PP,

I notice your statement that "the universe does not dissemble, only people do" draws a dividing line between people and the Universe. Remember, we are the universe, or part of it. And i would further argue that many other things besides people dissemble. Angler fish have lures resembling small fish which bring in larger fish for them to eat. My cat pretends I have not fed her so that my wife will feed her again. In other words, all consciousness, at whatever level, is capable of dissembling, including souls, Demons and God, if indeed they exist.

actually I agree with everything else you've said, with some reservations. I notice, for example, thay you say:

"The idea that studying sciences and mathematics involves learning lots of facts and ideas which you must take at face value without evidence is nonsense. "

but follow it up immediately with:

"Obviously building a practical accelerator isn't a practical possibility for most people so you have to take the word of the participants that results from experiments that have been repeated are correct."

In other words, your only real evidence is the word of someone else.

Please understand, I don't mean to be anti-science! I was NOT saying that scientists are unjustified in taking someone's word that repeated experiments have yielded results. My point was that, to the majority of people, including scientists, the process by which we come to believe that atoms exist is the same process by which we come to believe that souls exist: a combination of personal experiences that we feel intuitively support those hypotheses (if we're lucky), and the word of people with intellectual authority.

This hasn't been a bad thing for the human race; after all, one of our big advantages over most other species is language, and it acts as an advantage precisely because we can communicate our observations to others so that they don't have to make all those observations themselves. Science, like all other areas of advanced human endeavor, needs to build on what has gone before. So "taking people's word for it" is a big part of science as it is in other areas of life. That's not a knock on science. But it challenges the notion that "scientific knowledge" is somehow different from other kinds of knowledge.

My biggest point about science hinges on your capitalized credo: "IF IT AIN'T TESTABLE ITS USELESS." I would disagree with that in some cases. Things may be useless for certain purposes. But they can be life savers in others. The obvious relevant example, given the foregoing: I cannot test whether God or souls exist, but this is not a useless proposition.

This is where the arrogance of people comes in. Why is it useless? If it really IS useless, why do the vast majority of people make it part of their lives to explore this idea? If it is scientifically useless, moreover, why do so many scientists, including for example Einstein, claim that their involvement with the scientific exploration of the nature of the universe makes them MORE convinced that God and souls exist?

Hmmm....maybe I shold have called myself "God's Advocate" :-)