Didn't have a chacne to read all this yet, but will .. I was raised atheist, but married a catholic, so had lots of hoops to jump, and thinking to do.
FWIW .. Science has no disagreement with religion, by the very definuition. (Anyone who thinks otehrwise didn't think about it at all
-- by definition, religions (at least the Christian sense) define themselves as 'out of band', somethign outside of measurement or rational thought. It used to be define din things we can now measure or have theories on, so some would suggest religion is a moving target, an ever-shrinking area.. but nowadays its all just 'nebulous and unmeasurable', so .. Science cannot go near it, and therefore cannot agree nor disagree.
Following that, strikes me the only sensible philosophy is agnostic with atheist tendancies (which is how I am.) I don't really care if there is a god or not; if there is, he can show us the money and cool; but personally, I dont' realyl think there is any such being -- the overwhelming evidence certainly points towards not being one, or not needing one, so I'll go with that.
Also, I find it hard to rationilize some things .. if there is a creator, he doesn't care. Why are there birth defects? Little babies born with horrible problems -- they certainly did not sin to earn them. Why do murdered get away with things? They did sin, and often get away. Why all the many differing religions?
Given that evolution is fact (it is observable in nature), we can pretty much assume human evolution is a thing; thats okay, modern CAtholicism is pretty much okay with this .. a creator kicked things off from goo, and huamns came around. Fine. But again, the creator doesnt' seem to care -- otherwise we'd have a lot less flaws; humans have some of the worst vision in the evolved world -- in fact, the light entering our eyes has to pass through veins hanging in the middle of our eyeball, before reaching the optic nerve; this discolours everythign we see, and actually introduces massive error. Many other primitive animals have nearly the same evolved eyeball, but the optic nerve is not obscured like that. There are hundreds of bizarre things lik that in the body.. evidence suggesting long term evolution and relation wish fish etc, but also suggesting.. creator doesn't care.
(And there there is the deep south 'world is 6000 years old' crazy ... if its true, then the creator is a dick who likes to plant dinosaur bvones just to confuse people with daing technology.)
So to me.. I doubt there is a creator; if there is one he's either uncaring or a bit of a prick
But either way.. religion is okay; Christian religions generally preach good intentions and mean to be harmless (crazy people are crazy, not really the religions faults); we're raising our children catholic -- strikes me is no sensible person _becomes_ religions late rin life (why? big space ghost doesn't make sense, why would you convert to that? same as converting to scientology...) -- so we're raising our kids catholic, so that they have the chance to keep religion if they so desire. (Just so long as they don't come home and say 'it rains because god said so', I'm okay with catholic school). This gives them the chance at the sort of spiritual beauty that I can never really have, as long as they're clever and use their brains and not take 'the company line' as is. ("gay is bad", that sort of sillyness.) But if they abandon things later on, that will be their choice.
Its a funny thing though.. I try to be very fair; I repsect peoples beliefs, and I see how it works; I go to church every weekend, to make sure that I'm not an excuse for bad influence; also, its sor tof nice.. a family event, a time to sit for an hour of calm and meditate on life. Sometimes the priests are towing the line and need a slap, but I try to keep shut ('gay is bad' stuff again), but our priests are generalyl very well educated and good people, with a good set of thoughts.
But you say you're an atheist or agnost, and people look at you funny; like, thats a bad thing. Strikes me those who are rational thinkers shoudl get the benefit of the doubt, but those who beleive in supernatural get the pass instead
*Shrug*
Richard Dawkins is pretty interesting reading, but he's a hardcore atheist.
jeff
A friend of mine was raised fire and brimstone serious religious; he almost went to seminary to become a priest; I lost touch with him for a few years, and when we hooked up again .. it broke my heart; he'd given up on things, and moved on; the fire and brimstone was too hardcore and he just got sick of the 'you shodul be ashamed for _everything_' guilt. Was such a shame.. the one guy in life who really tried to balance science and faith despite the hardships, and to really make a go of living the best he could be for everyone else... and then dashed on the rocks; such a shame. I really admired him (Well still do, but I admired his ability to keep his hardcore faith despite the challenge.)
