Quote Originally Posted by thir View Post
Certainly religion is also used to explain what happens around us - and so it does even in this day an age, though from another angle. Remember the discussion about why the Haiti earth quake happened?
I don't remember the details, but I fail to see the point. Are you suggesting that the cause of the Haiti earthquake was anything but natural?

But, absence of proof is not proof of absence. There is so much science does not know!
As I've been saying all along! But absence of proof does not mean that you can fill in the blanks with whatever fancy comes to mind.

If you only "believe" in what can be measured, you claim that science is capeable of measuring everything that exists, and as history shows, this is not true. With new technology new discoveries, all the time.
Accepting what can be measured does not mean that only things which can be measured exist. Can one measure emotions? We can recognize them, understand what causes them, even control them to some degree. But we cannot measure them. And yes, with new technology will come new discoveries. And some of those discoveries may stand everything we think we know now on its head. But again, that does not give you the right to toss out any far-fetched notion and claim it is truth by divine writ.

This is a very good point. A lot of us are afraid of death, and I have noticed that villains in many stories and films are almost always afraid of death!
That's because the writers of those stories and films tend to believe in an afterlife in which there villains will be justly punished.

However, I personally think that people are also seeking answers about life, and how to live it.
Yes, they are. And that is what the religious stories are all about. Teaching tools to help people learn how to live. They are not, necessarily, historical documents, nor are they the inspired word of gods. They are stories, no more nor less.

But there may well be things we do not know of yet, and which now seem miraculous because we cannot explain them.
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
Arthur C. Clarke, "Profiles of The Future", 1961 (Clarke's third law)
That doesn't necessarily mean miracles, just that we don't yet know. This is one big difference between science and religion. In science, "I don't know" is the starting point for many journeys of knowledge. In religion, "I don't know" is answered with, "God."

We do not know that. Mind and body are one.
There have been studies done with prayer. These studies have regularly shown that results of prayer are indistinguishable from random chance. However, in cases where people in hospitals were told that people were praying for them, they did statistically poorer than those who were not aware, or those who were not being prayed for.

Since our minds are functions of electrochemical processes within the body, yes, they are one. No metaphysical nonsense required.

Actually, since we are all made of the same material as everything else, all that we physically are is forever circulating. Is is a fun thought, isn't it?
It's even better than that! Every element in our bodies besides hydrogen was made within stars. We are made of star stuff!

When we are gone, other life will be here, and that too will be wondrous. And maybe somebody will one day study us, as we study the dinosaurs.
Well, when they get around to studying me I hope they find some very nasty surprises!

Why should another way of thinking be in the way? There is room for it all.
Those who would obstruct the advancement of knowledge, who would try to control us with their imaginary gods, need to get out of the way.

"Belief gets in the way of learning." - Robert Heinlein, Time Enough for Love