January 30, 2007

I applaud you for pretty much every thing said by you on this site. Very well thought-out and eloquent, or straight to the point as needed.

That being said, I can hardly believe how a large number of people go on in life, having 'faith' in whatever is conveniently taught to them by their parents, and taking it as unshakable truth, even after learning that Santa, the easter bunny and tooth fairy were all fake. Talking to these people about other possibilities is an exercise in frustration. Somehow though, you even seem to have perfect rebuttals to arguments I could never get past.

Hopefully, this site can spur the minds of those who actually consider the possibilities, and help them come to better, more educated conclusions.

On a final note, I noticed your statement that our existance is a 'happy accident.' This is my favorite subject brought up by people who have something to prove in the name of religion. The argument that 'a box of (insert item) parts shaken for eternity will never result in a whole (insert item)' has to be among the more thoughtless of claims involving science or math. Eternity is quite a long time, and since the universe is also thought to be infinitely large, those who speak in defense of our happy accident of spontaneous existance have the ability to say that they are right, times infinity squared. I hope that little line of logic does some good in future arguments.

Personally, I wouldn't even bother bringing up the infinite nature of time when refuting the "shake a box" or "tornado in a junkyard" folks, since that just gets into an argument about probability, which is what they want. What I say is that the analogy is false since there is no natural process whereby bits of metal and plastic naturally get together to form machinery, but there is a natural process by which things evolve.