I've been watching the Religion & Spirituality section of Yahoo Answer a bit more objectively than usual for the past few days. Perhaps objective is the wrong answer. I agree with Dr. H when he says that claims of objectivity are frickin' lies. You can't be objective because we're human. Distant, I think distant is a better answer. Instead of thinking about the questions, I've been thinking about the patters of social interaction. There are two patterns that seem to recur an awful lot. 1) Some atheists and some of those who are vocal about against atheists and/or atheism seem to think that atheism is another word for "science in place of religion." 2) When people discuss science as a means of getting at or refuting religion, there seems to be a discrepancy between what science actually is and what they think science means. This is not, by any means, true for all people, but it is something I've noticed in a significant number (at least as I define it) of people on Y!A as well as in "the real world."

Science, like religion, is a means of getting at or understanding reality. A lens and a toolbox all rolled into one. All of science is nothing more than a circle with four points, and anyone using this circle of science can hop onto and off of it at any point without upsetting the process. There's not beginning point or ending point, though the logical progression may make it seem so. What's usually thought of as the first point is hypothesis. A hypothesis is a testable statement regarding realty. The word "testable" is what differentiates a hypothesis from a philosophical statement. The next point is observation and/or experimentation. This is where the hypothesis is put to the test and data from those tests are gathered. The next point is analysis, where the data is analyzed to see if the hypothesis passes, fails, or the test has no meaning. The final point is interpretation, where the observer, aka scientist, makes sense of the hypothesis and how it fits with reality. This stage usually leads to more questions than answers, and new hypothesis are formed, tested, analyzed, and interpreted.

Science, in itself, doesn't have anything to "say" at all. The write "Science says that humans evolved from single celled organisms time" is not the same thing as writing "God says humans were created in one day." What's actually happening is that the scientific method has been applied to the statement (hypothesis) and the method has affirmed that the hypothesis is true while with religion, the statement has been made and is expected to be accepted as truth, despite any evidence to the contrary.

The most misunderstood portion of the scientific method is the interpretation phase. What often happens is that a hypothesis is proven false or incomplete and during the interpretation part of the process, human understanding of reality is adjusted for the new information. Particularly when discussing evolutionary theory versus religious ideology, the interpretation method is often ignored or not examined by either side. For example, when some evolutionary hypothesis is either proven wrong (eg, that cro magnon evolved from neandertalensis) or no longer fits with new evidence or theories (eg, evolution happens in distinct lines) then those who don't understand the scientific method will claim this is proof that the entire theory is wrong while those that agree with the theory, but don't understand the scientific method are at a loss to explain why the theory is still relevant even though parts are wrong.

When it comes to atheism, I've met many atheists who believe they're atheism is supported by science. It's not. It is supported by reason and use of tools like Occam's Razor, but atheism, like theism, is not scientific. The atheist hypothesis is "Deities do not exist." This hypothesis is not testable. You can go no further in the scientific method than hypothesis, you can't go backward either. How would you test it? Observation? Circumstantial evidence, to borrow a legal term, exists, but it's nothing a thinking person would accept as scientific evidence useful for analysis, then interpretation. Atheism, like theism, is a philosophy, or more accurately, a belief.

Zoids the video game has come on and I've lost my train of thought. *sigh*