Precisely.
However, what extremely anti-religious people seem to ignore, whether deliberately, or through naivety, is that people who believe in God and Jesus and whatever, do not themselves necessarily require proof, scientific or otherwise. They have faith, and that serves their needs in a more than ample fashion. I myself am not anti science, however I do have certain issues with science. It lacks in one dimension for me. Disregard the impossible, but consider the improbable. Too often in my opinion, people confuse these two.
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Redsushi! Whoop! Whoop! Yes, that one!, Sat 7 Feb 2009, 14:41,
Reply)
OK, that was hard to parse.
1) Faith serves their needs instead of proof:
I disagree with practical arguments for atheism, such as "religion causes wars". It may well do, but that's beside the point.
Faith makes no sense, regardless of whether it's materially good for you or bad for you. Religious types are free to be religious, but they aren't free to be religious and correct at the same time. And we should want to be correct, according to my morality (and most religious people hold that as a value too, I suspect, despite the contradiction).
So if we have a "need" that can be met with faith or alternatively met with reason, that's irrelevant to the question of which we should go for. We should still make sense even if it's a nasty experience.
2) The improbable:
Conjectures are important to science, and for that matter inspiration is important in philosophy, and in art, and anyway there's more to life than science. The view that there isn't is called scientism (although I think the term is only ever used pejoratively, and trying to work out the word for an adherent of scientism is awkward).
Now, scientism is a bad thing. Mr. Spock, for instance, is a tosser, and his claim to always operate on pure logic leads to hypocrisy, because it's unworkable (perhaps illogical). Unfortunately the term scientism is often used as an attack on science and rationality, and in support of religion, in a hand-waving sort of way.
I don't think scientists often *are* scientistic, though it can happen. (Probably it happened more during, say, around 1910 to 1960.)
So ... yes, but I don't think it's a big deal.
Oh, and logical positivism was awful, but that's over now. Having said that, people do still often casually demand proof that a thing (say, God) exists, or doesn't exist, and both of these are wrong-headed. All "proof" can ever be is a challenge to a theory. It's a lot easier to falsify the theory that a thing doesn't exist than to falsify the theory that it does, so we assume things don't exist by default. Given this default, the theory that God exists can be challenged by explanations that better fit uncontroversial facts. i.e. there is no reason to postulate God, any more than celestial teapots, etc. The theory that He doesn't exist can be challenged by producing something best explained as God. Of course this all hinges on one's notion of a best and simplest explanation, and people can be eternally awkward about it if they're irrational enough.
(, Sat 7 Feb 2009, 15:58, Reply)