[BITList] Why do we exist?

[HUGH]

Colin,

It is as well to note that the great computer, Deep Thought, took 9,000,000 years to come up with 42 as an answer to the question.  I read once that, when 50 people were asked to define fascism, they gave 50 different answers.  And in like manner (as Sunday School teachers were wont to say when leaving the interesting story and getting to the bit about Jesus that they insisted was just the same) a roomfull of people will have a roomfull of notions about God/god.  These will range from a conviction (not really thought out) that He/She created everything, cos it says so in the Bible and you'll go to Hell if you contradict it - all the way through to Stephen Hawking, picking me up about 3/4 way along on a good day - 7/8 on a bad day.  When I walk into the Mall in Greenock I see a banner in an empty shop used by a religious group for the odd purpose.  This asks passers by, "Does God exist?  Yes? No/ Don't Know?"  Clearly the answer is "No", given only material things exist.  Not thinking things through is the main problem with religion.  Whether he's right or wrong, Stephen Hawking thinks the matter through.  My son tells me he's fed up being an atheist and with other atheists.  He's discovered it's not just a matter of not believing in something - there are orthodoxies, rules to be observed, fixed points of view to be maintained, lists of things not to believe in.  So he's becoming a free-thinking agnostic kind of atheist, damned by both sides in the divide.

Hugh.

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