Christian Liberals & Progressive People of Faith

you'd need to know what a unicorn was before you could determine if it was fanciful or not.

You do the very analysis I suggest there as a matter of fact.

Science absolutely involves definitions. Science is about classification. You cannot come up with a hypothesis or examine phenomena without defining.

God can mean a wide range of things. In fact, in many religions it does. There's the Abrahamic God that's all knowing, all powerful, eternal who was here before, during and after, yadda, yadda, yadda. There's your "unicorn." Defining God that way does in fact take it out of science.

But that's not the only possible definition. God could simply be "creator of the universe." If the physics theory that says a black hole turns into a new universe ends up being true (and I am not saying it is, but it's not a crazy theory either), then if someone creates a black hole, they are, in effect, God under that definition for that universe. Now, certainly not a God with the ability to control anything after initial creation, but not much different from the "absent" God that created the universe and then stepped aside present in some religious belief systems.

Yes, there could be beings that have lived for billions of years, and achieved the ability to control the entire universe. And yes, there's a scientific theory that directly addresses that too, the Kardashev Scale. Type IV civilizations can control the entire universe. Type V can control multiverses. Again, theoretical, but not "unicorns" and such beings would, in fact, be as God to us. They could do most if not all of the things a "God" could do.

The definition of these Gods yes would be scientific instead of mystical, and yes Clarke was right about sufficient science, but again, definitions matter. Not every religion thinks the same way about God or what a God is, so assuming the simplest most fantastical version of God is the only definition, then saying, well, that's clearly so silly as to not even merit thought, is, well...not very scientific.

That's why there's a real difference between agnosticism and atheism, despite the claims of some atheists (not implying you have done this) that agnostics are just weak atheists. The former IMO simply has a more rigorous framework in which to analyze questions like this than atheists do. Less binary.

We have zero evidence of life on other planets...none, nada, zilch. Yet, as an intelligent person I'm almost 100 percent certain you believe it inevitable that life exists on other planets, including intelligent life. Not that it's likely any has been flying around visiting us (although not impossible). I suspect that there are entities out there either now, or one day a few billion years from now, who will have the ability to control the entire universe. No way guaranteed of course, there may be barriers to that level of power or control, we don't know, but it hasn't stopped people smarter than you or me from thinking about it. That's not evidence for sure, but it also isn't unicorn wasting time either.