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I'd like to weigh in with some observations concerning the compatibility between religion and science discussed in recent editorials. Scientists who believe in a volitional God aren't going against any scientific evidence. Indeed, it's hard to imagine what could constitute scientific proof that God doesn't exist. Phrasing this another way, the existence of God is not a fully testable proposition. If the question of the existence of God is viewed from a scientific perspective, this untestabil

Written byDavid Wolpert
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I'd like to weigh in with some observations concerning the compatibility between religion and science discussed in recent editorials.

Scientists who believe in a volitional God aren't going against any scientific evidence. Indeed, it's hard to imagine what could constitute scientific proof that God doesn't exist. Phrasing this another way, the existence of God is not a fully testable proposition.

If the question of the existence of God is viewed from a scientific perspective, this untestability is in fact quite a shortcoming. Occam's razor frowns heavily upon untestable hypotheses. What's more, there is no evidence for God, the belief of human beings in such a deity being easily explicable in psychological terms. In addition, every hypothesis put forward by religion which is testable and which has been questioned by science (the age of the Earth, for example) has, after exhaustive study, been found to be wrong.

None of this actually ...

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