Quote:
Originally Posted by maskedmelon
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Difference is, with science one can determine the veracity of claims if they like :/
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This isn't exactly the difference of Science and Religion, but it's close. The strength of a theory is not in what it can explain, it is in what it can accurately predict. This is where every single religious theory falls flat on its face. While "God did it" serves as an explanation, it tells you nothing new about a phenomenon, nor can you use that theory to make any kind of accurate prediction of what you expect to find about the phenomenon.
For example, with the Theory of Evolution there have been thousands of predictions made about the kinds of fossils we'd expect find in the ground without explicitly knowing about them first that proved to be true. Intelligent Design could not have made those predictions, nor can anyone make any predictions about what they can expect to find given Intelligent Design as a premise. It's a useless theory.
With Science, you're not doing anything more than making a guess about what you are observing. Then, using that guess you make predictions about what you can and cannot expect to observe if your guess is true. For instance, if you guess that hail is caused by ice makers in the sky, you would predict that if you were to go up to the sky in a hail storm you'd see some ice makers plugged into a cloud. If you go up there and see no ice makers, you would predict that there is no hail. If you do go up in the sky during a hail storm to test your theory, and you find no ice-makers, but it's still hailing, you know your theory is wrong and it's time to make another guess.
Religion makes guesses (guesses that quite frequently contradict each other), but it doesn't test guesses and the guesses it makes predict nothing. That is the difference between Science and Religion.