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Re: Science, religion...thoughts - March 30th 2011, 01:51 AM

Quote:
Originally Posted by dr2005 View Post
To be fair, you could point to the prevalence of conspiracy theories regarding certain high-profile events in world history (Moon landings, JFK assassination, 9/11 and so on) as providing some circumstantial evidence that people can quite easily deny what is happening in front of them even in the face of overwhelming evidence. Denial does seem to be a reflex action in some circumstances, probably because the brain is not capable of fully taking in the implications of such events until initial shock has passed. I would agree however that this is circumstantial at best. Another possibility is that those witnessing an appearance of God on Earth would go into severe nervous shock and die thereafter, which would not be much of an improvement on balance...
That's the point though; people aren't denying things that they personally saw in those cases. The conspiracy theories are either denying the motives behind such things, or denying things that happened at least long enough ago that they're not really in recent memory. In either case, it usually involves suspecting people of tampering with evidence; if a being is clearly altering the laws of nature directly in front of you, I don't think that anyone could really ignore that. As far nervous shock; it's god. Presumably he's capable of not doing whatever he wants just as much as he is of doing whatever he wants, at least if we're still talking about Yahweh. A god who isn't capable of "flame-off" isn't really omnipotent.


The atoms that make up you and me were born in the hearts of suns many times greater than ours, and in time our atoms will once again reside amongst the stars. Life is but an idle dalliance of the cosmos, frail, and soon forgotten. We have been set adrift in an ocean whose tides we are only beginning to comprehend and with that maturity has come the realization that we are, at least for now, alone. In that loneliness, it falls to us to shine as brightly as the stars from which we came.