From: Zero Powers (zero_powers@hotmail.com)
Date: Mon Sep 18 2000 - 00:04:28 MDT
>From: Samantha Atkins <samantha@objectent.com>
>Emlyn wrote:
> >
> > Gods (or Godesses) aren't going to help us where we are going. Get over
>it.
>
>Don't be simplistic. I'm not, nor is this topic. Some of the impulses,
>sentiments, feelings, ideals, ideas behind religions are also to be
>found driving humanity in the sciences. That very desire to transcend
>that burns so bright in all of us for instance.
>
>I understand it is uncomfortable to think along these lines. I
>understand very well as I have fought with such things often in my life.
>
>But do not underestimate the importance of the various images of
>Transcendence to the type of work we are embarked on.
I can't imagine that any of the world religions have a lock on any sort of
real "supernatural" ontology. But I always get kick out of atheists who
smugly claim that there is no god. I don't claim that there is a god. The
fact of the matter is that the data are inconclusive. But there are some
things we do know: the universe is here; it got here somehow; and we don't
know how.
I realize that is not reason enough to claim that it must have been built by
Jehovah (Allah, Jesus, fill in the blank). But some time back, before the
big bang, before the first of perhaps almost infinitely many big bangs,
there was a *first* cause.
Energy is conserved, meaning it is neither created nor destroyed. Can that
mean that energy and/or matter have *always* existed? Is that any easier to
believe than the story that God has always existed? Not for me. Don't get
me wrong, I no longer believe in the God I was taught about in Sunday
school. But in light of the number and fundamentality of the unanswerable
questions, I can't see how one could claim with any sort of certainty that
God does not exist.
-Zero
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