>> If God does indeed exist, you don't get to pick what he expects of Humanity, if anything. You don't get to pick whether He is relevant or not.

I'm not picking what he expects. I said if one exists it's making itself irrelvant to humanity (by its own choice) as there's not even any actual evidence that he exists, let alone any clearly attributable actions.

>> You can't both say that "you don't know" if God exists, and that "religion is a fairy tale."
Sure you can. Religion and God are two entirely different things. Religion is created by humans, but god (assuming you believe in both god and creationism) literally couldn't have been, as if we created him that would mean he couldn't have created us. There are over 4000 different religions in the world, even assuming one is actually right, that means 3999 are fairy tales.
It's only religion that claims to have some link to god. I'm not seeing any evidence for god at all, let alone one directly claiming that any human religion happens to have got it right.

Fiction:

12 books from the Deverry series
The Three Body Problem trilogy
Monkey
Treacle Walker
Various books on Powershell

Non-Fiction:
Linux Administrator's Guide
Linux Network Administrator's Guide
Both OpenZFS books
Ansible
Terraform
Various books on Oracle, MySQL, PostgreSQL optimisation
C++ manuals
Various Cisco manuals
OpenPF manual

The conservation laws are statistical, at least to a degree. Local apparent violations can be OK, provided the system as a whole absolutely complies.

There's no question that if the claim was as appears that the conservation laws would be violated system-wide, which is a big no-no.

So we need to look for alternative explanations.

The most obvious one is that the results aren't being honestly presented, that there's so much wishful thinking that the researchers are forcing the facts to fit their theory. (A tendency so well known, that it's even been used as the basis for fictional detectives.)

Never trust results that are issued in a PR statement before a paper. But these days, it's increasingly concerning that you can't trust the journals.

The next possibility is an unconsidered source of propulsion. At the top of the atmosphere, there are a few candidates, but whether they'd impart enough energy is unclear to me.

The third possibility is that the rocket imparted more energy than considered, so the initial velocity was incorrectly given.

The fourth possibility is that Earth's gravity (which is non-uniform) is lower than given in the calculations, so the acceleration calculations are off.

When dealing with tiny quantities that can be swamped by experimental error, then you need to determine if it has been. At least, after you've determined there's a quantity to examine.

>> When people initiate wars in the name of God, they are lying. It's that simple.

Good! glad you agree! That immediately invalidates at least all major religions then, as at some point in time all religions through their leaders have instigated or supported one or more wars.

I guess we need to decouple God from religion. I am quite happy to believe in the possibility that a God exists, however without actual evidence the question remains open. If one does exist at all then it's so remote/ineffective as to leave no actual evidence of itself, so is making itself effectively irrelevant.

Religion is man-made, there is no more proof that it's messages came from one or more gods than there is that it was all made up by someone wanting power and control. In fact there is a lot of historical evidence that aspects of at least Christianity, Islam and Judaism have been created for exactly that reason.

So there really is strong evidence for how evil religion at least can and has been, yet despite that, it's sheep-like adherents still turn a blind eye.

> That logic relies on the concept that things don't happen by themselves. Ever.

Yes they do, all the time, at least at the quantum level.

> Therefor, a creator is required because things exist.
Things can and do exist without a sentient creator.

> That to me is more logical than to say that things exist because of...nothing.
I urge you to go read up on quantum physics.

You deceive yourself when you suggest that science doesn't require faith.
Science explicitly doesn't require faith. The dictionary definition of faith is a firm belief in something for which there is no proof. Science requires the exact opposite: evidence.

>> The faith part is when you say, in the name of science, that there is no creator.

Again, that isn't what science is actually saying.
It's saying there is no evidence for a creator. It's not denying the possibility, just like it is not denying the possibility of fairies.

> You are claiming that religion is destructive and evil, and that is also not true.

You have to be kidding right?
Just off the top of my head: 9/11, the crusades, nearly all the terrorism in the world, the recent massacres between Jews and Muslims, wars between Sunni and Shia, suppression of women, suppression of free speech, religiously-justified racism...

> You take at their word, anyone who does evil in the name of religion,

Do you really not see yourself doing exactly the same thing too? Do you really not see the evil behind even having a mechanism that allows someone to blame god for their own actions?

> You have *still* avoided conceding that the Salvation Army does good, and that they do it out of their sincere religious beliefs. They aren't the only ones.

Sorry I thought I already made it clear that I agreed that the Salvation army do good deeds. But then what about the many non-religious charities? Religion is clearly not a requirement to do good deeds, so claiming any credit of doing good deeds on having a religious belief is a falsehood. That said, I do agree that good deeds are done in the name of religion. I'm just not convinced that you can equate feeding and clothing a few druggies and bums to all the serious evil that's also been and is being done in the name of religion globally.

The only explanation science can offer, is that the cause was...nothing, nothing at all.

That's not accurate. What science says is that we don't know for sure, and may never know for sure. (many scientists currently think quantum effects are likely responsible, through research and discovery of experimentally repeatable effects, and because we've literally observed that particles do pop into and out of reality even in the hard vacuum of space).

This is a lot more rational and truthful statement that saying "a) We definitely know. b) It was god, further, it was necessarily the god of my chosen religion, not any of the different gods of 4000+ other religions on the planet".

>> The Big Bang theory, as commonly believed, is just as religious as any other theory,

No the difference between science and religion is that science doesn't require faith. it requires evidence, and the whole process is based on replacing hypotheses and theories for better ones when proven wrong.
Religion on the other hand starts out by saying it already has all the answers and explanations, and requires faith of its adherents to ignore the lack of evidence.

>> YES, there are hypocrites. YES, there are people who use religion to get rich. This does not make religion, evil.

That's as subjective as it gets. There are plenty of non-religious charities doing good work too, proving that you don't need religion to have a selfless morality.
Regardless of all the wars, terrorism, control, abuse etc done in some god's name, it seems clear that at it's core, religion is entirely based on requiring people to have "faith" to believe things that someone has claimed without any actual evidence. I personally think that manipulating/brainwashing people into having faith as their decision-making mechanism instead of using logic and evidence, while also pushing unproven, usually self-contradictory (therefore necessarily) lies as ultimate truths onto society in general, is damn evil in itself.

>> you are accusing religious people of being evil. So what's your point by mentioning this?

Because religion plays a signifcant part in nearly all wars, also religion is directly peddling factually incorrect information while claiming it is the truth. Also for hypocrisy, the bible preaches peace and charity, yet the Christian church is one of the richest institutions in the world, and their investments include arms manufacturers.

>> I noticed that you conveniently avoided responding to the part about the Salvation Army.

Yes I'm happy to acknowledge that the Salvation Army do good works, however I didn't mention them because there are 2.38 billion Christians in the world and the Salvation Army reports a worldwide membership of about 1.7 million, Hardly representative of the entire faith.

>> I personally work closely with number of devout Muslims. They are good people, they care about family and about doing what is right and kind.

  I personally work closely with number of non-religious people. They are good people, they care about family and about doing what is right and kind.

The muslims you speak about above aren't by definition true Muslims, since Islam is unlike Christianity in that it explicitly doesn't permit personal interpretations of Islam or deviation in any way form the Quran.

The Quran is replete with Surahs directing its followers to violence.

Surah 3:151: "We shall cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve (all non-Muslims) â¦"

Surah 2:191: "And kill them (non-Muslims) wherever you find them ⦠kill them. Such is the recompense of the disbelievers (non-Muslims)."

Surah 9:5: "Then kill the disbelievers (non-Muslims) wherever you find them, capture them and besiege them, and lie in wait for them in each and every ambush â¦"

Again the assumption that Christians act any more morally on average than non-religious people. Where is the data to support your position?
I've personally seen lots of counter-evidence but I agree that's subjective therefore invalid.

> Speaking of fairy stories, I'm betting you believe that in the beginning, there was only nothingness, and then suddenly there was a huge explosion that created everything we know. That sounds like a fairy tale to me!

NO I don't wholly believe that. I believe that there's a lot of actual measurable, reproducable data that strongly indicates the big bang happened, but I'm quite happy to accept a counter theory based on stronger evidence coming along.

On the flip side, there doesn't seem to be any actual measurable or otherwise tangible data to suggest let alone indicate that god(s), heaven, hell etc actually exist at all. At best the only info we have is all just highly personal and subjective.
In fact what we absolutely do know is that all modern religions are 100% man-made. Christianity developed in Judea in the mid-first century so didn't even exist previous to around 2000 years ago. The earth is a whole lot older than that, and the universe is a whole lot older than the earth. It is therefore clear that Christianity literally could not have had anything to do with the creation of the universe.