First off, thank you for having that flag in the classroom. It does more than you know for showing people that they can be accepted.

As for religion, I suppose my point and the biggest question really goes back to the big bang. Science can explain or at the very least approximate just about everything with the exception of the Big Bang. i.e., why does something exist instead of nothing? And I’ve heard the perspective — even from people who follow Abrahamic religions — that the only time God interfered was with the Big Bang, and that this was the actual “let there be light” moment. And that since then, we’ve been left to our own devices. What I find intriguing is that this interpretation does not really contradict anything in science. Personally, I see a striking symmetry between the Big Bang singularity (nigh instantaneous explosion of matter, energy, and information from seemingly nowhere) and the singularity at the center of black holes (nigh infinitely drawn out implosion where matter, energy, and information go seemingly nowhere), making in my mind a very strong case that the two are connected; that perhaps black holes create their own universes and we are but one of those universe offshoots. However, despite being succinct and elegant, this is also improvable and unfalsifiable. Faith in that this is how the universe began is, in my mind, no different than the faith that the Big Bang was started by none other than God.

(One could probably also make some argument about indeterminable quantum phenomena being of divine origin, but that goes even further outside the scope of the initial discussion hahaha).