Very nice.

Watch the video when you get a chance. It's very well done.

My comment was more directed at Cattivo. I had the misfortune of being in the process of typing it while CP was submitting his.

But anyway, one of my favorite quotes on the subject of religion and science comes from Kurt Vonnegut:

"A great swindle of our time is the assumption that science has made religion obsolete. All science has damaged is the story of Adam and Eve and the story of Jonah and the Whale. Everything else holds up pretty well, particularly lessons about fairness and gentleness. People who find those lessons irrelevant in the twentieth century are simply using science as an excuse for greed and harshness. Science has nothing to do with it, friends."

If Terry Gilliam has taught me anything, it's that there's a blurry line between fantasy and reality. Neither one is useful by itself, and neither one is infallible. If assigning incredibly specific traits to an unseen Creator of whom we know very little makes you happy, go for it. If denying the existence of a Creator makes you happy, go for it. But do not be so arrogant as to impose your own path of happiness on others; this only creates misery.

There are a few important things to understand about Vonnegut:

1. He was not particularly religious
2. He was not anti-science
3. He witnessed the firebombing of Dresden firsthand, which greatly effected the rest of his life
4. Most of his life was lived in the shadow of warring political ideologies; first Nazism vs. democracy, then communism vs. democracy

In Vonnegut's understanding of the world, science has the power to improve our lives, but far too often it is used as the tools of fervent nationalists who hope to use it subjugate nations they perceive to be inferior underneath them. And in Vonnegut's worldview, nationalism is the ultimate evil in the world, and yes, he does see a certain godlessness in it. Subsequently, Vonnegut saw religion as a weapon against nationalism. He believed that since mankind refused to recognize and unite under the basic similarities of the human condition, then they could only be united if they allowed themselves to believe that they were the works of benevolent Creator who did not wish them to inflict suffering upon each other. Vonnegut's advocacy of God was somewhat pragmatic; he didn't necessarily believe there was a God, but he believed the world would be better a place if people believed in something more powerful and more just than their government or their own individual needs. The quote I used, while one of my favorites, is perhaps not the best representation of his views. His belief was that not science was inherently evil, but that unchecked science in the hands of military powers was just as dangerous as unchecked religion, if not moreso. Here are more quotes that might better illustrate his views on science and religion:

"I know that millions of dollars have been spent to produce this splendid graduating class, and that the main hope of your teachers was, once they got through with you, that you would no longer be superstitious. I'm sorry — I have to undo that now. I beg you to believe in the most ridiculous superstition of all: that humanity is at the center of the universe, the fulfiller or the frustrator of the grandest dreams of God Almighty. If you can believe that, and make others believe it, then there might be hope for us. Human beings might stop treating each other like garbage, might begin to treasure and protect each other instead. Then it might be all right to have babies again."

"The arts put man at the center of the universe, whether he belongs there or not. Military science, on the other hand, treats man as garbage — and his children, and his cities, too. Military science is probably right about the contemptibility of man in the vastness of the universe. Still — I deny that contemptibility, and I beg you to deny it, through the creation of appreciation of art."

"I thought scientists were going to find out exactly how everything worked, and then make it work better. I fully expected that by the time I was twenty-one, some scientist, maybe my brother, would have taken a color photograph of God Almighty — and sold it to Popular Mechanics magazine. Scientific truth was going to make us so happy and comfortable. What actually happened when I was twenty-one was that we dropped scientific truth on Hiroshima."

"If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:
THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED
FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
WAS MUSIC "

"Take Care of the People, and God Almighty Will Take Care of Himself."

"There are plenty of good reasons for fighting," I said, "but no good reason ever to hate without reservation, to imagine that God Almighty Himself hates with you, too. Where's evil? It's that large part of every man that wants to hate without limit, that wants to hate with God on its side."

"I will come to a time in my backwards trip when November eleventh, accidentally my birthday, was a sacred day called Armistice Day. When I was a boy, and when Dwayne Hoover was a boy, all the people of all the nations which had fought in the First World War were silent during the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour of Armistice Day, which was the eleventh day of the eleventh month. It was during that minute in nineteen hundred and eighteen, that millions upon millions of human beings stopped butchering one another. I have talked to old men who were on battlefields during that minute. They have told me in one way or another that the sudden silence was the Voice of God. So we still have among us some men who can remember when God spoke clearly to mankind."

"That was the strength of the Nazis," she said. "They understood God better than anyone. They knew how to make him stay away."

"Some of you may know that I am neither Christian nor Jewish nor Buddist, nor a conventionally religious person of any sort. I am a humanist, which means, in part, that I have tried to behave decently without any expectation of rewards or punishments after I'm dead. My German-American ancestors, the earliest of whom settled in our Middle West about the time of our Civil War, called themselves 'Freethinkers,' which is the same sort of thing. My great grandfather Clemens Vonnegut wrote, for example, 'If what Jesus said was good, what can it matter whether he was God or not?' I myself have written: If it weren't for the message of mercy and pity in Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, I wouldn't want to be a human being. I would just as soon be a rattlesnake."

UsaSatsui wrote:

I never saw a conflict myself. Time is an invention of mankind, "7 days" could be anything to God

Reminds me of a joke I heard once. A man is sitiing in his kitchen one night and suddenly Jesus Christ appears before him.

"My child," He says, "I will allow you to ask me three questions. Think carefully."

"Lord Jesus Christ, is money important?"

"No, my child. A million dollars is but a mere penny to me."

"Lord Jesus Christ, is Heaven really eternal?"

"Yes, my child. A million years is like a mere second to me."

"Lord Jesus Christ, may I have a penny?"

"In a second."