immortal

Its something to do with the hormones especially Testosterone.

Extrasensory Perception(ESP) and Parapsychology comes to my mind for things which exist outside the scientific realm and empiricism.

Your view correspond to the Sethians who introduced Demiurge as an evil God to solve the problem of evil which was strongly criticized by Plotinus. Everything is inhabited by the true God, good and evil as such don't exist, the material world even though it doesn't exist in the external world, only it exists in our minds is important in fulfilling the works of the true God. This is how Valentinians view it. What do you mean by "your god".? Again Plotinus criticized the Sethians for not seeing the Goodness of the Demiurge. Knowing the Holy Father through the teachings of Jesus gives you deliverance.

Valentinian theology Brief Summary of their teachings. The analysis of Isha Upanishads- Aurobindo. 'V' refers to Valentinians and 'B' refers to Brahmans. V. The Godhead manifests itself through a process of self-unfolding in the subsequent multiplicity of being while maintaining its unity. He is the unknown true God or the Father. B. "The Purusha there and there, He am I." It is He who has become all things and beings. The Inhabitant of all forms. The Lord, the Purusha who both contains and inhabits the universe. He is called as Isha or Savitru. V. Valentinians believed that God is androgynous and frequently depicted him as a male-female dyad. This is related to the notion that God provides the universe with both form and substance. The feminine aspect of the deity is called Silence, Grace and Thought. She is also the active creative Thought that makes all subsequent states of being (or "Aeons") substantial. The masculine aspect of God is Depth, also called Ineffable and First Father.He is essentially passive, yet when moved to action by his feminine Thought, he gives the universe form. B. Samkhya recognizes two ultimate entities, Prakriti and Purusha. While the Prakriti is a single entity, the Samkhya admits a plurality of the Purushas in this world. http://en.wikipedia....ture_of_Duality The male aspect is the Purusha and the female aspect is the Prakriti. It shouldn't be taken literally as male and female, it only means they are forms and substance. V. The origin of the universe is described as a process of emanation from the Godhead. The male and female aspects of the Father, acting in conjunction, manifested themselves in the Son. The Son is also often depicted by Valentinians as a male-female dyad. The Son manifests himself in twenty-six spiritual entities or Aeons arranged into male-female pairs. The arrangement and names of the Aeons will not be discussed here. They represent the energies immanent within Son and were seen as part of his personality. Together they constitute the Fullness (pleroma) of the Godhead. B. Even in Samkhya it is stated that Prakriti and Purusha transformed into twenty four constituents. http://en.wikipedia....ur_constituents The Godhead of the Vedas can be worshiped in two ways i.e the Samshti swaroopa and vishruta swaroopa. In vishruta swaroopa they worship his individual sons (or Aeons) or part of his divine luster. In samashti swaroopa they worship his full pleroma or the complete fullness of Godhead including all his sons. V. Sophia sows the spiritual seed in all who hear the message. In some people the seed "falls on the path" and they do not respond at all. Such people are carnal by nature. In others the seed is choked by the thorns which are worldly concerns. They are hesitant and are unable to go beyond the level of rational explanations. Such people are dominated by their rational element or soul. In others, the seed was planted "in good earth" and they bear spiritual fruit. Such people are Gnostic or spiritual Christians. B. Even here they say that the seed to become "Sarvajnya" exists in all and everyone can achieve omniscience. V. Such a person is "in the world but not of it." They have already attained a spiritual existence such that, for them, the world has become the Fullness. B. Such persons are jivanmuktas, they are completely free and they are no longer bound to the forces of prakriti, they can leave their body whenever they want or they can live here for 100 years if it is required or even can reborn again by entering into a mother's womb without any fear of losing their spiritual knowledge once again. V. They believed that it was possible to lead a sinless existence through perfect knowledge (gnosis) of God's will. Sin was seen as an expression of ignorance. As it says in the Gospel of Philip, "The one who has knowledge is a free person. But the free person does not sin, for the one who sins is a slave of sin ". B. Ditto, same here. Only perfect knowledge & sympathy can give perfect help and these are impossible without oneness. He is equal in soul to honor & dishonor, respect & insult, because both come from himself to himself & not from another. Success & failure are equal to him, since he knows that both are equally necessary for the fulfillment of the divine intention. He will no more quarrel with them than with the cold of winter or the breath of the storm-blast. Neither will events bring to him grief or disappointment, fear or disgust with things, because he follows that divine will & purpose in himself & in others. He shrinks from no actions which the divine purpose demands or the divine impulse commands. He has no wish to kill, but he will not shrink from slaying when it is demanded.To men who are not free a conventional morality is an absolute necessity, for there must be a fixed standard to which they can appeal. V. Valentinians never rejected marriage and raising children. According to the Alexandrian teacher Theodotus, marriage was necessary so that those with the spiritual seed might be born. B. Same here. All this is for habitation by the Lord, whatsoever is individual universe of movement in the universal motion. By that renounced thou shouldst enjoy; lust not after any man's possession. Doing verily works in this world one should wish to live a hundred years. Thus it is in thee and not otherwise than this; action cleaves not to a man.(This is how the Isha upanishad starts by stating the above.) They both have a different transpersonal psychology and they both don't believe in scientific realism and assert that the material world is only a state of mind. The Gnostics took most of their ideas from the Neoplatonists and Plato. Neoplatonism and Gnosticism Valentinian Monism If mythology is strictly introduced and its importance is taken seriously then we cannot make a reconciliation between these two monistic systems and the Clement of Alexandria was right in distinguishing and separating Gnosticism from Brahmans and Sharamanas without making any connection it to Gnosticism. But the similarities and commonalities are so compelling that it seems that in terms of transpersonal psychology and of the anthropomorphic Gods they are talking about the same thing. It is inaccurate to think that the view espoused by Valentinians is similar to the view of Advaita by Shankara infact the view of the Valentinians go back to the view of the world as it existed when the Isha Upanishad was revealed and formulated, its the most ancient view of the world. Not a view which was formulated by Shankara in th 7th century, this view predates way before him. What is interesting is that the secret teachings of Jesus are similar to the ancient monistic systems by which we can speculatively say that there exists a true supreme Godhead with his own numinous world. Buddhism, Jainism, sikhism are divergent forms of this ancient monistic system and they all can be reduced into it. Now it appears that even the Judeo-Christian-Islamic religions of the middle east can be reduced to this monistic religion. The other deities like Ahura Mazda of Zoroastrianism, Egyptian Gods, and other Gods can be thought of as Gods of the other worlds who might not be aware of their origins from the supreme true Godhead due to ignorance. This is purely hypothetical and related to comparative religion and leads to paganism.

Your approach of assigning the God of the Old Testament to "Demiurge", who created the material world going against the divine will has been strongly criticized by Plotinus and by Valentinus. In fact Plotinus went on to say that "if some Gnostics think that the material world was created by an evil God and its not of the divine then why don't they just commit suicide". I'm basically with Plotinus and Valentinus here who think that even that was the play of the supreme Godhead or the Holy Father as you are thinking.

After skimming through the middle of the book they are talking about the teachings of Gnosticism and the concept of Born Again or Resurrection. So someone need to bring the practical knowledge of how we can born again and achieve revelations and that requires Faith in prior and its the job of theologians to do that.

There are no such things as right or wrong they are only apparent, they don't exist in reality. If Hank chose what he had to choose and his other entities chose what they had to choose then both are equally right in their actions. The world is just a play and it is full of providence. We don't have free will.

That's the point the same arguments which applies to God also applies to the mysticism of PeterJ. PeterJ is arguing only for the subjective aspect of God and this is the reason the Buddhists believe in sunyata or nihilism because either both the subjective as well as the objective exists or both do not exist since Buddhists are only concerned with the subjective aspect of God they cannot make any positive claims about the world since they cannot speak with certainty that the subjective itself exists either and hence they believe in nihilism. There is a distinction between the Non-dual of Shankara and Buddhism where as Buddhists stop only at the subjective and assert that nothing exists, Shankara transcends the subjective and positively asserts that a unity exists which is beyond the subjective and the objective and there is no specific means to know that unity, it is unknowable, that knowledge has to come all by itself on its own. There are other schools of thought who argue that both the subjective aspect of God which is the Self or Atman and the objective aspect of God with his form or name should be understood in order to have a complete knowledge about the world and to know the two aspects of the same reality. The reason why we are not seeing any evidence for God while we are objective observers is because there is a great urge in people to only have knowledge about the subjective aspect of God but no one seem to be interested in knowing the objective aspect of God which helps us to become the masters of our world and to demonstrate unusual phenomena so that even scientists can test those predictions and falsify the existence of God, the reason we are not seeing any miracles being performed by theists is because majority of the theists are interested only in the subjective aspect of God which only gives them to escape the suffering from this world and act as mere spectators of the world rather than being masters of their world demonstrating some very unlikely and unusual phenomena. This is the kind of mysticism I have tried to argue in this thread and the mysticism of PeterJ is incomplete knowledge and thinks that if we somehow eliminate God from the picture it solves our problems which in my opinion it doesn't and actually creates more problems than it solves.

Even I am referring to the #1 definition of literal. In the beginning He created the heavens and earth and He said, "Let there be light". I am taking this literally. Yes that's how God created the world but it doesn't contradict with what science says because God is speaking about his numinous world not the world of science. That is a serious misunderstanding of creation scientists and the New Atheists. There can be only two possibilities. Either science gives an objective account of reality and proves scientific realism beyond any doubt or theologians reduce science to a state of mind. Therefore they both don't overlap with each other often only when we are questioning our fundamental reality they overlap and conflict arises but that is an open question where both the people working in their own magisteria can come up with evidence and falsify the other ideology. I'm not confusing anything, that is the reason I prefixed the word "Radical" in front of scientific realism because I doesn't want to call myself an Idealist, I'm not an idealist, I'm a realist but I don't believe in scientific realism but I believe in the objective world of God made of five elements only that exists in the external physical world. That numinous world is the world of noumenon. The religion of Aryans do claim to have an objective numinous world of a personal God and I think even other religions with their own personal Gods should be interpreted in that way, only then religion makes perfect sense otherwise most of what religion says will definitely contradict science and turns out to be false and therefore I think that is the correct interpretation of the scriptures considering our wisdom which says God doesn't speak lies. Kant made a philosophical eror when he said the noumenon is unknowable, the noumenon can be known through revelations which doesn't require sense organs.

Its mainly because most of the Aryan culture is lost and neither the western scholars nor modern Hindus were able to fully comprehend those ancient texts since it required profound revelations to fully understand them and hence it was interpreted as poetic rubbish and majority of the parents send their children to the western education and the western school of thought so I don't blame the people for that, our only hope is our local Indian scholars who had the practical knowledge along with wisdom to interpret those texts correctly, fortunately somehow I caught up with a book by an Indian scholar who had thoroughly investigated and understood the Aryan religion otherwise I wouldn't have been aware of our lost culture. That book is not available in the English version yet but similar line of thought can be seen from other Indian scholars. Here is one. Isha Upanishads If anyone wants to know more about the Aryan religion this Upanishad would be nice place to start with. This single Upanishad solves most of the major metaphysical, philosophical, theological and ethical problems and answers our big question why are we here? Our true God is the Sun God not the God of money or family. Aryan religion is completely based on a different kind of trans-personal psychology in which anthropomorphic Gods control your thoughts and reside in our bodies. Aryans were masters of the world not mere spectators or slaves of an ever changing and a mutable world. For Aryans there is a numinous objective world of God and if their religion was being strictly followed, by now, you should have seen people teleporting from one place to another in that country by mastering the objective world of God. I agree that we are in darkness and need to see the light, I'm an optimist and I hope we recover our culture and things do change for the better.

I think the OP was not framed properly, I agree that it should have been in the trash can but since he has come up with some content to discuss we can discuss on whether at some point in human history were we worshiping the same God or not.

That post was addressed to Sergeant Bilko since he had a misunderstanding that the Aryan culture is inherently selfish which is entirely incorrect. Its your thread and you have every right to give it a direction which you intend to give. Back on Topic. As I have said earlier your approach is highly controversial and baseless. 1. We don't know whether all the religions in the world are worshiping the same God or not. 2. Or whether the same God is appearing in different forms or not. 3. Or whether only one of the religion's God exist and other Gods are fake or not. 4. Or whether God exists or not. 5. Whether all gods exist simultaneously or not. Therefore it is best to assume that all religions stands on their own and revelations is the only way to falsify a religion and their God and therefore all religious traditions stands on their own. Its highly inappropriate and pointless to even discuss on how or who has the authority over the supernatural realm. Finally religion has nothing to do with modern science. Neither Jesus nor Krishna knew anything about modern physics, the scriptures should be interpreted based on the time during at which it was revealed. It has nothing to do with the advancements in science and scriptures are not describing the natural world and hence the discoveries of modern science has nothing to do with the scriptures.

If one has to test the God hypothesis then that is the literal explanation and hence it is a problem for theologians not scientists. If scientists need to falsify the God hypothesis they can do it with in their own magisteria by developing a model of everything rather than interfering with the magisteria of theologians. This is not nonsense, it was Stephen Jay Gould who established the Non-overlapping magisteria and New Atheists have openly attacked and criticized the views of NOMA which I basically think is inappropriate and incorrect and an apparent lack of understanding how God works his works. New Atheism Non-overlapping magisteria I hope you do realize that this is not solipsism, according to solipsism only your mind exists and both the external world as well as other people's minds do not exist but that is not the view of theistic religions, there is an external world which exists independent of the mind and revelations gives us methods to observe your own mind and in this way this gives a commitment to the belief that what we are observing is the noumenon of the world i.e the things in themselves. Its not solipsism, subjective idealism, naturalism, absolute idealism and objective idealism. It is the idea of a personal God and his hypothesis. I think we need to redefine some of the terms. Radical scientific realism - The view that physical or material objects don't exist in the external world and it is only a state of mind. This is the phenomenal world. Noumenal world - The world of God, the actual physical world as it IS, the five elements, himself and the mind, made up of his own stuff. This take on religion is universal and all theistic religions proclaim and teach the same thing. The Sufi, Zen, Kabbalahists, Gnostics, Aryans and any authentic religion which believes in a personal God all speak of the same thing and describe God with the same attributes that, he is immutable, omniscient, omnipotent, benevolent, eternal etc. except for atheistic religions like Buddhism who don't speak of the existence of the noumenal world of God. As long as they realize that those are their personal opinions then that's fine and they need to know that their conclusions are not compelling enough to reject the God hypothesis and such a hypothesis is very much alive. Some atheists do plan to have atheistic temples. The noumenon is not unknowable, it can be known through revelations and such a useful practical knowledge should help the theologians to demonstrate new phenomena proving the God hypothesis otherwise religion as a whole is rubbish and unreal and it does work on evidence, its not entirely based on blind faith.

This is true and this is how the things are here most of the times but the Aryan beliefs as espounded by the Sanathana Dharma is the end of selfish behavior and selfishness in a society if that Dharma is strictly followed by individuals in the society. Its just no one is interested in knowing the wisdom hidden in the scriptures and its difficult to take the path of righteousness. The Aryan belief system can be understood through the words of Yajnavalkya. So it basically says we already possess everything in us and we don't have to desire or long for anything, individuality no more exists here, if one is enjoying his wealth the others should never envy his wealth or him and it is to be thought that they themselves are enjoying the wealth since there is no individuality and since they possess everything that exists in this world in them. So one should never desire for his wife because he already possesses her and it makes no difference to him between her presence and her absence, a behavior we call as Stitha Prajna or the right conduct of the Stoics, its just it is highly difficult to take this path of righteousness. Overall Sanathana Dharma teaches the very opposite of being selfish and possessive and if you find that people are selfish and possessive then it means that Sanathana Dharma is not being followed by the members of the society and are acting as finite, powerless and limited slave beings.

Scientists should leave such experiments to theologians, its not their magisteria, its the job of theologians to do experiments and bring evidence for God. I basically say this because as long as your confined to that particular state of mind, the world appears to follow the rules of science and the scientific models and therefore to create cracks in reality theologians need to transcend and then they need to manipulate the external physical world so that objective observers can observe such unusual phenomena. Scientists are not suited for this becuase they are objective observers and an experiment performed by a group of objective observers won't going to notice any unusual phenomena because they haven't stepped up to the new realm of God. This is the reason I said that you need to bring back the messengers of God or scientists should try to be one themselves but its inappropriate for scientists to test their hypothesis on faith and hence this is the job of theologians and hence its better for them not to interfere into their magisteria. This is based on the assumption that God is merciful and benevolent and all loving, yes he is merciful and benevolent. In fact good faithful people go through most of the troubles in life for example Jacob's trouble times and such things are inevitable. The people who do prayers are the one's who expect that the world should always exist in a peaceful state all the time but that's the not how the will of God is, the world should change and old things have to disappear and new things must evolve, these are the people who like to taste sugar but don't like to taste bitter but God didn't ordained nature in that way. There are partial near-death experiences which can be caused due to high dosage of drugs given by doctors to sensitive patients in rare cases. Once I underwent a complex fiscal seizure while I was subjected to high dosage of Deriphyllin since I was a asthma patient, these can be explained by shutting down of the brain where patients perceive or process things in a confused way, a complete near death experience would be that a person is completely dead for 15 to 20 minutes and then comes back to life again, that requires explanation. However his personal experiences will be subjective and there is no way of testing whether he really went to hell or did he went through a tunnel. Again Intelligent Design movement was a movement by a few creation scientists, God never claimed that he created life using DNA, it was not a movement by God, I think both creation scientists as well as New Atheists should stop putting words into God's mouth, poor God!!. For God DNA, periodic elements, elementary particles don't exist in his world, he lives in a different realm with his own stuff and obviously life should look fine with natural selection when the world is viewed through the sense organs. I don't deny evolution by Natural selection. That would require the knowledge of the soul in order to create cracks in reality and I don't find it compelling to conclude that God doesn't exist by such observations since such knowledge is hard to come by and requires more investigation and practical knowledge which might have been lost over the years. This is again a lack of wisdom of God, your personal God is none other than your ego and he is the sole creator of this world and he has control over all your thoughts and actions and hence its silly to think that all good things are done by God and all bad things are done by the Devil. According to religion we don't have free will, all we have control is over our attitudes like pride, selfishness, envy etc and bad attitudes like pride apparently corrupts one's personal God (or personal ego) and hence his actions too appear corrupted. Therefore good and evil exists with in us and personal God exists in Lucifer too its just he had pride and didn't abide in the truth and it was God who separated light from darkness. Therefore just because some are theists it doesn't mean they have to be morally perfect, one can be morally perfect by controlling one's attitudes, this was the whole idea of stoics and how Marcus Aurelius lived a simple life even being in a palace. There were people who have took the path of righteousness and were evaded from sinning. No one will find evidence of God in astronomy or physics because the world of God or religion is the world of noumenon and the world of science is the world of phenomena so how can we find evidence of God in the phenomena of things. Some of the premises where misunderstandings and misrepresentations of the word of God and so is the conclusions from such arguments. Empirical sciences cannot falsify a metaphysical concept like God. God and religion are beyond politics but its unfortunate that politicians use such sensitive concepts to generate vote banks and to win elections rather than learning the wisdom of God.

This is a misunderstanding I posted that post through my cell phone and since there was a problem of loading of the page I posted it three times by mistake, it doesn't show my contempt towards your ideas or towards your approach and it was not my intention to post that three times, sorry for the confusion. Infact you're the one who is insisting by repeating the same thing again and again even though I made a sincere effort to make you understand how science works and how it has changed over the years. I guess you know that GR is about geometry and even the particle "graviton" is viewed as perturbations in the goemetry of space-time which spreads in the form of a wave in the geometry of space-time itself. A gravitional theory based on gravitional field will have a completely different set of equations and will inherently be a completely different model, please kindly come up with a model and make predictions that matter emits a "strange particle" which causes other matter to attract then scientists can test your predictions and will accept your hypothesis, if not this is just philosophical rambling. Yes indeed but that requires building new models which incorporate older models into that new model and gives a new persepective of nature. Science is cumulative and your questions do require a model and a set of predictions. Scientific models are just models they aren't reality by itself and its wrong to assert or conclude that nature is the way the models are, science only says nature behaves based on these scientific models, it doesn't say it is the way it is as described by those models. There is a difference between saying space exists and saying space exist in this way and it is like this or it is like that. The accepted models of science gives the best ontology based on its accuracy. This is the difference between a layman or a philosopher and a scientist, a scientist backs up his assertions with predictions and tests his assertions. Your new hypothesis doesn't make any new predictions and hence its philosophy, its not science or give us a method to falsify your hypothesis. Logical reasoning or rationalism can be wrong, the point of science is to know how nature works, just because your argument is logical we don't accept it at the end of the way all we want to know is that Is nature really that way? and hence testing is required. Is space made up of chunks of blocks? Is it a rubber sheet? Is it a void? Is it digital? Is it a crystal? Does it have a structure? a symmetry? How can I know what it is? One won't be a good scientist if one considers that statement to be a big joke.

This is again a serious misunderstanding evidence for Big Bang is not evidence against the validity of creation as described in the scriptures by God, God says the world was made up of just five elements i.e Fire, earth, water, air and space and that is a literal explanation, for religion Big Bang didn't happened in the external physical world, it doesn't say that Big Bang didn't happened but it didn't happened in the external physical world it appears to have happened only when we perceive this world through a particular state of mind. There is nothing in science which contradicts religion because both religion and science are of different magisteria and both science and creation as described in the scriptures stands on its own. Religious claims have little do with empirical science and its incorrect to falsify a creation myth based on evidence from empirical sciences and I strongly criticize the attempts of New Atheists to falsify such religious claims through empirical sciences and they lack the wisdom of God. Its better for New Atheists to stick to their scientific method rather than criticizing religion, making silly arguments and interfering themselves into a different magisteria, its quite easy to disprove religion develop an objective account of reality and come up with a working model of consciousness only then they have the authority to criticize religion not before that. No, subjective idealism or solipsism is the view that only mind exists but for religion an objective world do exist independent of mind which is made up of five elements, so yes if religion is right then it means a part of solipsism is right but it doesn't fully accept the view of solipsism in toto. Religion is the world of noumenon and it alone exists in the external physical world. For religion only mind, God and the five basic elements exist in the external physical world and the world of science or empiricism is brought into reality by the mind and the sense organs in the external physical world(these are completely different sense organs and it has nothing to do with sense organs of brain that we normally see in reality) and the cosmos, the elements in the periodic table don't exist in the external physical world. I never said science works on faith, a good scientist had to test his hypothesis without any bias. The violation of Bell's inequality clearly casts doubt on scientific realism and if science doesn't work on faith as you insist then it should allow for alternate roads to reality and to new ways of thinking about the nature so that we have enough evidence to assert that the assumption of scientific realism is false which is very highly likely that it is and religion is one of the new ways of thinking about the nature of the cosmos. This is the reason I strongly criticize New Atheists they enforce on us that we should only make scientific speculation and not make metaphysical speculations like God. I said that's the way theology works and theologians must accept the existence of God to bring any evidence for God, I didn't said that everyone should accept the existence of God without questioning his existence or without evidence of him, it doesn't have to be blind faith. The fruit should pay off for his belief in God and theologians should be able to demonstrate phenomena which proves the existence of God otherwise the whole idea of religion is rubbish and unreal but its also incorrect to conclude things without investigating about him first and empirical science is not the appropriate way to investigate God, you need to step up to the new paradigm or allow others to do it and not make wrong conclusions about it before hand.

For religion the material world or the world of science is of little value, they are not making claims about the material world and hence subjecting such claims to empirical testing is extremely incorrect and inappropriate and so are the conclusions from such a type of testing. Revelations of certain theologians casts doubt on scientific realism and therefore what empiricism says may not be ultimately or absolutely true. The next massive leap of intellect would be that empiricism is purely subjective and the world of God is the objective world. In Guardian someone asked "If what we call reality is only a state of mind then what is mind?" No one was able to answer his question because an observation of your mind is not accessible to everyone, it can only be accessed by those who have faith in God, theologians can't do too much about that, they didn't created this world, God created it, theologians are rather more happy to make that observation accessible to everyone but unfortunately God has set up this world in that way, don't blame the theologians for being intellectually dishonest. Science works by "evidence first and then belief" where as theology works by "Faith first and then evidence". Therefore its inevitable for theologians that they should accept the existence of a supernatural being to bring any evidence of that being in the first place.This is the reason theologians rely on the word of God so that they won't waste their time in unicorns or in flying spaghetti monster which might not bear any fruit.

Intolerance and mocking of peaceful religious beliefs are mere personal opinions, its not science or a scientific fact, if New Atheists think it is then there is no difference between New Atheists and those who argue that Intelligent design is science. To test those claims you need to bring back the messengers of God like Moses, Jesus, Muhammad etc or try to become one yourself, if you haven't tried it then you haven't tested those religious claims. That's your presumption, not mine, I can easily presume that every single thought of yours is directed by God and say that he is as real as your self aware thinking.

The proponents of New Atheism are as wrong as the proponents of Intelligent Design movement. Some of the arguments of New Atheists like Daniel Dennet who argues "Why God doesn't speak of mathematics in his scriptures?" or "Why there is not a single word about maths" are silly arguments. The scriptures of Religion don't overlap with the accepted theories of science. As Dawkins says a supernatural world as claimed by religion will be a completely different world and they both do overlap in reality but its inappropriate to falsify religious claims based on the observable world. The methodologies of science and religion don't overlap and its appropriate that both hold on to their respective methods and investigate nature and not attack one another. If science is all about puzzle solving then there is no better problem solver than God for he has created a world to fit both the claims of religion as well as science in harmony with each other.

What you are describing is fundamentalism or extremism and I do criticize such views but a religion can be followed peacefully by a group of people with out enforcing their beliefs on to others and threaten them to convert. It is left to his or her personal liberty or choice to keep some time for speculative metaphysics and to peacefully follow their set of beliefs with out harming anyone. They can do work, raise kids, perform ones duties, receive pleasure, be socially responsible just as a normal man would live. So true religion is not much of a hindrance to science and not a threat to society.

Everything is rooted in philosophy, in the east we call schools of philosophy as "Darshanas" meaning Point of Views or insights. Darshanas There were basically 9 schools of philosophical thought in which six were mainly theistic metaphysical schools and two were atheistic(Buddhism and Jainism) schools but involved a supernatural realm or an entity and the final one was the skeptical, materialistic, naturalistic and non-theistic school of Carvaka. The school of Carvaka - This school of philosophy is very much similar to the school of scientific method and both has its roots in empiricism. The other six theistic and mystic schools discuss mainly about metaphysical and transcendental concepts and their arguments are rooted in revelations. So yes, basically a philosophy which is not rooted or based either on empiricism or on revelation is a crap or simply rubbish because without practical philosophy you cannot gain any real knowledge. Theology is not about attacking science, its about knowing God not rambling about him based on blind faith.

There is no relation between religion and science, both are of different magisteria and both are talking about completely disconnected irrelevant world views, however both of them have the potential to make the other a pejorative.

I think you have interests in Synthetic Biology.