One might apply the same argument you just used to argue for the existence of leprechauns.

Just as with gods, I cannot assert that leprechauns do not exist, but I suspect you will agree with me that there existence is very unlikely based on the available evidence.

Using the logic from the argument you made earlier, it could be that leprechauns do not exist, or it could be that we do not have the necessary evidence to be convinced of their existence, but it would be a mistake to assign equal weights to these two potential outcomes. If you disagree, I would be happy to justify this assertion further in a future reply.

Now I will be the first person to admit that there may be an explanation for god's existence that I am unaware of, but thinking it not unlikely without such an explanation would be remarkably foolish.

Let me put it this way : attempting to justify the existence of a divine being depends upon a host of complex systems. If the being has intelligence, that requires an explanation. If it has the ability to manipulate matter, that too requires an explanation. With each level of complexity you add, the probability of occurrence diminishes due to the principle of logical conjunction.

I'll go one further and say that scientific reasoning can lead to high confidence in the position that god does not exist. Science can not make the assertion that god does not exist just as it can not asset that leprechauns do not exist. It can lead, however, to the conclusion that the probability for either of these existing is vanishingly small. If we approach the idea of god as a hypothesis, we have to ask, is there enough credible evidence in favor of god's existence to reject the null hypothesis that god does not exist? Since there is not, belief in god is not scientifically rational, but, if you stop here, belief that god does not exist is not rational either. To understand why god's existence is exceedingly unlikely that god exists, we have to consider the enormous problem of explaining god's existence in the first place. We understand how intelligence arose through natural selection, so the complexity of our brains is not improbable. The complexity of something like god simply existing, however, would be a considerable challenge to explain, especially with a seemingly infinite number of other possible outcomes of universes existing without gods. I would compare it to this : If a magician asked you to pull a card at random from a deck and was then able to correctly tell you which card you had and then repeated the trick several times with the same result, you might presume that, by random chance, the magician was able to correctly guess your card. That presumption offers an explanation in the same way that a god presents an explanation, but it is highly implausible.

...make a new law to make breaking the original laws illegal.

Science may be agnostic, but it's conclusions are not. Those who understand how to correctly apply the scientfic method know that the burden of proof is on the person making the assertion (the alternative hypothesis). Without sufficient evidence, we are forced to reject the alternative hypothesis, so, when asking whether gods exist, the scientific method demands that we reject this hypothesis due to a lack of evidence.

I'm afraid that trying to find truth in Genesis is mostly grasping at straws. One may choose to believe that the ark came to rest on Ararat, but there's no more evidence that than for bigfoot or alien abduction. I'm sure there were many floods in the old times, but I doubt that any of them ever involved a floating zoo. More importantly, if you want to make up your own interpretations for every part of a story to make it work with logic, that's fine, but it will lose any pretense of divine inspiration. You can make up your own interpretation that either hasn't been or can't be falsified and believe in that, and, in fact, that is what most Christians do, which is why there are so many sects. When the story doesn't jive with reality and you throw out the literal meaning and decide to "interpret" it, anyone can interpret the story in any way that they choose and every one comes up with a different interpretation. That is how we ended up with hundreds of religious sects. The real question is, why would anyone believe in a god who sucks at communication so badly that he can't even provide a semi-coherent text? http://www.faithisfraud.com/

Not only is the Bible false, but it contradicts itself from front to back. It is not even consistent on its most basic assertions. For example, how long was Jesus in the tomb? Matthew 12:40 says three days and three nights, but Mark 16:2 and verses in other gospels indicate that it was actually only Friday night and Saturday night with Jesus rising on Sunday morning, so only two nights. Clearly this is a contradiction, but the Bible is also chalk full of logical impossibilities. For example, in the Bible, the day and night were created before the sun. At faithisfraud.com, I am working through every chapter of the Bible, pointing out the inconsistencies for your amusement. Visit http://www.faithisfraud.com/ for more information.

The doctor offers some interesting insights, but misses the point of the conflict between science and religion. Many people of faith have made tremendous contributions to our body of understanding and their faith may have even given them motivation, but faith itself is antithetical to reason. Choosing to believe something without sufficient evidence goes directly against the nature of science. Science also depends on logic. Since we understand that intelligence arises from competition as part of an evolutionary process, we would need to make a lot of unverifiable assumptions to explain the existence of a god. Although we can't prove that god does not exist, most religions are easily falsifiable. It seems to me that that the only way religions like Christianity survive is either through the ignorance of their members, or by their members' ability to cling to the nonsense parts of their religion which have not yet been directly falsified as truth while claiming that the parts which have been falsified are metaphorical.