Atheism or religion --- which is better for science

• Comfort about how futile one's entire life is in an atheistic reality, as well as that futility for close ones to them who have passed.
  
• A sense of unity and harmony in society, in other words a sense of 'community'.
  

1. Religious and scientific thinking are different and disharmonious 
   
2. Religion is illogical and has to use trickery and indoctrination to convince people
   
3. The so called value of religion is comfort and meaning, not ultimate truth
   

The antagonism we thus witness between Heligionand Science is the continuation of a struggle that commenced when Christianity began to attain political power. A divine revelation must necessarily be intolerantof contradiction ; it must repudiate all improvement initself, and view with disdain that arising from the progressive intellectual development of man. But ouropinions on every subject are continually liable to modification, from the irresistible advance of human knowledge. [William, J. 1881]

Research on this topic began with the eminent US psychologist James H. Leuba and his landmark survey of 1914. He found that 58% of 1,000 randomly selected US scientists expressed disbelief or doubt in the existence of God, and that this figure rose to near 70% among the 400 “greater” scientists within his sample [1].  Leuba repeated his survey in somewhat different form 20 years later, and found that these percentages had increased to 67 and 85, respectively [2]. Leuba attributed the higher level of disbelief and doubt among “greater” scientists to their “superior knowledge, understanding, and experience”2. [nature]

• prevents the discussion of new ideas
  
• distracts smart people
  
• harms the skills of skepticism and logical thinking
  
• mixes truth with feelings
  
• coerces people to believe false claims
  
• contributes nothing to science
  
• tries to censor science
  
• introduces assumptions that violates scientific integrity
  
• takes credit for scientific progress after fighting fiercely against it for centuries (e.g: christianity)
  

• is not religious
  
• is the default intelectual position
  
• makes more and better scientists
  

See how Earth moves around the Sun? Its current elliptical path gives us winter and summer, without bringing us too close to our star.

Since the Sun is 330,000 times heavier than Earth, its gravitational influence pulls the Earth towards it. Luckily, our planet moves sideways from the Sun’s pull, and fast enough, so that it doesn’t get sucked into that giant ball of hot plasma.

But up the gravity on Earth by just a little bit, and you ruin everything. If Earth’s gravity was just 5% stronger, the increase would warp our planet’s near-perfect circlular orbit into a tighter elliptical path.

Summers and winters would become a lot harsher, the intense climate change would spark widespread famine and would likely collapse the world economy. And yet, there might be some survivors.

Your heart and lungs will be strained under the increased pressure. Breathing gets harder, and your blood pressure skyrockets. Imagine, you’re basically giving yourself a piggy back 24/7. Sleeping gives you bed sores, stairs get scary, and trips and falls might even become fatal!

Speaking of falls, our infrastructure, our technology, and nature itself, aren’t equipped to handle this type of force.

Buckling under twice the weight they were built for, buildings and bridges would collapse; planes would also fall from the sky; and satellites would tumble back to Earth; since they’d no longer be traveling at the right orbital velocity.

Trees would collapse under their own weight, or they would die from not being able to pump water as high as they used to. New ones growing in their place would be much shorter and thicker in order to accomodate the new constraints of double gravity.

And like that, perpaps humans would evolve the same way: decreased height, thicker veins, increased bone density.

Barring the severe climate change that would occur, such as atmospheric compression and increased radioactivity, we might actually be able to build a nice little life for ourselves. That is, one where everything is smaller and closer to Earth, but what’s wrong with that anyway?

The strength of gravity
When the Big Bang occurred billions of years ago, the matter in the universe was uniformly distributed. There were no stars, planets or galaxies—just particles floating about in the dark void of space. As the universe expanded outwards from the Big Bang, gravity pulled ever-so-gently on the matter, gathering it into clumps that eventually became stars and galaxies. But gravity had to have just the right force—if it was a bit stronger, it would have pulled all the atoms together into one big ball. The Big Bang—and our prospects—would have ended quickly in a Big Crunch. And if gravity was a bit weaker, the expanding universe would have distributed the atoms so widely that they would never have been gathered into stars and galaxies.

The strength of gravity has to be exactly right for stars to form. But what do we mean by “exactly”? Well, it turns out that if we change gravity by even a tiny fraction of a percent—enough so that you would be, say, one billionth of a gram heavier or lighter—the universe becomes so different that there are no stars, galaxies, or planets. And with no planets, there would be no life. Change the value slightly, and the universe moves along a very different path. And remarkably, every one of these different paths leads to a universe without life in it. Our universe is friendly to life, but only because the past 13.8 billion years have unfolded in a particular way that led to a habitable planet with liquid water and rich chemistry.

The formation of carbon
Carbon is the element upon which all known life is based. Carbon atoms form in the cores of stars by fusion reactions. In these reactions, three helium atoms collide and fuse together to make a carbon atom. However, in order for that fusion reaction to work, the energy levels must match up in just the right way, or the three helium atoms would bounce off of each other before they could fuse.

To create this unusual match-up of energies, two physical forces (the strong and electromagnetic forces) must cooperate in just the right way. The slightest change to either the strong or electromagnetic forces would alter the energy levels, resulting in greatly reduced production of carbon. The values are tuned so that carbon is produced efficiently, leading to abundant amounts of an element we need for life.

The stability of DNA
Every atom has a nucleus of protons and neutrons and a cloud of electrons swirling around it. When an atom binds with another atom to make a molecule, the charged protons and electrons interact to hold them together. The mass of a proton is nearly 2,000 times the mass of the electron (1,836.15267389 times, to be precise). But if this ratio changed by only a small amount, the stability of many common chemicals would be compromised. In the end, this would prevent the formation of many molecules, including DNA, the building blocks of life. As theologian and scientist Alister McGrath has pointed out,1
[The entire biological] evolutionary process depends upon the unusual chemistry of carbon, which allows it to bond to itself, as well as other elements, creating highly complex molecules that are stable over prevailing terrestrial temperatures, and are capable of conveying genetic information (especially DNA).

These are just a few examples.
Evidence for fine-tuning is recognized by physicists and astronomers of all religions and worldviews, and has been for decades. As agnostic Steven Weinberg, a Nobel Laureate in Physics, wrote,

…how surprising it is that the laws of nature and the initial conditions of the universe should allow for the existence of beings who could observe it. Life as we know it would be impossible if any one of several physical quantities had slightly different values.

Whether universe or multiverse, God is the Creator
When some atheists argue that the multiverse weakens the case for God’s existence, they overstep what science itself can claim. The multiverse models are fascinating and address scientific questions in this universe, but at a scientific level the predictions for other universes are virtually impossible to verify. But even if a multiverse model were well-established on a scientific level, it would not and could not replace God. No scientific theory can. From the perspective of biblical faith, science merely investigates the physical world that God created and sustains.

The physicists who are investigating the multiverse include Christians who ponder the multiverse as God’s creation. The multiverse raises theological questions that need consideration (see for example physicist Robert Mann’s discussion).  And yet, as physicist Gerald Cleaver writes, if multiverse theories are shown to be correct, it would be “the next step in understanding the beauty, splendor, complexity, and vastness of God’s creation.”

 a system of beliefs including claims about the supernatural

not being religious

the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment.

a system of beliefs including claims about the supernatural

the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment.

not being religious