Correct. In point of fact, if you want to prove there's no such thing as flying reindeer, it does not suffice to say, "no one has seen one".

And yes, if researchers are able to limit the universe of possibilities, eliminating each element in that universe DOES prove non-existence... within that universe of possibilities.

The "proof" there are no flying reindeer does not hold - unless you can prove that if flying reindeer did exist, they MUST have been seen by biologists, aircraft pilots or naturalists.

More to the point, is this a real species? http://english.people.com.cn/mediafile/2... How about this: http://images.nationalgeographic.com/wpf...

Oh wait, prior to 2008, neither species had been observed by a biologist, aircraft pilot or naturalist. But they both been discovered since. Along with dozens of other species. So the "no one has seen one" argument doesn't... "fly".

Regards the "Ace of Spades", assuming a fair deck, the universe of all possibilities is KNOWN. If someone could define 52 possible varieties of god, then it would likely be possible to prove (or disprove) the existence of god... that is if testable hypotheses are possible.

In criminal justice, it's possible to prove something did NOT happen by proving a mutually-exclusive event DID happen. "My client cannot be guilty of a murder at midnight on New Years in Germany because he was in an interview on television in Times Square". Of course, this does not address the "absence of evidence" comment.

In the medical case, the universe of possible reactions is not known. Therefore, the absence of evidence (in a subset of the population) is not (conclusive) evidence of absence. It may tend to make the likelihood of reactions more or less likely (the same as flying reindeer).

Regards the existence/absence of a diety - it is ENTIRELY a personal belief - unsupported by objective evidence.

"Logic fails where faith abounds." is equivalent to "faith is illogical".

So your argument is that for 100-150 years American men were unable to figure out that they could vote bread and circuses, but within 10 years of women getting the vote, everyone figured it out? That in states where women did not have the vote, no one figured they could vote for bread and circuses even when those in neighboring states (where women had the vote) did figure it out? Really? For 50 years that went on? As soon as women got he vote, the men also suddenly voted for bread and circuses, though they'd not done so for 150 years prior? Really? Think all the women were telling the men, "Now that we can vote for bread and circuses, you should too!"??

I think it rather more likely that the men understood the consequences - while women, with vastly inferior knowledge of economics - did not. Thus women, in their ignorance, have set America on the path of economic destruction.

Your comments betray a lack of understanding of science as great as the lack of understanding of Mormons by those who say, "The only reason to be a Mormon is to shtup multiple wives". The two are equally valid.

For openers, the greatest desire of most scientists is to discover something that no other scientist has yet revealed - and if it's something completely at odds with everything we thought we knew, so much the better. This is the absolute opposite of anyone in the clergy of any religion and in stark contrast to the desires of the devout. Sure, a lot of science is learned "using the same books" - but that's because it's not likely that the fundamentals will ever be overturned. 1+1=2. Fight that all you want, but you won't get far.

The major difference between science and religion is HOW people know things. Religionists read things in a book and "believe in their hearts" that it's true. They never think about it. They're never critical. They just accept it. Dissent is officially discouraged, and if your theory doesn't fit official dogma, at some point, you're just cast out - regardless of the evidence.

Scientists review (and perhaps repeat) experiments that explain aspects of the physical universe. A prime example of the difference between religion and science was the report a couple years ago that a project at CERN had detected neutrinos traveling faster than light. The commonly accepted science is that no physical object can travel faster than light - so there was a bit of an uproar. The general consensus was that IF it was true, it would upend much of what we thought we knew. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/...

And yet, the scientific community embraced the challenge. They tried to replicate the results. They analyzed the project and they hoped to learn the TRUTH. No one was punished or cast out for challenging the accepted standard.

Compare that to what would have happened in any religious context. For centuries, anyone daring to counter the preachings of their church was labeled a "heretic". Many were torture, burned to death, crucified or cast out of their church. The Mormons aren't any different. If you stand up in church and make announcements that new evidence proves Joseph Smith was a con man, a horse thief and a liar, odds are, you WON'T be invited to discuss your heresy in a civil manner.

Where are religions' repeatable experiments? There are none. Where is the proof of religion? There is none. There are only stories. You cannot validate any religion by doing the experiments yourself.

Then there's the REAL appeal to ignorance: "Why do we have eyelashes? If you don't know, then science must be invalid and god must exist!" Hogwash! I can immediately think of one evolutionary advantage: The eyelashes are a "warning system" for the eye itself. Something touching the eyelash prompts one to blink, perhaps preserving the eye from damage. When did the first eyelashes evolve? I don't know. But I won't ask you to have faith that we will know some day, because it's possible we never will.

I'm not jousting with your straw man.

"The statement "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" was made popular by Carl Sagan. ... Sagan's general position was that "science is saying in the absence of evidence, we must withhold judgment"

PRECISELY.

Science (or religion for that matter) presents no evidence for or against the existence of god. Therefore, we must withhold judgment - which is what agnostics do. Another way of saying that is, "There's not enough evidence, so I don't know."

"I, personally, cannot argue with their education or their equations or their assessment of the data or their conclusions."

100% agreement on that.

And yet, you have no evidence that god does NOT exist. Seriously. Let's see your case. Once again (and hopefully you get it this time) the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. The fact that there's no proof that god(s) exist is not proof that no god(s) exist. You have to do better.

The fact that the "other side" keeps coming up with hair brain "proofs" does not mean you are correct. As an (admittedly imperfect) example, suppose the religionists attempted to prove that pi was equal to 2, then 15, then 56... you could easily prove them wrong. But that does not mean that pi is equal to whatever number you say it is. If you say pi is equal to 3, and successfully prove that pi is not equal to the infinite number of real numbers that exist between 4 and 5, you're just as wrong as they are! You have to PROVE your case, or it has no more validity than the pro-god arguments.

And that's my point. No one... Not the buddhists, or the christians or the shintoists, or the druids, or the atheists, or the satanists - have proven their case. None has evidence that is empirically better than the other. The most anyone can say - logically, rationally, honestly - is they do not know whether there is a god or not. My personal belief is there is no god. But I'm honest enough to say that belief is only a personal opinion.

And yes, I understand and generally accept the premise of Occam's Razor. But it's not an immutable law of the universe. Take classical physics. It's very simple. You have electrons and neutrons and protons whizzing around making up matter... until some goofball named Richard Feynman comes along and makes the entire thing a lot more complicated with stories about quarks - and not just quarks - up quarks, down quarks, strange quarks with color and spin and charm (oh MY!) Was the simpler explanation of classical physics correct? Yes. As far as it went. But the more you look at it, the more complex the question becomes.

We pretty much know everything there is to know about classical physics. But there are still some very critical question about quantum physics that remain unanswered. I submit that had we stopped with "the simplest" explanation, we would have missed the entire picture... and so it is with the "god" debate. The fact that all of your opponents are wrong is not proof that you are right. To think otherwise would be a logical fallacy that assumes that the set of positions so far advanced was in fact the universe of all possible positions. Until you've defeated every single version of "god" that can be proposed (my personal favorite is that "god" is a purple dinosaur who runs around singing, "I love you, you love me" - but who didn't have the foresight to get his book out before the other guys), you have NOT proven your case.

Let me make that even more clear: In order to prove there is NO god, you must prove that every single possible god construct is FALSE. Not just today's established religions. Not just belief sets that may have fallen into disfavor. Not just the individual personal belief sets of every person on the planet, or who has every lived in the history of the planet, but every conceivable (and perhaps even inconceivable) description of god that anyone (including life forms on other planets, or in other universes) might have of god, including the idea that "god" may simply have created our universe with no more concern than someone tossing an apple core out the window of a moving car - that the seeds sprouted and we now enjoy the benefits of what (to god) was inconsequential act of no importance.

I don't disagree with any of that. But an atheist makes an assertion for which there is no supporting evidence, that being, "There is no god".

My scientific side revolts at such bald and unsupported gibberish, in large part because it's the exact analog of what religionists say about their religion, that is, "My religion is true" - without any proof or ability to test the hypothesis (or as you point out, without even a rigorous, testable definition of the hypothesis).

That's why I consider atheism another religion: The secular religion of the "un-god". It has no more (or less) basis in fact than ANY religion that relies upon the existence of a god, because (without any proof whatsoever) it rests on the requirement that no god exists! This, whether you care to admit it or not, is "belief in things not proven" which is typically the definition of "faith".

So you have an unprovable hypothesis (and one that isn't well defined or testable) and an act of faith that the hypothesis is true to the exclusion of all competing hypotheses.

How is that different from religion?

The difference is that every scientist is on the hook to explain his methodology and demonstrate his results. When reaching conclusions, repeatable experiments are key. Of course, this doesn't apply to areas where there are only hypotheses - as in "what happens inside a black hole?" But for areas considered "settled" in science, the entire road map of how to replicate the experiments is available.

In addition, theories change and improve as our knowledge gets better. Newtonian physics is pretty good as far as it goes, but it doesn't describe what happens at the atomic level. For that, greater understanding is needed. So science is constantly improving.

Religion? Not so much.

If anything, the superstitions of another age wear thin as mankind becomes more knowledgeable. Heinlein said that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic - but it goes the other way too. The "miracles" of an earlier time is often indistinguishable from thread-worn parlor tricks and comic book versions of reality.

My favorite example of that sort of stupidity is placing Galileo under house arrest and condemning him for saying that the earth revolves around the sun instead of vice versa. Any scientist who made such a monumentally-stupid statement would lose all credibility. And yet the inspired-by-god Catholic Church keeps chugging along with the same fools believing in its "infallibility".

The Mormon religion hinges on the book of mormon - touted by Joseph Smith as the "most perfect book on earth", chock full of errors: Jesus was born in Jerusalem, Over 4000 grammatical and spelling errors, and a litany of factual errors (Benjamin got the magic glasses? Or Mosiah? The angel who delivered the plates: Nephi? Or Moroni?) Some critics view the writing as "immature" as in when the armies of Shiz and Coriantumr fought until everyone was dead - except the two leaders. Really? When has THAT ever happened, except in comic books?

And bear in mind those are just a few of the INTERNAL flubs- mistakes that are observable without subjecting the entire belief system to the additional burden of repeatable experimentation.

Religion has none of that. There's no accountability in religion because there are no reproducible results. It may all be true, or all be false, or some true or some false, just like any tall tale. But the thing religion is not is this: Verifiable.

And yet, if the majority is stealing your property, how will you get them to vote to stop? (The Founders had a pretty good idea. They did it with guns.)

While I think I've said I believe the 19th Amendment is the greatest legislative mistake in the history of America (and if I haven't, I say it now), I believe the greatest judicial failure in our history is Wickard v. Filburn (and its ilk). Of course, there are many judicial blunders to choose from, Wickard seems to have had the longest lived and most pernicious effect on America.

Once again, absence of evidence is NOT the same as evidence of absence.
And I don't consider the only "god theory alternatives" to be christian versus atheist.