To re-iterate the point by the grandparent, it is even harder to change the lines in your hand than to change writing styles. Does that imply that handreading is a correct way of determining someone's future?
Sorry, but no. Have you ever looked at the source code Matlab produces? Every single line of code hooks into the Matlab library and does numerous checks for bounds, matrix dimensions, whatever. Even a simple for loop (for i=1:10) becomes a set of calls into the library. With that comes a general C compiler that cannot do the type of optimizations a Fortran compiler can make (due to aliasing), and the conclusion is clear. Compiled Matlab code is nowhere near the speed of Fortran.
The factor 50 improvement you get with using the compiler, still leaves you with a large factor from actual Fortran performance. I've done some tests myself between compiled matlab and hand-written C that used the Matlab routines, and the C code beat the Matlab generated code by a factor of 20. Granted, that code used a lot of loops, but that was the reason I wanted the code to be compiled. And as for performance being irrelevant compared to quickness to write/maintain, this does not hold for numerically intensive code, where a slowdown smaller than 2 is probably acceptable, but not the orders of magnitude that Matlab seems to come with.
Today I write my bottleneck code as external C programs (mex-files) for Matlab.
Beating a dead horse, but okay. RMS does not want a BSD-license because someone can come along and lock up the software again under copyright, viz. Microsoft's ftp client. What he wants to achieve is that the software is free, but more importantly, that it stays free. This until the copyright runs out, and then its free for ever. A BSD-style license can not guarantee that. Only when copyright on software is completely abolished there is no need anymore for a copyleft license.
Because European parliament has voten and decided that software in unpatentable. Parliament has this authority. The council now ignores the parliament and tries to push it through. Hence undemocratic.
For me as a Dutchman, there's another thing going on as well. The Dutch parliament has instructed our government to *not* allow software patents. Obviously the Dutch ministers are now voting in *favour* of software patents in the council. Not sure if similar stuff is happening in other countries, but it's really annoying to see two successfull lobbies in the two correct democratic bodies being ignored, apparently without repercussions.
For all Dutch./ readers out there; the Dutch minister of Economic Affairs is Brinkhorst, and unlike his party (D'66), he's apparently not convinced by the importance of the Dutch parliament. Let him know that you won't vote for his party if he continues to ignore Dutch parliament here.
Ok on Jericho. The point still stands. All historical evidence points to the fact that the Old Testament was a written down account of oral history, written down by jews in exile. So its oral history and very suspect in that.
The New Testament, which is what Christianity is based upon, doesn't have these monumental miracles that might show in the historical records as the Old Testament has. It's merely the philosophy (ie: non-historical) of a particular person who was by a small set of people considered the Messiah. In that sense, Christianity and Buddhism are very comparable. The philosophies of the old and new testament are very different from eachother. The Old is an account of the history of a people, while the New presents a personal account of an individual.
About the last part. What I was poorly phrasing there is indeed evidence of the miracles: where's the burning bush? In any case: what significance would it have if we found out that the Red Sea indeed was dry at a certain point? Or if we find a boat on the top of a mountain? There are numerous explanations for that, including a natural (or human induced) phenomenon that was construed to be of religious significance. Religion is a matter of faith, science a matter of reasoning. The two are not exclusive, even though I am a person of little faith.
Sorry for nitpicking, but don't confuse science with mathematics. 2+2=4 is provably true in for instance Paeno arithmetic. What is not provably true is that the addition operator holds in the physical world: if you have two sticks of wood and add two sticks of wood to that, you have four sticks of wood. Mathematics applied to physics. However, if you have two clouds and add two more clouds, you might simply end up with a single big cloud. Here the addition operation does not transport to the scientific discourse (even though the molecules do add up). This is what measurement theory is about: how to apply mathematical operations to physical phenomena. Interesting stuff.
Actually, it goes a bit deeper than that. Darwinian evolution also predicted the existence of genes itself. Not their form or functioning, but it was a necessary part of the theory that there was a common carrier for inheritance of traits. So the actual key prediction of evolution was purely the existence of a DNA-like substance. This we take for granted nowadays, as its a fact, but scientist only started looking for it because of evolution theory. I think that since the discovery of this DNA, evolution theory has similar status as the theories of physics.
Ball 1:
The fact that Jericho didn't exist anymore when the walls came tumbling down doesn't strike you in the least bit odd then? No problem, religious myth in a historic setting does not give credence to the religion, it gives evidence to the historic setting. No more, no less. There's no historic evidence for any of Gods interventions, even though there's plenty of historic evidence that the Judaic people were dwelling in that place at that time. Myth != history.
Oh, and
Buddha is as much an historical figure as Jesus.
Ball 2: No there's not. Show me some evidence of religious (not historical) significance of the actions of the Christian God. Or of any God. I like Haephistos.
Ball 3:
Hey, you have to throw you know! You can't strike me out on the basis of the first ball alone.
Ball 4:
Mostly harmless. Part five in the increasingly inaccurately named trilogy the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy --Douglas Adams
Then go read his followup paper, which is linked to in the first. It addresses that very point.
No it doesn't. It addresses the point that if there is a particular document (string of genes) to be reached within a certain error limit, it is still impossible. My point was that there might be a wealth of documents, all giving rise to life. We've observed the outcome of one, but don't know about the magnitude of all. He talks about a minimum coding length of 256 (meaning a search space of 4^256). This assumes that the only coding space that can support life is DNA. How can he claim this? For all we know, life can arise from interactions of completely different molecules, which also has a tiny probability of success to be found. If the possibilities are numerous enough, they might simply add up.
I grant the author his scepticism though, as I'm also not very convinced by science's forays into pre-biotic evolution. It's a tough problem, but I'm sure there's a rational explanation for it. On the other hand, it could have been this 2^(-256) chance that created life in this universe, and we would be shit out of luck with our science to explain that.
The analogy was not meant to explain evolution, it was there to refute the challenge. The implicit assumption behind IC is that anything that cannot be broken apart cannot have been built. This is wrong and the arch example shows that. This means that the challenge is faulty and does not need to be taken seriously.
My further statements about how evolution builds up and removes stuff is based on a few experiments I've done with artificial evolution (genetic programming), where indeed irreducibly complex programs evolve through mutation and selection and where a complete 'fossil' record was there to see that adding and removing stuff while retaining functionality indeed is possible. This doesn't necessarily mean that natural evolution does the same thing, but that wasn't what the analogy was used for.
And dog, cow, human all use the same carrier for genetic material, DNA. The existence of such a carrier was predicted by evolutionary theory. Furthermore, evolutionary distance can now be quantified exactly. You have exactly 50% of the genes from your mom and 50% of your dad. You have more of your DNA in common with your monkey brother than with any other being except for your parents. 99.5% of your genes are shared with all humans on earth, 98% with the bonobo, our closest relative. Still a good 90% of your DNA is shared with all mammals, a good portion with reptiles, and so on and so on.
Looking at the fossil record hoping to see evolution in action used to be necessary before we could actually look at the DNA itself. That has now changed, and evolution has shown to be right on the money for all its major predictions.
For Evolution Theory to work at all, it presupposes a common carrier for genetic material for all species. People started searching for that and found DNA. How is Evolution not a theory again?
Don't look at the fossil record, look at genomics. Evolution predicts that every living being ultimately has the same ancestor. More related animals have a more recent ancestor. Thus it predicts that the carrier of heritage should show similarities between species. This was stated long before this carrier, DNA, was discovered.
Now looking at DNA we see that absurdly high percentages of the DNA are common in living (and fossilized) animals. As predicted. This DNA creates proteins and we see that although proteins in different animals are structurally slightly different, they still are functionally equivalent. Again predicted, but now through the neutral theory of evolution (in 1969, before efficient protein sequencers were available). Now drugs are being developed on the basis of similarity of function of different proteins. Without Evolutionary Theory there would not be a point in trying to use a protein from a chicken to test a drug for a human body. This can be done and all ultimately because of the predictive power of Evolutionary Theory.
Actually irreducible complexity is easily refuted. It hinges on the fact that parts of organisms are so complex and interdependent, that if you take one thing out it ceases functioning. Hence, the IC proponents (who have died out by now) claim that the thing must have been created as a whole, as it cannot conceivably have been build up with small steps. And the ID is there.
To refute this, simply take the construction of an arch of bricks. Humans have been capable of doing this for millennia. The nice thing about a brick arch is that it is irreducibly complex: take one brick out and the entire thing collapses.
Unlike what the IC people claim, people don't put a ready made arch out of nowhere, they first build supporting structure, build the arch, and then remove the supporting structure. Something similar can easily happen in evolution. Lots of structure with limited functionality gets added and added, and lots of old superfluous structure gets removed. What you end up with is a 'irreducibly complex' structure where every part has a function and there's no clear indication how it was build. Simply because the supporting structure has been removed underway.
What the page is missing is the possibility that there could easily be enormous amounts of different ways to produce life by arranging molecules and our little world just stumbled on one of them. The page argues on the basis of Hamlet, and there is only one such thing. The faulty assumption is that life is like a book, unique and you need to stumble upon the exact thing. Life is much more diverse and opportunistic, and stating that the only example we know of is the only possible configuration is a bit silly.
Nope, the existence of God is an assertion, as there is no effective test for falsifying the hypothesis. The non-existence of God however is a valid scientific hypothesis as you only have to show the existence of God to disprove it. If this happens, the existence of God becomes a fact, but it would still lack a theory explaining this existence. Facts are boring and akin to collecting stamps, building a solid theory is what matters scientifically.
Actually, Occam's razor itself has been mathematically formalized and sharpened in recent years. It's called the Minimum Description Length principle, which loosely states that the best theory is the one that minimizes (in bits) the length of the theory (in bits) plus the length of the exceptions to the theory (in bits). It is itself based on Bayes theorem, and is used in communication and learning theory, but can equally be applied to science. Unfortunately the thing itself depends on the Kolmogorov complexity and is thus uncomputable.
Still, it does show that Occam's razor is a simplification of a deeper principle that is rooted in the axioms of mathematics. There's no religion there. (And no, you cannot equate mathematical axioms with religion. They're just not comparable in scope and intent.)
Religion, of whatever nature, cannot be proven scientifically. It still may be true.
Luckily many religions contradict eachother, so we can logically claim that they cannot conceivably be all true. Given that they all have the same amount of (historic) evidence behind them (none), one might actually be tempted to conclude that religion and truth are two completely different concept and should not be applied to eachother. Hence any form of religious claim on truth should be disregarded.
Let's start with the scientific results that will actually give ID or creationism the status of a 'theory'. In proper scientific jargon, ID is at most conjecture, but actually an assertion. In scientific hierarchy of importance, this is the lowest of the low. In ascending order of scientific importance:
Assertion: random guess
Conjecture: more or less insightful claim on the basis of analysis
Hypothesis: prediction of one or several facts. Still to be tested.
Fact: more or less random observation that can be repeatedly observed. (If things are not supported, they fall down to the earth.)
Law: very accurate equation tying together a number of facts. (Law of gravity).
Theory: time-proven explanation of a wide range of facts. (Newtonian theory of mechanics includes the laws, but covers more ground.)
So all in all, maybe the sticker is actually a good thing for evolution, as it readily claims that evolution is not a 'mere' fact, but an actual theory. Now to teach the students that science is about theory formation, with the facts as the thing to reason about. Collecting facts in themselves is as interesting as collecting stamps.
No, you're dead wrong in this. The need to convert people and create as many babies is inherent in any religion that is to survive. This is a simple Darwinistic argument: natural selection applied to religions. For a religion to survive, it needs a following. Without a following it is dead. If the following isn't large enough, it gets eating up by a more 'fit' religion. Hence all religions that have survived for a long time put lots of emphasis on conversion and procreation. You don't think that the pope's ban on condoms have anything strictly to do with abstract theology, do you? No, it's just that a religion needs more babies, to make sure that it will get enough adults to follow the religion.
The truly Christian religion that you sketch has been abandoned right at the beginning. Not by all sects, just by the ones that survived and which subsequently became the Catholic and Greek-Orthodox churches. Note that this has nothing to do with Christianity, the Muslim and Hindu faith work in similar ways. More converts, more babies and intolerance to other religions. Survival of the fittest. A religion that allows condoms and is tolerant towards differently minded religions will survive two generations, max.
Back at the hard atheists: Why do you [believe] in the absence of a God, when there's no evidence to back up your belief?
As an atheist, I don't think the burden of proof is on me, but let's try to clarify this. Firstly, apart from an actual manifestation from God to myself and (preferably) the rest of the world, there is no logical way to disprove God. Please tell me, how would someone go about finding the evidence to the absence of:
God
The terrible snowman
Santa Clause
the toothfairy?
In other words, although it is eminently possible to find evidence for the presence of things, (just show the thing) it is impossible to find evidence to the absence of things. Anything anyone
conjures up that cannot be seen, or in other words, that is supernatural, cannot be disproven.
Hence the burden of proof belongs to the theists.
Despite millennia of attempts, this has failed miserably.
What I do believe in is sceptical inquiry and reasoned weighting of arguments. Under this regime, the God hypothesis fails on several counts. Given the parent's remark about the agnostic reply, I'm sure we agree about this. I do however not accept equal opportunity agnosticism: God may or may not exist, with equal odds, and if it exists, it may or not may be a Christian, Jew, Islamic or Hindu God. That's simply too easy. The matter is too improbable for that.
So I'll stick with my gospel: organized and quantified uncertainty. Call it doubt if you will. There is room for belief, but no room for faith. In this universe God is simply an exceedingly improbable possibility. Unlike agnostics, who implicitly assign equal odds to the existence or absence of a God, I'm an atheist: the likeliness of God existing I consider vanishingly small. For all practical purposes equal to zero.
Didn't do much reading did you? It's a logical impossibility to disprove the existence of a particular thing, not a scientific one. It is however 'easy' to prove existence, just present the thing. A thing that exists but cannot be observed is a linguistic joke. Compare:
There is a god
There is a terrible snowman
There is a toothfairy
Elvis lives!
None of these things can be disproven by science, yet any of these things could in principle be found and presented as a fact. None of them have however. At best you can call it a category mistake to present an idea as a potential fact.
Slashdot Mirror
To re-iterate the point by the grandparent, it is even harder to change the lines in your hand than to change writing styles. Does that imply that handreading is a correct way of determining someone's future?
The factor 50 improvement you get with using the compiler, still leaves you with a large factor from actual Fortran performance. I've done some tests myself between compiled matlab and hand-written C that used the Matlab routines, and the C code beat the Matlab generated code by a factor of 20. Granted, that code used a lot of loops, but that was the reason I wanted the code to be compiled. And as for performance being irrelevant compared to quickness to write/maintain, this does not hold for numerically intensive code, where a slowdown smaller than 2 is probably acceptable, but not the orders of magnitude that Matlab seems to come with.
Today I write my bottleneck code as external C programs (mex-files) for Matlab.
Beating a dead horse, but okay. RMS does not want a BSD-license because someone can come along and lock up the software again under copyright, viz. Microsoft's ftp client. What he wants to achieve is that the software is free, but more importantly, that it stays free. This until the copyright runs out, and then its free for ever. A BSD-style license can not guarantee that. Only when copyright on software is completely abolished there is no need anymore for a copyleft license.
For me as a Dutchman, there's another thing going on as well. The Dutch parliament has instructed our government to *not* allow software patents. Obviously the Dutch ministers are now voting in *favour* of software patents in the council. Not sure if similar stuff is happening in other countries, but it's really annoying to see two successfull lobbies in the two correct democratic bodies being ignored, apparently without repercussions.
For all Dutch ./ readers out there; the Dutch minister of Economic Affairs is Brinkhorst, and unlike his party (D'66), he's apparently not convinced by the importance of the Dutch parliament. Let him know that you won't vote for his party if he continues to ignore Dutch parliament here.
The New Testament, which is what Christianity is based upon, doesn't have these monumental miracles that might show in the historical records as the Old Testament has. It's merely the philosophy (ie: non-historical) of a particular person who was by a small set of people considered the Messiah. In that sense, Christianity and Buddhism are very comparable. The philosophies of the old and new testament are very different from eachother. The Old is an account of the history of a people, while the New presents a personal account of an individual.
About the last part. What I was poorly phrasing there is indeed evidence of the miracles: where's the burning bush? In any case: what significance would it have if we found out that the Red Sea indeed was dry at a certain point? Or if we find a boat on the top of a mountain? There are numerous explanations for that, including a natural (or human induced) phenomenon that was construed to be of religious significance. Religion is a matter of faith, science a matter of reasoning. The two are not exclusive, even though I am a person of little faith.
But it's getting late and I'm losing coherence.
Sorry for nitpicking, but don't confuse science with mathematics. 2+2=4 is provably true in for instance Paeno arithmetic. What is not provably true is that the addition operator holds in the physical world: if you have two sticks of wood and add two sticks of wood to that, you have four sticks of wood. Mathematics applied to physics. However, if you have two clouds and add two more clouds, you might simply end up with a single big cloud. Here the addition operation does not transport to the scientific discourse (even though the molecules do add up). This is what measurement theory is about: how to apply mathematical operations to physical phenomena. Interesting stuff.
Actually, it goes a bit deeper than that. Darwinian evolution also predicted the existence of genes itself. Not their form or functioning, but it was a necessary part of the theory that there was a common carrier for inheritance of traits. So the actual key prediction of evolution was purely the existence of a DNA-like substance. This we take for granted nowadays, as its a fact, but scientist only started looking for it because of evolution theory. I think that since the discovery of this DNA, evolution theory has similar status as the theories of physics.
The fact that Jericho didn't exist anymore when the walls came tumbling down doesn't strike you in the least bit odd then? No problem, religious myth in a historic setting does not give credence to the religion, it gives evidence to the historic setting. No more, no less. There's no historic evidence for any of Gods interventions, even though there's plenty of historic evidence that the Judaic people were dwelling in that place at that time. Myth != history. Oh, and Buddha is as much an historical figure as Jesus.
Ball 2:
No there's not. Show me some evidence of religious (not historical) significance of the actions of the Christian God. Or of any God. I like Haephistos.
Ball 3:
Hey, you have to throw you know! You can't strike me out on the basis of the first ball alone.
Ball 4:
Mostly harmless. Part five in the increasingly inaccurately named trilogy the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
--Douglas Adams
First base!
No it doesn't. It addresses the point that if there is a particular document (string of genes) to be reached within a certain error limit, it is still impossible. My point was that there might be a wealth of documents, all giving rise to life. We've observed the outcome of one, but don't know about the magnitude of all. He talks about a minimum coding length of 256 (meaning a search space of 4^256). This assumes that the only coding space that can support life is DNA. How can he claim this? For all we know, life can arise from interactions of completely different molecules, which also has a tiny probability of success to be found. If the possibilities are numerous enough, they might simply add up.
I grant the author his scepticism though, as I'm also not very convinced by science's forays into pre-biotic evolution. It's a tough problem, but I'm sure there's a rational explanation for it. On the other hand, it could have been this 2^(-256) chance that created life in this universe, and we would be shit out of luck with our science to explain that.
My further statements about how evolution builds up and removes stuff is based on a few experiments I've done with artificial evolution (genetic programming), where indeed irreducibly complex programs evolve through mutation and selection and where a complete 'fossil' record was there to see that adding and removing stuff while retaining functionality indeed is possible. This doesn't necessarily mean that natural evolution does the same thing, but that wasn't what the analogy was used for.
Looking at the fossil record hoping to see evolution in action used to be necessary before we could actually look at the DNA itself. That has now changed, and evolution has shown to be right on the money for all its major predictions.
For Evolution Theory to work at all, it presupposes a common carrier for genetic material for all species. People started searching for that and found DNA. How is Evolution not a theory again?
Don't look at the fossil record, look at genomics. Evolution predicts that every living being ultimately has the same ancestor. More related animals have a more recent ancestor. Thus it predicts that the carrier of heritage should show similarities between species. This was stated long before this carrier, DNA, was discovered. Now looking at DNA we see that absurdly high percentages of the DNA are common in living (and fossilized) animals. As predicted. This DNA creates proteins and we see that although proteins in different animals are structurally slightly different, they still are functionally equivalent. Again predicted, but now through the neutral theory of evolution (in 1969, before efficient protein sequencers were available). Now drugs are being developed on the basis of similarity of function of different proteins. Without Evolutionary Theory there would not be a point in trying to use a protein from a chicken to test a drug for a human body. This can be done and all ultimately because of the predictive power of Evolutionary Theory.
To refute this, simply take the construction of an arch of bricks. Humans have been capable of doing this for millennia. The nice thing about a brick arch is that it is irreducibly complex: take one brick out and the entire thing collapses. Unlike what the IC people claim, people don't put a ready made arch out of nowhere, they first build supporting structure, build the arch, and then remove the supporting structure. Something similar can easily happen in evolution. Lots of structure with limited functionality gets added and added, and lots of old superfluous structure gets removed. What you end up with is a 'irreducibly complex' structure where every part has a function and there's no clear indication how it was build. Simply because the supporting structure has been removed underway.
What the page is missing is the possibility that there could easily be enormous amounts of different ways to produce life by arranging molecules and our little world just stumbled on one of them. The page argues on the basis of Hamlet, and there is only one such thing. The faulty assumption is that life is like a book, unique and you need to stumble upon the exact thing. Life is much more diverse and opportunistic, and stating that the only example we know of is the only possible configuration is a bit silly.
--Albert Einstein
And he was wrong there as well.
Nope, the existence of God is an assertion, as there is no effective test for falsifying the hypothesis. The non-existence of God however is a valid scientific hypothesis as you only have to show the existence of God to disprove it. If this happens, the existence of God becomes a fact, but it would still lack a theory explaining this existence. Facts are boring and akin to collecting stamps, building a solid theory is what matters scientifically.
Actually, Occam's razor itself has been mathematically formalized and sharpened in recent years. It's called the Minimum Description Length principle, which loosely states that the best theory is the one that minimizes (in bits) the length of the theory (in bits) plus the length of the exceptions to the theory (in bits). It is itself based on Bayes theorem, and is used in communication and learning theory, but can equally be applied to science. Unfortunately the thing itself depends on the Kolmogorov complexity and is thus uncomputable. Still, it does show that Occam's razor is a simplification of a deeper principle that is rooted in the axioms of mathematics. There's no religion there. (And no, you cannot equate mathematical axioms with religion. They're just not comparable in scope and intent.)
Luckily many religions contradict eachother, so we can logically claim that they cannot conceivably be all true. Given that they all have the same amount of (historic) evidence behind them (none), one might actually be tempted to conclude that religion and truth are two completely different concept and should not be applied to eachother. Hence any form of religious claim on truth should be disregarded.
Why can't we make evolution happen in a lab? The fact that you need a lab the size of a small planet does not make it impossible, just impractical.
Assertion: random guess
Conjecture: more or less insightful claim on the basis of analysis
Hypothesis: prediction of one or several facts. Still to be tested.
Fact: more or less random observation that can be repeatedly observed. (If things are not supported, they fall down to the earth.)
Law: very accurate equation tying together a number of facts. (Law of gravity).
Theory: time-proven explanation of a wide range of facts. (Newtonian theory of mechanics includes the laws, but covers more ground.)
So all in all, maybe the sticker is actually a good thing for evolution, as it readily claims that evolution is not a 'mere' fact, but an actual theory. Now to teach the students that science is about theory formation, with the facts as the thing to reason about. Collecting facts in themselves is as interesting as collecting stamps.
5. Faith is wrong
The truly Christian religion that you sketch has been abandoned right at the beginning. Not by all sects, just by the ones that survived and which subsequently became the Catholic and Greek-Orthodox churches. Note that this has nothing to do with Christianity, the Muslim and Hindu faith work in similar ways. More converts, more babies and intolerance to other religions. Survival of the fittest. A religion that allows condoms and is tolerant towards differently minded religions will survive two generations, max.
As an atheist, I don't think the burden of proof is on me, but let's try to clarify this. Firstly, apart from an actual manifestation from God to myself and (preferably) the rest of the world, there is no logical way to disprove God. Please tell me, how would someone go about finding the evidence to the absence of:
God
The terrible snowman
Santa Clause
the toothfairy?
In other words, although it is eminently possible to find evidence for the presence of things, (just show the thing) it is impossible to find evidence to the absence of things. Anything anyone conjures up that cannot be seen, or in other words, that is supernatural, cannot be disproven. Hence the burden of proof belongs to the theists. Despite millennia of attempts, this has failed miserably.
What I do believe in is sceptical inquiry and reasoned weighting of arguments. Under this regime, the God hypothesis fails on several counts. Given the parent's remark about the agnostic reply, I'm sure we agree about this. I do however not accept equal opportunity agnosticism: God may or may not exist, with equal odds, and if it exists, it may or not may be a Christian, Jew, Islamic or Hindu God. That's simply too easy. The matter is too improbable for that.
So I'll stick with my gospel: organized and quantified uncertainty. Call it doubt if you will. There is room for belief, but no room for faith. In this universe God is simply an exceedingly improbable possibility. Unlike agnostics, who implicitly assign equal odds to the existence or absence of a God, I'm an atheist: the likeliness of God existing I consider vanishingly small. For all practical purposes equal to zero.
Didn't do much reading did you? It's a logical impossibility to disprove the existence of a particular thing, not a scientific one. It is however 'easy' to prove existence, just present the thing. A thing that exists but cannot be observed is a linguistic joke. Compare:
There is a god
There is a terrible snowman
There is a toothfairy
Elvis lives!
None of these things can be disproven by science, yet any of these things could in principle be found and presented as a fact. None of them have however. At best you can call it a category mistake to present an idea as a potential fact.