Myth:
The atheist who expects that science just answers the question about religion relies on faulty reasoning. The existence of God isn't a question that science can answer. How do you set up an experiment to test for the existence of God? It's just blind faith to deny the existence of God when it is impossible to scientifically determine if an all-powerful, all-knowing God greater than our ability to measure or comprehend exists or not.
Response:
A popular argument from religious theists involves, in some manner, the claim that their god is beyond scientific proof, evidence, testing, experimentation, or what have you. The purpose of such an argument is to somehow demonstrate that atheistic attempts to use science to criticize theism are all sorely misguided. If God is beyond the ability of science to evaluate, then efforts to do so are worthless, thus invalidating atheists' conclusion that belief in God is unreasonable or irrational.
This argument is problematic on a number of levels. Perhaps the most obvious flaw is how often it tends to apply a double standard to atheists. Not all forms of this argument do, but it occurs in many cases because atheists are castigated for rejecting belief in something (God) without the benefit of scientific proof while theists themselves are permitted to not only believe, but even base their entire lives around this belief, also without the benefit of scientific proof.
There are other flaws that occur in pretty much all versions of the argument. For one thing, how can a person claim to know that "God," whatever it is, really is beyond scientific evaluation, testing, or measurement? We can grant that the existence of such a god is a theoretical possibility, but to state unequivocally that such a god exists, and moreover is "the" god, is much stronger claim. Religious theists making this argument aren't stating a theoretical possibility in order to point out a potential flaw in atheists' argument, but are instead making a definitive knowledge claim.
Where, however, would such knowledge be obtained? Faith or revelation might be the most obvious choices, but they aren't particularly valid options in this context because of the way science is being presented as a standard for making knowledge claims. How can anyone state with any degree of reliability, authority, or security that claims made in religion cannot be answered — or at least addressed — by science?
It could certainly be granted that there are religious claims which science cannot evaluate: claims about metaphysics, value, meaning, etc. At the same time, though, there are a large number of religious claims which are empirical in nature regarding the world we all live in. These are indisputably claims which science can address and they are not something which religious theists can arbitrarily exclude from the purview of science simply because they occur in the context of religion.
This argument is fundamentally similar to one accepted by some atheists as well as religious theists, namely that science and religion occupy different spheres of life and, when properly used, never truly conflict because they are always dealing with different topics. This is a false argument so long as religions involve themselves with empirical claims. Even non-empirical issues are addressed in various ways by science — scientific research on how the brain works, for example, can have unavoidable implications for morality and decision-making, subjects sometimes limited to the sphere of religion.
So, is the existence of "God" a subject which science cannot answer? That depends entirely on how "God" is defined by believers. Some can be proven or disproven empirically or logically and some cannot — but those which cannot are defined in ways which are too vague or incoherent to properly evaluate. In such cases, it also isn't very reasonable to believe in them, and religious theists are only fooling themselves if they think this is a way to avoid providing rational defenses of their claims.
Any alleged deity which is claimed to interact with the world we live in is a deity which should have empirical effects — and that constitutes potential evidence for or against the existence of said deity. Only gods without any impact on our world are beyond empirical investigation, but such gods are also without any real relevance for us. Even if they are somehow not unreasonable to believe in, they certainly aren't worth basing an entire life around.
