[Thor]

Originally Posted by Textcritic

I'll check out the book. I have a few friends from Finland; all biblical scholar-types like myself, and I have always been very impressed at their own utter lack of insecurity with regards to their faith.

So far, I'm at the point that what religion does for us—what God does for us as a society and as individuals is to provide purpose and meaning, regardless of how illusory they may seem. What I think plagues people deep down is the seemingly cold, dispassionate state of a universe and a world that evolves towards nothing: Most people want to be a part of something greater than themselves, and given what we now know about how insignificant we are in the grand scheme of universal history, the truth can be greatly distressing. The idea of God provides purpose to a great many: Even if it is something that we have created, it is still meaningful.

This is true, but I think there is a definate alternative to meaning without God to most non believers, we find it in many different ways but its still much about what Dawkins says in "Unweaving the Rainbow" and Daniel Dennett says in "Breaking the Spell" which touch upon awe and inspiration of the universe, its complexity and how fortunate we are to have this opportunity to exist.

My thrill and passion is to see humanity move forward, to see us learn more about the cosmos and our own world. The thrill of new discoveries, the thrill of pondering what the future holds, is to me very precious and inspirational.

Knowing that you have only this short window to exist, certainly gives you a perspective that we need to take care of our planet, each other, and make sure that our time is well spent on earth.

Here's a comment on it by Richard:

One of my other books you also mentioned, Unweaving the Rainbow, is sort of my testament on that aspect, on the spiritual quality of life that you get from science, that you get from contemplating your situation in the universe with clear, open eyes. The eyes that have been opened by science, facing up to reality. Facing, well more than, no, not so much facing up, but rejoicing in the astonishing good fortune that you have in being alive. It's an astonishingly unlikely contingency that you should be here. That any of us should be here.

I don't have a copy of Unweaving the Rainbow on me, but the opening words are something like, we are going to die and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die, because they are never going to be born. The number of possible people who could be standing here in my place, but who will never see the light of day, outnumber the sand grains of Sahara. We know this because the set of possible combinations of DNA so massively outnumber the set of actual people. So we are fantastically lucky to be alive and as I said, nobody should ever complain of being bored.

It's a kind of insult to the gazillions of people who will never be born to complain of being bored. It's an insult to them to complain that our time in the sun is limited to some decades. We're just fantastically lucky to have those decades at all, and it is an insult to them to whimper and whine at the prospect of its coming to an end. We owe it to them and ourselves to make the most of the time we have on the planet, and there are all sorts of other respects in which the book, Unweaving the Rainbow, develops the theme. But I'd like to think that all my books about expounding evolutionary science contribute to the same feeling of spiritual, I don't mind using the word, spiritual welfare.