Intruder... one last post before I get started on my day...
Why is it your job to fucking defend God? Seriously...think about it - isn’t he big enough to defend himself? He can’t even fucking prove his existence on his own....Jesus fucking Christ - him too!
And to make this little rant “even”. Thor you fucking cocksucker strike me with lightening! Goddamm unicorns hiding in North Korea governed by their lord and saviour Kimmy Yung-Un who has never shit a day in his life!

The Intruder - ...when science couldn't prove a thing, it then means it doesn't exist.

Science has never proved anything. That just isn't what it is about.

Oh dear.

Even before I delve further into this topic, I found this paper very quickly:

Dreaming As Mind Wandering: Evidence From Functional Neuroimaging And First-Person Content Reports by Kieran C. R. Fox, Savannah Nijeboer, Elizaveta Solomonova, G. William Domhoff, and Kalina Christoff, Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 7:Article 412 (July 2013) DOI: 10.3389/fnhum.2013.00412 [Full paper downloadable from here]

From the paper in question, we have:

Abstract

Isolated reports have long suggested a similarity in content and thought processes across mind wandering (MW) during waking, and dream mentation during sleep. This overlap has encouraged speculation that both “daydreaming” and dreaming may engage similar brain mechanisms. To explore this possibility, we systematically examined published first-person experiential reports of MW and dreaming and found many similarities: in both states, content is largely audiovisual and emotional, follows loose narratives tinged with fantasy, is strongly related to current concerns, draws on long-term memory, and simulates social interactions. Both states are also characterized by a relative lack of meta-awareness. To relate first-person reports to neural evidence, we compared meta-analytic data from numerous functional neuroimaging (PET, fMRI) studies of the default mode network (DMN, with high chances of MW) and rapid eye movement (REM) sleep (with high chances of dreaming). Our findings show large overlaps in activation patterns of cortical regions: similar to MW/DMN activity, dreaming and REM sleep activate regions implicated in self-referential thought and memory, including medial prefrontal cortex (PFC), medial temporal lobe structures, and posterior cingulate. Conversely, in REM sleep numerous PFC executive regions are deactivated, even beyond levels seen during waking MW. We argue that dreaming can be understood as an “intensified” version of waking MW: though the two share many similarities, dreams tend to be longer, more visual and immersive, and to more strongly recruit numerous key hubs of the DMN. Further, whereas MW recruits fewer PFC regions than goal-directed thought, dreaming appears to be characterized by an even deeper quiescence of PFC regions involved in cognitive control and metacognition, with a corresponding lack of insight and meta-awareness. We suggest, then, that dreaming amplifies the same features that distinguish MW from goal-directed waking thought.

Oh look, scientists have been able to establish salient features of dreaming via direct neuroimaging techniques.

The authors then set the stage for their investigations as follows:

“Dreaming” is usually understood as subjective mental experiences during sleep. Although most famously (and strongly) associated with REM sleep (Aserinsky and Kleitman, 1953; Dement and Kleitman, 1957), dream-like thought is also reported during other sleep stages (see Methods).

For several reasons, by “dreaming” we will generally be referring to subjective reports drawn from REM sleep: for one thing, the majority of “dream” reports have been elicited from REM sleep-stage laboratory awakenings; further, only REM sleep shows a particularly strong correlation with dream mentation (~80% of awakenings from REM sleep result in dream reports: Hobson et al., 2000). For the purposes of the present paper, then, “dreaming” refers to mentation reports from REM sleep.

“Undirected” thought is a similarly complex construct, and can be divided into several different categories (Christoff, 2012). “Mind wandering” (MW) and “stimulus-independent thought” (SIT), for instance, are typically defined as thinking that deviates from a particular task a subject is meant to be completing (McGuire et al., 1996; Mason et al., 2007; Christoff et al., 2009). “Spontaneous thought,” on the other hand, is characterized rather by its undirected, effortless nature—more akin to the everyday concept of “daydreaming” (Singer, 1966; Klinger, 1990; Christoff, 2012); no particular task, or deviation from it, is required. Subtle differences are apparent: MW, for example, might be initiated deliberately (as when a subject decides to “tune out” during a boring task) rather than being “spontaneous.” Nonetheless, these terms are often used interchangeably or with only minimal definition. Fluidity of terminology seems inevitable, however, in a relatively young field of inquiry (Christoff, 2012); moreover, the subjective content and neural basis of these states appear highly similar (compare, e.g., Singer and McCraven, 1961; Christoff et al., 2004, 2009; Stawarczyk et al., 2011). We therefore use these terms relatively interchangeably throughout this paper. MW, spontaneous thought, or daydreaming, then, all refer to subjective reports of undirected thoughts during wakefulness (whether deviating from, or in the complete absence of, a task).

After an exposition on the specific brain regions that are active as part of the Default Mode Network (DMN), including relevant fMRI scans illustrating the activity levels in the regions in question, we have this:

REM sleep is initiated by a network of cells in the pons and nearby portions of the midbrain (Siegel, 2011), but involves a widespread recruitment of higher cortical brain regions (see our meta-analytic results, below, for regions of this theoretical REM network: Table ​Table22 and Figure ​Figure1).1). REM sleep recurs, in increasingly lengthy periods, approximately every 90 mins throughout the sleep cycle, overall constituting about 1.5–2 h of an average night of sleep. Whereas non-REM (NREM) sleep stages are generally characterized by deactivation of many regions as compared to wakefulness (e.g., Kaufmann et al., 2006), REM is unique in that many brain regions are clearly more active than during wakefulness (Table 2). REM also appears to be the most active state from the subjective point of view, with longer, more emotional, and more frequent dream mentation in REM than any other sleep stage (Hobson et al., 2000). REM therefore appears to be by far the best neural marker of dreaming, though it nonetheless remains problematic (see Methods).

A look at the Methods section provides a detailed exposition of the processes used to eliminate phenomena that might impact upon the utility of the neuroimaging techniques they used to perform their analysis, thus ensuring that their results are consistent.

After much discussion of detail, the authors provide this:

Neural evidence for dreaming as intensified mind wandering

To ensure a consistent picture of REM sleep brain activity, we only included in our meta-analysis studies that used relaxed wakefulness (instead of, e.g., other sleep stages) as a baseline condition. Thus the activations observed in REM sleep (Table ​(Table2)2) are in contrast to quiet, waking rest, which—though not directly examined in the studies in question—would very likely have resulted in spontaneous thought/MW at the subjective level, and recruited DMN brain regions. Since the observed foci of activation generally represent t-tests contrasting REM sleep > waking rest, it seems probable that our meta-analytic results actually represent regions showing greater activity during REM sleep than during DMN activation/MW. Because so many significant clusters for REM sleep activation overlapped with DMN regions, these results suggest that brain activity in REM sleep does not simply parallel DMN activity, but rather represents an intensified version of it (Figure 3). The finding of greater cerebral blood flow in DMN regions during REM sleep vs. probable waking DMN activity is consistent with the many qualitative, first-person results discussed above (Section First-person Reports of Content from Mind Wandering and Dreaming), which suggest that mentation during REM sleep is in many ways a longer, immersive, more intensive version of waking spontaneous thoughts and daydreams (Figure ​(Figure33).

Also of interest are prefrontal cortical (PFC) regions, involved in executive processes like cognitive control and goal-directed thought. It is well known that numerous such regions, particularly the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and dorsolateral PFC (DLPFC), are consistently engaged by effortful, goal-directed tasks (Duncan and Owen, 2000). Though executive PFC regions are not part of the canonical DMN (Table ​3; Buckner et al., 2008), more direct, online assessments of MW, using first-person reports combined with fMRI, show that executive PFC areas, alongside core DMN areas, may also be activated during MW (Christoff et al., 2009). Though MW-related activity was not observed in some other PFC regions, robust activation was found in dorsal ACC and DLPFC (Christoff et al., 2009), suggesting that executive processes may to some degree be ongoing during MW. REM sleep, in contrast, shows no such activations; indeed, we found numerous executive PFC regions to be deactivated (Table 2, Figure 1). We propose the tentative notion that waking thought, waking MW, and dream mentation may lie along a continuum of intensity with respect to executive function, as well: executive regions are most active during waking goal-directed thought, undergo a large (but probably not total) diminution during waking rest/MW, and become relatively quiescent, perhaps even actively suppressed, during REM sleep (Figure 3; see also Christoff et al., 2011).

So, it's not as if there hasn't been any scientific research in this field.

But it gets even better, courtesy of this paper:

Neural Decoding of Visual Imagery During Sleep by T. Horikawa, M. Tamaki, Y. Miyawaki & Y. Kamitani, Science, 340: 639-642 (3rd May 2013) DOI: 10.1126/science.1234330 [Paper available from here]

From the abstract:

Visual imagery during sleep has long been a topic of persistent speculation, but its private nature has hampered objective analysis. Here we present a neural decoding approach in which machine-learning models predict the contents of visual imagery during the sleep-onset period, given measured brain activity, by discovering links between human functional magnetic resonance imaging patterns and verbal reports with the assistance of lexical and image databases. Decoding models trained on stimulus-induced brain activity in visual cortical areas showed accurate classification, detection, and identification of contents. Our findings demonstrate that specific visual experience during sleep is represented by brain activity patterns shared by stimulus perception, providing a means to uncover subjective contents of dreaming using objective neural measurement.

Oh look. The authors of this paper demonstrate that a suitably programmed computer can reliably discern the nature of visual data occurring in dreams from fMRI data.

Looks like once again, our mythology fanboy is ignorant of the relevant research.

I've been aware for some time, of advances made in the reliable determination of images observed by individuals while awake using fMRI data, but this is the first paper I've encountered extending that research to dream imagery.

At bottom, it's all neurochemistry. No magic man needed.

It is so funny that you criticize science for being unreliable in methods of proof, yet believe in something purely by blind faith. I can make up a deity in an hour and claim the same things you do, and say that it is "unprovable by science". Of course something made up without regard to the laws of the universe cannot be proven by said laws.

Your argument is invalid because you fail to take into account that your entire belief system was thought up thousands of years ago by people with no concept of natural and physical law, in a place and time where modern science was not even considered as a possibility. Now, we do have methods to call BS on most Christian beliefs, but some doctrines and dogmas of Christianity are so far fetched from reality that logic and reason cannot be used to prove or disprove it.

So, you cannot claim that a method of proof is invalid purely based off of the fact that it cannot prove the imaginary.