At 06:50 PM Monday 8/4/2008, Jon Louis Mann wrote: > > "By atheists" and "in the name of > > atheism" aren't the same thing. It's > > about, as was mentioned a few posts back, ideology. When > > beliefs get > > in the way of reason. And in that sense, Stalinist Russia, > > Nazi > > Germany, Spain under the Inquisition, Maoist China, and the > > Balkan > > conflicts are all the same thing. It's ideology. > > "Atheism" is not an ideology, it's just a > > position of non-belief in > > gods. The one problem is that a large proportion of > > humanity seem to > > be wired for religion, so if one decides they don't > > believe in God, > > there's some room for other dangerous nonsense to fill > > the gap. In > > Russia, that was Marx-Leninism and Lysenkoism, and very > > similar in China. > > Charlie. > >i sit corrected, "in the name of atheism". as a devout atheist i >believe there ain't no gawd, but i can't prove it, so i take it on faith.
And that is pretty much what many Christians and others believe: that there is a God, even though they cannot prove it rigorously to the satisfaction of everybody, so they take it on faith. > i believe the universe is cyclical and the big bang occurs when > all the galaxies in the universe are sucked into super black holes > which are then sucked into a super duper black hole at the center > of this universe, which then explodes it reaches critical mass, so > that the process of expansion, contraction and the heat death of > the universe starts all over, again. >jon Of course you may know that a cyclical universe seems to be out of favor with cosmologists now because the latest evidence points to the density of "stuff" in the universe (matter + energy + "dark matter" + "dark energy") being less than the critical density necessary to halt the expansion, much less make everything fall back into a "big crunch." And while some Biblical literalists and others may claim otherwise, there are many scientists who do not believe that there is necessarily an essential conflict between the findings of science and belief in God in general or Christian belief in particular. . . . ronn! :) _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
