(July 2, 2014 at 5:01 pm)blackout94 Wrote: Do you think being an atheist (it doesn't matter if you are an agnostic or gnostic) enhances or diminishes your chances of being a happy human being?I'm certain that it has some effect, but I think it's different for each person. I have always been a happy and optimistic person in that I could always rationalize things towards a positive outlook. So I was always a happy person as a theist, and I have remained a happy person as an atheist.
"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
