Oh Bill, some of us actually find the idea that we are not immortal comforting, you should never say 'everyone' feels one way or the other about anything.

The Faith of my father, is not my faith. He allowed me to make my own mind up about Gods and creation by drawing on education, observation, free thought and my own experiences. In fact, he was adamant that the indoctrination of children into ANY religion or belief system was tantamount to child abuse. I often wonder how I would have turned out if he had not been so enlightened. I owe him my independence, for which I will be eternally grateful.

I grew up in a nonreligious household. My mom died a week after I graduated HS. ( It was 1980- before cell phones.) I had left the house that day and was out all day. Late in the afternoon I heard my mom say "goodby" . It was her voice and she was not there but still I heard it clear as day.

I got home late that evening and my dad was waiting in the living room to tell me that mom died.

Bill Nye and others like him have a point but still can not answer experiences like I and others have had. There is no evolution theory that explains supernatural events.

Yes I believe in GOD. There is something out there that science can't explain. Yes there are a lot of nut job preachers and followers. It does not change the fact there is something beyond us.


We will all find out on our deathbed.

With the VAST majority of the world's population believing God exists in one form or another, you're asking a whole lot of people to just shut up about it.

Tolerance goes both ways.

I tolerate living in a world where cartoons depicting literally shitting on Jesus is considered a form of entertainment. Maybe other people can tolerate when a person simply relates an experience they had and shares their view without even trying to proselytize.

Granted, but it was a request, not a command.
How about I ask them to just stop acting like they KNOW the unknowable, and insist they preface their religious conversations with 'this is what I believe' instead of 'this is how it is'?
While I would prefer to not have to hear about other's beliefs constantly, my real issue is with them being offered as 'fact' that I MUST accept in the face of all evidence to the contrary.
My problem also lies with the fact that most people (not all) can't discuss their beliefs without proselytizing, that's especially so for religious zealots. I would have much more patience with the topic if that were not the case.

Understand, for people who have faith, faith is knowing the unknowable.

Example: I know that intelligent life exists on other planets. It is a 100% certainty in my mind. I am so certain of this "fact" in fact, that I think it's ridiculous that there are people who even question it. Yet, there is no actual scientific proof. Nothing published. Nothing discovered. I believe it though. I know it to be true. If someone were to tell me I shouldn't believe or talk about it, I would find it nonsensical and offensive. This is what faith feels like.

There's a difference between passively not believing in God and actively hating people who do.

If someone offers some bullshit as fact, and you know it isn't, welcome to every day on earth (or at least the internet). It doesn't matter if it's religion or not.

For example: (paraphrasing) 'Most people proselytize'.

Most of the (almost 6 Billion) people who believe in God go through their day to day lives without ever even mentioning their beliefs let alone trying to proselytize when they do.

And on that note I will say that proselytizing is not necessarily wrong either. You believe what you believe and they believe what they believe and everyone gets to express themselves (all proselytizing) and everyone can make up their own minds. Now, I'm talking about people expressing themselves, not entities who have an agenda.

Which brings me to my last point. None of this is to suggest that I disagree with Bil Nye. Kids should not be fed bullshit. Adults either. The real problem? It's not "money is the root of all evil". It's "the love of money". Greed is behind the majority of evil.

There are those who desire positions of power and pervert religion into a tool to achieve their own agenda. This is a very old story. And it is these people who "take God's name in vain". But that's just one hammer in their toolbag. Religion is one. Anti-intellectualism another. Manipulation through fear. On and on.

Science is truth but it is not the only "truth" in life. Art exists. Beauty exists. Love exists. There is more. Maybe all of that can be boiled down to some chemical reactions in the brain and sociological pressures, but I believe there is a greater truth.

Sorry for ranting. Don't take any of this personally please!

I'm sorry your Mom died, but what you have is an anecdote.

I'm sure your perceived experience means a lot to you, but the most probable answer is pretty simple: you imagined it. Human memory is incredibly fallible and at times of emotional stress even more so. There have been numerous studies that have shown this.

And yes, science can't explain everything.... yet. But that doesn't mean we just get to fill in the blanks.

There is no "fact" that there is "something beyond us". In fact, everything we know has shown that there almost certainly isn't anything beyond us (at least in a supernatural sense).

Meanwhile, where's our resident young earther? Cmon @shinyblurry. Bill Nye is calling you out.

Understand that claiming to 'know' the 'unknowable' is a definition of insanity. :-)
I can understand your position on ET life, but I disagree it's a certainty, it's merely a statistical NEAR certainty. Just as I must leave that tiny possibility that 'god' exists, you should leave open that tiny possibility that other life does not. We can't know (until we find positive proof, of either, until then it's a question...one can't prove a negative).
Please don't indicate I said any such thing. I do not 'hate people who do', nor have I ever said any such thing. I have said I am disturbed by the ACT of claiming to know the unknowable, and hate the assertion of 'proof' that is never 'proof' (or as you said, BS as fact). It doesn't matter what the topic, to me.
While you may be correct, most don't mention their beliefs daily, that's not what I said...I said when they DO discuss their beliefs, it's usually offered in a 'these are the facts, believe them' manner, morphing to anger if the beliefs are not simply accepted as fact. Again, not always, but more often than not in my experience.
No, proselytizing is not just accepting others' different beliefs, and allowing others to make up their minds. It's saying 'my way is right, anything else is wrong, now do and believe as I do'. I'm guilty of it myself at times, but I'm looking for people to not 'believe' anything but learn how to assess data and figure out reality for themselves (not based on others ideas and beliefs).
I'm pretty much there with you about greed and religious elite.
We differ about science. Beauty, love, love of beauty (art) have been boiled down to chemical processes in the brain scientifically (my godfather was the brain chemist that discovered most of the chemicals in the brain and how they interact). I see no need for anything else, no matter how cool it might be if there were really 'magic' or 'supernatural' things out there to explore and understand.
I try to never take it personally, unless I see a personal attack. I hope you do the same. As I said, I usually try to 'hate' actions and methods, but not the people that use them (with some exceptions for assholes).

EDIT: I think it boils down to people mistaking what they fervently believe for what they 'know', an understandable mistake.

I feel the same way Bill Nye does; I don't think they should teach Darwinian evolution to children. It is especially damaging to children to adopt the belief that they are a random accident with no purpose or meaning to their lives rather than a special creation of God, made in His image, and created to fulfill the destiny He planned for them.

Bill seems to think that those who believe in God are simply too weak to accept the idea that we are all glorified apes living on a random mudball, but that isn't true for me or the other Christians I have met. People believe that God exists because an honest conviction, not because they are intimated by the philosophical blackhole that a belief in strict naturalism ultimately leads to. I was a true believer in the secular creation narrative before I came to know that God exists. I was resigned, as some of you are, to die an ultimately meaningless death. I changed my mind because of the evidence revealed to me, not because I was scared about my future.

I've probably made it clear here several times that I'm fairly religious, and that at the moment, I'm not convinced evolution is the correct explanation for our existence as humans. But it certainly doesn't mean I'm ignorant in the subject. I've studied it for many years, both in school and out. Although it's not my area of expertise (physics was my focus), I'm most definitely not uninformed. Now there may come a time in the future that I am sufficiently convinced, and change my viewpoints regarding evolution. Will that be a problem for me? I don't think so. Not everything in the Bible is literal, and my interpretation of certain parts may be off. But for now, I don't believe in evolution.

But my disbelief is certainly no hindrance to my education, my understanding of science, or my contribution to society, and it would be insulting to assume otherwise. There are plenty of other Christians (and other religous folks) that are the same. The issue is that the fundamentalists are causing everyone problems, as they usually do, by refusing to accept the teaching of such material, and I certainly don't agree with that.

As a Christian parent, by all means, let your kid learn about evolution, and if you don't agree with it, explain to them why. (Parents are teachers too.) The child may not grow up agreeing with the viewpoint, but they won't be ignorant of it.

Me and my dad had the exact same dream, with all the exact same details, a few days after a very difficult loss. We were all hugging each other, together - like when we were younger - and we both agreed on our positions, things that were 'said' (felt), everything. As he kept telling me details that i also had written down, i was getting chills down my spine. It felt like nothing i'd ever experienced before.. i even woke up feeling positive, like nothing was really wrong and it was all going to be ok.

I always went through life certain that nothing profoundly mysterious would ever happen; i understood a lot about the world and i thought i knew how to make sense of anything that happened given time. I felt like life was about getting to know someone, growing to love them and need them, only for them to be stripped away and never be known again, and for me to live on carrying that pain until eventually i was released from it. And that single experience changed my mind on all of those things, giving me a feeling of passion back... which in a way, to me, confirms that it was real - even though he passed, he somehow managed to enrich me and give me a reason to carry on. But that experience is something unique to me and my understanding of things, and no one else could or should be convinced by it.

I accept that no one else will be able to believe that what i know happened really did happen, and there will be people who would say it's coincidence. Yes it looks like one, no i can't prove it, but i feel differently about it than you do, and you weren't there.... and that's all i can say with any certainty to another person. If there IS some kind of god, or some kind of life after death, and our loved ones are waiting for us, then why would the evidence BE scientific and provable? Why should it be scientific instead of unscientific evidence, just because THIS world is scientific?

I don't believe in mediums, ghosts, tarot cards or any hocus pocus - none of that will be proven. But that doesn't mean that sometimes, perhaps, when you love someone so much, the distance between is not so great. All i can be sure of, about death, is that absolutely anything can happen, and there is no reason to assume it will be anything like what we know now.

I believe you bob. I wouldn't have before that happened, but i do now... it's just that perhaps we disagree on what it means. Which is ok, cos your guess is just as good as mine.

Only real miracle on young earth "theory" is how everything had to be disguised to look like the earth was really really old...

http://videosift.com/video/Youre-Going-To-Die

I wouldn't keep beating this horse bloody if yours hadn't died HUNDREDS of years prior.

We're NOT talking about philosophy. This is NOT a perspective based on convictions alone. We are talking about TEST-ABLE SCI-ENCE...

This is the world (universe, perhaps multiverse) which engineers towards space discovery, sustainability of planetary bodies and their varied biology, geology, chemistry, and all of the sciences explainable through the holiest of holy languages -- MATHEMATICS -- based on innovation and implementation through repeatable testing.

Your beliefs do NOT contribute to that, though they do contribute elsewhere -- the realms of philosophy and mythology. I guess we call that religion. But not science.

In this life, we are concerned with temporal discovery and how to engineer with such discoveries. We're not concerned about the afterlife in THIS life. We are concerned with science, especially because it has a track record of proven results which we all benefit from.

It doesn't matter what you believe or once believed, there is a rigorous process for scientific knowledge; including a peer review process. All humans have emotional pain, but that shouldn't hold us back in the dark ages before reason.

Hi Poolcleaner,

I think you're arguing from a false premise, that a belief in Creation science does not contribute to what you call true science. Some of the greatest scientists who ever lived were creationists. Here is a list of a few of them:

http://creationsafaris.com/wgcs_toc.htm

Their belief that God created an orderly Universe based on laws (which is the reason we call them laws) highly influenced and inspired their exploration of the cosmos. Here are a couple of quotes:

When with bold telescopes I survey the old and newly discovered stars and planets when with excellent microscopes I discern the unimitable subtility of nature’s curious workmanship; and when, in a word, by the help of anatomical knives, and the light of chemical furnaces, I study the book of nature I find myself oftentimes reduced to exclaim with the Psalmist, How manifold are Thy works, O Lord! In wisdom hast Thou made them all!

-Robert Boyle, Chemistry

The more I study nature, the more I stand amazed at the work of the Creator.

-Louis Pasteur, Medicine

Creation science is a collection of data which supports the idea that the Earth is young. Some of the theories within creation science are testable and predictive, but as a whole you cannot put it in a lab and perform a measurement any more than you could do so for macroevolution, because they both concern what happened in the past. You cannot observe macroevolution happening anywhere nor can you subject it to empirical testing. You can make observations and inferences based on a theory, but that is subject to interpretation.

You forgot one....
'The Church says that the Earth is flat, but I know that it is round. For I have seen the shadow of the earth on the moon and I have more faith in the Shadow than in the Church.'-Ferdinand Magellan

I would say that many of these people in your linked list were not actually 'creation scientists', most were from before the invention of the scientific method, and many others were heretics that may not have stood in public opposition to 'creation science', but didn't believe it. At the time, stating something against the church's doctrine might get you tortured to death.
That's not why we call scientific 'laws' laws. It has NOTHING to do with church or god.
Not a single hypothesis in 'young earth' "theory" (a complete misuse of the word 'theory') is testable, because they're just plain wrong and based on a single person's terribly bad math based on the bible and the length of each generation listed within it. It was NEVER scientific in any way. Sorry.
Not a single hypothesis in creation "theory" (there's that misuse of the word again, it's not a 'theory') is testable either. Not one. If it were, you would have scientific proof of god, and you simply don't. Please don't lie about science.
Macroevolution has been seen in the lab, in fruit flies and bacteria amongst others. It has been observed and repeated with empirical testing. IT is a THEORY, not an inference based on an unprovable hypothesis (like creation science and young earth both are).