: If we are to follow accepted scientific reasoning, the best knowledge we can have is probablistic. As such no belief can conclusively be proven. It is just that some are more likely than others.Granted, the notion that a God exists is less parsimonious than the notionthat God does not exist, and thus Occam's razor demands atheism under certain conditions. Among those conditions is the question about whether the existence or non-existence of one or more gods is relevant to the subject under study. As none of my personal research addresses this issue, the existence or non-existence of God is simply irrelevant, and therefore I have never experienced the conditions under which Occam's razor must be applied. Therefore I remain agnostic. God could exist, he just doesn't seem to do anything.
: It is true that arguments about the existence of god are usually excluded from science as unproveable (certain christians excepted).
: I do not think it follows however that this means we can have no clue as to god's existence. We have other means at our fingertips. We have logic and we have our everyday experience. It is these things I contend that point a rational observer in the direction of the non-existence of god. It is these that point us in the direction of a conclusion that on balance the existence of god is unlikely.
Granted, again. However, I maintain that there is no empirical evidence that can be unequivocally be assigned to either one "side" or the other in this debate. Any deity that has the abilities ascribed to him by most of his fan club would certainly be able to hide all trace of his existence, so there can not be unequivocal evidence for non-existence, since it can be argued that god falsified evidence as a "test of our faith" or some such other special pleading. In other words, the ascribed characteristics of this god fellow include manipulation of our ability to perceive him. This raises a theological issue ("would god lie to cover his tracks?") but it doesn't raise any other issues that I can think of. If the universe "acts" like there is no god controlling it, we may as well treat it that way. However, as science can never "prove" anything, only disprove false things, and no evidence exists by which the notion of the existence of a god can be tested, the question is scientifically meaningless, and agnosticism (suspended judgement awaiting evidence that will most likely never come) is the only logically supportable position, if we rely entirely on the empirical realm. Science doesn't deal with metaphysics, so science can never offer a satisfactory answer to this question. I,personally, allow the possibility that a god may exist; such a hypothesis would explain all the available data, although admittedly less parsimoniously than philosophical naturalism. However, if this god does exist, he either doesn't interact with the universe at all, or he perfectly obscures any traces of any intervention, and either way, he is therefore simply irrelevant to the operation of the universe. That's still not evidence against his existence, however.
I realise I don't always explain myself too clearly. I hope my position was made more clear this time.
-Floyd
