The quotations in this post are pretty badly organised.

silly Wrote:That's true, but pedantic and technical, as the same could be said of virtually anything that occurs in one's life. Most people share the belief that doctors can identify and treat illnesses. Most people hold the belief that their birthday is actually on the day specified in their birth certificate. Most people share the belief that the sun provides warmth and light. Most people share the belief that we cannot fly. etc. Would you deem it necessary to call these things shared belief systems of faith, and liken them to religions?

naive Wrote:Yes.

Do you believe that there is a distinction in probability between the possible truth of the claims that "humans cannot fly", that "Jonah lived in a whale for three days", and that "men are from Mars while women are from Jupiter"?

silly Wrote:That's the problem of religion, not the luxury of science. It just makes it harder for religions to possess credibility when their claims are not testable.

naive Wrote:So if science were not able to be easily tested, would you have no faith that you would not wake up out of bed one morning and fall into the sky? Just because a theory is untestable does not mean it is false, nor does scrupulous testing mean that results will never change.

Do you not recognize, that there is no compelling rational reason for a person to take their belief away from the evidenced status quo (that people don't fall into the sky) and instead replace it with an unsubstantiated notion (that I could fall into the sky). 

Formally, If a claim is not testable, then the truth of it cannot be verified, and it cannot be accepted. It's possible that it could still be true, but there is no reason to believe that it is. There exists a "burden of proof", and all positive claims must provide sufficient evidence in order to be accepted as true. Without evidence/proof, there is no way to distinguish between the likelihood of any claim.

silly Wrote:Imagine the members of this site created a book with Gandhi as supernatural saviour of the world (who flew around in the sky and converted sand into food) and copied real historical events into it as well as Aesop's fables. Then just imagine a couple of thousand years into the future: it becomes a widely accepted religion with thousands of believers writing books about it. Does this prove that Gandhi was really anything more than a mortal man? If you were one of these believers, you might believe with every ounce of your body that the depictions of Gandhi are real, and believe that there is proof everywhere, but your "proof" of supergandhi is based on embellishments and fantasies written in books.

naive Wrote:Ok, lets assume that Ghandi really did do these things. How would you prove it to people 1000 years from now?

I don't particularly know, but this point does not help your argument. It is important that you recognize that if there is not sufficient evidence for something, there does not exist a compelling rational reason to believe it.

naive Wrote:If I was adding two coins together all day long and then all of a sudden one time I ended up with three coins (1+1=3), but I couldn't repeat the process or explain it, it would have nothing to do the the 'truth' of it happening. There are anomalies that happen and a lack of proof doesn't not imply a lack of truth.

There is no rational reason to believe that two coins can magically transform into three, there is only pure faith. There is no evidence that things like that actually happen. Also, being able to test something does not make it true, it just makes it possible to determine whether or not it is true.

silly Wrote:Religion might be emotionally compelling, but it is not rationally compelling. It relies on faith, not rationality.

naive Wrote:Rationality is only faith in knowledge, and without faith you can have no rationality.

How so? Rationality involves logically consistent beliefs, it requires logic and reasoning.

In regards to:

naive Wrote:I'm not speaking of any specific religions, it's not my purpose to say which theories are true or false. Simply that anything accepted as truth, is based on a system of faith.

I was replying to:

naive Wrote:Science and religion are very very linked by the shared systems of faith and are most definitely not mutually exclusive concept

with:

silly Wrote:It specifically depends on which scientific theory & religion you are talking about. For instance: Evolution is not compatible with a literal interpretation of the Bible's Genesis.

I made a claim that science and religion definitely can be mutually exclusive concepts, and if you want to dispute that, then I can provide evidence to back up my claim.

silly Wrote:In science, most experimental data is objective.

naive Wrote:The data is objective, our understanding of the data is not.

So you think that scientific data can accurately depict objective truth?

silly Wrote:Many people who appreciate science, also appreciate rationality/reason, which is pretty much the opposite of faith.

naive Wrote:I do not believe this statement to be true, I believe that rationality/reason requires faith.

In what way does reasoned logic require faith?

Pishtim Wrote:i also really hope this does not turn into a flame war. religion vs science is one of the oldest and most exciting topics imo. maybe i feel that way because a conclusive argument can never be made by either side, and the debate will continue to rage on: scientists will always fall back on empirical evidence (and will never be able to supply ALL the answers) and religionists will always fall back on "you just have to have faith".

Yeah pishtim, I don't believe that science can be effectively used to argue against religion. However, I think that religion can be effectively argued against with the use of philosophy and logic.