He's a failed scientist. He hasn't published anything in 15 years so he withers away in obscurity at some shitty teaching university and spouts garbage.

The greatest rationalist of 'em all, Isaac Newton, spent most of his life searching for coded messages in the Bible. None of us know the ultimate meaning or nature of the universe; and the very best science can do is build mathematical models of what is observable. In any event, there is little or no point to mocking other peoples' spiritual beliefs. It's rude, counterproductive, and disrespectful.

Math (and by extension, Science) is the single most significant human achievement in understanding and predicting how the universe works. Math is winning about 1 x 10^81 to 0 against superstition in predicting the behavior of the universe at all scales. Maybe Math is God and God is Math.

Every time one of these religion vs. science article appears, a huge war in the letters section ensues. Salon must have realized that these types of articles are "popular" and keep on publishing fundamentally the same article with different names. Please, if you are sick of these articles let's just ignore this one. Giberson has made a farce out of science, so don't even dignify him with a shouting match.

...I predict that after this letter, there will 200+ letters arguing about the existence of imaginary friends. Letters pontificating that only certain imaginary friends are real. Letters debunked by reason and logic. Letters like Swiss cheese that have holes so big you could drive a truck through them. Letters with references to Santa, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Letters by people who believe in virgin birth, coming back from the dead, talking bushes that are on fire, talking snakes, vegan dinosaurs. There will be letters by people who think global climate change is a myth, but that fossils were put into rocks by the devil to confuse everyone.

"And now," cried Max, "let the wild rumpus start!"

If I shit on the Eucharist and mail it to the Pope, I'm making a political statement. What does that have to do with science?

Where is the outrage for the scores of abused alter boys, the church cover-ups, and the systemic misogyny of Catholicism or Islam or Tibet or what have you?

The Eucharist is a cracker. The worst thing about me smearing my cum and shit and piss and vomit and blood over it, setting it on fire, fashioning a crusifix out of bacon and letting it rot then mailing it to the Pope is that I have wasted food and people are starving.

PS - free Palestine.

Nor is there any chance it can become a religion.

Religion: the use of ignorance, also known as "faith" to justify accepting vague, and illogical explanations of how the world around us "works."

Science: the use of observable physical evidence of natural phenomena to collect data, and analyze this information to explain what and how things work.

Honestly... it's the 21st century, man. It's time to get with the program.

PS - And to that weasel Ben Stein, claiming scientists are being close-minded by not willingly debating creationists. They had that debate back in 1850... YOU LOST. Who's really the close-minded one here?

Didn't see your post before I posted mine!

Everyone have a nice night!

To compare science and religion is, I'm sorry, absurd. For one, remind me again how religion's quantification of angular momentum goes? Or how religion explains the physics behind axonal conduction? These mundane questions lie at the heart of science and speak of the true quest of the scientific enterprise: namely, how does the world work. Science is merely a method for gaining knowledge of the world; one that is standardized, rigorous and highly conservative. There are REASONS to believe the conclusions of science: reasons to believe in evolution by natural selection; reasons to believe in a physical description of consciousness; and, indeed, reasons to believe that the (admittedly obscure and still, as far as I'm concerned, unknown) mechanics behind the creation of the universe WILL BE KNOWN. The only semblance I can think of between science and religion is, I guess, the polemic adherents of both. I do not believe religion has much (if anything) to offer our world anymore, but don't get me wrong. I know plenty of people who are very religious and that does not bother me at all. Its a choice and I support freedom of religion. But know this: science is the only method we have for gaining knowledge of the world, the ONE AND ONLY. Truth (?) by revelation has been surpassed by truth by experimentation.

Giberson obviously doesn't understand science. There is no religion to it. Of course science will never be able to figure everything out, the universe is vast and strange indeed. Science is all about being a skeptic not a believer! We can model, we can theorize, we can not "know" absolutely. And thus the mystery lives on, all without the need for religion.

Everyone, from the bum on the street to the president of the United States, to a child in Chile to know-it-alls like you, has a viewpoint.

Everyone believes in something.... even when it's nothing. Some people believe in the Bible, some the Koran, and some believe what people in white coats say and print in science books.

What's odd to me, especially in these letters on Salon, is that the people who wholeheartedly believe in science don't see that as a belief system!

If you do not recognize the simple fact that you believe what you believe, and that you believe you are right, and the reasons you believe you are right are backed up by what you read and think about and talk about... if you don't see this simple fact, well, you should.

Be proud of your belief system! A religion, really, is just a gathering of beliefs. That's all. A religion does not require audible prayer or churches... most Quakers have neither... a religion does not require blind faith... it only requires a fervent adherence to a belief system.

You there, on the computer, frowning at these words, sneering at the very idea that your hallowed Science could be "lowered" to the level of a religion... yes, I'm talking to you.

You think you are sooooo superior. Like I'm an idiot with my head stuck in the Bible and never coming up for air. Like I don't get Nova, or read Joseph Campbell, or understand quantum physics or don't understand the concept (not fact) of the mythology you call Evolution... you are not as brilliant as you think.

What you do have, like me, is faith. In fact, like me, you have Faith. Faith that is unshakable.

Sure, I could explain how the age of any object can not be verified by carbon 14 dating beyond 14 thousand years... but that will not shake your belief system. I could explain that even in the lowly stink bug, it would be rather improbable for it to form, on it's own, separate bags for the noxious gas and the propellent, since it needs both to protect itself and they could not function apart from one another.... or that evolution presuposes a world where blind fish, for millions of years, crawl up on the shore ever higher so that they could "evolve" legs and that these millions of stumpy psuedo-fish could not survive... but this does not deter your fervent belief in Science.

I could mention that virtually every major portion of Evolution is rooted in fine art that supports the fantasy, the Cro-Magnon man was not a Monkey-Man but in fact, a short, ugly Man... that the very idea that birds, over millions of years of flopping around in the jungle, could not very easily and "suddenly" grow wings... that in fact, the math proves that for a speciees to really evolve into another form, you need a population of four quadrillion and a gestation period of less than 50 days, and that the only organisms that fit this model are viruses...

That Pasteur proved more than 150 years ago that it is IMPOSSIBLE for life to spontaneously form from non-life, as Aristotle taught... and that he also taught the earth was flat...

But no.

You buy all that, hook line and sinker. Even though "science" changes its mind about the age of the universe, the reason that everything else has happened, science has created revisions on revisions on revisions... and you buy all of that.

And the idea that there could be a loving God in the Universe? Poppycock! Right?

So, since I've read your books, since I understand fully your beliefs and since I just happen to believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and loves you and all that... I'm crazy... right?

And you? What are you? You, who blindly believe in whatever the guys in the white coats deal out to you.

Are you not, as well, a True Believer?

Really?