mitchellmckain

But this point of view leads directly to the conclusion that homosexuality is an activity, a natural activity according to you but still an activity not an identity like sex and race. The homosexual community will have difficulty accept this because they see it as losing ground. However if the logical groundwork can be laid for an equivalence with religious freedom, it might fly. It is, after all, the identification of homosexuality as an immoral activity by religious groups that makes this such a problem. Equivalence with religious freedom may be just what is needed to deal with the threat (and do a lot to put religous groups in their place). Religious freedom must include a freedom from the imposition of religion on other people. Any activity which does not do harm according to secular judgement (ie. legal and scientific reasoning), cannot be prohibited by the secular authority. The morality of such activities can only be judged by the religious sector, which means that homosexuality (which clearly falls in this category) must be protected under the auspices of religious freedom. However, that means it must also be subjected to the same restrictions. This means that public places such as the workplace and public schools can prohibit the free discussion of both religion and homosexuality if these are judged disruptive or inappropriate. However these two must legally be on an equal basis.

No more than Catholicicsm is the same as Christianity and yet Christians get blamed for everything the Catholics did. So likewise since the communists are a member of the group atheism and if atheism can be considered a religion then atheism is the worst religion of them all. Couldn't agree with you more. The real culprit is human nature at its worst. And war and murder happen in spite of religion not because of it. Although humans will use any excuse they can find for what they do. But I think that history proves that religion is the hardest and rarest excuse of them all.

I on the other hand, do not much care for debate, I prefer discussion, which places a higher priority on respecting different points of view. I was in my high school debate class/club and I think the experience was very valuable in developing my public speaking ability. But debate is too much about arguing for argument's sake, picking at words, intentionally misunderstanding and distorting the other persons point of view, and other meaningless tactics of rhetoric. I find all this a waste of time and tiresome. Oh but I never even implied anything different. But as much as people may try to indoctrinate, after a certain age it doesn't stick. After that it becomes a matter of choice. The active Christians are all converts. Oh people certainly like to repeat this. But I challenge this. Prove it. Six million Jews were killed because of their religion but not in name of any religion. More than twice that number were killed by the communists, and if you call what they had a religion then atheism is the worst religion of them all. Then there is the impressive slaughter by Ghingus Khan. Two world wars. The civil war. How does the example of the crusades and a few wars in Europe during the reformation, with religion as the thinnest excuse, justify this claim of yours? In fact most of the time when it was about religion, the result was conversion by force rather than slaughter. It was often only afterwards that simple greed brought about the slaughter or enslavement of those which religion had previously converted. Well the original topic was "Evolution or God: How were we created" But a photon, my pleasure.. There is no such thing as a photon at rest. So a photon is always a wave which often interacts as though it were a particle. Or if you like M theory (modern string theory) it is a vibrational mode of ten dimensional space-time, which like all forms of matter and energy can only interact in discrete units called quanta.

It all depends on what part of science you are talking about. Something on the frontier of science like cosmology and this estimate of the universe as being 156 billion light years accross is extremely tentative. You are not meant to take any scientists word for it. The best you can do is find out the reasoning behind this calculation and decide for yourself. However when it gets to a point that 95% of the scientific community which specialize in that subject area agrees on something then then you know it has been checked and rechecked and more importantly that new scientific advances have been made with its help. That is the point where disagreement with the conclusion in question begins to strain credulity.

Actually you should welcome this idea of being without a cause in physics. The thing you have to understand about physics is its very narrow view of the world. You see, physics only looks at the mathematical relationship between repeatable measureable quantities. I think, and famous physicists like Eddington agree with me, that it is absurd to think this view of the universe is all there is. Therefore if physics says that something has no cause, it really just means that there is no physical cause. It means there is no cause that can be expressed as a mathematical relationship between measurable quantities. I think that spontaneous does means there is no physical cause. My first impression of Mr. Hawking suggests that he is a true disciple of Einstein and a determinist. However, unlike Einstein, he has digested and accepted quantum physics so I am not so sure. He does suggest that science is a better explanation of the origin of the universe than God, and that God is not needed to explain the universe any longer. Quantum physics brought an end to the classical era of physics (you seem to be describing) where everything was thought to have a (physical) cause. Quantum theory includes events called a wave collapse the results of which are purely random and without cause. Many physicists have resisted this conclusion strenuously, none more than Einstein. Many thought that the causes were simply unknown, this idea is called the hidden variable theory. But a scientist John Stewart Bell proved that if any such hidden variables existed then there was a inequality that should be obeyed by certain physical measurements. The experiments have been performed repeatably and the results are conclusively that the inequality is not obeyed which means that the hidden variables do not exits. So the causes are not simply unknown, they really do not exist. But again all this is within the narrow view of causality and the world used by physics, so it is this narrow view of causality that fails in quantum physics. One way the results of the Bell inequality experiments are interpreted is to say that local realism is fails. In other words instead of throwing out determinism we could throw out reductionsism which says that reality can no longer be reduced to a sum of its parts. The most stubborn mechanistic (reductionist) determinists try to dodge these results by throwing out the limitation of the speed of light, but the majority of the scientific community does not take this possibility very seriously.

Who said it has infinite size? A recent estimate puts the size at least 156 billion light years accross. Older estimates of 10 to 15 billion light years is based on the age of the oldest visible stars, but this doesn't take expansion into account. The new evidence derives from objects 13.7 billion years old and taking expansion into account. They think these objects are at least 90% of the age of the universe so the universe could be bigger, but not by many orders of magnitude. (Do an internet search on the size of the universe). Sure all this is quite theoretical but point is, who said the universe has infinite size? There is a theory of inflated expansion where it expanded very quickly (exponentially) in the early part of its expansion but I think that lasted about 300,000 years not 3 seconds, and the universe has continued to expand at a more normal yet increasing rate since then for another 10 to 20 billion years. Another part of this inflationary theory is that the universe was in some sort of high energy false vaccuum and it was the decay of this false vacuum that caused inflation while producing energy in the particulate form as a hot quark soup. It was after this that the universe cooled while expanding further to form matter as we know it today. Why did the universe expand? Most cosmologists like Stephen Hawkings look for the answer in a quantum phenomena called spontaneous symmetry breaking. The basic idea is that an initial state can fall to a lower energy state by spontaneously breaking some kind of mathematical symmetry. In this case it could be the spontaneous breaking of the supersymmetry of supersymmetric string theories, which is why we find that symetry broken in the world we know today. This theory is never meant as an explanation as to where the universe comes from. Physics doesn't try to answer such question. It only tries to explain physical measurements. The big bang was first developed to explain the measurement of the velocity with which all the galaxies we see are speeding away from each other. Next there was the measurement of the 4 degree background microwave radiation, which is explained by the theory that at some time in the past the universe was in a hot dense state. Inflation theory was developed to explain the large scale uniformity of the universe. Logic can never find a beginning, because logic only goes from one truth to another or one supposition to another. It must start with an axiom, postulate or assumption taken on faith, and accepted until the conclusions which derive from it prove false. Whether it is the big bang or God we can always ask why and how such a thing is, was or came to be. The real decision between these two ideas has to do with what you want to explain. If you want to explain the mathematical results of physical measurements then the big bang is your best bet. If you looking for meaning, purpose and hope then God is the better bet, since very few people find any deep meaning for their lives in the mathematical equations of physics.

You web page at directory.astahost.com seems to be broken whether in firefox or ie linking the page produces this messageParse error: parse error, unexpected T_VARIABLE in /home/director/public_html/inc/db.inc.php on line 56

A lot of christians believe that a few dinosaurs survived to a time in history a lot more recently than when they supposedly became extinct. Well I hardly buy into their ridiculous 6000 year timetable but as for the dinosaurs what could be more reasonable. Why should they all die at once. Every living thing struggles to survive. It only natural that a few may have survived. After all we have been wrong before, remember the Coelecanth (oops guess they were not extinct after all).What most people fail to realize about the fossil record is that the process captures records only occasionally and therfore tends to represent only the largest populations. Small populations struggling on the brink of extinction tend to get overlooked. It is in these small populations where evolution moves most rapidly, because large populations are too genetically stable. Thus it is perfectly expected to see gaps in the fossil record as we do.

I hope you are not going to tell me you like those horrid reality shows. No acting sure. No art. Only people with no life of their own would watch these.I love movies because I love art and stories. Of course there are movies without much of either of these and so I think they stink. Movies can also be a strong and shocking dose of reality that take us outside our sheltered little lives. Take for example a recent movie titled "Crash". It show how stupid, petty, confused, confusing and wonderful that people can be. Nothing happens as you expect it.I do think it is strange how actors and entertainers have become some of the most important people in our society. But this fact is more honest than politics in the US has become for a long time, for these people are actors and entertainers whether anyone admits it or not. On the hand, I think it shows the true source of human values. It does not come work like the stupid Marxist believe. It does not come from trade goods or even the necessities of life. Ultimately value comes from human creativity. The great things in life are acts of pure creation and movies are superb examples of this indeed.Yes we are surrounded by phonies and pretense. It is how many people react to fear and protect themselves from pain. But you only get past these defenses by opening yourself up to the risk of being hurt yourself. Hostility and contempt is another mask and although open hostility may be more honest than those, who hide their hatred beneath a web of lies and a smiling face, it is still a reaction to the same kind of fear.In condemning movies and actors you have hidden behind one of the worst kind of defenses of all. Scapegoating. It is a means by which people hide from themselves and pretend that they are not becoming exactly what they despise. You need to consider how you are putting on an act yourself and what role in a movie of your making that you have chosen.

I don't care much about the language, they are all pretty much the same to me. What I am more concerned about is the security and especially their minimum requirement test. I have my doubts about whether this page will fit your "static" requirement. They have those pattern recognition tests designed to block automatic access on some pages. I can avoid these but this is an example of how automatic access unfriendly this website is. Another is thier limit to downloading and analysing less than 100 data records at a time. Also it is not a matter of simply parsing the info. It has to be retrieved interactively in pieces and then put together.

I downloaded firefox 1.0.4 a while a go but never had much reason to try it. I resist using plug ins as well, I keep refusing the macromedia flashplayer, for example. Ok, so maybe I am paranoid. But I figure the less crap on my computer the better. I finally tried firefox in order to see if it would solve a problem I had with yahoo mail. I kept getting sent to a "Page cannot be displayed" after logging on to yahoo mail. Surprise! Using Firefox did solve the problem. Of course I have better email addresses but I want to keep all the ones I have. I cannot "switch" to firefox. There are sites specifically designed for IE which I have to use. Although there is one with a minimum requriement test which detects firefox as Netscape 5.0 and accepts it.I do not get tabbed browsing and I don't like the way that firefox opens a new window. The main reason that I use the new window feature is for branching. I need to see the info on the current page while I explore links from that page at the same time. Both of the above features of firefox get in the way of this. Ok I can right click on a link and open it in a new tab, but in the new tab it opens the back button does not retain the memory of your previous tab. Anyway I have to say I prefer IE in this regard.I see all these enthusiastic praises of firefox. But they are a bit meaningless to me without details. What is so great about firefox? So far the only thing that makes it worthwhile at all to me is that it lets me use my yahoo mail account.

I mostly program in C++ but I am open to using any language (although would not like to buy a compiler, I have Visual Studio). In the past I know that I have been able to run programs in a sub process although I am not sure that would be the right approach for this. The idea is to run a program that supplies the keystrokes to IE 6.0 in order to get info from that site periodically and analyse it. I think it has to be IE 6.0 because well take a look at the minimum requirement test they do on this site http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ anyone done anything like this and could they point me in the right direction? I am quite capable of absorbing whatever details are needed from the internet (I learned OpenGL and Windows API in the same way). P.S. I am not talking about cracking the site or anything. I would use a legitimate user and password.

Logan, first I would like to say that I am responding to your post because I found it interesting not because I wish to refute everything you say. I have had so many people automatically assume this and obvious confusion results because they cannot see the validity of the refutations which I am not making. Being both christian and a physics teacher I cannot agree more with what you are saying here in the main, but I would like object to final sentiment. Standing in between science and religion and absorbing the confusion, trying to make sense of it, is not a comfortable place to be. There are many people, even the majority who have little reason to even try. Therefore I object to calling people fanatics or cultists (even though many of these would wear the badge proudly), because I think they are far more ordinary than these labels imply. I am often surprised at how little of what science is saying is understood by the majority of people, including those who adopt it (science) as a sort of life philosophy or religion. Because of this, I think it has become a pretty common attitude to give up on science. People buy in Kuhn's nonsense about scientific revolutions and think that the discoveries of science will eventually be overturned, and so they believe what they want to believe. As strange as it may sound, I think that Star Trek has a greater following than science these days. People find it easier to believe in a well told story. For lets face it, the stuff of todays physics has gone so far out of the realm of common sense that it is far stranger than science fiction. Indoctrination really has very little to do with it. In our society people make their own choices about what to believe and they change their minds all the time. What you are really saying here is that you think the rejection of evolution is unreasonable and therefore anyone who does this must be crazy or deluded. You are wrong. People can and do believe in just about anything for reasons too numerous to count. Reason is not a one way street, it is more like an infinity of parallel worlds because it must begin with assumptions, postulates, or first principles. This is too simple a picture. Originally science, philosphy, religion, art and entertainment were all one with no divisions between, it was the expression of the pure and innocent wonder, curiosity and creativity of mankind. You think like a modern man when you separate these elements. Their stories were not only to explain like a science, but to give them meaning like a philosophy, to inspire them like a religion, to express beauty like an art, and engage their heart, humor and passion as our numberous forms of entertainment does today. So we have become more sophisticated today with all these specialize activities to excel in specialized tasks. But confusion and some siliness results when we compare these different activities based on goals of one of them. Science is in the business of explaining things rationally and of course religion cannot compete on that basis because that is not its primary function in life of the believer. When we compare these in this foolish manner and force people to choose, I think were are in danger of becoming fragments of a whole. Religion has only been used as a convenient excuse for war and abuse when that seemed possible, but it has more often been simply ignored because it gets in the way. I mean get serious, where exactly was religion in the two world wars? And what about the atrocities committed by the communists in their cultural revolutions in the name of their anti-religious sentiments. Do you really think the conflict in Palestine is about religion? The muslims have always been 1000% more tolerant and sympathetic with the Jews than Christians have, until we decided that they had to give up their land for them. Ok, so what about the crusades? Religion was a convenient excuse for these barbaric conquerers of the Roman empire to continue their pilliage south, but the victims were often other christians. So people like to parrot this nonsense about religion being the cause of war, but I think it is time for people to grown up. Well, clearly I am saying that it really must be both, but we really don't want to turn the clock back and mix up science and religion back together again. In science we have learned that sometime apparently contradictory explaination are required for a real understanding of things (the photon is both a wave and a particle). But, on the other hand, not everyone can do it, so we need tolerance and even appreciation for people who are different. Or a giant living computer created by mice to compute the ultimate question? Yes this sort of pseudo-science is rampant today. We definite want to keep religion out of science. All in all, I think we see eye to eye. We definite need to find some way of healing this adversarial gap between science and religion. We need a greater acceptance of the true complexity of human life and take a step toward becoming more than just fragments.

Perhaps I should rephrase that statement using the words "when we fail to see the value and beauty in other living things." It is true that western civilization has grown increasingly careless of other living things, but seeing the beauty and value in our fellow human beings has, historically, been more difficult, I think.

As a christian my viewpoint could be said to be somewhat christian. But since I am proposing a theory and christians today seem a bit adverse to theorizing you might question whether this theory is christian at all. On the other hand the assumptions made here are many and largely spring from a somewhat Christian world view. Well, you can decide for yourself.My theory begins, like Aristotle, with some kind of Unmoved Mover, some what like the Christian idea of God as all powerful, all knowing, infinite and perfect in knowledge and being. Now the christian believes that such a being created the world, but I would like to stop before this, and first consider the question of action. If a being like this should act, from what fountain of motivation does his action spring? In other words, why do anything? Apparently this being is complete and sufficient of himself and it is inconceivable that he would act out of need. I suggest that the only conceivable motivation is to give from that overwhelming abundance which is his being. But if this is the case, then to whom or to what shall he give. In this initial state of unlimited omnipresence and power, is there anything or anyone which is not him that he can give anything to? I think not. Therefore if this being should act at all it must be to create something other than himself and because this creation is intended to receive, it must be animate to that extent. Now consider what kind creation seems likely? Something that would receive only a little that he has to give or something that could eventually receive all. It seems to me that the second is only logical for the first would quickly become obsolete - a mistake. But if something animate had the capacity to receive all that this infinite being could give then does it not seem to be infinite itself in some sense? It must have infinite potential, so that the more does receives from this creator, the greater its capacity to receive grows to become. Now what do you think this thing would be, this animate being of infinite potential separate from its creater? Now some of you might assume, ok right, here it comes, he is going to say ... man... right. But you would be incorrect.No, what I have in mind is something that springs a bit more directly from the requirements outlined above. Consider what this being must do to acheive his end. To be something apart from himself this thing which he creates must have its own substance and this substance must take shape and act on its own, apart from the direction of his will. Consider that he might acheive such an end with a substance called energy which takes shape and acts according to mathematical laws which are not 100% deterministic but which leave the smallest indeterminacy through which he can exert some influence if he chooses to do so. Often simple rules can lead to a neverending increase in complexity which can surprise us especially if the process is not completely deterministic. Considering his objectives, the rules or laws he would choose would have a potential for unbounded complextiy. But more importantly it must have the capacity to support something of infinite potentiality. What could this thing be? It must be something with ability to become more than it is. It must be able to increase itself in every way conceivable, to grow, to learn, to adapt, to evolve. It seems obvious, to me at least, that what we are talking about is life.For me it is a logically inescapable conclusion that if such a being as described above were to act, then it must be to create life. And the universe is nothing more than the cradle or egg in which he can bring life into being. Life is his perfect compliment - infinite potentiality to go with his infinite actuality. Life is something to which he could give endlessly in care and guidance to cultivate and to teach. So after creating this cradle of life he would naturally continue helping life to grow and help it to become more and more able to receive everything which he has to give. We are certainly a part of this because we are alive. But considering how vast the universe is I think we can discount the incredible arrogance of man in supposing that the success of God in any way depends on this particular mote of dust we call the earth.But this is a far cry from saying that he is disinterested. Here is life, and in it is all potentiality for which he created the universe. Consider that one way or another everything we are comes from this creator. In us he cultivated the love and care we feel for each other. In us he grew the beauty that we see in each other. In us he raised the minds that judge the value we perceive in our fellow man. Is this a product of fantasy or delusion or could this be only smallest hint of the love and care that he feels for us, and the beauty and value that he sees in us. The fantasies and delusions of man are legion, but there is a foolish and childish feel to them. The foolish and childish things all seem to come out when we fail to care for and love each other, when we fail to see the value and beauty in other human beings.

Everything has to relate to computers?!? How boring. I mean I like computers. In many ways computers are practically my life, on the other hand, they are not my life at all. Blabbing about computers all time is not for me. Frankly, if you really want intellegent people in this forum and not just a bunch of fanatics with no life of their own, then you need to reconsider.

Boy! Talk about unexpected endings! Is Dumbledore really dead? Did Snape really turn on him? Something does not add up here! Is this author just trying to imitate the gimmick of Lemony Snickett by keeping Harry as miserable as possible in every book? What about that shriveled hand that Dumbledore promised to explain to Harry but never did? Did that scene with Dumbledore begging for his life from Snape seem phony to anyone? Instead of an end in site, we seemed to get a promise that this story will never end. Can the author keep us interested if she kills off our favorite characters?

This is so typically Korean. I swear, half of these peope are insane. It is their character to do nothing in half measure or moderated by concerns for little things like physical health. Sure I have gone hours playing a computer game, I am sure many of you have. It was only a matter of time before a Korean found this extreme like they do in most everything else. I think they are proud of this type of insanity and encourage each other to behave this way. Where are the most radical Christians that go to church every morning before dawn to pray: Korea. Where are the most radical communists left in the world where communism has clearly failed: Korea. They will study the hardest in any subject and play the hardest in any game to prove that they are the best in the world. Do I admire the Koreans? Not really. I think they are just crazy.

Or rather it is like anyone no matter what his religion as long as he keeps one foot in reality and doesn't let ideology, theology or doctrine eat his thinking away until there is nothing left but a pie in the sky.

Good thought depending on what you think that means. The kind of evolution of the individual described by Darwin lead to a socially destructive philosophy known as social darwinism. I also think it played a crucial role in the philosophy of nazi germany. The problem is that Darwin's theory is incomplete. This does not sound like any kind of evolution at all. It sounds like the inheritance of aquired characteristics supplanted by Darwin. But on the other had there must be something right in what you are saying. Intuition tells us so. Darwin's theory of the evolution of the individual doesn't apply to humanity anymore. We are clearly in the next stage of evolution, which is the evolution of the community, which changes all the rules. We embarked on this stage of evolution once we began to protect the weaker members of society and made possible ways of life freed from the immediate concerns of individual survival. How does a computer programmer compete for food. He doesn't, not as an individual. Instead there is a mutually benifical dynamic between him and those who do aquire food. Learning and human technology are all part of this new stage of evolution of the community. Competition has proven to be an effective economic dynamic for the human community but its proof is not Darwinism but in the improvement of cooperative acheivements of the human community.

For the people on the ship they can get anywhere as fast as they would like, it is just for the for the people back on earth watching that it takes so long. So "would be space emperors" must either stay on a planet to rule it while space ships crawl among the stars like snails or go on the space ships themselves where the people on the planets can pretty much ignore him. Of course the scavenger like aliens in the sci fi hit "Independence Day" would certainly be a be a problem (at least if relativity were the only obstical). Well the last class I had two years ago when I finished my masters in physics was a pretty up to date class on String Theory. And one of the key historical developments was solving the "tachyon problem" (which meant figuring out how to make sure tachyons don't show up in the theory). The essence of science is that it can be reproduced. Here in Utah we had that cold fusion fiasco/scandal where some scientists had people convinced they had found evendence for cold fusion, but it turned out to be a scam. Reproducible results is the only thng that seperates science from fraud (or big blunders). As for believing in tachyons I and all the physicists in the world are completely outnumbered by the star trek fans.

We would not get older because it does not take that long. Relativity affects time and space not the aging process. The point is that relativity does not limit further space exploration! We can get anywhere as fast as we would like. What it does interfere with is our ability to make space empires which just makes for fun stories like star trek. Tachyons are not a theoretical particle proposed by today's physics. They are predicted by theories which are considered flawed and incomplete because of this prediction. None of today's scientists believe that tachyons really could exist. It is just an idea that sci fi shows like star trek could use to entertain you with its techno babble. That is correct, which is why none of today's scientists believe that ftl travel could ever be possible. Going back in time makes fun stories but it is a logical contradiction.

But why do you say this? You demonstrates that people put more faith in science fiction than science. And the reason is probably only that they understand it better. A sci fi book that accepts the reality of relativity at least as far as travel is concerned is "Speaker for the Dead" by Orson Scott Card. Go one step further and give up on the idea of instantaneous communication and space empires and other such nonsense and then we can try to imagine the future as it might be. Ok so ftl travel would be nice, but so would magic spells to turn garbage into food. Makes more sense to focus on what is possible, don't you think?

I believe that Wicca is one instance of a group of the oldest religions in the world. The group spans the entire world and is called shamanism or shamanistic as a group. This group includes the religion of the native americans, shinto in japan, shamanism in korea, Wicca and Druidism from europe and many more. Vodouin, Toaism, and Hinduism also probably derives from shamanistic roots as well. Probably the most significant commonality of all of these religions that makes them identifiable as a group is their respect for and focus on nature (and human health) as opposed to the clear focus of the Judeo-Christian, Islamic and Buddhist focus on human beings (particularly an their other worldly well being). These later religions are also message oriented or reformist in nature, which tend to make them a bit more agressive (seeking conversion) in nature, although that no longer, at least, seems to be the case for Buddhism.The revival of Wicca, the increasing popularity of native american religion and others of this group in the west are clearly an obvious response to the gaping hole in Judeo-Chritian thought about the role, importance, and respect due to the natural world. This gaping omission has only become more obvious with the slow realization of man's negative impact on the environment.It also a response to the way Christianity has become somewhat superficial, hollow and even ugly as a result of defensive and reactionary trends in Christianity. Much of Christianity has become so afraid of new ideas that repetition of Biblical phrases has become the only "safe" way of speaking. Don't get me wrong. Not only do I have a deep respect for fundamentalist Christianity but I consider myself a born-again Christian. But unlike others of that kind I also have a respect for the other religions of the world. I also refuse to abandon rational thought and honest critcism where it clearly applies.I think that Christianity had its golden age at the time of the founding of America in the birth of what I call protestant liberalism. This is represented by groups such as the Quakers and Unitarians, and later the methodists perhaps. At this time the Bible was opened up to the public as a new frontier at the same time as new scientific discovery and philosophy (both old and new). By trying to absorb it all and make Christianity meaningful in a changing way life, Christianity was truly alive as never before or since. Evolution and other secular philosophical attacks on Christian thought , subversively undermining the central message of Christianity has caused the retreat represented by fundamentalism. I believe that without this fundamentalist retreat the real Christian message would have been lost. However, in a world full of change and new challenges, fundamental christianity which discourages creative thought seems superficial. In a world where science is playing a more and more important role the dismissal of science makes fundamental chritianity seem hollow. In a world which is quickly becoming a single community the exclusivity of fundamental christianity is an ugly thing. Therefore, it is only natural that as Christianity has become more anti-intellectual, narrow and exclusive, people have turned to alternatives which seem more reasonable.New religious movements such as unificationism and bahai have tried to create a synthesis which overcome this dillemna , but I think the heart of christianity has failed to survive the process in these cases. For one thing, they have been too wrapped up in the messianic ambitions of their founders.Another irony is that there is very few practices of the older religions like Wicca that Christains did not absorb in some form or another. It is probable that some practices in modern Wicca have been influenced by Christianity as well. After all this, most of the differences are likely a bit trivial. And it is ironic that christians condemn Wicca to fearfully protect the purity of sacred practices, some of which, very likely, historically, derive from Wicca.

Actually I think his view of the divine is a common one. However, number 4 is unsupportable, because we all hurt people. If God loves anyone, then God loves all people regardless. I think that the differences between us which we make so much of in order to puff ourselves up, are pretty insignificant from the perspective of God. I see myself with the same perspective as parent arbitrating in the fights between my two boys. They make much of insignificant differences in behavior which is bad both their cases. It gets to the point where you don't want to listen to this nonsense anymore. I think that no matter how grown up we like to think we are, from God's perspective we are all silly and childish. I find it impossible to believe that this journey on which we have taken only the first step (like a toddler) can end here before it has hardly even begun. However, I think there has to be something other than God's love and approval involved in all this religion stuff. There must be something intrinsically wrong in the actions of evil, such that they carry consequences which have nothing to do with any judgement of God. It is the nature and lesson of life, that actions have consequences we have to live with. A God who loves us, like any parent, would surely try to warn us, but I have no doubt that in our immaturity we are misunderstanding and getting it all wrong.