> > SCIENCE, TRUTH
> > RELIGION, MEANING.
> >
> >
> Actually their is a fifth word --- faith.
> and most religious persons I know need FAITH because they experience
> no meaning in their lives.
What, like faith that it is impossible to (or that we
shouldn't) overcome evil and all that which ails us? After all, if
there is a God, we must find some way to justify why God hasn't
overcome evil. If an all powerful God can't (or shouldn't) overcome
evil, we must abandon all hope that we can (or should) overcome evil
with our science. If God can't, how can we?
Science does give us real faith and hope. Science says that
with more of the same kind of progress we've seen by mankind in the
past towards overcoming some of what ails us, we will be able to
eventually overcome all of it. If you have faith in some God, you
must throw all this out since God should have done it before now.
That's the opposite of faith or giving up in despair.
If you "believe" in God, you must attempt to justify,
theodicize or accept evil as necessary. You can't hope to overcome.
Why make so many fruitless attempts to try to twist that which is bad
into some how being good simply to justify some God? Can't we,
instead, hope to overcome evil rather than trying to find some way to
accept and justify it? Rather than such giving up in hideous or
faithless despair, I prefer to hope and have faith that it can all be
overcome; that when there really is a near powerful God, he can and
will eliminate evil as we now know it. Now that is real, honest, and
justified faith to me!
Brent Allsop