The general thrust of Mangani's statement is accurate.

My opponent has misconstrued the general thrust of my argument, which may be of my own doing. I am not claiming that the "evidence" provided for the existence, intent, etc. of God given in the Bible ought to be seen as scientific evidence. On the contrary, I think there is a clear dichotomous rift between the pursuits of science and the pursuit of understanding through myth, even if that understanding is not based on fact. The point I was trying to make is not that the knowledge the Bible places before a person is scientific, far from it because the observation is not repeatable, a hallmark of the scientific method. I was essentially trying to demonstrate that the type of knowledge, however vacant, that the Bible attempts to present is presented with mythical evidence set within the limitations of physical space, which is why we see such obvious misconceptions such as the Earth being flat, etc. Thus, my opponent has incorrectly categorized my attempt to demarcate the arenas of knowledge (mythos and logos) as an attempt to mesh the two together, something I wholeheartedly do not wish to do. But before we move on, let us explore some of the generalizations my opponent has made about the nature of science, which will hopefully show why a demarcation is necessary and proper between the knowledge sought by science and the knowledge sought by the Bible. My opponent asserts that science has some sort of goal in mind, or that it is progressive. Further, my opponent claims that "science is the establishment of truth with regard to the evidence." I think these claims are accurate to an extent, but the terms 'progressive' and 'truth' within the scientific realm are, at best, ambiguous. To understand why 'progressive' is a bit premature, let us first look at the term 'truth,' specifically within the scientific realm. A common and useful tool to understanding the movement of objects through space is to think of space as Euclidean. In other words, if you have a point, and you draw a line through that point, then there is only one other line in space that is parallel to the first. Within Euclidean geometry, this statement is just as true as, a square has four sides, a triangle contains 180 degrees, etc. However, what happens when we use a different geometry? Let us suppose (and trust me, many mathematicians and cosmologists have) that space is not Euclidean, that in fact, it is spherical. Once space becomes spherical, the concept of a parallel line is nonsensical. Which of these concepts is true? Is it true that lines or parallel or not? The answer is, of course, that each statement is true. Truth is determined by sentences, and the structure, and even the truth content of a sentence is determined by the language one is using. Therefore, if I am speaking in Newtonian language, then it is indeed true that objects in motion stay in motion on a straight line unless acted upon by another force. However, if I am speaking in relativistic terms, then this statement is not entirely true, and if I accept the cosmological idea that the true vacuum we exist in is indeed spherical, then the concept of a line as we know it goes out the window. The point I am making is that truth is relative to the language and system one is using. Now, with this understanding of truth in mind, it becomes obvious that 'progress' is a misnomer because there is nothing to be progressed towards aside from established goals that humanity places before itself, such as, "the truth of the evolution of man" or "the truth of string theory," etc. Therefore, to claim that the 'nature' of science is the pursuit of truth through evidence, is not entirely accurate. A more accurate description would be that science is a method that concerns itself only with those claims that can be verified using empirical evidence, and has produced many utility increasing technological advances through this pursuit. Once one understands that there is a already a demarcation of 'truth' and 'progress' present in science itself, it becomes simple to see why such a demarcation between science and religion is necessary. The Bible is not contradictory in the same way that Newtonian and Einsteinian physics are not contradictory. Newtonian and Einsteinian physics provide tools that have a certain utility depending on the goal, each containing 'truths' that are verified through rigorous empirical tests. The Bible, contrarily, is not even concerned with the same knowledge as science (aside from the 'claims' made in the Bible about the structure of the Earth etc. that have more to do with ancient notions, but can be seen as "false hypotheses"). Rather, the Bible is concerned with attempting to explain human existence through the supposition of a God, a moral code, etc. and it does this through the use of myth. To claim that this is somehow "contradictory" to science is absurd because the two are not even related. As my opponent claimed, the issue is epistemological. Therefore, the claim that the Bible is opposed to science is as silly as the opposite statement. The two entities are after very different ends, with one being revealed metaphysics, and the other being an increase in utility made possible by a 'better' understanding of the mechanisms of the universe. What Tataris is essentially claiming, which is true, is that metaphysical naturalism or metaphysical materialism is in direct contradiction to the Bible and vice versa because both make claims about metaphysics that cannot both be true without violating the law of contradiction, i.e. it cannot both be true that there are non-natural entities and true that there are no non-natural entities. However, science, in principle, ought not to be a metaphysical position, rather, it is a method that consistently increases the utility of human life through empirical evidence and detecting patterns in that evidence. To address one final point, my opponent makes the claim that "The Bible ultimately is a document about faith and exalts faith as a virtue, whereas science necessarily must regard faith as a vice and a corruption of any true way of knowing." However, I think this is also premature based on the need for efficiency in scientific inquiry. Certain dogmatic principles are always held to in science, and it causes a large schism when one of these core beliefs is shook. For example, science assumes that there are 'things' and that they can be counted, and that a=a and a+b=b+a just to name a few. These principles will probably never change because they are very efficient and necessary to human understanding. However, as any philosopher of mathematics worth their weight will tell someone, these "axioms" are assumptions about the nature of things, and there is no inherent truth in their supposition, but one can discover 'truths' after one accepts these assumptions. Now, science, for efficiency's sake, makes far larger assumptions than these such as the geometry of space, the existence of atoms and their constituent parts without verifying their existence for themselves during every experiment. Of course, I do not wish to ask scientists to waste their time verifying every principle they build an experiment or theory on, but I do wish for others to understand that much of science is "faith" in an established system, although that system can at times be found to be incorrect, i.e. tectonic plate theory. -Tataris, we should have a side discussion about this issue if you are interested after the debate. I think it is an interesting issue, but I think demarcation truly is the accurate approach if one understands that science ought not take a metaphysical position, but, rather, be only a method.