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> This seems like a wonderfully sane way to reconcile science and religion
> without excluding either as absolutely essential to the natural world as
it is
> observable.  If God is present in all things, then all we observe,
research,
> describe or induce is, by definition, of God.

But then we would be omitting an important aspect of scientific
methodology - Occam's Razor.

The supernatural is not only irrelevant in science, it is unnecessary. When
a phenomenon, once considered para- or supernatural, becomes a part of
scientific understanding, it is no longer "beyond" our natural, physical
world; it is a part of it and it now falls within the realm of science. Some
of our present-day para- and supernatural claims may indeed turn out to
exist and when evidence is collected and the phenomenon is understood, we
will enrich our understanding and knowledge base and expand our reality. The
phenomena will no longer be defined as para- or supernatural. Some will
remain inexplicable and unknown (incapable of being proven or disproven) and
still others will warrant being thrown in the trash bin. Needless to say, by
definition there is NO para- or supernatural phenomena - if they exist, they
are part of the natural world. Relegating them to the "paranormal" or
"supernatural" realm is a bit like the "limbo" stage in Catholicism (which
I'm told has now been abolished.)

We have a probability curve in some cases - the likelihood of whether a
particular phenomenon exists. This is where Occam's Razor can be especially
useful.

My own personal take on the phenomenon of god is that a) we haven't needed
him/them to explain our reality thus far; b) we can trace the development of
belief in god(s) through history and understand how he/they came to be; c)
there are social benefits to why these sorts of beliefs may have been
invented; d) we can find the sources for the religious beliefs held by
individuals (adopting parents' belief, geographical location, education, and
so on), etc. This forces me to conclude, considering the probability curve,
that it is very unlikely that god claims have any merit. Atheism (which
literally means 'without theism' and *not* "claims god doesn't exist") is
therefore a reasonable position to hold.

Amanda

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