(October 14, 2013 at 5:35 am)themonkeyman Wrote: procaracas - I dont generally believe but these people who say there is a heaven and hell are the people I have trusted and knew my entire life so at times it really does feel that I am going out on a limb when they are so persuaded otherwise.And yet they were unable to persuade you. Why? Surely there must be some reason, or number of reasons, why you're conflicted? In spite of apparently being surrounded by religious believers and their reinforcement for years, you've come to doubt their views so strongly that you're asking for help in fighting off their arguments.
Find the reason for that, and you'll probably realize just how weak their whole belief system really is.
In any case, people have been predicting the end of the world for a very long time. Also, keep in mind that bad news always draws the most attention and in a world where there is more media coverage and accessibility than ever, it's easy to be overwhelmed by bad news and think that things are worse than ever. And that theme has been going on for as long as there have been people making end-of-world predictions.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould
