This is why Westboro Baptist Church is a joke

[Jester]

Why do they need to state that there is no other force? They don't believe another force is involved, but they really have no way of knowing what occurs in the "spiritual realm".

From the perspective of science, there is no "spiritual realm." This is not to deny is conceivable existence in a philosophical sense, but remember NOMA: if it doesn't exist, it doesn't exist, and if it does, it's outside of science's vision entirely. Science does not deal *at all* in supernatural phenomena, full stop.

And yet, NOMA is regularly violated on the other side from creationists and their re-branded "Intelligent Design" allies, who make explicit claims for the relevance of their religion, in a *tangible, measurable sense* to evolution. Science can, should, and indeed must fight back against this, at least to the point of explaining clearly that there are full, naturalistic theories consistent with the evidence that explain all of this, without recourse to any outside force. Whether you believe in one or not is irrelevant - it is not *necessary* for the functioning of evolution. That is not a religious statement, it is a scientific one.

In defense of Establishment, you seek equal protection for non-religious people from public officials talking about anything of faith. But, when the same public officials talk about faith being unnecessary, you don't defend that same spirit of Establishment.

Once again with the prevarication - such a convenient method of generating straw men! Nobody is telling children that faith is unnecessary in some cosmic sense. They are being taught that no outside force need be invoked to explain evolution - which is simply a scientific truth. No claim is being made (in the classroom) about the overall value of religion, or the necessity of faith in some social or personal sense.

It is entirely a functional claim, a question of how to parsimoniously use theory to explain observed evidence. Claiming you do not need a supernatural force to explain evolution should be no more controversial than saying you don't need a banana to make a martini.

As for cosmology... Doesn't this seem a little more mystical than science?

Not unless you completely fail to understand the scientific method. Dark matter is a specific *hypothesis* designed to explain empirical observations. It is no more than tentatively true - a speculation designed to temporarily plug a particular gap between our best theory, and our data. In time, it will either be supported by more evidence, or it will be discarded in favour of a better hypothesis. Science FTW.

Religion, meanwhile, either remains stuck in times long past, or wanders aimlessly, in response to no empirical evidence whatsoever - the attempt to understand the self-admittedly incomprehensible, with no data, no observations, no evidence.

-Jester