[_Stefan_]

Sophie, organisms have been evolving immune attacks and defenses for billions of years. If there is a way to attack, there is a way to defend. How have we run out of antibiotics? Have you heard about rational drug design?

Who is even able to say that a particular problem is completely unsolvable? If there are scientifically valid questions that are unsolvable, which are they, and why? How do you know that advances in science and technology in the future will not enable those "unsolvable" questions to be answered? That's how it has been for the questions asked since science began. It is not an unreasonable or arrogant optimism. Who is qualified to put a limit anywhere?

I would like to support BC's universe-map idea, it's a poetic concept, but I would consider the scientific method to be a more practical map.

[lyner]

I appreciate that a certain amount of optimism is necessary or the species would give up trying.

'The real thing' is not a map of the real thing. A totally one-to-one mapping of one system onto another takes up space, resources, mass etc. This system is, by definition, not part of the original system so it does not 'contain' the totality of information. This is a bit of a red herring but I used it as a counter example to the idea that Science can ever know it all.

As far as antibiotics are concerned, I thought there were strains of TB for which we had no drugs. Is that no longer true?

But, in any case, we are into diminishing returns, here. All over the world there are human bodies in which there are new strains of disease evolving. There are a very few laboratories responding to this and all they do is the best that they can. In the end, we aim at a least worst solution. Resources tend to be channeled into diseases which affect the privileged. The poor masses are catered for much less.

No one is actually qualified to identify the limit - it's set by the amount of resources that humans want to, or can afford to, put in.

The logical proof (are there holes in it?) to my original statement is that there are more problems than people with time to solve them. That implies that we can never solve them all.
BUT this is not a gloomy fact; it needn't bother anyone any more than the existence of death. We just do our best and shouldn't need to ask any more than that.

[Madidus_Scientia]

I'm sure it has, at least, already explained why we make use of a God. Humans and all other animals have needed optimal rules to work by in order to survive best and propagate the various species.
A highly intelligent species like H. Sapiens needs a built-in strict controlling influence to make it 'behave right' and it is not surprising that genes have evolved to give us a need for a higher authority. We behave badly enough as it is and, without a God figure, we'd have hacked each other to pieces long ago.

Do you mean we need religion to give us morals? You say without a god figure we would have hacked each other to pieces, what about all the people that have been hacked to pieces in the name of religion?

[_Stefan_]

Regarding antibiotics, there are pathogens we don't have treatments for now, but which given enough R & D could be combated in future.

I'm glad that you've said that the limit depends on time, resources, etc, rather than some intrinsic limit on which valid scientific questions can be answered, which was how I understood your position initially. In this case I agree with you.

[lyner]

Do you mean we need religion to give us morals? You say without a god figure we would have hacked each other to pieces, what about all the people that have been hacked to pieces in the name of religion?

Yes - but we haven't hacked ourselves totally to pieces, yet.
We all need a Jimminy Cricket in there to control our worst excesses and to help us make 'good' choices. We are a very social species and get our initial life training from parents or equivqlent. As a group it is reasonable to invent a common super-parent figure which is described as God to replace the parental influence. Sometimes this was the Chief of a tribe or Emperor.
Humanism can achieve self regulation too, but it is a very intellectual 'faith' which is atheistic. Your average person may not have the time to think each decision out from square one and Religion provides the same sort of answers that a Parent would have given to children.
People will naturally fight each other and, human nature (another gene) often makes them hijack the God influence and use it as an excuse for shocking behaviour. I am not forgiving what religions have done, I am merely explaining it away.
Although I am not a believer I feel that (the better behaved) religions are better for a society than no religion. That sounds very condescending / smug, I know, but I often feel that, if more people thought about ethics and 'spiritual' matters as much as I do, personally, the World would be a nicer place to live in.

[Madidus_Scientia]

Although I am not a believer I feel that (the better behaved) religions are better for a society than no religion. That sounds very condescending / smug, I know, but I often feel that, if more people thought about ethics and 'spiritual' matters as much as I do, personally, the World would be a nicer place to live in.

Indeed, but I also think if more people thought full stop the world would be a nicer place, the ethics and morals come naturally.

"Children should be taught how to think, not what to think".

[lyner]

Absolutely.
But, by making that comment, you have demonstrated yourself to be thinking on a higher level than most  (compliment) and would probably 'behave yourself' in a way that would be better for the species.
However,  you  have made the mistake of thinking that other people are ever likely to 'think'  in a useful way, collectively, without the help of a 'Metaphor', such as a God.
My thesis is that evolution has caused humans to use this Metaphor in lieu of  'thinking'.

This, unfortunately, is no more able to be proved than is the actual existence of a God.

[captnsaj]

"Atheism is as much a faith as Christianity "
In the same sense that bald is a hair colour.

Strictly speaking, since I can't prove that there is no God, I ought to be described as agnostic on this matter.
Oddly, nobody describes me as agnostic when I say I don't believe in the tooth fairy, but my reasons for disbelief are pretty much the same. Equally, I don't know of anyone who describes a child's fear of the "monsters under the bed" as being a matter of religious faith.

Atheism is generally taken not just to mean the belief that there is no God, but a more general feeling that one only believes in things for which there is positive evidence.
As it happens, science generally does the same thing.

The atheists that I have met are dead set on the fact that there is absolutely no God. period.  I have no idea what they base this "fact" on and the tout it as scientific fact.  You may personally not believe in the toothfairy, but science can come up with a set of experiments based on the definition of a toothfairy to prove or disprove his/her existence.  Even then, there would be a certain amount of uncertainty (the p value).
The God that most religions believe (the "Big Three" as it were) is thought to exist outside the rules of our known Universe.  Afterall, how can He create something and then be bound by it?  Therefore, we cannot scientifically prove nor disprove God.
I have an old blog post about this:
newbielink:http://captnsaj.blogspot.com/2007/06/atheism-is-not-scientific.html [nonactive]