I've only read through the first 10 or so pages, but I'm really enjoying the content and ideas you guys are putting out. One response that stood out to me was from IrishLax:
1. IMO, I can't envision a scenario where there isn't some sort of supernatural force in the universe. I only have a rudimentary grasp of physics from my engineering background, but simply put there are a lot of things that physics comes close to explaining how they function but is so far away from explaining why they function how they do that I believe the inexplicable and imperceptible strongly implies the existence of the supernatural.
It seems to me his reasoning extends from the God of the Gaps argument. That what we don't know or understand, can only be explained by a supernatural force or God. We don't know; therefore, God did it. I've seen many people on this thread put forth some form of this reasoning.
To me this argument falls through because there are many things we didn't understand just 20 years ago, that people deferred to God as the explanation. Now, we do understand those things that were previously unexplained, and God's role has precariously receded. Essentially, the gaps that God fills get closed as we understand more about the universe. God's role as the explanation is getting smaller and smaller, and could potentially be removed altogether if one continues to believe in the God of the Gaps argument.
This isn't a knock on everyone here who espouses this reasoning. The greatest scientists and thinkers in history also succumbed to the God of the Gaps. Isaac Newton, probably the smartest person to ever live, discovered the laws of physics and invented Calculus to prove his ideas by the age of 26. But when he reached the limit of his ideas and couldn't explain what was beyond them, he also deferred to a higher entity or supernatural force.
However, years later other scientists built extensions off his ideas in physics and found the solution to things that Newton could not. Now, suddenly those things were no longer explained by God, they were explained by logical, natural law.
Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson gives a wonderful lecture called "the perimeter of ignorance" on this topic if you are interested to understand more (especially for those of you in the sciences):
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As for the 3 questions:
1. I used to be Christian but now I'm not sure. I'm inclined to think no because I haven't really seen evidence that a God exists. As I became more educated, reasons I had previously for believing in God didn't make sense anymore, and I get this unsettling feeling that religion is there to control me.
2. No, the Bible is certainly not reliable historically. The numerous authors, conflicting timelines, and stories that conflict with what we know is plausible in the real world make this clear. If one literally believed in the timeline of the Bible, the earth would only be 6,000 years old, which is empirically false. Even the Catholic Church acknowledges this and states that the Bible is not meant to be believed in via historical context.
For example, a Catholic priest would tell you that it's not important to believe that there was an Adam and Eve as the first two people ever. It's more important to glean the teaching that God created man, and that the story of Adam and Eve tells us that Sin came from man, not God. The other details of the story need not be believed as literally true.
3. See #1.
