PZ Myers once compared the religious *spectrum* as a linear function. He said something like that the Fundamentalist Christians pull the spectrum to the RIGHT (for the sake of argument), while the rabid foaming atheists like Sam Harris and Dawkins (and even some folks here…) are stoutly anchoring the LEFT.

In this tug of war, I don’t think the scientists/atheists are gonna get their labcoats dirty, because we control the REAL magical cure: KNOWLEDGE. The only thing getting muddy will be the frocks of the faithful bible thumpers.

So when good moderate Christians say that I am just as “bad” as a Fundamentalist, in some sense you could be right, in that I pull the entire spectrum toward the abyss of atheism. I sure could use some fat moderate Sheep on MY side though, any takers?

They are different things, for different purposes. Religion is a formalized explication of the numinous, and has to do with perception and meaning encoded in ritual and fable. It comes into conflict with science when it starts making what Richard Dawkins terms “Existence claims.”

The problem with your question is the underlying assumption that somehow they should compete. What I’m talking about is what may loosely be termed Spirituality, which is a very human thing, a product of our intellect and imagination and our, as Mindy puts, connectedness. There is no reason this should come into conflict with science, as it is an emotional response to acknowledging our sense of being.

As for what actually happens, I’ll go with science over myth, analysis over fable. What it means…well, that’s something else.

“On the one hand, he says, he has his religion, and on the other hand, he has his science, and the two don’t seem to overlap. “Cosmology,” Primack says, “is producing the true history of the universe.””

I tend to agree with Primack (and his wife).

I think you missed Mindy’s point. She says: “Our souls, in my version of faith, are our network of connectedness…”

There is a metaphysical point at which the descriptions of the first few millionths of a second of the universe and god moil into a kind of sublime handwaving. Once “we” showed up (self-aware, cognating creatures) god was almost an automatic concept in which all this handwaving gets subsumed.

But the concept Evolves.

As for god listening to our prayers…if I read Mindy right, she believes somewhat as I do, that when we talk to each other (seriously, deeply, real communication) then we are talking to god, and in that formulation sometimes our prayers are answered.

Or maybe this is all just semantics. But I’m always open to some antics.

Well, you know that I have trouble with this. As far as I know, “The Big Bang” included EVERYTHING, that would also included any “God”. Nothing would not have existed outside of or before this universe (by definition). Unfortunately I need a magic spaceship and plenty of rocket fuel to prove it.

About the evolution part, I’m sure you are familiar with the argument by now that natural selection and evolution work INDEPENDENTLY of any forces outside of those we currently know.

In fairness, here is an excerpt from a discussion with some cosmologists who seems to agree with Mindy…

http://www.science-spirit.org/printerfriendly.php?article_id=559

“The elegant order and beauty of the universe, to me, seems to point to an intelligent creator of it,” says University of Alberta cosmologist Don Page, an evangelical Christian who studied with physicist Stephen Hawking at Cambridge University and lived with him for a time. “It seems simpler to believe that this ordered universe was created by an intelligent being than to believe that it exists just by itself.” Page, whose work in quantum cosmology investigates what happened when the universe was so small that quantum mechanics would have applied, reads the Bible and believes God listens to his prayers.”

I don’t believe for one iota of a second that God is a micro-manager - gave us our brains, imbued each of us with a soul and sent us on our way. Our souls, in my version of faith, are our network of connectedness, both to each other and to God. S/he/it does not win games for the Faithful nor does s/he/it grant grace to some but not to others (I HATE that expression, ‘there but for the grace of God go I,” which essentially says *I* am deserving of grace but the other is not).

You are spot on, and I loved reading it.

Another word for believing something you cannot see or prove is “delusional.” How do we distinguish faith from delusion? With evidence. We use evidence to determine if something is ‘real enough’ to justify our faith; otherwise, it is mere delusion. Did George Washington exist? What is the evidence? Bones, letters, Mount Vernon…we have a lot of evidence George Washington existed, so we have faith that he did.

Does (or did) the god Zeus exist? What is the evidence? Ancient temples, statues, friezes…we have a lot of evidence that people once *believed* in Zeus enough to devote a lot of scarce resources toward creating monuments to Zeus, but we have no evidence that Zeus actually exists (or existed).

Does (or did) the god of the Bible exist? What is the evidence? Ancient churches, statues, friezes…we have a lot of evidence that people once believed, and continue to believe, in the god of the Bible, enough to devote a lot of scarce resources toward creating monuments to that god, but we have no evidence that the god of the Bible actually exists (or existed).

“But wait.” the believer will say, “the god of the Bible answers my prayers.”

No, he doesn’t. The god of the Bible hasn’t answer prayers any more than has Zeus, Thor, Vishna or any of the other thousands of gods to whom humans have prayed; believers simply credit their god when good things happen, and blame some other god (Satan, Apollo, Jormungand, Shiva, etc.) otherwise. It’s called “selection bias,” and you can read more about it here (http://dangerousintersection.org/?p=449) and here (http://slate.msn.com/id/2086617/) and, for an amusing example, here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_sharpshooter_fallacy).

Well, it’s hard to argue with a definition, so I will agree with you to some extent, if that’s how you want to define “evolution”.

Just know that, I know for a fact that L. Ron Hubbard is the creator of the Universe. Any and all experiences you are feeling even those about your own god, are actually just L. Ron Hubbard’s dianetics at work.

Did I mention the flying spaghetti monster? He is the one in charge of keeping creationism out of schools, with his squiriming appendages, he works hard every day to deceive atheists like me into thinking that the God of Jesus is NOT the real god. That’s all I know.