User talk:SouthWriter/sandbox/An atheist's objections/@comment-1375165-20100706115412

I'm so glad that we have this new medium for a friendly religious debate! Things oughtta be getting interesting.

Though Oerwinde I'm surprised at you. Most of what you said is a pretty typical trollish comment (even with something taken directly from 4chan). That's neither constructive nor in particularly good taste. This is for debate, not insult. And with that out of the way...

Destroyanator: The problem is that you are having faith in science to come up with an answer, when there is no reason that it will find one for the beginning of the universe. The whole problem with science in that area is that at that moment in history, nothing can be observed.

A mistake that people VERY often make is to think that science is a system of truths. Rather it is a set of axioms that have not been falsified, that's why virtually everything that used to be true of science has either been found to have countless exceptions, or to be completely false. Science is a tool, a tool for observing the universe to the best of our abilities. It is for that reason that I respect science and even have faith in it to help humanity.

Nevertheless, when it comes to complex matters, we really are working with faith and guesswork. Even when it comes down to the working of atoms, we know very little. We can't even empirically understand how molecules form in some cases, and we've had to invent "models" like hybridization theory, just to get a somewhat practical understanding. Things get even more confusing when it comes to quantum mechanics when you have almost a dozen "schools of faith" that exist to interpret it.

As always though, science and empirical study will falsify the definitively incorrect ones, and humanity will come to a better understanding of the universe. Point is though, we can't for the moment, as individuals I am saying, use science to explain such grand concepts. No matter what we choose, we're working off of faith, so it all comes down to personal choice.

As a side note: For anyone interested in a good piece of philosophical reading, as regards to religion, the works of Thomas Aquinas are extremely interesting. He's probably one of the most insightful individuals I've ever read the works of, attempting to solve the "problem of evil" (see Epicurus quote), determine how best we can understand God, among other things. His work may be confusing to some, and I imagine a lot of people have probably thrown his books down in disgust, but just keep in mind writing style was different in the middle ages, and its translated from Latin. He has some very good opinions and I highly recommend any of his works.