That's the rub. Religion is not a science. With science, you look outward to see outward, you look to the cosmos to see the cosmos. With religion, you look inward to see outward and you look within to glimpse the cosmos. That part of the puzzle is easy to me, the hard part is putting it to use.

Amen.

Amen!
Can we eat now?
Pass me the biscuits and gravy.

The part that's easy for me to see is that religion and science are one and the same.

Baldwinville, thank you! To me, science and theology are just different and not mutually exclusive ways of trying to understand IT/us/Gaia. With a Southern Baptist begining, I had to reject "religion" completely in favor of science for awhile before I could see it. Still trying to "see," and always will be.

<FONT size="1">End of my Sunday sermon. Good morning!</FONT s>

I have found that when one begins to search for the answers to things related to a supreme being or purpose, it is best to start from within, for there is were the answers are to be found.

Thanks for your input everyone! I guess you're rying to tell me I'm still on my own with these questions, but I appreciate your responses--more to think about. <img src="http://www.arlo.net/ubb/smilies/peace.gif" width=16 height=16>

Quilt lady, See Moose Friends Network:Blunderite Book Club (In Honor of Todd). The next BBC book, Illusions, might be of interest to you.

Hi Folks;
I agree with Pat's description, dated Sep 20
when I'm quiet & lucid, I look to an "organic" model of the universe, and our place in it.
We are small grains of sand, in a large unknowable gathering, of matter, all too synergistic, symbiotic, and beautiful, to be random.
For any one grain of that sand to think the Creator looks, acts and thinks like
it/she/he does, is light years, beyond folly

also, the older I get.... today, being a benchmark, of sorts, preceded by 55 earlier benchmarks, the more important I find it to know what it is, that I dont know...and, to know that much of what I don't know, may be unknowable.....so, in the true spirit of what SO is to me, I don't know what part of what I dont know, is unknowable....ya know...?

Yes, I do know, which is to say that I don't.

Yes, exactly. Kind of like a dog who doesn't know that he doesn't know how to do math. What is it that we don't know ? Who knows ?

the stages of knowledge are,

1. Not knowing and not knowing that you are not knowing.

2. Not knowing but aware that you do not know

3. Knowing but not knowing that you know

4. Knowing and knowing that you Know

5. Knowing or not knowing but not caring either way.

6. Being a Blunderite, and trying to confuse one's self.

7. The state of being Nathen, which is neither good nor bad, Knowing or unknowing, just being.

of course I could be wrong, feel free to correct the list you silly half witted little shits.

If you are being selectivly oblivious to or about what you do know, you are practicing judgement , control and selective obliviosity.

If you know what you are being oblivious to or about, you are doing the same thing as stated above.

If you don't know anything and are oblivious about things in general, or selectivly oblivious to things that you perhaps should not be oblivious about, you probably are George W. Bush.

you mean.. I have to lead donkeys down the Grand Canyon & dig ginseng roots, to find SO enlightenement? wow!! someone better tell the Dali Lama , he's way off track!! heeheehe