On a slightly different note, to Stephanie - saying that "God hates you" is not a Christian thing to say.
1. The whole "God hates fags" movement is farcical. See
http://www.lgcm.org.uk for some good essays on Christianity and homosexuality.
2. If you believe that God hates you because you are a sinner - all humans are sinners, and if God is love, surely he can't hate all of us! Timothy Keller, in "The Reason For God", describes a church as "a hospital of sinners rather than a museum of saints". People become Christian to confess their sin to Christ, not to become Christ.
There, that's my piece on that. Now back on topic.
No, I do not see science, evolution, Darwinism, etc. as a religion; nor do I see it as the "anti-religion". On science and Abrahamic religions, it's (shock horror!) possible to believe in both. I went to a Christian school, and we were taught that God made the world in six days - but, we were also taught that it does not specify in the Bible that these "days" were 24 hours. God's days could have been millions, billions of years to us, and "day" is only used as a metaphor for the creation of the Sabbath.
As for science and pagan religions, my personal belief. I believe both in deity, and in evolution. The Gods created the Big Bang, and it all went from there. Though natural selection took its course, who started it off, kept watch over it, and made plans for humans to become the intelligent beings that they are? The Gods did.
I'm not going to be fundamentalist about this and say that I'm right, you're wrong, there's no other way. I accept Christian and other religious beliefs (though I'm a bit dodgy about annoying "you're going to hell" types), and agnostic, atheistic and scientific-only beliefs. I have what I believe, you have what you believe.
I refer you to this James lyric, a verse from "The Shining" (a beautiful song, and lyrically a great piece on religion) -
There are no promises that anyone can speak, the future's full of secrets, the past will never keep.Neither religion nor science can make promises that they have the whole truth.
The future's full of secrets, and no religion can honestly say that it has all the answers.
The past will never keep, and science may have some proof, but cannot prove everything.
We have belief, we have faith - but we do not have answers. This is, in my opinion, the best way to see it.
Have I contradicted myself? I don't know. I just hope that I've made some sort of point.
Edited by user 15 September 2009 02:22:20(UTC)
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