Hello Everybody,

I'm back. The diagnosis is good - the results are hopeful.
I just want to Thank You All - for your support.
It meant a great deal - at a time when I needed it so badly.
Again, Thank You.

I've now got access to a computer. I've missed our discussions very much.

Fact or Faith? There are many who may feel that - "For faith, fanatic faith, once wedded fast to some darn falsehood, hugs it to the last!"

I feel that its a personal choice. But I'm not fanatical about it and I definitely don't know all the answers. Only many questions.

Advances in molecular biology have revealed vast amounts of information encoded in each and every living cell, and molecular biologists have discovered thousands upon thousands of exquisitely designed machines at the molecular level. Information requires intelligence and design requires a designer.

Biochemists and matematicians have calculated the odds against life arising from non-life naturally via unintelligent processes. The odds are astronomical. In fact, scientists aren't even sure if life could have evolved naturally via unintelligent processes. If life did not arise by chance, how did it arise?

People of every race, creed, colour, and culture, both men and women, young and old, wise and foolish, from the educated to the ignorant, claim to have personally experienced something of the supernatural.
So what are we supposed to do with those accounts of divine healing, prophetic revelation, answered prayer, and other miraculous phenomena?

Ignorance and imagination may have played a part to be sure, but is there something more?

The universe is ordered by natural laws. Where did these laws come from and what purpose do they serve?

Perhaps searching for answers to questions is part of our evolutionary
process.
I know that I've still got so much to learn.

Fractelle – you are so very right when you say humans consider themselves intelligent! compared to what? You could have said a few hundred million years ago that some fungus on a rock was amazingly intelligent when it was the most advanced thing on earth.

http://edition.cnn.com/2003/TECH/space/07/22/stars.survey/index.html

According to this article there are 10 times as many stars in the universe then there are grains of sand on every beach in the world. And that’s just the ones we can see! Or in mathematical terms 70000000000000000000000000 stars!
“The actual number of stars could be infinite. The universe is so big light from the other side of the universe hasn't reached us yet”

What I meant by us broadcasting radio signals for 150 years is that other civilizations if they existed must have been broadcasting for a whole lot longer then that. Since radio waves travel at the speed of light any civilization with equipment to detect radio waves within 150 light years of earth must have picked up on our signals. It goes vise versa as well if a civilization has had been broadcasting with similar tech too us for a thousand years or ten thousand years if they are with in one thousand or ten thousand light years of us we would have detected there signals at SETI. But as I said before it has all been very quite. The only 2 option are either these civs don’t use anything close to radio waves to communicate or they don’t exist.

Welcome back foxy hope you are feeling better!

Special welcome back to Foxy, please don’t feel I am attacking you personally, I understand that your faith is very important to you. I am pleased that you have chosen to make a post here. The point I am trying to make is that formal religion is created by humans and adhering to it exclusively limits us all. As to what created the universe, no-one knows.

Vanilla,

Am in your debt for that wonderful link – have been spending much time there, and you have enabled me to provide the following Astronomical Image for today – it is awesome:

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0803/lh95_hst_big.jpg

However, Christian church and political leaders continue to limit scientific research. Many fundamentalist Christians deny birth control, stem cell research and other scientific advances that could save many lives. I believe that this denial has at its foundation a very geocentric basis. We have to break free of these limitations and one of the best ways is through education (particularly in the sciences) and looking at the universe helps us to realise that we are a part of something magnificent.

We are not the apex. We are not the hub of the universe.

Religion places mankind at the centre of everything, claims that man was made in the image of a god, this is arrogant and blindfolds us.

Time to break free, time for the human race; women and men to grab the opportunity that life gives us, to create a world of learning not ignorance, of exploration instead of stagnation.

PS

Easytimes, just because we communicate using radio waves doesn’t mean others do, besides who can say that others haven’t already given us a look-over and decided we’re a tad too hostile towards each other…. Maybe if we manage not to destroy this world, in a few millennia, they will decide to make contact...

The universe is 13 billion years old, as far as we can see. That means we can receive today radio-waves that were sent out 13 billion years ago. If we aren't doing this, it could mean that either the sponsors of the radio shows have died or that we are all alone, which is indeed a worry, and certainly discredits intelligent design as no intelligent god in his right mind would do that and thus minimise the chances of life surviving somewhere; being omniscient, as a true Middle Eastern god always is, he would know what a stupid bunch we would become after Adam and Eve (all that inbreeding-was the Garden of Eden in Tasmania?), so if he was intelligent, he would have to organise several different groups of punters, each group on planets as far away from each other as is possible. Does this prove that all life-hosting planets are 14 billion light years away from each other?

For all the agnostic views held here I wonder if any of you have actually been involved in space exploration? Id rather have respect for my Professor friend at Church that has actually been involved in space exploration. Most peoples views of God are too small, because it suits them to not be acountable to anyone.

Welcome back, foxy! I agree: much to learn we all still have.
Re the supernatural experiences, our knowledge of the universe and its laws is limited but continuously increasing. Some experiences that once were thought to be supernatural can now be explained by science. In the future, our knowledge may well enable us to explain the experiences that we contribute to the supernatural today.
Our progress is slowed down as soon as we assume that there is no scientific explanation. As religion comes up with an (unproven) explanation (it’s supernatural, God/a ghost/ a spirit did it), people stop investigating and there we have a classic example how religion could slow down scientific investigation if it were not for people who are less superstitious minded.

Fractelle “The fact of 150 years of emitting radio signals with no discernable response, doesn’t concern me at all...“
I agree. Perhaps other civilisations aren’t even interested in contact with us, insignificant earthlings; perhaps they’re so far advanced that they’ve developed technologies like Google Universe that allow them to zoom in on us when we’re at our worst behaviour and they want nothing to do with a primitive civilisation that is far too pollutive and destructive.

TRTL you mention Ken Ham and his museum. This building full of crap and lies is a disaster for the minds of children and shouldn’t be called a museum. This is an excellent example of how religion still is allowed to retard the minds of children. Unfortunately, even here we have ‘religions’ such as The Exclusive Brethren that deny Australian children access to science books that are available to the rest of our young population and they receive tax funding as if they’re proper schools.
The same children are forbidden to choose their own life path and denied tertiary education. Child abuse in the name of some backward sect.