Religion and Science can Coexist.

My opponent has raised some interesting points in his latest rebuttal, however I feel they create more problems for religion than they actually solve. Firstly my opponent has said that the evidence I provided showing that God does not exist is irrelevant as my opponent stated that "Most Christians do NOT take the Bible literally; they view the Bible's stories as metaphors, parables, and allegories that portray Christian morals. All of this applies to the Koran and Muslims too, since the Koran was written in a similar fashion." However, this is not true as Christian doctrine and the bible is behind the movement to stop same sex marriage in the USA, and Sharia law commanded by Koran is still enforced in Saudi Arabia. (1,2) As an example of this, homophobic stances by churches against same sex marriage come directly from the bibles laws in Leviticus 18:22. (3) I would think that this means then that my opponent is agreeing with me that any holy text is pointless and not divinely inspired. Surely this then leads to the natural conclusion that there is no point to adhere to any rules which are given in these holy texts. So I have to wonder what god my opponent believes in and on what basis he is making the conclusion that the god he believe in is actually true when all holy texts are "not to be taken literally". My opponent has additionally admitted that his experiences "include some unexplained coincidences that were so overly convenient that I couldn't believe them to be a result of dumb luck. They also include metaphysical experiences in which I felt God's presence. However, neither of these is really quantifiable." and "This is why I have stopped trying to prove the existence of God via the scientific method." In effect by saying this he has shown that science cannot be applied to his experiences and this surely shows that science and religion are unable to coexist. It requires the observer to be there and have a first hand experience which cannot be quantified. Importantly, it requires a discarding of the scientific method even though my opponent says that gods existence does not contradict the scientific method. My opponent says that religion is not an illusion. However there was no evidence put forward by my opponent to support this point, so I am not sure how I can accept this. I do agree with my opponent however that this is my opinion, but this opinion is based on the non-existence of god which I gave two examples of in the debate. Of course my opponent could argue that this does not include all the gods, and if I call my table god then he is right. However,we are clearly talking about the so called supernatural god in this debate and not the material table god. My opponent said that he "wanted to make it clear that religion does NOT contradict science. I wanted to prove that religion and science are to totally different pursuits with two totally different goals which are NOT MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE." However, as I have pointed out multiple times in my closing statement, religion contradicts the scientific method and so religion is in effect contradicting science. My opponent is correct however to say science and religion have different goals, science has the goal of following the evidence and religion has the goal of not following the evidence. In conclusion my opponent gave a quote which said "Science is the study of God's creation", but there is no positive evidence for the existence of god so am not sure how science can be studying gods creation. I would rather say "science is the study of the physical world". In summary, I would have to say that science cannot co-exist with religion as applying the scientific method to beliefs will lead to the disintegration of religion. I would like to thank my opponent for a stimulating debate. (1) http://www.catholic.com... (2) http://en.wikipedia.org... (3) http://skepticsannotatedbible.com...