TheBeardedDude

I'm sure you think this reply has some value. How are opinions wrong?

Sure, religions make claims that are testable, but being tested and failing to be substantiated isn't going to cause religion (or the religious) to abandon them. Because religions and religious beliefs are not based on evidence or scientific inquiry, they are based on faith. (apparently I only get a limited number of posts as a new user and this is my last until tomorrow it appears)

I think the singular biggest threat is the GOP control of Congress. We are already seeing (over the last few years) a decrease in spending on Earth Science and NASA research, this will be yet another period of decreasing the funding further. It will be a pretty depressing few years (at least) for those of us relying on funding to get research done.

I like the quote by Stephen Jay Gould where he describes Science and Religion as "Non-overlapping magisteria." What Gould means by this is that both science and religion have fundamentally different ways of looking at the world and trying to evaluate it. As a consequence of this, science won't accept faith as a reason for believing something. So science will never accept religious assertions/beliefs. And for religion, it doesn't utilize science nor was it founded on or by scientific principles. So religions will never amend their belief systems based on scientific tests/experiments because faith-based belief isn't about validated and evidential beliefs. An example would be the biblical flood story. Geology can show that this isn't a true story, but that won't cause a believer in the flood to abandon it. Because believing it isn't based upon a scientific understanding of the world, it's based on a religious interpretation of the world.

I am mostly with you on this. Religion is inherently divisive, but so are a lot of other things (countries are too, etc). The question is whether or not religion provides a service/product that only it can provide that offsets its divisiveness. For example, countries provide defense and support and representation, etc. Making it worth it to live in a country as opposed to not. I don't think religion provides anything one couldn't get from a secular group/institution and as a consequence I too think the world would be better without religion.

As CharonY noted, there are a lot of organisms that can and do thrive in anoxic/euxinic settings. The redox ladder below will give you an idea of what groups of organisms live in anoxic settings and how their metabolisms work.