With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil - that takes religion.I also liked the following Richard Feynman's quote he referenced:
When you look at the universe and understand its laws, 'the theory that it is all arranged as a stage for God to watch man's struggle for good and evil seems inadequate.While reading Dr. Weinberg's article, I was hoping that he would bring up a few fundamental questions for which we have no answers. They are, where did the pre-big bang dense matter come from? If it was a speck from other bang bangs (like he said), where did the matter for those big bangs come from? NASA says that our universe might be oval-shaped. What would be on the other side of the oval? This kind of reasoning makes me believe in the existence of a higher power.
My intuition tells me that our universe was created by intelligent design. I believe that intelligent design need not be a contraction to Darwin's theory of evolution. Though our Designer may not have created "the life" per se (as The Holy Bible says), I think It started the process by generating the matter, and probably even creating conducive conditions for origin of our APPARENT intelligence. A side note - I am very happy to learn that The Complete Works of Charles Darwin Online was posted on the internet yesterday. It is always good to have the Master's works handy, even for a novice.
I find it very hard to believe that the matter has been there from time immemorial. The way a "desire" to continue existence originated in an inanimate object (single cell) at a snap shot of time (i.e., life from non-life), matter could have originated from Sunya through intelligent design. In fact, I believe that the matter we perceive as real, is very likely a fragment of our imagination as indicated by Peter Russell in his excellent articles related to matter and consciousness.
One might ask then, why was this Blog titled "Cogito, Ergo Sum"?! A very good question. My answer is, though I believe that the reality most probably is an illusion, unfortunately, like almost all of us (janata), I am not absolutely convinced. I think that only a few enlightened ones (Gyanis/Yogis) base their actions on thoroughly-internalized conviction that what we perceive as reality, is an illusion. The rest of us are busy with what I call, our peacock dances in trying to impress the irrelevant, and illusionary sensual gratifications. I titled my Blog "Cogito, Ergo Sum" as it accurately describes my belief, be it right or wrong. I am looking forward to changing my conviction (and hence the title of this Blog) ASAP! As Thomas Carlyle said:
The Greatest of faults, I should say, is to be conscious of none.Finally, I am also puzzled as to why so many theorists imply that the absence of hydrogen, carbon, and oxygen implies the absence of intelligence (e.g., if there is no water on Mars, it is not possible for intelligence to exist on that planet). Isn't it like saying that if there is no wood, there wouldn't be any baseball bats? Sure, baseball bats were made exclusively out of wood for a long time. But slowly we started making these bats out of metal and we get pretty darn good baseball bats made of material other than wood now.
Similarly, just because we see intelligence associated with only carbon-based life forms around us, we can't say that other elements are not capable of producing such intelligence. For that matter, I don't feel that material is necessary for producing intelligence. Since we know that our perceived intelligence is carbon based, looking for hydrocarbons (plus oxygen) is just a good starting point - that's all.
Somewhat related quote:
Look at all the stars. You look up and you think, "God made all this and He remembered to make a little speck like me." It's kind of flattering, really.- Morgan Earp in the movie "Tombstone"
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