Whether it was intentional or not, your [2] paragraph there seems to reveal part of your own identity with the scientific community, primarily because of the way it was phrased. It reads as if the scientist is completely and entirely committed to the rational, while cleverly mentioning that those identifying with religion clearly toss the evidence out of the window.

Of course the literalist does this because his world-view does not permit it, but this sophistry ignores the larger picture that both the scientist and the literalist hold equally irrational worldviews -- one in scientific naturalism and one in the Bible + scientific empiricism.

Both world-views are far from grounded in complete rationality and both world-views function on powerful assumptions that hardly qualify either individual as completely rational, a distinct difference from how your paragraph depicts the two individuals. I think robg states it best here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=396215

Of course, I am a Christian and have my passionate identity tied to this discussion, but it was interesting how you chose to portray the scientist as rational and the religious believer as irrational. Was that intentional, or was it a little bit of personal identity peeking through in your writing?

This is not my attempt to "read into" your writing, but given this context of personal identity (which we know both consciously and subconsciously shapes everything we do), I was interested to know if your writing here was shaped by your own identity. I'm pretty confident it was, given that you're definitely not trying to deceive anyone here, but you are certainly providing a slanted view on reality.

I believe the scientific community is defined by complete commitment to the rational. Sure, there are people who claim to be scientists, but the scientific method is an exercise in pure rationality.

As well, generally speaking, ultra-religious people tend to discount evidence that contradicts their faith.

In contrast, ultra-scientific people accept new evidence that contradicts their previously-held beliefs. They update the model and move on.

I'm sure there are examples to the contrary and I do see a "No true Scotsman" fallacy looming on the horizon of this line of argument.

You would do best to rephrase that statement in far less concrete terms, because scientists (more specifically -- "scientists" trying to answer "why" and "how" our existence came about) are hardly playing in the arena of complete and total rationality.

As I linked before, scientists far smarter than myself have noted that the rational scientific method used in empirical observation oversteps its rational boundaries when it attempts to answer existential questions -- those are the only real questions that are even disputed between religion and science. No intelligent religious person questions the complete rationality of empirical observation and the scientific method behind that, so the only domain were talking about here is that which is under dispute.

In this domain of dispute between religion and science, where it's pretty evident both world-views are in fact NOT completely rational (i.e. conjecturing about the unobservable and unmeasurable), it would only be fair to say that neither the scientist or religious believer has a completely rational answer that explains their own existence. This is a distinct difference from how the scientist and religious believer are subjectively viewed as concretely rational vs. irrational, when it is crystal clear that is not the true big picture of the differing world-views.

Nevertheless, the major problem here is that these questions of existence are answered in the name of Science. The common person understands science to be the authority on all things rational, because they've seen it in practical use on all things empirical. The only problem is that most fail to realize that the scientific method only has true rational authority in the domain of the empirical. Can't you see the inherent problem here? Science has no more authority in answering existential questions than any other world-view, because all of science's rational authority comes from the empirical, where things can be measured, observed, modified, etc.