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There is strong evidence that man's aversion to snakes is biological; fear of snakes has literally been hardwired into our genetic processes. Religious rites emphasizing snakes tend to be fear-based ones--an attempt to come to grips with the fear by mythologizing it. From E.O. Wilson's...

The curse of the book business... a 94 page book wouldn't fly, so the author had to come up with filler to get it to acceptable length. Happens frequently with books that present a hard-driving big idea or insight. You get the good stuff up front, and then a bunch of pointless padding in the...

To lighten the mood a bit, a public service message from the Church of Latter Day Saints (via South Park): http://youtube.com/watch?v=9yTs0wtemvU

Veronica? Huh? Oh, Archie comics reference, I get it. Took me a second, as the last time I read an Archie comic I was eleven years old or so. My ideological brethren? How do you know who my ideological brethren are? Based on your post, you seem to assume I am an atheist, which I am not, and...

So I'm a pagan eh? By which definition? * One who follows a religion of European, North African, West Asian or Pre-Columban American origin and who is not Christian, Muslim nor Jewish, or who does not worship the God of Abraham. * Professing no religion; heathen. If it is the second...

Thanks Slappy, your contribution to the discourse is much appreciated. By all means, continue posting worthless one-line comments and filling up threads with other's quotations in the process. God forbid you should have something intelligent to say, or indeed anything related to the shape or...

Ah yes, Aquinas -- the guy who thought heretics should be killed. Guess he didn't like folks who saw the huge, gaping holes in every single one of his supposedly irrefutable arguments. As Hume demonstrated, to even believe an irrefutable argument exists is a sign of ignorance. No statement...

One, you misquote what I said. It is a distinct lack of statistical evidence for a positive assertion--that God intervenes in meaningful ways. Not the other way round. Two, I have no desire to wade into the semantic relativist kiddie pool with you. My post was a tongue-in-cheek wake up call...

What, no LOL? And that, my liege, is how we know the earth to be banana shaped.

So if God's eternal presence is manifested as, say, an eternally expanding and collapsing universe and nothing more, then atheists and theists could theoretically both be correct at the same time, depending on how you slice it. Maybe there are enough quark shifts in each big crunch to make the...

Not to pick nits, but would you please stop misspelling the word existence. It's annoying. p.s. might as well mention independent also

This thread has now jumped the shark, or rather, jumped the Z.

Dude, you are a sophist and a post-modernist of the first order. Your ability to obfuscate could put a ninja's smokescreen to shame. Derrida would be impressed.

Come on man, don't you believe in miracles?

In most cases it's impossible to start without a point of view. If the subject is even tangentially related to one's interests, then certain ideas and perceptions regarding the topic will already exist. This applies tenfold if the topic at hand is one of deep interest. If one has thought...

But such a capricious God would also be a deliberate sower of deceit and confusion in human terms, with the ability to declare ANY action or whim consistent via cosmic sleight of hand. Such would render all theology texts worthless. If we postulate that God is like Q from Star Trek or The...

You missed my point. All points of view include "past experiences and alleged knowledge." It is, um, not possible to have a point of view otherwise. The fact that "no knowledge can ever be final" does not mean that all knowledge needs to be questioned. That way madness lies. And there's...

You want to take on a tidal wave of interlocking and mutually confirming evidence, that is only getting stronger over time, by jumping up and down over a two-inch tall straw man? Good luck with that... By the way, as long as we're discussing monkeys...

Neither do you, unfortunately. No one does.

Speaking of not logical, how is it you expect to saunter in and point to the existence of dubious concepts like "living conscious energy," and then get offended when people don't quickly nod their heads in agreement? Furthemore, how childish is it not to see the difference between "past...