Prometheus

There are so many flavours of Buddhism that you'd be able to find some for which this is the case and others for which it is not. (Buddhism doesn't actually teach reincarnation but rebirth - the difference being there is no permanent self, soul or mind which passes between lives.)

It is at least possible (though i have no idea how likely) that science could sufficiently progress to explore pre-big bang. The question will then be what came before that and so on... I think there will always be something we do not know about. Personally, rather than say godditit i would rather say dunno, but each to their own. I'm not sure there are enough conservative religious people on here to get their view on that. I can offer an anecdote from my childhood: in science class a muslim friend of mine and i were banished to the naughty corner, so we used to just talk between ourselves. He explained once that he thought both the story of Adam and Eve and evolution was true - Adam and Eve were monkeys and then later evolved into humans. Not quite anti-science but it shows how religion provides a framework in which people understand things which could subvert a proper understanding of something.

I agree it doesn't: i misread your statement as something else (and gave you a -1 so bad was my reading: would be awesome if someone reading could chuck a +1 in there.) But this is a step forward for now we can place god in that category of things that cannot ever be disproved, like the Taoists have always done.

If that is the only claim made by about a god then i agree. We think of it as the only claim of most moderate people's god because science has set limits on what can be said about god. No longer can people say, 'yes, god just came along and parted that massive sea over there'. Surely science would have something to say about that?

Probably, but science does have something to say about the issue. I think It's important because science can do religion a massive favour here: by giving limits on what religion should be talking about. They don't have to worry about how the universe came to be, or the nature of of celestial bodies. Science has it covered, and if there gaps in a knowledge the track record of science gives us every confidence that it is the correct method to plug the gap. This liberates religions to consider more important things like how best to bring communities together, and how best to live the lives we are given. Consider, it is only because of the progress science has made that you can say god is outside the remit of science. Before such progress religions were free to make up all sorts of claims about how their god influences the world. Science has in effect defined what god cannot be: that is very important. So while i agree with you that scientists can say "We have no need of that hypothesis,"for religious people what science has to say about what cannot be is extremely important.

Well, transubstantiation is still official Catholic belief: surely we can test that quite easily. It might seem a small point but in religions making all sorts of claims, influencing a large swathe of people i think it is important that they outline whether all, some or none of their scriptures are to be taken literally - and if some, specifically which ones. Else violent verses could be taken to be commandments from god.

Time won't account for how i've aged:

I'm Prometheus. Interested in science, currently learning some maths. Want to hone my debating skills.