Hi Iano
That science has delivered him onto this dilemma horns isn't really the issue - indeed, I'm glad it has; it might cause him to stop and think about it for a while.
But that is the essence of science! To constantly think and update theories based on evidence. Contrast this with religion which is inflexible, dictated to by a millennium-plus old tome without any ability to change or adapt. That has to be the epitome of restricted thought processing...
Not that I was attacking science by the way. I was pointing out the curious circularity of view that science seems to demand you arrive at: stardust concluding it's made of stardust is one thing. Supposing itself able to pronounce that conclusion reliable is quite another
To say that you are an engineer, it's quite eye-raising that you don't appear to understand the scientific method. Science, (unlike your religion) doesn't pretend it has all the answers. The scientific data set is based on a best fit model of the universe we inhabit based on EVIDENCE around us. Sure you can babble on all you like about this might be that, and this might be something else.....but science ONLY uses what can be observed and measured in the reality we see....in the light of anything better that is the only route anyone can logically take....otherwise ANYTHING might be possible and you could be the flying spaghetti monster for all I know.
So, using observational data (the only sort we can meaningfully use), science makes predictions and theories are either rejected, subject to further scrutiny or tentatively accepted. Note the tentatively bit.....nothing is ever totally proven, only a best fit approach - with an acknowledgement that a given postulate is always up for modification or downright rejection if better data comes along....if you are an engineer you must know this!
Contrast that with your 'book'. There is no room for manoeuvre. You blindly follow the book written by those Bronze-Age mystics all those years ago....you proclaim to know 'God's word' - again based on nothing but words written aeons ago. Some of your ilk scorn archaeologists because they 'read' data in skulls and other fossils....yet they stubbornly present their version of the past in those fixed words (fossils of social evolution?!) that aren't up for modifying or reassessment in any way......and you wonder why scientists shake their heads?
For me there really is no contest - science is magnificent because of the long road it has come. People strived often in adversity (and thanks to religion - danger) to make this planet a better place. In ancient Greece and Rome there was science — mathematics, sewerage systems, spas, quality roads, philosophy and astronomy — to name a few pre-Christianity achievements. Fifteen hundred years later in sixteenth century England, people threw faeces out of their windows into open gutters, Black-Death and other diseases were rife, and in Europe people were persecuted in the Inquisitions — including many fledgling scientists. Who knows what great advances were lost during this ignorant time. I have to say Iano — there really is no contest for me!
Edited by Drosophilla, : word deletion