Well, it is, by definition, impossible to completely rule out the existence of anything, but as far as it goes, I think when God is concerned, evolution comes close to ruling out the possibility. It wont ever be 100%, but I'd rate it as being very close to ruled out, or "by all practical meanings ruled out"

As science progresses, the gaps where God is supposed to be a possible answer, disappear bit by bit. I feel very confident that science will probably within the next 10 years or so create life in the labs, ie: show how life (the first replicators) could come about by chemical chance.

Once thats done, the "original life-giver" argument disappears as well. At the same time, experiments with the Large Hadron Collider and other physics experiments are working on obliviating the so called "first cause" argument, closing yet another gap.

Not that "god" was an impressive argument to begin with, because its the very opposite of evolution. Think about it, all evolutionary theory is all about is "How can we explain this enourmous complexity??" ie: the brain, the eye, etc. and the answer is of course a bottom-up solution, life, and complex life, grows up in the universe, complexity comes LATE, after billions of years of evolution. God requires that the opposite is true: that the most complex thing imaginable came FIRST!, and that is, again, impossible, according to what we have learned about the universe so far.

In reply to this comment by botono9:
In reply to this comment by BicycleRepairMan:
It takes a bit of time to explain, I recommend you read one or two books on evolution/natural selection to understand, but to give a brief answer as I can(in retrospect it got pretty long, sorry): ...

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Your original comment made it sound as if evolution proves the existence of God to be an impossibility (or perhaps I just read it that way). If that is the case, I don't see how natural selection (which we know to be true) proves the absence of God. Evolution and natural selection do not speak to the origins of life, only its development over time.

If that is not the stance you were taking, well then never mind. While I do not personally know whether or not miraculous intervention is possible, I don't see any reason to believe it has happened so far in the course of evoltution.

It takes a bit of time to explain, I recommend you read one or two books on evolution/natural selection to understand, but to give a brief answer as I can(in retrospect it got pretty long, sorry):

"Evolution by natural selection" means exactly what it says it means; all life on this planet, came about gradually, changing, evolving over vast stretches of time , and its always due to natural selection.

To take just one of the most familiar, most commonly mentioned, and most controversial (from a religious standpoint, mind you) Ourselves, Humans, we are a kind of ape, we are two-legged, walk upright and we have a bigger brain and less fur, but nevertheless we are an ape, just like the chimp, which is our closest relative. We did not "evolve from apes" we ARE apes. but about 6 million years ago, we and the chimpanzee's ancestor were the same kind of ape. Chimps went one way, and we another.

Now, lets for simplicity call this ape "apes" and ourselves "human", so that from now on, when I say "we went from ape to human" I mean those specific apes, 6 million years ago.

The thing is this: every individual born between right NOW and 6 million years ago were , in a sense, just like us. they had a mother and a father and they looked a bit like them too.. there was no one point where an "ape" gave birth to a human, because its a gradual process, you could travel back in time to any random spot, say 4.340.053 years ago, and youd find what looked not exactly ape, and not exactly human, but something in-between (And yes, they have found these things frozen: Lucy, little foot, etc) and there would be a mother and an offspring, no different from eachother than you or I am from our mothers.

And this goes for EVERY SINGLE CREATURE AND PLANT, on this planet.

Now, you might ask, what does this have to do with God?

Well the thing is, it can be shown, with vast amounts of evidence, that what I've just said is in fact true, we came about by evolution. Period. IF you were to INSERT God into the whole mess, it would simply be as an addition, and not a contribution. But more than that, it would actually be a CONTRADICTION, because if, we were to use "God" in any one stage of the whole natural selection logic, say if an "ape" gave birth to a completely "human" offspring some 300 thousand years ago, after God had decided things were to be so, we'd have a COMPLETELY different world at our hands.


The world, in short, would look as if it was designed/directed or controlled by god.

And intutively, thats exactly what it does. it looks designed..

But if we look deeper, the evidence shows something else, it shows, quite conclusively, that we were NOT created, or "guided" in evolution, we (as well as every other animal) appear to be the result of natural selection.

Natural selection also produces vasts amounts of "waste" on the evolutionary track, fro instance, if you made the trip back , say 4 million years, you could in theory meet our ancestors, which would be just one individual. but ofcourse, There would be an entire population, several thousand individuals why would to us look "half-ape" ultimately, only one of those thousands eventually become our ancestor. the rest may have long linages or some may not even reproduce to the next generation, but only one will be our specific ancestor.

The rest, in evolutionary terms, is "wasted" in a sense, you can almost look at individuals as keys, thousands, maybe millions of keys, but only one key unlocks the path to the most distant generations.

It is this enormously wasteful process that is able to unlock its way through evolution, we know what the fuel is: variation and mutation, and the engine is natural selection.

God would simply put sticks in these beautiful wheels, because allthough we can easily imagine that God makes a mutation happen or whatever, that sort-of puts us on the path, it seems ridiculous, when we know how these things REALLY work. Its like in the old days when we thought God made it rain or whatever, and ofcourse, God COULD have made it rain, its just that we have the right answer, which has to do with winds, sunlight, clouds, temperature and so on.

What I meant by my statement was that it is ofcourse POSSIBLE that God is there and intervenes and so on, there really just is no point in cramming him in there, since we have the real answers.