the argument that nobody can prove or disprove the existence of gods because such beliefs being “outside of science” makes no sense to a healthy human mind. Science is just a set of tools for explaining the universe and everything in it. Even hypothetical gods.

But you can’t rationally state that the probability of gods existing and gods not existing is 50/50 just because there are just those two possibilities. That’s like saying the probability of me being a billionaire is 50/50 (I either am or I am not), but in fact the odds that I’m a billionaire are more like 15 million : 1 (calculated by factoring the number of humans on the planet and the actual number of billionaires). That being said, I still haven’t proven anything without showing you my bank account.

My point is that the there are people in this world that claim things about the universe without providing anything to back up their claims.

And of course science can explain consciousness. The lack of your understanding of neuroscience does not turn consciousness into magic.

I don’t know who told you all this nonsense but to use a Dutch phrase you’re sounding like someone that’s hearing the bells but doesn’t know where the church is.

It does not make sense to me to be agnostic about something with such a low probability of being true. The Earth could be going around the sun in a square shape, but I’m not going to be agnostic about it just to be on the “safe side”. Scientific theory and peer reviewed observations demonstrate it goes around the sun in a slightly elliptical orbit.

Science and religion both make claims about the universe, but science and religion are absolutely not compatible.

Science relies on evidence, observation, testable theories, repeatable experiments, peer review of claims, etc.

Religion relies on the gullibility of human beings. It doesn’t even try to explain anything. In religion, the dumbed the explanation, the better because most people will never get a scientific education anyway so remembering some mumbo jumbo you can just make up on the spot is even easier.

In reality, nobody can prove or disprove creator deity beliefs because the context of those beliefs lies outside science. But then science also can’t explain consciousness. Science can only explain what it can measure objectively and empirically but the human mind can reason beyond science – and, indeed, it can reason about its own reasoning (i.e. being aware of oneself and one’s own consciousness, which is entirely impossible to scientifically describe). Because ‘proof’ lies within the context of empiricism, and ‘belief’ lies without, and ‘reason’ (and/or philosophy) is capable of transcending both, then it should be obvious that relying on science alone to make sense of and understand the universe that defies measurement on many different levels cannot be sufficient to satisfy all of the senses (physical and intellectual) that a human being possesses.

Which – if any – religious beliefs you personally subscribe to is a different matter. It has always struck me that the only honest position for someone who does not accept any of the existing religions and their doctrines is that of agnosticism – i.e. not discounting the possibility of a creator deity or something along those lines.

I’ll close by saying that it is possible to honestly subscribe to the best of scientific rigor while holding religious beliefs that help one makes sense of everything. Did you know that the first person to propose what we now call the Big Bang (then called the ‘primordial atom’) was, in fact, a Belgian Catholic priest by the name of Monsignor Georges LeMaitre? Religion and science need not – and indeed should not – oppose one another.