What about God? Does God belong in the classroom?
Maybe. He may belong in a comparative religions or religious studies classroom. God does not belong in a science class.
I'll give you a quick rundown as to why.
Science has a specific sequence of procedures, depending on the field. In a very general sense, science follows the sequence I'll give here. Some sciences cannot follow it precisely, some add, some subtract, but vary as little as possible.
Science first observes some phenomenon that needs explaining.
It then makes observations related to the causes of that phenomenon and puts together a number of best guesses as to the cause. For good measure a few implausible but possible guesses are also thrown into the mix.
For each of these guesses, or possibilities, tests are determined that would disprove it as an explanation for the phenomenon. This is where God (or anything supernatural) as an explanation first causes problems. If you haven't guessed yet, these best guesses are the foundation of a theory:hypotheses.
The tests are performed, and one by one the hypotheses are falsified. If a modification of the hypothesis makes the falsification questionable, the hypothesis is modified, tests are developed and run. If the hypothesis fails in a big way and there is no hope of rescue by modification it is set aside. Future findings may resurrect it at a later time but it still goes through the process of testing at that time. Within the tests, even for evolution, statistical analysis and the ability to predict are major evaluation points.
In the end, we have a theory built of a number of hypotheses that we were unable to falsify. None have been proved as such, just have passed tests of falsification. The theory must also cover more than just the observed phenomenon, it must hold true for other predicted phenomena.
This is part and parcel of science, falsifiability is necessary to reduce the number of possible explanations to a few that have a confidence level that is beyond a reasonable doubt.
You can see that with an explanation such as God who can be blamed for any cause or effect, none of the original hypotheses would be falsifiable. In fact we could come up with any number of ridiculous, improbable hypotheses we wanted and not be able to eliminate any of them.
That, in a nut shell, is why God does not belong in the science class. Remember, however, that this is an overly simplified version of what really happens.
If there are any scientists out there that would like to correct me, please do so. Gently.
Which God? And which classroom?