Have any of you read about the anthropic cosmological principle?

This Universe was purposely designed. The only other possibility is that there are or have been trillions and trillions of universes for this one to pop up randomly. Which isnt really a possibility, considering that 1) this universe is expanding steadily with no outside interference, which there would be if there were other universes around, and 2) Anytime a universe doesnt contract into another big bang, the process of one universe leading into another would stop.

Im not saying that it is conclusive proof of a God, but following science will point you toward the existence of an intelligent designer.

I didnt read through the whole article, or the many comments, but im sure the atheists have been thier usual condescending, elitist selves.

peep this link if youre interested..

www.proofgodexists.org/anthropic_principle.htm

I'm not a religionist, I'm a humanist and yet I object to this phrase that keeps cropping up "debunking the supernatural."

Sometime in 2007 Scientists at CERN in Switzerland and MIT wil switch on their particle accelerators. Their aim, in a spirit of friendly rivalry, is to be first to prove the presence of a mysterious sub atomic particle, the Higgs Boson, often referred to as The God Particle which is thought to be responsible for enabling particles to have mass, to exist in other words.

At the moment the Higgs Boson is every bit as supernatural as ghosts, fairies and angels. Some people believe in it, some people do not.

Of course failure to record an observation of the boson will not prove it does not exist. Something is responsibe for binding together the gulons, quarks and other particles that make the nucleus of an atom. And something is responsible for holding the electrons orbiting that nucleus at exactly the right distance. That also is a supernatural phenomenon because we cannot yet explain it.

I have experienced in life several things that cannot be explained by any known science. These things then are supernatural, but the fact they cannot be explained does not mean that God or the Devil are involved.

Three hundred years ago a woman could have been executed as a witch because she used willow bark tea to cure a headache. Yet now we know willow bark contains the compound on which aspirin is based. Supernatural? Certainly not, but it was once.

Too many scientists fail to differentiate between supernature and superstition and because of this they allow religionist to dictate the agenda.

So can we have a little less debunking the supernatural and a little more debunking the sloppy use of language please. If we avoid ambiguity we will soon have the creationists on the run.

Yeah, but you see, my God is Shiva.

DrMajorBob makes an excellent point, which holds true even more when generalised beyond christianity. All religions thrive on the incessant litany of brainwashing of children from the parents and elders. Most children are not encouraged to develop a level of open mindedness or independent thinking. They are constantly fed morsels the respective mythologies, and are reinforced to spout the same nonsense that you hear from the grown up zealots.

Check this out in any religion - christian, muslim, jewish, hinduism - and you will find that they are all equally culpable(The only difference is that some religions are more organised at such mass mind corruption than others). Children are nurtured in the deplorable and mindless environment of the respective myhthology. And, boy, do they look smug and pious when they hold forth on how they found god. To me they look moronic.

As a child, I was such a moron who swallowed the 'truth' of hindu mythology, and did not even perceive the possibility of independent thinking. I hate the part of my childhood that was lost and wasted in this type of nonsense. And I despair to see such brainwashing being perpetrated in greater measures on all the children at home and at school. All under the guise of good upbringing and education. IDiots (deliberate capitalisation, and you know what I mean), are just one example of attempt at such corruption of the thinking mind through the schools.

And yes, I am pissed with the christians - and the hindus, and the muslims, and the jews, and whoever else fills the young malleable heads with utter nonsense and crowd out the faculty of open and independent thinking. This is as deplorable a form of child abuse as any other, and it is found acceptable. Religion thrives on dumbing our children down. What is not to hate?

Mr Shermer is enviably cogent in his argument, and I have a lot of regard for his works and thinking.

However, the whole debate about evolution, ID, and the nature of science is tainted by christian-centric obsession. This is probably related to the fact that this also seems like a US obsession. (Sadly, the evangelical hatred of science is also seeping across the Atlantic to some parts of Britain too).

The smugly self-indulgent 'modern' judaeo-christian religions have long proselytised and hijacked the rich world traditions, and supplanted them with their own brand of barbaric fundamentalism. Consequence, the blight of christianity and islam have overrun whole countries of the East, and the world burns under the fundamentalist fervor of muslims, jews, and christians.

The fundamentalist christians are now turning their self-obsessed attention against the scientific way of thinking. But in challenging them, let us not lend them any more credence by singling them as the only faction who reject scientific thinking. They just enjoy a stronger lobby and sponsorship (of an once progressive, but increasingly regressive, nation) than others. The cause of scientific thinking surely deserves better. A more inclusive debate, discourse, and education is what is required.

I have a friend who was a thorasic surgeon. And a very good one. Arguably a very well-educated man.

At retirement, his need to continue teaching, garnering attention, and a host of other human needs to be sure, lead him into multilevel marketing pursuits. I've heard my friend speak about his spiritual beliefs in the past and I watched him take the bait offered by people who want financial success to be some sort of indicator of spiritual health and well-being.

My friend dodged a bullet from these folks. Their shadow pyramid finally came into focus and the facts of basic marketing had their day.

Then my friend found himself fascinated by the notion of mining gold out of the sewage of major metropolitan cities. His "connection" into this cutting edge technological achievement fleeced him for the rest of his retirement before my friend realized just how ridiculous and foolish an idea this investment "opportunity" was.

My contention is that if my friend had not been raised in an environment that encouraged and nurtured magical thinking as a major component of daily life he would have kept his critical thinking skills engaged long enough to walk away from people who meant him no good.

Magical thinking? But isn't it fun to watch children enjoy our faery tales about the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus? Where's the harm in any of this?

Not alot of harm in these myths because eventually we teach our children the truth about these stories. The harm comes from respected authorities in the community who actually believe (and proudly trumpet) that dead people walk around in physical form post-mortem. That somehow a God who has quite obviously gone to some trouble to point out the temporary nature of our tenure here would construct a reality where the thing which often separates us from Him would be His reward to us for engaging in saintly, or highly desireable, behavior.

"That's right my beloved children; I love you so much that I am going to torment you with more limitation, more death and more conflict than you could ever wish for in a thousand life times." This is the God that contemporary Christians get away with teaching innocent, naive children. And one of the "benefits" of this knee-buckling adherrence to utter crap is that a significant percentage of worthy people will continue to be vulnerable to one con or another that relates to cause and associated effects.

There can be great beauty in rituals and in the ethical systems those rituals are intended to support. But there is something terribly rotten about encouraging a large number of one's fellows to believe that wine becomes blood and wafers become the actual body of someone who was brutally assassinated by a cadre of amoral rich people 2,000 years ago. In fact, it's quite hateful. Dress up your hatred if you want to, if you must, but don't expect, rely, or insist that the human species needs to be significantly or even partially lead by individuals who have been hypnotized into buying into this baloney.

The ACTUAL effect of this sublimated hatred has been the wars and rumors of wars fought in defense of our culturally selected version of the Easter Bunny. Drone on and on about how wunnerful contemporary Christianity's promise is...but it is just another Easter Bunny, a myth made dangerous because we are expecting sane adults to believe in its literal truth.

What things REALLY are are a function of where they come from; causes are known by their effects. If Christianity in any form was ever about more than the ingratiating of one set of human egoes over another, we would be able to see that in its history. Instead, we see that very quickly after the revelation of the gospels took place, those who tried to capture the actual quality of the information provided were declared "heretics" by those who wanted to "organize" their new religion, and rewrite that religion in their own image and likeness.

Christianity is just one example of this very human process of self deception and self destruction. No spiritual tradition engaged in by humans is immune from it and most of them suffer because of it.

Reality is about finding a map of truth that matches the data and explains more about humankind's relationship to itself and its environment. The truth will set us all free.

But first the truth is really going to piss us all off.