Now, I'm going to ruffle a few feathers here, but hear me out. It is my contention that an absolute position of atheism is poor science and that a scientist who holds it is operating from a preconceived bias that taints his research.

Science is, in essence, the quest for knowledge. We attempt to discover more and more about our universe through a series of observations, hypotheses, and tests. And, through the course of history, we have discovered much.

But each breakthrough discovery was the result of someone realizing there was something to be observed beyond their five senses. And so they devised instruments to observe the unobservable, measure the immeasurable. And we owe much to their research, for without it, we might never have discovered that the earth revolves around the sun, or the existence of the North and South American continents, or the atom...and we most certainly would have no clue about DNA. All of these discoveries and many others as well came about because a scientist dared challenge longheld empirical observations of others.

The metaphysical is not a nonexistent world; it is simply a world that is unobservable using our current standards of observation. We have limited capacity to observe beyond our five senses, but just because we can't observe it doesn't make it any less real. The fact is that the atheistic scientist accepts as much on faith as the fundamental Christian, or Jew, or Muslim. Carbon dating, for instance, must rely on the THEORY that carbon decay is constant in diverse climates and conditions throughout an extended period of time. Granted, it's a theory that seems to hold up, but the same EMPIRICAL evidence that the atheist demands for the existence of a god is lacking in the theory of carbon dating. The same could be said of evolution from one CLASS of animals to another; there is simply no empirical observation of a reptile giving birth to a bird. It just doesn't happen, and much of the system of the two classes of animals are different; enough so that a reasonable scientist SHOULD question the absolutism of those who claim this evolutionary pattern.

I have heard it said that the only intellectually defensible position in the area of spirituality is agnosticism. While pure atheism contradicts a truly scientific approach, so does "pure" belief in any PARTICULAR religion (again, one's bias taints the results).

The problem I have with atheism is that it is an ABSOLUTE position...and declares definitively that one can know the unknowable; that is, the existence or nonexistence of God. Atheism, then, is as much grounded in emotion as is Christianity, or any other faith. It is not in any manner objective.

Still wonder why I consider it a religion?