StG,
>>You and me aren't really that different. We just call the same things something else<<
Well put.

The “good old lady”, the TV-technician and the professor of electronics can all enjoy (or not) the same TV program. The difference is that the good lady does not care how and from what source the program is transmitted to her, the professor knows all about Maxwell’s equations etc, the technician is somewhere in-between. Do you find this metaphor relevant?

Sure, why not.

StG

<<< You and me aren't really that different. We just call the same things something else. >>>

Cool.

:-)

I'm not so sure, StG.

>>Severin, You and me aren't really that different.<<

Here's a fairly significant difference, I would have thought, from the same post.

>>My religion is right ... for me. Good luck to yourself and everyone else in what gives you comfort.<<

It's the phrase "what gives you comfort" that provides the clue.

I am aware that religion "gives people comfort", but curious as to what it gives them comfort from.

Why should one look for comfort? Why is it necessary to be comfortable?

To answer my own question somewhat, I suppose the fact that we are a cosmic anomaly, a freak accidental combination of factors that enabled life to form, develop and become self-aware, can be a distinctly uncomfortable thought. Which can explain to some extent why many people invent a "maker", and invest that "maker" with a "purpose".

This belief provides comfort to StG. Possibly, at an individual level, to avoid having to contemplate the vast emptiness that surrounds us.

But it needs to be said that at a societal level, it doesn't work quite so well. Thanks, mainly, to all the different conceptualizations of the "maker" and his "purpose".

Those differences cause, I would suggest, substantial discomfort, to many.

That's quite a big difference.

Pericles

I think you are being very pedantic.

The sense of being, the feeling of life that I experience when looking at the universe or sitting quietly in a forest (even though I am a minute collection of atoms), I still feel a part of an extraordinary immensity. That I don't think it is a result of some sky-daddy, is something only the fundamentalist religious has difficulty with, StG has shown he can relate to what I have said - even though he has been offended by some of my POV's. If formal religion gives StG succour then so be it. My comfort is in just the simple fact of 'life, the universe and everything'.

Each to their own, the most important thing is communication. To that end, this thread has been successful.