From secular scientist Dr Marcello Gleiser, winner of the Templeton Prize, "It's extremely arrogant from scientists to come down from the ivory towers and make these declarations without understanding the social importance of belief systems."
I presume that he is referring to religious worldviews. Important to whom? Religions aren't important to me or anybody else who has learned to navigate life outside of all of them. What I find arrogant is somebody like this telling me that I should value or respect a belief system because somebody else needs it. That's fine for them, just as some people need glasses to see well. But I'd say that being able to see well without glasses is preferable, as is living without religion for those who can.
We don't need religions for there to be social cohesion. In fact, religions are a major source of bigotry, hatreds, and wars.
"When you hear very famous scientists making pronouncements like ... cosmology has explained the origin of the universe and the whole, and we don't need God anymore. That's complete nonsense," he added. "Because we have not explained the origin of the universe at all."
We don't need a god hypothesis for anything any more. We have naturalistic hypotheses and theories to account for how the world works every day (why the sun appears to go through the sky without invoking Apollo, how lightning forms without Thor, etc), how the universe and the life in it evolved from (material evolution = Big Bang cosmology, biological evolution), and for the origins of these seed states (multiverse generates the seeds of universes, chemical evolution = abiogenesis generates the first replicators).
Gods have been excluded from the daily operation of the universe (leading to the birth of deism) and its evolution. They have not been excluded from the twin origins problems, but they are not needed until naturalistic possibilities have been ruled out, a very unlikely occurance given that we only see supernaturalistic explanations being ruled out (no more Thor or Apollo) and replaced with naturalistic ones
Yeah, and because created things exist, we have strong evidence for Creator.
You're begging the question if to you, created means deliberately created by a sentient, volitional, potent agent. Mindless processes also create. Plate tectonics tells us how the earth creates volcanoes, earthquakes, and mountain ranges, but no other creator (or Creator) than the earth's crust, the magma below it, and the laws of physics is needed.
Obviously, you could claim that everything came to exist by chance, but that is logically very poor belief, because we don’t see any evidence for such thing to be possible.
You don't see the evidence that our present universe could have arisen due to blind natural forces absent an intelligent designer? I do, as do millions of other people.
Life exists, science doesn´t know how it exists, therefore, God created life.
There s no physical evidence of God, all things have physical evidence, therefore God does not exist.
Both syllogisms are valid, both logical, yet opposite of one another.
Neither of those syllogisms is valid. Both contain logical fallacies. They are two forms of argument from ignorance, one saying that if you can't tell us how life came to exist, it must be due to a god, and the other being that if you can't produce evidence of a god, god are ruled out.
Logic has little value in determining anything about God.
I can rule out the god of the Christian Bible with logic alone. That god is described as possessing mutually exclusive traits at the same time, such as having and granting free will while also knowing all future events, or who is perfect, but also makes errors that he regrets and tries to correct as with the flood story. The law of contradiction tells us that no such thing can exist.
This argument doesn't rule out the possibility of gods, just logically impossible ones.
I've even heard atheists refer to themselves as spiritual, not because they believe in a supernatural or spiritual realm, but rather, because they are not afraid to admit that the human mind has all kinds of components.
Agreed. The religious have no monopoly on spirituality. Furthermore, I would add that they misinterpret the spiritual experience, which is one of euphoria, a sense of mystery and wonder, a sense of gratitude, a sense of awe, and a sense of connectivity. These are generated by our own minds - pleasant psychological states, but just psychological states nevertheless, not due to experiencing a god.
Scientific knowledge greatly enhances the spiritual experience of one's world. Looking out at the night sky and recognizing what you are experiencing - how connected we are to that star, how far the drop of light has traveled to inform one's eyes of its presence, and the understanding that we are made of stardust, is an authentic spiritual experience.
I find nothing spiritual in believing in spirits like gods, angels, and demons. Nor in a faith like Christianity that rips the adherent out of his universe, describing matter and flesh as base, man as sick, recommending detaching oneself from the world and not trusting one's own mind not to be a demon trying to steal his soul. He is told to deflect his attention and gratitude to a god and place that don't exist (see the logical ), and to live life as if he is waiting at some kind of cosmic bus stop waiting to be carried away to someplace better. I find nothing spiritual there. That's the opposite of connectivity. That's alienation at just about every level.
