h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Science has also evolved for thousands of years, working up from the basest experiments, up until now where we are performing very complex procedures, spending millions on research and developing innumerable quantities of special eqiuipments; and what have we got to show for it? Two identical sheep clones. Personally I wouldn't profess science to be close in power to that of an omnipotent being, real or not.

Two identical sheep clones? Is that really what you think? Do you drive a car, watch TV, own a computer, have enough to eat, a warm place to live in, influenza does not kill you, life expectation of about 75 years (and so on, for hours)???

That is science!!!

One might have spotted that I was being intentionally controversial; do you believe everything I say? Do you honestly think that because my name is Albino Lagomorph that there actually is a white rabbit sitting typing these messages? Still, never try to justify the greatness of science by mentioning an invention that allows me to watch Jerry Springer 24 hours a day, and as for a warm place to live in, a cave and a fire can do that; none of this central heating malarky. Ho-ho-ho.

Sorry, but you leave me quite confused about what you wanted to say in the first place.

Ermmm... something about... ermmm hang on. Look over there! *points to the distance and runs off in the opposite direction*

This debate is verging on the irrelavent .

Regarding the power of science, it is the process of finding out what the limits are, and how to avoid them (or at least make them less important). The limit on god interfering comes from the fact that for any change, you get a combinatorial explosion, the severity being proportional to the size of the change, so if you want to predict the effect of your meddlng, you keep the changes as small as you can.
Science has now advanced to the point where we are starting to have a good idea what we think, and in which part of the brain we think it. Using biofeedback, and sensors, we can influence the type of thinking that we do, and learn to induce that thinking mode at will. you can use (soon) gene therapy in the gut to cure diabetes, and you can regrow spinal cord (within 5-10 years) to make quadraplegics walk.
You can also spot what effects you are having on the environment (ie the ozone holes), find outwhat causes them, and take measures that are already starting to cure them. I don't think that is a bad result for a system of thought that is only about 600 years old.

Yeah but God, and science and stuff... had you thought of that? *Is beginning to wonder where the original arument went*

It is very easy:

Science is a method to gain knowledge of nature.

Gods are symbols for feelings about nature and mankind.

Religions are cyberspaces.

Science has the fault that it tries to explain everything, and when it cannot explain something it says there is nothing to be explained - Professor Van Helsing of "Dracula" fame said that, or words to such an effect. Just thought I'd throw that in to the fray.

Well said, and science also has a few other faults.
It is funded in such a way that the funders only want results that confirm what they already beleive, or that supports their viewpoint over the truth.
It is notoriously bad at explaining itself.
It is notoriously bad at makingit's experiments "failsafe", so when something goes wrong, they don't have a containment policy to deal with it.
It isn't very good at the looser, social sciences, but then neither is anything else.
It has a tendency to know more and more about less and less, while being very bad at diseminating its findings outside its own discipline. There is currently no solution to this problem from any source, so any suggestions welcome.
On the whole though, there isn't yet anything better to replace it, so I think that we are stuck with the present form for now. After all, it is still fairly new.
Scientists also have the problem that they think when they have explained something that they have explained it away, and this is only due to bad presentation by the scientist. when you explain something, it brings forth new wonderfull things, which also need explaining, and enrich the original problem.
Where we should have the gods, is in the areas where there are no satisfactory scientific answers, and leave science alone to do its job (as long as its scrutinised).

Gosh.

I would disagree with "It is funded in such a way that the funders only want results that confirm what they already beleive, or that supports their viewpoint over the truth."

Over here, it's largely funded by corporations that want to make millions selling some new product from scientific research. Alternatively funded by the government, which would much rather fund work that generates new or challenges old knowledge - "yep, we were right" is not considered a good way to spend tax payers money.

Yes, there are mistakes where tobacco companies fund research on the effect of ciggies, or Monsanto and GM - but those are isolated examples, not indicative of the entire discipline.

The problem of disseminating findings outside the group is a problem, I suggest, with all large bodies of knowledge - getting into a new area of any kind often is a rather sharp learning curve - and that includes stuff like Shakespeare.

Although you are right about vested interests funding, you are a little optimistic about government funding.
As an example, take particle accellerators. To produce any meaningful results from these massive machines, you have to repeat some experiments that you already know the answer too, so that you can callibrate the scales on the incredibly complex machine. Only then do meaningfull results come out, but the government funding used to pay for these machines won't let you do those experiments, because we already know the answers, and to guarentee next years funding, you have to produce something dramatic this year. However, not doing the elementary experiments means you don't have any way to callibrate your new results, and thus potentially invalidate those results.
An example of partisan funding is tobacco companies funding research that justifies their position, and gagging the researchers whenthe experiments don't produce the desired results.
As for corporations funding research, most of whet they want to fund is engineering, not science. This is not to say it is not valuable, as it definately is, but it is mainly about taking what we already know, and then progressing it to the point where it can be used in cd players, and other consumer goods, not about discovering something totally new.

And I think that conclusively proves that God is a small type of Siberian monkey.

No, it only proves that she has an EVIL sense of humour. Probably hasn't forgiven science for toppling the church from it's unjustified place at the top of the tree.