LOL!!!!!!!!!!

Wonderful post, John.


Bill - Well said. I would concur with you on virtually every point.

"maybe there are no real answers to some questions, and we should spend our time trying to figure out just what CAN be known and learn to live together without all the bickering."

Amen!

I think that it's people's own emotoinal insecurity and their fear of uncertainty that causes so many to cling to what they feel are CERTAIN answers, despite lacking any clear supportive evidence OR any direct personal experience of their own to back up their beliefs.

They're afraid of not knowing. So they take someone else's word for it instead of finding out for themselves....or just accepting the fact that they don't know. They choose to believe their leader, their priest, their commander, the Bible or some other worldly authority....and they let that authority do their thinking for them.

The more insecure they are, the more fiercely they will defend their arbitrary beliefs. This can get dangerous. They may even kill other people to defend a belief that they acquired merely on someone else's word...or from one book such as the Bible or the Q'ran.

I work mostly on probabilities rather than certainties. Evolution strikes me as a very probable thing, based on various evidence we have in its support, for example. The existence of the soul strikes me as probable, but I don't think of it as something "given by God" exactly....I think of it as consciousness, and consciousness is something every living thing has to a greater or lesser extent. The only question is: does that consciousness continue following death of the physical body? I think it probably does, but I don't know for sure. I might be mistaken. If I am, then I won't have to concern myself with it (or anything else) any longer after I die! ;-D And if I'm right, then the fun of being conscious will go on and on.

The way I see it, I win either way.