The "Eye of God" as photographed by the Hubble space telescope.
I was recently an innocent bystander to a rather impassioned argument by a certain U of A microbiology undergrad as to why god does not exist. Actually, to be more clear her argument was that as scientists the only sensible position to have on the existence of a deity is atheism. I personally am not an extremely religious person and have not set foot into a church in over 6 years not, but the more I thought about this viewpoint the more it irritated me. The premise of the argument was that as the existence of god was the most challenging of “the existence of god” vs. “the non-existence of god” to accept, the burden of proof falls upon the theist camp.
This notion is nonsense. The burden of proof falls on everyone. As scientists we have no right to call anyone wrong without being able to prove ourselves correct, and calling someone wrong without proof limits the possibilities of human imagination and as such the scientific process. We now commonly accept many things that within the frame of reference of people at some point would have seemed ludicrous. For example as one point the concept that the earth was not flat was nonsense. It contradicted everything our sense told us. The concept that time goes slower as we get faster??? Nonsense!! That energy can only exist in multiples of distinct quanta?? Yeah…. That doesn’t make sense. How about the fact that the entire universe originated from a volume margins of magnitude smaller than the tip of my pinky finger? Laughable really. By calling views that don’t seem to correspond to our frame of reference wrong we inhibit ourselves from discovering truths.
So to all scientists out there, including the arguer in question, I urge you all to choose your own path when choosing whether or not to be religious. If the thought that in this universe, of which we have possibly barely scratched the surface of understanding, the thought of a being greater than ourselves having guided the evolution of this world and taking part in our day to day lives seems too ludicrous to accept to you than feel free to be atheists. If the thought that there is no way that having pre-marital sex will not send you to burn forever in the fires of hell seems silly than by all mean beat your bible fervently. Just do not force upon others the views that you espouse. … Unless of course you can prove god exists/does not exist. In that case feel free to write me, I’m dying to hear from you.