1. Google is the closest thing to an Omniscient (all-knowing) entity in existence, which can be scientifically verified.
2. Google is everywhere at once (Omnipresent).
3. Google answers prayers.
4. Google is potentially immortal.
5. Google is infinite.
6. Google remembers all.
7. Google can “do no evil” (Omnibenevolent).
8. According to Google trends, the term “Google” is searched for more than the terms “God”, “Jesus”, “Allah”, “Buddha”, “Christianity”, “Islam”, “Buddhism” and “Judaism” combined.
9. Evidence of Google’s existence is abundant.

Although, now I’m confused – is Google God, is is it the Flying Spaghetti Monster? Oh noodley/googley one, please give me a sign, so that I may know who to worship!

(via Williamely)

• 7 Proofs That We Live in a Computer Simulation – or Why Proofs of Gods Existance Are Unconvicing
• Why I took so long to accept evolution – a.k.a. Why every christian should read their own bible. “part of what helped me along was actually reading the Bible in high school, being horrified by much of it”
• denialism blog : I can has souls? – There is a god, and it’s a cat.
• Religion and Sexual Ethics – A nice summary of the moral position of various religions. Interesting to compare catholicism and buddhism side by side! (I think I’m with the Buddhists, here)
• LOL cat Bible – Personally, I hate this pathetic LOLspeak crap, although this picture is funny… “In teh beginning, Invisible Man make univerz. Invisible Man say, I can has light. Gots light.”

• Letter to the Editor: Kick the Atheists out of America – “I don’t care if they have never committed a crime, atheists are the reason crime is rampant.”
• Philosophy and the proof of God’s existence by Roger Jones – A nice summary of many of the traditional “proofs” of God’s existance, including the argument from design, pascals wager, and the philosophies of Kant, Hegal and others.
• What Evolution Left Behind On Humans – “I?ve always been fascinated with human evolution. To me, the most fascinating part of human evolution is learning about what was ?left behind? on our bodies from our ancestors and from our prenatal development.”
• Wife Beating – It?s therapeutic – I’m glad someone’s cleared this up. Wife beating is not a rule, it’s just therapeutic. Oh, but there are limits!
• Pharyngula: They’re running out of virgins! – Nice tasteless video about terrorists debating how many virgins they get in paradise

Creationist: You can’t prove evolution is true, 100%.

Me: But evolution has been proved true beyond a reasonable doubt. It’s like in court, to prove a defendant is guilty, the jury needs to decide that it is beyond a reasonable doubt that the claim is true.

Creationist: A ha! But innocent people are sent to jail all the time!

Me: Okay, but imagine a different court. In this one, a juror has to first pass years of tests to prove that he knows about the law and the case at hand. Then, he and a million others who also passed the test hear case after case after case. A million different defenses [sic.] are launched against the truth of the claim. Every single of the million jurors after every single of the million cases concluded that there was no reasonable doubt that the claim was true. A single juror, in one case, could say “Not true” and the defendant would go free. But that never happened, and still never happens to this day. Because this defendant gets a million trials every day. And still, not one “Not true” has been found.

That’s the case that evolution is true.

Creationist: Yeah but someday we’ll find a Not true, but for you it’ll probably be too late. Enjoy hell loser.

Me: :-\¹

It comes down to a fundamental misunderstanding of the role of science. I just recently finished my final undergraduate essay ever, On The Nature of Proof for my “History and Philosophy of Mathematics” subject. One section of the essay deals with this issue specifically²

The scientific notion of proof is not dissimilar from that in general use. While scientists (or, perhaps, the media which portrays scientific research to the public) may occasionally be casual in their use of the word “proof”, when questioned about the certainty of their results (and thus, whether their work actually constitutes “proof”), they might reply: “Scientists don’t talk about ‘proof’, period. We leave that to the mathematicians… Change the word ‘proof’ to ‘evidence’, and it makes more sense.”³

Scientists seem to have little problem admitting that they do not, in fact, prove anything. Karl Popper, whose ideas defined the modern scientific method, suggested that “scientific experimentation [is not] carried out with a view to verifying or finally establishing the truth of theories; … we can never finally prove our scientific theories, we can merely (provisionally) confirm or (conclusively) refute them”⁴

It should be clear that any use of the word “proof” in science is either accidental, or a deliberate attempt to promote “pseudo-science” or non-science as legitimate. Scientific theories may be contingently true, but it is not the goal of science to provide “proof”. While science may have higher standards of evidence than the general population, scientists (like the general population) seek “evidence that is sufficient to establish knowledge of a conclusion”⁵, not certain truth.

1. About Atheism: Proving Evolution is True
2. Rosalion, Richard (2007) On The Nature of Proof
3. Myers, P.Z. (2005, June 16) “Volokh’s question“
4. Thornton, Stephen, “Karl Popper“, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2006 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.)
5. Chappell, R. (June 17, 2005) “Evidence, Knowledge, and Proof“.