the theory of evolution says nothing about creation, and as such does not rule out a creator

Nothing can, even in principle, rule out a creator, it is simply impossible to do. Thats what we are trying to show by postulating celestial teapots and invisible unicorns, you cant rule anything out.

To say evolution "says nothing about creation" is a bit like saying "the football coach hasnt scored a single goal this season" it is correct in one sense, but a pretty pointless argument against the coach. The answer in both cases is "well, not exactly". You still need a coach, thats my point.

Evolution explains how all life went from really simple to really complex with no need for, and perhaps not even room for, a divine intervener. In other words, God is shown quite certainly to be ruled out of the entire circle of life as we know it, and he/she/it is reduced to a previous gap, this time not to explain the wonderful diversity and beauty of the life of this planet (Which is the reason we invented him in the first place), but to explain how he twisted the cosmological constant knobs into place and made lifeless, barren rocks unevenly distributed in galaxy clusters so far apart it shouldnt even count..

From early in the video - the reason superstition is gaining ground is because:

A) It's easy to understand and therefore to believe in. Things like "I Know that I Know that I Know" and stuff about angels and supernatural realms are easy to grasp.

and

B) Science is becoming Damn Hard to grasp even for educated laymen who bother to make the effort.

I mean who the phuk actually understands carbon nanotubes, or electron/hole flow, or genetics, or quantum physics, or the rings of Uranus or damn near anything that crosses the Science News wire these days. Even Applied Science has advanced so far beyond the =capability= of the ordinary guy to understand that many people have simply given up trying.

edit: oh and i recall seeing a tv special on Hawking years ago where he was asked "do you believe in god", after a bit of cosmological hemming and hawing he finally said no.

hey silvester!
popculture for the win!

What about a collective that would hold videos about the many myths, cosmology, religion etc. of various cultures - something along the line of the Islamica?

From wikipedia:

"During the presidential campaign of 1800, the Federalists attacked Jefferson as an infidel, claiming that Jefferson's intoxication with the religious and political extremism of the French Revolution disqualified him from public office. But Jefferson wrote at length on religion and many scholars agree with the claim that Jefferson was a deist, a common position held by intellectuals in the late 18th century. As Avery Cardinal Dulles, a leading Roman Catholic theologian reports, "In his college years at William and Mary [Jefferson] came to admire Francis Bacon, Isaac Newton, and John Locke as three great paragons of wisdom. Under the influence of several professors he converted to the deist philosophy." Dulles concludes:

“In summary, then, Jefferson was a deist because he believed in one God, in divine providence, in the divine moral law, and in rewards and punishments after death; but did not believe in supernatural revelation. He was a Christian deist because he saw Christianity as the highest expression of natural religion and Jesus as an incomparably great moral teacher. He was not an orthodox Christian because he rejected, among other things, the doctrines that Jesus was the promised Messiah and the incarnate Son of God. Jefferson's religion is fairly typical of the American form of deism in his day. ”

Biographer Merrill Peterson summarizes Jefferson's theology: “First, that the Christianity of the churches was unreasonable, therefore unbelievable, but that stripped of priestly mystery, ritual, and dogma, reinterpreted in the light of historical evidence and human experience, and substituting the Newtonian cosmology for the discredited Biblical one, Christianity could be conformed to reason. Second, morality required no divine sanction or inspiration, no appeal beyond reason and nature, perhaps not even the hope of heaven or the fear of hell; and so the whole edifice of Christian revelation came tumbling to the ground.”

Jefferson used deist terminology in repeatedly stating his belief in a creator, and in the United States Declaration of Independence used the terms "Creator" and "Nature's God". Jefferson believed, furthermore, it was this Creator that endowed humanity with a number of inalienable rights, such as "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness". His experience in France just before the French Revolution made him deeply suspicious of Catholic priests and bishops as a force for reaction and ignorance. Similarly, his experience in America with inter-denominational intolerance served to reinforce this skeptical view of religion. In a letter to Willam Short, Jefferson wrote: "the serious enemies are the priests of the different religious sects, to whose spells on the human mind its improvement is ominous."

Jefferson was raised in the Church of England, at a time when it was the established church in Virginia and only denomination funded by Virginia tax money. Before the Revolution, Jefferson was a vestryman in his local church, a lay position that was part of political office at the time. He also had friends who were clergy, and he supported some churches financially. During his Presidency, Jefferson attended the weekly church services held in the House of Representatives. Jefferson later expressed general agreement with his friend Joseph Priestley's Unitarianism, that is the rejection of the doctrine of Trinity. In a letter to a pioneer in Ohio he wrote, "I rejoice that in this blessed country of free inquiry and belief, which has surrendered its conscience to neither kings or priests, the genuine doctrine of only one God is reviving, and I trust that there is not a young man now living in the United States who will not die a Unitarian."

Jefferson did not believe in the divinity of Jesus, but he had high esteem for Jesus' moral teachings, which he viewed as the "principles of a pure deism, and juster notions of the attributes of God, to reform [prior Jewish] moral doctrines to the standard of reason, justice & philanthropy, and to inculcate the belief of a future state." Jefferson did not believe in miracles. He made his own condensed version of the Gospels, omitting Jesus' virgin birth, miracles, divinity, and resurrection, primarily leaving only Jesus' moral philosophy, of which he approved. This compilation was published after his death and became known as the Jefferson Bible. “[The Jefferson Bible] is a document in proof that I am a real Christian, that is to say, a disciple of the doctrines of Jesus, very different from the Platonists, who call me infidel and themselves Christians and preachers of the gospel, while they draw all their characteristic dogmas from what its author never said nor saw.”

However, early in his administration he attended church services in the House of Representatives. He also permitted church services in executive branch buildings throughout his administration, believing that Christianity was a prop for republican government.

Church and state:

For Jefferson, separation of church and state was not an abstract right but a necessary reform of the religious "tyranny" of one Christian sect over many other Christians - and of the interference of the state in affairs of religion. Following the Revolution, Jefferson played a leading role in the disestablishment of religion in Virginia. Previously the Anglican Church had tax support. As he wrote in his Notes on Virginia, a law was in effect in Virginia that "if a person brought up a Christian denies the being of a God, or the Trinity …he is punishable on the first offense by incapacity to hold any office …; on the second by a disability to sue, to take any gift or legacy …, and by three year' imprisonment." Prospective officer-holders were required to swear that they did not believe in the central Roman Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation.

From 1784 to 1786, Jefferson and James Madison worked together to oppose Patrick Henry's attempts to again assess taxes in Virginia to support churches. Instead, in 1786, the Virginia General Assembly passed Jefferson's Bill for Religious Freedom, which he had first submitted in 1779 and was one of only three accomplishments he put in his own epitaph. The law read: “No man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burdened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer, on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities.”

One of Jefferson’s least well known writings is: "Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burned, tortured, fined and imprisoned. What has been the effect of this coercion? To make half the world fools and half hypocrites; to support roguery and error all over the world"- Thomas Jefferson, in his Notes on Virginia.

Jefferson sought what he called a "wall of separation between Church and State", which he believed was a principle expressed by the First Amendment. This phrase has been cited several times by the Supreme Court in its interpretation of the Establishment Clause. In an 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptist Association, he wrote: “Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between church and State.”

Jefferson refused to issue proclamations calling for days of prayer and thanksgiving during his Presidency, yet he did do so as Governor in Virginia. His private letters indicate he was skeptical of too much interference by clergy in matters of civil government. His letters contain the following observations: "History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government", and, "In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own." "May it be to the world, what I believe it will be, (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all), the signal of arousing men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings and security of self-government". Yet, Jefferson advocated the influence of religion in abolishing the institution of slavery in America stating, "Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice can not sleep forever: that considering numbers, nature and natural means only, a revolution of the wheel of fortune, an exchange of situation is among possible events: that it may become probable by supernatural interference!”

While the debate over Jefferson's understanding over the separation of Church and state is far from being settled, as are his particular religious tenets, his dependence on divine Providence is not nearly as ambiguous. As he stated, in his second inaugural address: “I shall need, too, the favor of that Being in whose hands we are, who led our fathers, as Israel of old, from their native land and planted them in a country flowing with all the necessaries and comforts of life; who has covered our infancy with His providence and our riper years with His wisdom and power, and to whose goodness I ask you to join in supplications with me that He will so enlighten the minds of your servants, guide their councils, and prosper their measures that whatsoever they do shall result in your good, and shall secure to you the peace, friendship, and approbation of all nations."

An interesting and intriguing documentary-drama on Einstein's life, work & ultimately death - focusing on his theory of everything, which he worked on until he died on April 18th 1955. It touches on his religious beliefs, plus the critical reluctance of his theoretical 'grandchild' - Quantum Mechanics: "God does not play dice" - as he's famously said on both subjects. Like his Cosmological Constant, his work caused controversy & he never completed his unified theory - but ironically his disdain towards Quantum theory may have finally finished his work...

WTF?! That is scary how yer brain works.. classic.

"the cosmological combinations...
non-linear snapshot #987359876"

Search your past aquaintences or piers, and you'll remember a soul similar, placed there by the cosmological combinations...
non-linear snapshot #987359876

A fascinating one-off documentary from Channel 4 (UK) - detailing Einstein's struggle with his cosmological constant:

" When Albert Einstein formulated General Relativity in 1915, he was not aware the Universe was expanding. Large scale structure in the form of galaxies was not known and all fuzzy luminous nebulae were considered basically similar and within stellar distance scales. Only with Hubble work in 1930 came the realization some of those nebulae were in fact island universes, and that they were not only very far, but also receding from us at enormous speeds. This was not known for Einstein, and since gravitation exerts its influence up to infinity, it was natural for him to postulate some force working in the preservation of an apparent equilibrium among matter, preventing universal collapse. This is why he postulated the Cosmological Constant, symbolized by the Greek letter Lambda, and included a term accounting for it in the field equations. Once universal expansion was discovered, the need for an unknown repulsive agent could be dropped and Einstein dismissed the Cosmological Constant as his 'biggest blunder'"

This stuff is wild, we just started it today in my course on Astronomy and Cosmology. Another thing that blows my mind is that we can't see the entire universe, because at the beginning of the Big Bang, it moved faster than the speed of light. This is cool stuff!