By the way, this week's New Scientist leads with an article on "Imagination", discussing how it must have evolved (if you accept the premise that it is a random product of evolution). Check it out. its very relevant to this discussion.

Hi Grateful,

Thanks for taking the time to consider our responses. I will have to wait to see what your response is before I can consider whether or not it encapsulates everything I have said in my response to you. But you certainly have quoted a part of my response that is, what I believe to be, an insurmountable challenge to the existence of your god (and the Christian god, of course). So I look forward to what you have to say.

As for the New Scientist article, I can't seem to access that at the moment, but all I can say (for now) is that if you think evolution is the product of random occurrences, then not only did you not read it properly, but my assumption that you know nothing about evolution was correct.

Evolution is not the result of random chance, but the result of random mutations and variation guided by the processe of natural selection.

BIG difference!

A.J.Phillips writes; "Evolution is not the result of random chance, but the result of random mutations and variation guided by the processe of natural selection."

Thankyou AJP for a timely reminder and one that sometimes is a little too subtle for the religiously afflicted. But of course simplistic dissembling permeates the teaching of science by religious institutions, particularly among the creationists. May one enquire, Grateful, if you hold to the tenets of creationism in general, the Anthropic Universe, Intelligent Design, a Young Earth and biblical and papal infallibility?

A religious person who actually has a comprehensive layperson's acquaintance with [for instance] scientific knowledge is a much more interesting challenge than the melancholy, repetitive drone that assails the ears of the non-religious.

Grateful, if you had at least tried to deal with my post re the miracle and scientific confirmation of said miracle then you might attract more respect for your views.

Pericles you write:
">>Virtue and sacrifice can only be rational if there is a God.<<

I would be interested to hear your justification for that assertion. What evidence can you offer that shows virtue to be a uniquely God-driven state, as opposed to a rationally-evolved product of the human will to survive?"

Man is different from nature. He has choice. If he is God-driven he chooses deeds that will please his Creator and avoids those that will not. If he is not God-driven he will only choose such virtuous deeds as serve his own personal interests. He will be just, for example, when justice serves his personal interests, but if it works against his personal interests then the rational man will not be just. So a virtuous deed will always be rational for the God-driven. For others, a virtuous deed is contingent on his personal interests.

Grateful writes; "ANS: For myself, everything is from God: whether we may deem it good, bad or ugly (or a miracle). I like to see you create the disease, the cure let alone the person involved. We’re all His creation. And of course science allows us to know whether or not the person is better."

Create a disease? What a bizarre thought. But your idea does raise the issue of the faithful's rather immature petulance with science for not having the answer to every question available to them for immediate use. Had you a modicum of familiarity with the history of science you would be familiar with example after example of where men of science have proven the nay-sayers wrong and in most cases, foolish and willfully ignorant. Men who risked life and limb that you might be less so.

Are you so foolhardy that you confidently predict science will never create a new, artificial disease? And it is intellectual sweat and blood that is creating the cure. As for creating a person.....first, define "person". It might take a few weeks to discover that we should agree to disagree.

Let me record it here, with no intent of disrespect, that I find it insulting to humankind generally that the vast intellectual achievements of humankind, sometimes bought at great cost, should be attributed by the faithful to a figment, a ghost, a spirit inhabiting a supernatural realm. Properly-engendered pride in achievement is not a shameful attitude.

The last sentence of your statement above obviates the need to invoke the supernatural. Your use of the words "allows us to know" has a rather obsequious ring to it though. Much better "informs" or "reveals".

Grateful writes; "ANS: What is Art".[?]

I will never deny that religious faith has moved humankind to great achievements in the arts and philosophy. I acknowledged so in an earlier post concerning Dr.Brantly's motivation and courage.

You might well have asked; "What is beauty?" and prompted a similar response to the one I offer here.

The inspiration that drives the human intellect to achieve is derived from many and varied sources. The death of a child might provoke a music composer to create a great symphony. The transcendental and the numinous are conditions of our minds that arouse creativity, sends poets into rapturous elegaic pursuit, drives great artists to paint the ceilings of the Sistine Chapel. In similar vein, did the beginnings of the Theory of Relativity burst into the mind of Albert Einstein, who was at most an incipient deist, most certainly not a christian with the accompanying belief in a personal interfering god.

Intellectual creativity, in all its ramifications, finds its highest development, for the present, in humankind. Once again, the antithesis, the inimical side of creativity has found expression in the development of horrible weapons of destruction, in the early denial by religious leaders of sedation to women in childbirth, of messianic leaders seeking absolute power, of the billions of words that have shackled human minds in religious faith. Though I freely admit to the last condition being a personal opinion. Nevertheless I can stoutly defend said opinion.

At the present, grateful, I'm prompted to thank you for the apparent honesty of your philosophical stance and the general openness in the way you have expressed yourself. Satisfactory indeed........I hope for all here.