So, the idea that living things have evolved over millions of years following known laws of biology is difficult to believe. As opposed to the magic theory that they just popped into existence out of nothing...
You are not paying attention, Mike. According to your precious science, it is not known as to how your precious living things originated. If the building blocks of life created your precious evolved beings, then what created the building blocks of life? Where did the building blocks of life come from? If you can't answer this question, then Evolution Theory is just a novelty, and no better than the Magic Theory of dancing unicorns and leprechauns magically blowing the building blocks of life, out of their noses, so that you can have your precious Evolution Theory.
But that is precisely how religion most likely got going, isn't it? We don't know how something works, and so attribute that thing to some god. God was probably a sort of shorthand for explaining things long ago. Where did the earth come from? God did it. Why does life exist? God made it. Why is some tradition in effect? God ordered it.
Science works differently. First, it acknowledges that some things are unknown. You're correct in assuming that we don't know how life started. However, science does postulate a number of theories on the subject--none of which require magic.
I believe that the study of science is the study of God because God created the universe and set its laws. The more we understand of science, the more we understand of God.
Really?
Care to point to any peer review journal thats published a study that explains god?
What you're basically saying is that, since god made everything, then the more we learn about everything, the more we learn about god. But thats a fucked up way of going about it because you're assuming god exists to begin with, and then using everything as evidence of god without having to prove the link that god actually made everything.
The way I see it there are two main types of argument for god. Historical and Metaphysical, neither of them tend to use any science.
Historical would be, this book is really old and says theres a god, this miraculous thing happened thousands of years ago and for some reason god can't do any miracles now we have video cameras and electron microscopes.
Metaphysical tends to be bullshit like, the universe has to have a beginning, so god is the beginning, or god is the greatest thing in the universe, there must something in the universe greater than anything else, so that is god.
Most of these either start with an unproven assumption (like the universe has a beginning), or attempt to change the definition of god to something that can already be proven to exists (like god is everything, or love is god, math is god, etc), or both.
Science is a method of explanation. You take observation and evidence, you make a hypothesis, then you test it, then you get it tested over and over to make sure the results are right and that nothing else is responsible for the results you're getting.
So have you got any evidence for god that would actually fly in a peer review journal?
Here's some shit that might work.
Things spontaneously popping into existence.
Amputees suddenly growing arms and legs back.
Basically any kind of magic shit that only god or a god like thing could do.
Or actually seeing or being able to measure god and having a recording of it.
Now none of these in themself are proof of god, but they would be evidence, which would then have to be investigated to find out if there is a god that is causing them.