jetsom said: "so nobody get me more involved in this thread. thx. "

dawkins said: "A friend, an intelligent lapsed Jew who observes the Sabbath for reasons of cultural solidarity, describes himself as a Tooth Fairy Agnostic. He will not call himself an atheist because it is in principle impossible to prove a negative. But "agnostic" on its own might suggest that he thought God's existence or non-existence equally likely. In fact, though strictly agnostic about god, he considers God's existence no more probable than the Tooth Fairy's."

cbit said: "In our lives none of us feels the need to entertain the possibility that propositions that we have no evidence for are true. Heaven/god/an-extra-plane-of-something-inconceivable-to-our-human-minds/the unicorn all fit into this category."

dawkins said: "Given the dangers of faith — and considering the accomplishments of reason and observation in the activity called science — I find it ironic that, whenever I lecture publicly, there always seems to be someone who comes forward and says, "Of course, your science is just a religion like ours. Fundamentally, science just comes down to faith, doesn't it?"
Well, science is not religion and it doesn't just come down to faith. Although it has many of religion's virtues, it has none of its vices. Science is based upon verifiable evidence. Religious faith not only lacks evidence, its independence from evidence is its pride and joy, shouted from the rooftops. Why else would Christians wax critical of doubting Thomas? The other apostles are held up to us as exemplars of virtue because faith was enough for them. Doubting Thomas, on the other hand, required evidence. Perhaps he should be the patron saint of scientists."

evermzah said: "u might wanna tell that to theoretical physicists"

cbit said: "This in itself is extremely important to notice. For the sake of example, can you think of one thing, apart from god obviously, for which there is NO evidence of its existence that could be substituted into this example that wouldnt make the proposition look foolish? if you can, please name one.

It looks foolish precisely because it is foolish."