climate change is real, and that consensus represents the best of our current understanding as a species.
2) "Proof" in the sense you use it doesn't exist, the correct term is scientific evidence. The more evidence and the more convincing it is, the more firm the belief in a theory.
3) The article you linked from the libertarian website was unfairly representing its argument in relation to the paper it was referring to.

Please let me know. Remember - nothing is "beyond scepticism" in your words. I am sceptical about everything, including gravity, which i have an incredible amount of evidence for. However i am still sceptical about our understanding of it - i am always looking for differences. That doesn't mean that our understanding isn't the best one we have, and we should use it for our own advantage and safety.

I also note that you seem loathe to have a proper discussion with me. Our discussion could have been either about the scientific method or about the article you linked, but to throw all these links at me makes me feel you're unwilling or incapable of challenging your own opinion based on evidence. You don't even refer to the assessments of the article that i offered; you immediately discarded the article from your argument and linked me to other people that may or may not be misrepresenting the argument.

Does this guy think that if he says ONE thing that is correct (or at least sounds correct) that people should believe everything every other thing he says on that topic? It sure seems that way to me.

For example... if you trace back the neurons in the CNS to their origin you get... sensory neurons (often from the peripheral nervous system)! (i.e. the things you see, hear, feel, taste, listen with, as well as get your balance and sense of position etc). Yet he jumps from tracing the origin of neurons to a philosopher who died hundreds of years ago and had no real knowledge of how neurotransmission worked.

And yes of course, not every neuron originates from a typical sensory fiber; there are inter-neurons and various control centers in the brain, however even those are not working in isolation, they are getting input from other parts of the brain (e.g. the hypothalamus).

Descartes believed in dualism, a distinction between mind and body, and people are free to believe in that idea, but it is simply that... a belief - much like religion. I get the feeling that a lot of theory that came out of that time was heavily influenced by the fact you could often get executed for not being a strong member of your church/faith, but that could just be me.

It's kind of weird because Descartes is also known as the man for stripping down philosophy into known truths.

Most of these are the same reason, and none are really arguments against the viewer's existence so much as what we think of as their conventional physical presence. Descartes, who was a half-wit, nevertheless managed to make a convincing argument for existence, even if he did pussy out of exploring some of the dimensions of his experiment in order to pursue his religious agenda.

The idea of simulated reality is pretty difficult to dispute. Of the many simulated universes we reasonably expect to be eventually created, what are the chances of finding ourselves in the single original 'real' reality? What's amusing is this doesn't really have any significant consequences for the way we live.

You are an a-godzilla-ist and that is entirely a practical concession to the fact that you can't really afford giant monster insurance considering recent statistics for giant lizard attacks and indeed going through life avoiding Tokyo at all costs is just kinda a bummer - imagine all the fresh sushi you could miss out on.

You can't actually prove that there never was a Godzilla or that there never will be a Godzilla and you can only assume (not demonstrate) that there is not a Godzilla planet orbiting one of the stars a few galaxies down the way.

All you can really say is that Tokyo is still standing and that all the various accounts of Godzilla's antics across the myriad of B-movies and hollywood blockbusters that feature him as a character seem to have no basis in reality for various reasons. You move on with your day, smile a bit and never really bother to duck for cover.

And that's all we're saying about God. To my knowledge, that is the bleeding edge of audacious claims being made by anyone who is even vaguely respected - simply that we can't take religious claims seriously any more, so we are going to move on with our lives, only dealing with religion directly when it decides to be a bit too influential for our tastes.

But fine, based on the secondary predicate principle and a lengthy philosophy 101 essay with no shortage of verbal meandering through Descartes, et al., atheists kinda sorta make a claim of some sort. What's your point.

And if you think that the atheist experience simply trawls the bottom of Christian intellectualism then who would you have them debate, Ray comfort? Matt Slick? Perhaps you?

More than anything, the most disgusting trait of Christianity is that it equates child rapists and children as equally sinful in the eyes of God. There are certainly various arguments saying that different consequences will be felt here on earth, or perhaps that there is an arbitrary age of innocence, etc... But almost universally, Christians agree that the following scenario is at least possible:

Rapist rapes child, we'll start with that.

The child struggles through the resultant torturous anguish across a lifetime, starts a support group, mans a hotline, works in the community to support fellow victims, increases awareness and so on while loving his/her family and friends, making mistakes periodically and occasionally letting loose at a concert or something. The child (now an adult) is unfortunately just a minimally observant Jew and never really gave Jesus any consideration, so when he/she gets hit by a drunk driver at the unfortunate age of 34, he/she is tormented in hell for the rest of eternity.

The rapist, meanwhile, goes on with his (statistically probable) life, perhaps he rapes some more children (also statistically probable) and maybe he then stops at some point, realizing it is wrong and maybe even feels guilty about it. Ridden by guilt, the preaching of a wayward street preacher catch his ears one day. He ventures into church for the first time. He is moved. He proclaims his belief in Jesus and the resurrection. He feels his sins are forgiven and he can feel years of guilt being washed away. Maybe he even admits his history as a rapist to a sympathetic inner circle of confidants, spiritual advisors and friends. He dies of a heart attack, and spends eternity in heaven.

That is disgusting and a god that sets such a system up is disgusting.

Many compassionate people are blinded into thinking this is just and good in an effort to tenaciously preserve their own sense of eternal safety and cosmic worth at all costs. That is less disgusting just because it is an understandable impulse, but it is disgusting nonetheless.

I'm very happy you liked it. I almost deleted that post because I was afraid the whole thing was too pompous. But I figured, ultimately, who could argue with the sentiment..."Garfield" really was a horrible film.


In reply to this comment by ChaosEngine:
In reply to this comment by TheFreak:
Put a thousand fruit flies in a box and you can watch the entire circle of life, played out in multiple generations, in a matter of days.
Now, stand back far enough to view the entirety of human existence in one box and the objective eye will discern no greater purpose than the fruit fly. We live, we reproduce, we die. All of human evolution and technical advancement bent to the simple purpose of continuing to exist.

We are ultimately seperated from the fruit fly by one thing; a simple question,
"Why?"

The contemplation of our own mortality is undoubtedly the single factor that has inspired us to become more than the sum of our individual lives. The yearning to outlive ourselves, to defy the inherent pointlessness of existence, to deny the emptiness of the void that precedes us and remains, undisturbed, after we're gone. The human defiance of the finity and futility of life drives the greatest achievements of our species.

Humanity, alone among the animals of the earth, has taken the gifts of evolution and harnessed them to scream its answer to the empty cosmos with soul wrenching achievements of art and philosophy. Those creations of mankind that we experience as a feeling, rising up from inside us and overwhelming our minds with a beauty and perfection far greater than ourselves.

The great accomplishments of mankind that elevate the purpose of our existence:
The philosophy of Aristotle
The architecture of Angkor Wat and St. Peter's Basilica
The art and discovery of Leonardo Da Vinci
The grandeur of the Sistine Chapel and the humble beauty of Van Gogh
The feets of engineering; the great wall of china and Apollo moon landing
All the great works of the most inspired among us, who could encapsulate beauty, wonder, humor and tragedy into discrete works of brilliance:

Shakespeare, Sophocles, Mark Twain, Hemingway, Kepler, Gödel, Newton, Hippocrates, Bach, Wagner, Coltrane, Hume, Kant, Descartes, Tesla, Gutenberg, Frank Lloyd Wright...
...and Bill Murray.

Except for his work on Garfield.
That movie was fucking horrible.


My life is better for having read that comment.

In reply to this comment by TheFreak:
Put a thousand fruit flies in a box and you can watch the entire circle of life, played out in multiple generations, in a matter of days.
Now, stand back far enough to view the entirety of human existence in one box and the objective eye will discern no greater purpose than the fruit fly. We live, we reproduce, we die. All of human evolution and technical advancement bent to the simple purpose of continuing to exist.

We are ultimately seperated from the fruit fly by one thing; a simple question,
"Why?"

The contemplation of our own mortality is undoubtedly the single factor that has inspired us to become more than the sum of our individual lives. The yearning to outlive ourselves, to defy the inherent pointlessness of existence, to deny the emptiness of the void that precedes us and remains, undisturbed, after we're gone. The human defiance of the finity and futility of life drives the greatest achievements of our species.

Humanity, alone among the animals of the earth, has taken the gifts of evolution and harnessed them to scream its answer to the empty cosmos with soul wrenching achievements of art and philosophy. Those creations of mankind that we experience as a feeling, rising up from inside us and overwhelming our minds with a beauty and perfection far greater than ourselves.

The great accomplishments of mankind that elevate the purpose of our existence:
The philosophy of Aristotle
The architecture of Angkor Wat and St. Peter's Basilica
The art and discovery of Leonardo Da Vinci
The grandeur of the Sistine Chapel and the humble beauty of Van Gogh
The feets of engineering; the great wall of china and Apollo moon landing
All the great works of the most inspired among us, who could encapsulate beauty, wonder, humor and tragedy into discrete works of brilliance:

Shakespeare, Sophocles, Mark Twain, Hemingway, Kepler, Gödel, Newton, Hippocrates, Bach, Wagner, Coltrane, Hume, Kant, Descartes, Tesla, Gutenberg, Frank Lloyd Wright...
...and Bill Murray.

Except for his work on Garfield.
That movie was fucking horrible.


My life is better for having read that comment.

Put a thousand fruit flies in a box and you can watch the entire circle of life, played out in multiple generations, in a matter of days.
Now, stand back far enough to view the entirety of human existence in one box and the objective eye will discern no greater purpose than the fruit fly. We live, we reproduce, we die. All of human evolution and technical advancement bent to the simple purpose of continuing to exist.

We are ultimately seperated from the fruit fly by one thing; a simple question,
"Why?"

The contemplation of our own mortality is undoubtedly the single factor that has inspired us to become more than the sum of our individual lives. The yearning to outlive ourselves, to defy the inherent pointlessness of existence, to deny the emptiness of the void that precedes us and remains, undisturbed, after we're gone. The human defiance of the finity and futility of life drives the greatest achievements of our species.

Humanity, alone among the animals of the earth, has taken the gifts of evolution and harnessed them to scream its answer to the empty cosmos with soul wrenching achievements of art and philosophy. Those creations of mankind that we experience as a feeling, rising up from inside us and overwhelming our minds with a beauty and perfection far greater than ourselves.

The great accomplishments of mankind that elevate the purpose of our existence:
The philosophy of Aristotle
The architecture of Angkor Wat and St. Peter's Basilica
The art and discovery of Leonardo Da Vinci
The grandeur of the Sistine Chapel and the humble beauty of Van Gogh
The feets of engineering; the great wall of china and Apollo moon landing
All the great works of the most inspired among us, who could encapsulate beauty, wonder, humor and tragedy into discrete works of brilliance:

Shakespeare, Sophocles, Mark Twain, Hemingway, Kepler, Gödel, Newton, Hippocrates, Bach, Wagner, Coltrane, Hume, Kant, Descartes, Tesla, Gutenberg, Frank Lloyd Wright...
...and Bill Murray.

Except for his work on Garfield.
That movie was fucking horrible.

similar themes can be found in the work of the philosopher, Rene Descartes, whose insight that “The conquest of nature is to be achieved through measure and number” was derived from an inspired vision of an angel.

@A10anis

Agnosticism is an epistemological position of the uncertainty of knowledge of things. In other words, the nature of knowledge about God, or knowledge in general really, as many above have pointed out (I'm taking it you did read the nice chart above!). Theism or Atheism is a position, either knowingly or unknowing rejecting or accepting the idea of God; one can be explicitly or implicitly atheist (like all children not exposed to the idea are implicitly atheist). Agnostic Atheist is the most common position, but few people have complete understanding of all the concepts involved, or have their own private understandings of what they mean; making any unilateral criticism troublesome. As to the foundations of science and Mathematics, Kurt Gödel had had a great role to play in the destruction of what most peoples concept of certain systems are. And the o so smart Karl Popper ideas on falsifiability has thrown the antique notion of certain truth from science against the wall, in which modern Philosophers of Science, like Hilary Putnam have found intractable to solve, except to say that very little separates, currently, the foundations of science form the foundations of any other dabble of the imagination. Einstein talked about this as well, that wonderment is really the pursuit of all great scientists...not certainty.

As to my original claim, that science has truths it can not rectify, I leave it to better minds to explain the problems of induction. David Hume, Nelson Goodman, and Kurt Gödel drastically changed any view of certain knowledge from science and maths that I had. The untenable nature of the empirical evaluation of reality is just as uncertain as Abrahamic codifications being real.

I close with this, some of the greatest minds in the history of science and philosophy had no problem, nay, drew power from the deep richness they gathered from their faith. It drove them to the limits of the thoughts of their day, René Descartes, Gottfried Leibniz, Blaise Pascal, Alan Turing (who kept some vestibules of faith even after what happened to him), Georg Cantor, and countless others all had some "irrational" faith was more than just a ideal system of commands by some dead people, it drove them to greatness, and in many cases to rejection and madness of their "rational" peers. Georg Cantor, the father of the REAL infinite, died in a mental institution only to have his ideas lite a fire in the minds of the next generation of mathematicians.

It is my believe that we all want to have issue with x number of people, and make peace with y number. We elevate the slightest difference, or conversely, ignore a great flaw to peg this mark just right for us. Perhaps my y is just bigger than your x, or most peoples x as I find this debate I have is a common one; for tolerance, peace, and consideration. If you still think what I am saying is non-sense, then I guess we have nothing more to say to one another. I hope I cleared up my thoughts a bit more, I am not very good at communicating things that are more than just the average amount of esoteric.

The best evidence is just filling in the gaps in science.

I'll have to disagree with you here. To say the evidence for a creator is just filling in the gaps isn't true when it is a better explanation for the evidence. Take DNA, for instance. DNA is a complex coded language which contains grammar, syntax, phoenetics, etc There is no naturalistic explanation that can account for it; DNA is information, and information only comes from minds. The medium doesn't matter. Just as a message transcends the paper and ink it is written in, and just as you can write that message in the sand and has no loss of data, DNA is transcendent of its medium. A designer is a better explanation for the existence of DNA. Check out this article:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/3040594/The-Linguistics-of-DNA-Words-Sentences-Grammar-Phonetics-and-Semantics

What happened before the Big Bang? I don't know. "God did it" isn't evidence, it isn't rational or logical. "God did it" used to be the explanation for the shape of the Earth and the movement of the stars, when that was questioned, the questioner was threatened with death. However, by continuing to question, we now know a lot about the solar system, enough to put satellites into orbit and photograph distance planets.

That is just a fallacy, though. Just because people used "God did it" as an explanation for things we know understand in more detail is not evidence against the existence of God. It is just evidence for the ignorance of people. Christians aren't against science. I am against things which aren't science, like things which have never been observed and are untestable, like macro evolution.

Scientific theories are indeed interpretation of facts and in many cases, it involves jumps because we can't explain everything. This is what the word "theory" means in this context, rather than the meaning the Fox News's of the world use when they pretend it means that science is guessing. That's why there is always doubt, always questions to be asked and answers to be listened to. The important thing is that it is interpretation and extrapolating data, i.e. it is based on what we can prove.

Science does a lot of guessing. This is why theories have changed so many times in the last few centuries. Not too long ago, science was certain the Universe was static and eternal. It was one of the evidences that atheists would use against Creationists. Now, we know the Universe had a definitive beginning. The scientist who discovered said that there is no other theory which lends itself so well to the creation account in Genesis.

My main point is that science has nothing to say about the existence of God. It is not anything it can prove or disprove. God is a spirit, and a spirit is an immaterial being. There is no empirical evidence for something immaterial.

However, some answers have been listened to and fallen short. For example, Intelligent Design. This has been discussed and no rational, logical or empirical evidence have been put forward. This is why it has been rejected, by me and by the scientific community: not because we don't want to hear but because it's been talked to death, causes distracting controversy and frankly, it's clearly bullshit. I wouldn't want my child taught it in school because if you teach one unsubstantiated load of nonsense, where does it end? I want rational and logical things taught to my children. If I want my children to believe in the Flying Spaghetti Monster, I will teach them myself and when I struggle to explain the dinosaurs and radiocarbon dating that they learnt about in school, I should take a long hard look at myself.

Again, intelligent design is a better explanation than natural selection by random mutation for a number of things. When darwinian theory was created, the cell was thought to be a simple ball of protoplasm. We now know the cell is more complex than the space shuttle, by an order of magnitude. There is no naturalistic process which can account for the existence of this complex and intricate nano-machinery. Just because you consider it "bullshit" doesn't make it so. The Universe has the appearance of design. There are 30 or so factors in physics which have to be precisely calibrated for the Universe to even form correct, let alone for life to develop. The odds of this happeneing by chance are beyond calculation. Instead of admitting that and changing the theory, scientists then postulate multiple Universes to make the design features in this one seem plausible as happenstance.

Here is a nice video on the complexity of the cell:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSasTS-n_gM&feature=related

If you want to talk about radiocarbon dating, this again is something which is an interpretation of evidence based on a number of unprovable assumptions. It presumes that radioactive decay rates have remained constant in the past and that there was no contamination over periods of millions or billions of years. Check out this article:

http://biblicalgeology.net/blog/fatal-flaw-radioactive-dating/

I do rely on empirical evidence, we all do. You are relying on what you see too, what you see written on the pages of the Bible. Short of Descartes' "I think therefore I am" philosophy, everything we think exists is empirical. If we can't believe what we see or what we consider to be self evident, how can you believe what you think you are reading from what you think is a Bible?

I am relying on my own experience, and in my experience I have observed that the material reality is a veil, and behind that veil is a spiritual reality which encompasses it. I have seen the evidence of a higher power working in the world, who relates to us on a personal level. I believe the bible because my experience confirms it, not because I just assume it is true.

Is believing my own eyes and my own mind what you want to call my religion? That seems to be to be very different to religion as I know the word.

When you have faith in metaphysical claims, and that faith informs your entire worldview, that is indeed like a religion. What you are seeing is through the lens of that worldview..

>> ^Quboid:
I haven't seen any good evidence for Christianity. I haven't seen any good evidence for the existence of God. The best evidence is just filling in the gaps in science. What happened before the Big Bang? I don't know. "God did it" isn't evidence, it isn't rational or logical. "God did it" used to be the explanation for the shape of the Earth and the movement of the stars, when that was questioned, the questioner was threatened with death. However, by continuing to question, we now know a lot about the solar system, enough to put satellites into orbit and photograph distance planets.
Scientific theories are indeed interpretation of facts and in many cases, it involves jumps because we can't explain everything. This is what the word "theory" means in this context, rather than the meaning the Fox News's of the world use when they pretend it means that science is guessing. That's why there is always doubt, always questions to be asked and answers to be listened to. The important thing is that it is interpretation and extrapolating data, i.e. it is based on what we can prove.
However, some answers have been listened to and fallen short. For example, Intelligent Design. This has been discussed and no rational, logical or empirical evidence have been put forward. This is why it has been rejected, by me and by the scientific community: not because we don't want to hear but because it's been talked to death, causes distracting controversy and frankly, it's clearly bullshit. I wouldn't want my child taught it in school because if you teach one unsubstantiated load of nonsense, where does it end? I want rational and logical things taught to my children. If I want my children to believe in the Flying Spaghetti Monster, I will teach them myself and when I struggle to explain the dinosaurs and radiocarbon dating that they learnt about in school, I should take a long hard look at myself.
I do rely on empirical evidence, we all do. You are relying on what you see too, what you see written on the pages of the Bible. Short of Descartes' "I think therefore I am" philosophy, everything we think exists is empirical. If we can't believe what we see or what we consider to be self evident, how can you believe what you think you are reading from what you think is a Bible?
Is believing my own eyes and my own mind what you want to call my religion? That seems to be to be very different to religion as I know the word.

I haven't seen any good evidence for Christianity. I haven't seen any good evidence for the existence of God. The best evidence is just filling in the gaps in science. What happened before the Big Bang? I don't know. "God did it" isn't evidence, it isn't rational or logical. "God did it" used to be the explanation for the shape of the Earth and the movement of the stars, when that was questioned, the questioner was threatened with death. However, by continuing to question, we now know a lot about the solar system, enough to put satellites into orbit and photograph distance planets.

Scientific theories are indeed interpretation of facts and in many cases, it involves jumps because we can't explain everything. This is what the word "theory" means in this context, rather than the meaning the Fox News's of the world use when they pretend it means that science is guessing. That's why there is always doubt, always questions to be asked and answers to be listened to. The important thing is that it is interpretation and extrapolating data, i.e. it is based on what we can prove.

However, some answers have been listened to and fallen short. For example, Intelligent Design. This has been discussed and no rational, logical or empirical evidence have been put forward. This is why it has been rejected, by me and by the scientific community: not because we don't want to hear but because it's been talked to death, causes distracting controversy and frankly, it's clearly bullshit. I wouldn't want my child taught it in school because if you teach one unsubstantiated load of nonsense, where does it end? I want rational and logical things taught to my children. If I want my children to believe in the Flying Spaghetti Monster, I will teach them myself and when I struggle to explain the dinosaurs and radiocarbon dating that they learnt about in school, I should take a long hard look at myself.

I do rely on empirical evidence, we all do. You are relying on what you see too, what you see written on the pages of the Bible. Short of Descartes' "I think therefore I am" philosophy, everything we think exists is empirical. If we can't believe what we see or what we consider to be self evident, how can you believe what you think you are reading from what you think is a Bible?

Is believing my own eyes and my own mind what you want to call my religion? That seems to be to be very different to religion as I know the word.