Why scientists cannot be atheists

A lot of people nowadays fashion themselves to be atheists. Some even consider themselves to be more intellectual when compared to religious people just because they subscribe to the idea that God does not exist. Before I write further on this, I'd first define some of the words I'm using.

'God' refers only to the way major religions define their omnipotent being, with all the prayers, creations, sins, heaven and hell and all that stuff.

Atheists are people who strongly believe that God does not exist.

Scientists are just any people who practice the scientific method, not necessarily highly qualified researchers.

Think about how religions describe God. He/She has to be trusted, not questioned. He/She cannot be subjected to any proof or scientific analysis. We only have to “believe” that He/She exists. NO QUESTIONS ASKED. There is no guarantee that every person gets to see an act of God (ofcourse, this again depends on what one calls an “act of God”. It could be something as straight-forward as the existence of life, or more specific stuff like miraculous healing and all).

In science, there is one very important test that any theory has to be subjected to- Falsifiability. I picked this up from wikipedia:

"Falsifiability is the ability of a theory—a working framework for explaining and predicting natural phenomena—to be disproved by an experiment or observation.[1] The ability to evaluate theories against observations is essential to the scientific method, and as such, the falsifiability of theories is key to this and is the prime test for whether a proposition or theory can be described as scientific. “

Now, what would the consequence be if a scientist wants to claim that there is no room for the existence of God within the scientific framework (or simply, that God does not exist). It means he/she has conducted a test (either a physical observation or just a thought experiment), by which he/she has found that God does not exist. Also, falsifiability requires that if God exists, His existence must make sure that the above test would fail. But the way that God is defined, He is free to do whatever He wants, whenever He wants. On one day, He may let the test work and on another day He may let it fail. Or He may let the test work forever and still exist, since it is in His power to do whatever He wishes. 

 

My explanation has been sloppy and I would expect the reader to think about this till he/she is convinced (please comment if you find my observation to be wrong, but not if you couldn't understand it). The bottomline is, it is not possible to assert scientifically that God does not exist, just because of the way God is defined. Science cannot comment on the existence of God. So, any person who says he/she is a man of science and does not believe in God, he/she just does not know even the basics of the scientific method. 

 

The closest a scientist can get to an atheist is to being an agnostic- a person who is ready to believe in God if he/she is convinced in some way of that, and till then just doesn't care to think about the question of His existence. However, it is quite easy for a scientist to believe in a supreme being (but not God in the exact way the religions define Him).