Sure, the origins of religion and science have a lot in common. (Hey, both can be said to grow straight out of the basic question "How does the world work?"). And sure, lots of scientists have been, and still are, religious people; and lots of religious people have been, and still are, scientists (because people will be people, and our prejudices are among the last things we ever want to give up).
And, suuure, the "Absent Watchmaker" theory *might* be a way to reconcile religious sentiment and scientific observation. But, apart from that ridiculously contrived William-of-Ockham-is-choking-on-his-beard -style longshot -- which explains absolutely nothing more than the same model *without* the Blind Tinkerer, but exists *only* to preserve an otherwise-too-obviously ludicrous superstition -- the *content* of the religious cosmological model has absolutely fuck-all to do with the *content* of current scientific theory and observations.
Which, for reasons that are hopefully obvious when you read the preceding monstrum of a sentence, is expressed as "religion has nothing to do with science" in the common vernacular. (One would have thought most people could grasp that simplification pretty much immediately, and wouldn't have to go off on tangents about the origin of philosophical speculation...) So please, Ben, let my posts stand as the statements of general principle they're intended as, OK? You can bend over backwards to appease the Jeezmoids in threads of your own, or in replies direct to them.
The Tillster:
And then a few centuries later, a peculiar thing happened. Some people looked at all of this science, and took the fact that God was not involved as evidence that God was a superfluous theory, in fact God did not exist.Yeah, 'xackly... But what's so "peculiar" about that?!?
Perfectly valid scientific reasoning, isn't it?
There is a supreme irony here. Discoveries made by devout Christians like Isaac Newton, which were possible because of theories of how a perfect God would act, became evidence that there was no God!?Yup. Life (and history) *is* ironic, sometimes. So what?
(Just look whom you're talking to: