Sorry y’all.

HURRAH! HURRAH for the Wiz-ard,
The wonderful Wizard of …

…. or is he?

/shakes fist at New Zealand

Oh, and Rev Chimp – Why my God and not Vishnu? Because
my God looks better in a sports car.

Oh my, a Christian with a sense of humor – whatever will you do?

Oh haha! erhem. Um cough cough.

Now how about answering my question?

Then answer honestly from your emotions which you find more
appealing.

Me? All of the above. Seriously. Of course, I am a space geek, so I have a particular yearning for space. There is something profoundly wonderful about seeing the surface of another world, at least in my opinion. Buzz Aldrin put it best: “magnificent desolation.”

To me, it IS amazing to see something which, as far as we can tell, has never been touched by life. Perhaps Earth really is Eden, the cradle from which all life originates. Perhaps not. There is really only one way to find out, and that is to go out and look.

I do realize that many other people do not share this joy in the sheer, jaw-dropping splendor of other worlds. They do not see the potential, or at least find the potential too distant and too abstract to be meaningful to them. I am capable of respecting that, as long as they are capable of respecting my passion for space in turn. Different people have different interests. That’s perfectly natural, and actually a very healthy thing for society. (We can’t all focus on space travel, after all. We’d starve to death.) But my problem with people like Comfort is that they expect me to respect their passions but have no intention of respecting mine. Instead, they denigrate my passions, as if to justify their lack of interest in them. This shows a lack of vision, in my opinion, because it means they cannot really conceive of differences of opinion. Why would they attack scientific inquiry if they did not specifically feel that such things are foolish? Comfort’s obvious lack of understanding on such topics do not improve my impression of him at all. He is denigrating that which he doesn’t understand anyway, which demonstrates that he has no willingness to listen to different views, much less understand and respect them. And that is what I find sad.

I think it’s more important to remember that the goal of manned space flight RELIES on environmental technologies, and thus contributes to researching the environmental issues that are our priority.

After all, if you’re sending human beings to Mars, you need a ship that can manage about 3-4 years of self-sufficiency. Permanent colonies on Mars or the Moon are either going to be self-sufficent, or at the permanent mercy of their financial backers for continuous resupply. Either way, the ability to supply a renewable source of Food, Water and electricity on a small scale would have profound impacts on our own ability to live on earth sustainably.

No one here is saying those things. Science looks for answers in reality, using specific methods. Idea evolve, change. Woaw… sort of like everything else on earth?
I lost all respect for religion and religious “educators” when I asked why the dinosaurs weren’t mentioned in the Bible. I know they weren’t mentioned because humans did not know of them back then, therefor could not have written about them!
The pastor said they are, indirectly, that obviously Noah had them on the ark as well. Wow, apparently our cubit/ft conversion is off by a factor of 10, or 100!
Like the other poster said earlier: stop being ridiculous!

One: Islamic fundamentalist, Christian fundamentalist – they’re both as bad as each other. Me, I just get tired of the old “evil Muslims who wanna take over the world” stereotype.

Two: Taking the mick out of Ray Comfort is not the same as attacking Christianity. Ray is a loon, and a dishonest one at that. If people hold religious beliefs, fine, but I doubt many here are interested in anyone preaching it.

Just my 2 cents.

–> Insert obligatory whine about lack of edit or preview feature here <–

Allow me to let you in on something most theists seem not to understand about atheists and agnostics… Most of us are former believers. We know the spiel, we’ve read the books, we’ve heard the message. Many of us even spread the word for a while. (I personally spent nearly 10 years working in youth ministry and education.) It’s just that eventually we begin to see through the faulty reasoning and emotional arguments. We just don’t buy it anymore. And it’s going to take more than you repeating the same tired story to convince us. We’d like some evidence this time around, thank you. Believing unsupported assertions may make you feel warm and cozy, but forgive us for preferring the evidentiary and examinable. It’s just that it works best. Reason may not be as romantic or comforting as wishful thinking, but it has the virtue of getting us to the truth.

Also, were a god to exist, there’s no reason to assume it would value or desire our worship, or indeed deserve it. The insecure, jealous, genocidal lunatic of the old testament certainly doesn’t deserve praise or worship.

And the “Bow or Burn” message in the NT isn’t any better, even if that Jesus character seems like an mostly OK guy.

“The biggest tragedy of Comfort’s “just dirt” comment, though, is the severe lack of vision that it reveals, and the total lack of wonder. I mean, he clearly believes that God created the world, and that it’s a wonderful place. Why is he not consumed with curiosity about that world? Why is Martian soil not every bit as fascinating as terrestrial soil, given that God created it and declared it good? One doesn’t require faith in the divine to be captivated by the sheer wonder of the Universe, but I would expect faith in the divine to make the world seem even *more* wonderful, not less. Rather sad, really.”

Look at a photo of a tropical beach or a huge mountain range
on Earth, then look at one of the images of Mars taken by the
Phoenix spacecraft of that planet’s north pole.

Then answer honestly from your emotions which you find more
appealing.

Perhaps now you can see why most regular people would no more
choose a world without God than they would a place as bleak
looking as Mars really is.

By the way, in case you are worried, I am not against space
exploring and I even “believe” in evolution. I simply find the
latter to be the way God made His creatures. I am not anti-
science, either. I just think it is limited in its answers for the
human race.

Oh, and Rev Chimp – Why my God and not Vishnu? Because
my God looks better in a sports car.

Oh my, a Christian with a sense of humor – whatever will you do?

:^)

Believe me, one needs a sense of humor in THIS world.

You say there is no God or other realms beyond the Earthly
plane we live in, but you never offer an alternative. Life and
this world just is and that’s it. If you ever really thought
about it, there is a reason why so many people believe in God
or at least some kind of supernatural being or beings, and not
everyone is a dumb, deluded fool. You think your offer of a
world devoid of a purpose and future – and often the only
hope for so many who have nothing else – is the better one?

Why your god and not Vishnu?

I also have a brain, and know how to use it, so I know that the televangelist described by the BA is a complete idiot when it comes to this topic. I am not a Creationist. I think Creationists tend to give Christians a bad name. (They’d give Muslims a bad name too, but in the countries where Muslims are sufficiently numerous for Creationism to be predominantly Islamic, there are laws against noticing that some Muslims are giving the rest a bad name, with predictable results.)

I’d like to correct the BA slightly, though. Dirt isn’t just “rock and other substances that has been processed by bacteria”. One mustn’t forget that it also contains a significant amount of poo, dead animal parts, dead plant parts, and fungus both alive and dead. Dirt is actually pretty disgusting if one thinks about it. Regolith, however, is truly virgin soil.

The biggest tragedy of Comfort’s “just dirt” comment, though, is the severe lack of vision that it reveals, and the total lack of wonder. I mean, he clearly believes that God created the world, and that it’s a wonderful place. Why is he not consumed with curiosity about that world? Why is Martian soil not every bit as fascinating as terrestrial soil, given that God created it and declared it good? One doesn’t require faith in the divine to be captivated by the sheer wonder of the Universe, but I would expect faith in the divine to make the world seem even *more* wonderful, not less. Rather sad, really.

One thought for any Creationists or other Biblical literalists who don’t like the idea of space exploration: the first commandment given by God to mankind was this: “Go forth into the world, be fruitful, and multiply.” If that isn’t a commandment for exploration, I don’t know what is. If you take the Bible literally, then why not fully support space exploration as part of the divine commandment to go out and colonize the whole of creation?

My life is rich far beyond material or monetary standards that
society judges happiness to be based on. I have a loving
family who has somehow survived these “delusions” to go
on to be productive and positive members of their communities.
If I am sadly mistaken, then I wish more people could be this
misguided.

You say there is no God or other realms beyond the Earthly
plane we live in, but you never offer an alternative. Life and
this world just is and that’s it. If you ever really thought
about it, there is a reason why so many people believe in God
or at least some kind of supernatural being or beings, and not
everyone is a dumb, deluded fool. You think your offer of a
world devoid of a purpose and future – and often the only
hope for so many who have nothing else – is the better one?

It must be nice to live in your safe, comfy ivory towers and
proclaim to the unwashed masses your reality. Too bad if
most of these people find your world as barren and empty
as those images from Mars poring down from space now.
That is your reality – a cold bleak harsh one that offers nothing
but eternal death.

So forgive me if I prefer a world where a loving God watches
over me and my family and the rest of us, even the ones who
are so certain He does not exist.

And what gets me most of all is how you can study all the
complex wonders of this amazing and HUGE Universe and
still not see God behind and among it all.

Unlike the mocking I have seen here, I bear none of you ill will
and will pray for your salvation.

Sadly, no, if what I believe is true, you won’t learn anything once you’re dead. So I won’t be able to say, “I told you so.”

[/snark]

> You mistake the acts of a few radicals who use God’s name in
its many forms such as Allah to pereptuate evil upon us all as
the act of God Himself. These people are wrong beyond wrong,
and so is anyone who falls for this trickery.

The problem is there is no way for the objective observer to tell the difference between those who truly represent God and those who erroneously claim to. Even the ones doing the claiming are convinced they are right. Heck, to judge by those holy books that are claimed to be directly from He Himself, He is a pretty nasty fellow. Oh, I’m sorry, that’s that silly “Old Testament” stuff. What, like the “Ten Commandments”? Um, right.

Look, I’ll grant you that there is a fair bit of anti-religious sentiment expressed here. People who perceive religious belief as nonsensical fantasy will express as much. Watching others venerate fantasy would be humerous if not for the lengths it is taken and the effects it has on real lives. Venerating fantasy to the point of fostering ignorance and actively promulgating idiocy will draw ridicule.

If you don’t want to be ridiculed for your religious beliefs, don’t be ridiculous about them.