What basis is there for that assertion?
It only makes sense. For God to have created things, He was here before the questions were conceived, let alone answered. So, He provided the answers when asked.
While I agree, I'm making a different point, which is that any theistic religion's claim of exclusive truth and exclusive moral authority is built on a house of cards of assumptions. To prove the existence of a single god, we would have to disprove the existence of many gods. To substantiate the rest of the claim, we would have to prove that the god controls natural events, that the god has any interest in human affairs, and on and on.
The truth and moral authority are claims any and all can make. It's entirely up to each individual what they determine the truth to be, what they conclude their moral authority will be. Religion may claim it, but it doesn't make it true for each individual. Many a person has chosen death over denying their beliefs.
No, the "guess" originates with observation and current knowledge. It's not just the product of imagination.
Observation, like talking with a burning bush?
Most of science actually does come from imagination which is then tested. The Big Bang theory we were discussing was actually denied by the person who more or less proved it, because he (Einstien) refused to accept (regardless of fact put before him) that the universe was not a constant - had not always existed. It took a scientist (who happened to also be a priest) to put forth what Einstein demonstrated - the Big Bang. When the Pope of the time said this was a form of proof of the Bible, the scientist (who also happened to be a priest) asked the Pope to stop saying that, or his scientific answer to a scientific question would not be viewed by the science community as a valid argument. To understand it took this scientist's imagination to comprehend what was being shown in Einstein's equations, and extrapolate an imaginative answer. Then, Hubble tested it.
One doesn't start with an assumption. One starts with observations and with current knowledge.
Of course science doesn't have a final answer to the origin of life. It doesn't pretend to have that answer, and it doesn't have to have one. Science doesn't automatically assume that life arose from nonlife, but it doesn't reject the possibility, either. Assuming that a supernatural entity created life leads to the question of what caused the entity to come into being.
I agree, it doesn't answer ALL questions any more than theistic thoughts do. But, theistic thoughts are more inclusive in possibilities into the why's, not just the how's.
Not necessarily. Scholars theorize that Judaism was influenced by the Sumerians' religion and later religions in that region, where the ancestors of the Jews lived in captivity for a time. Similarly, the supernatural aspects of the stories about Jesus may have been influenced by the stories about Mithras. The larger issue is that religious symbols are really metaphors for ideas that are often labeled as philosophical. Attempting to read the symbols as literal historical facts not only creates the problem of proof, but also takes the focus away from the metaphorical meaning.
I'm not sure how it takes away from the meaning to believe they're literally true, but I do understand that the stories are told on more than one level. That actually adds credence to the stories to me - there WAS a garden of Eden, there WAS a flood, etc.
