"Well, There’s the records of the Christians Bible, for one."

They began as scientific texts, did they? Went through the scientific methods of observation, testing etc? Were written up fully and completely as a series of observation, methods and test results and published through respected academic channels, then openly criticised by generations of teachers, students and other scientists to see if they were rigorous enough to be considered scientific? I think not.

John:
I used the term 'inconclusive proof' as I understood druid to mean it, which was in an absolute sense. The fossil records have gaps, yet there is enough of them to prove certain facets of evolution at the very least. So the fact that they are 'inconclusive', perhaps incomplete would have been a better word but I was using someone else's terms, means that the evidence so far gathered, while not being able to paint an absolute concrete picture of it all, is still far from worthless, which was seemingly the suggestion put forward for any proof that couldn't be considered unequivocally absolute and beyond doubt. Then of course there are always people who will claim that anything is inconclusive simply because they prefer to ignore it.

If religious texts had more scientific value they would deserve more inclusion, but being preached at for the heinous crime of being accidentally human and getting lectured about your sex life all day doesn't help e.g. the average student of orbital dynamics very much.

The biggest oxymoron of all is the latest wave of 'creation scientists' - I'll leave you to decide where the 'moron' part fits in. Finding more sophisticated ways of justifying intelligent design and, STILL BY INFERENCE ONLY, a creator, by using philosophical predicates dressed up as science; is still philosophy. The anthropic principle in particular has actually been shown to undermine its own claim, but you don't need a degree in predicate logic to understand that - anything will ultimately fall down when based on a false or suspect premise.

And then they get the bloody theories wrong anyway! Or worse, deliberately so! No scientist would last five minutes in a serious scientific community if they did that. Nevertheless, for years to come it will be argued, along with Behe and all the other currently trendy arguments for intelligent design, even though at best all they suppose is an outside entity's involvement and not any religion's version of it in particular. The desire of any given group to believe it does mean their version shows how far gone some of these people are. And, yeah, that is classic psychological disorder, where anything goes to prove a point;

Ford: You're stealing that ship?
Zaphod: Yeah.
Ford: You can't do that.
Zaphod: Look, property is theft, right? So theft is property? So this ship is mine.


"Those believers that the outer limits of the universe can somehow define the origins of life on earth"

Yes, well, to be objective about anything you have to consider it and beyond. They sound ideally placed to me, considering the issue in as many contexts as can be scientifically researched, much more so than anyone who sits back and says 'no need to discover anything, God did it'. They do find common universal laws, but they are born of study and research, not blind faith. And although science can resist changes to some things, it is not for the same reasons as religion does i.e. bloody-minded, head in the sand mentality, some perhaps but it never lasts, science ultimately reserves judgement pending further testing and always accepts new evidence even if it is later refuted. Religion, for the most part, treats new evidence with derision and wishes it could still use the ducking stool.

If, for example, it was discovered, tested and accepted by the scientific community that the law of gravity wasn't everything we thought it was, there would still be students of science sticking to the older view, but to suggest that all athiests or scientists would do so is ludicrous. Any true student of science knows that anything they learn or discover has a high chance of being superceded or incorporated into something else. And science would still move on despite the opinions of the supposed 'blind worshippers' of older theories.

Besides, I wouldn't count anyone here as a plastic athiest anyway. Once again it is symbolic of creationist arrogance to suppose that a contradictory opinion or belief couldn't have been actually considered or thought about with any degree of intelligence. They have lost the capacity to keep their beliefs and their thoughts separate, so of course we all have. You gotta hand it to them, if they can't understand you they just make you as dumb as they are :-)

On one of our forums a creationist fundie type started a thread called 'why did you become an athiest?' Become. Like that was the only way. Um. Hello? You want to stick your head in the clouds, fine, dude, more power to you but you have to pull it out of your arse first.

"Catastrophes made changes, but there should be a steady progression along the way?"

Both, according to modern evolutionary theory. There were both fast and more gradual changes happening simultaneously. This is also backed up with hard evidence for anyone who can be bothered to check.

For 35 years, before I went online, I had never believed in any god and had never had more than the odd argument about it. I had met the occasional fanatic and thought from a very early age that it was a dangerously unstable mindset with no real place in a productive society which could only be counter productive if you ever had to think about anything else, while looking around nervously for the cops. And of course, no offence to good Americans, but I wasn't brought up in the United States of religious Assholes who never shut up about it. We had better pest control.

The first time I saw an evangelist on TV I laughed so hard I almost wet myself. When someone told me it wasn't a comedy act, it was serious and people actually sent them loads of money, I just made it to the toilet in time. To me it represented the ultimate triumph of the human race over itself and common sense.

It never used to be a problem until religious people made it one. If somebody asked me 'do you believe in God' I would either answer
'no',
'why should I? The bastard never writes',
'which one?'

etc etc and by and large, unless you got a serious god botherer with a personality bypass and zero sense of humour, nobody had a problem with it. The word athiest was hardly even used, someone asked you if you believed, you said no, and they didn't feel the need to bang on about it for another 5 minutes trying to decide the correct label for you. They had a life. Also, the word athiest was never used here in the same derogatory, discriminatory way as whore/nigger/jew/queer/commie/intentional slur of choice.

Bottom line - all religious people, without exception, are far more concerned about my non belief than I am. I don't give a flying fuck about their beliefs, I just wish they would get off my case about mine.

They might be offended. I don't care.

"All governments suffer a recurring problem - power attracts pathological personalities. It is not power that corrupts, but that power is a magnet to the corruptible" - Dune, Missionaria Protectiva.