About this whole Catholic-trashing thing--I offer the following,

[talkingmime]

117. Actually, that's exactly my view on it. If you don't take "six days" literally,...

and rather view it as "eras", then it meshes perfectly. The problem starts "in the beginning". How can you start the clock on a "day" if there's nothing (specifically Earth) to serve as the clock? My sister-in-law is a Baptist who grew up Methodist and for reasons beyond my conception (she's highly intelligent and well educated) she honestly believes that Earth is six thousand years old. Go figure.

And the 12-15 billion year old universe is simple speculation. The expansion leaves a lot of it dark to us because the light will never reach us. Relative to the galaxies moving away from us, yes, we're traveling faster than the speed of light. It's a little hard to wrap your head around at first, but relativity really doesn't imply that you can't move faster than light if you pick a point of reference that already is.

I look at it as multi-dimensional and consider the "center" of the universe to be the perimeter at the same time, folding into itself to continue the cycle. It took a lot of pot to come up with that theory, but that was a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.

I still don't believe there is a God, but at the same time have no means to prove either way. People claim it is God's will when someone suffers a horrible nasty death and turn right around and praise God for saving someone else from similar circumstances. SHIT HAPPENS!

There are a lot of progressive non-denominational churches out there that are willing to engage in intellectual and philosophical discussions about the various versions of the Bible, and other religious texts for that matter. I've enjoyed many such "services", but they are more gatherings of those with open minds.

Certain Americans call Muslims terrorists and certain Muslims call us "The Great Satan". Curiously, Islam, Judaism, and Christianity share the same roots. It seems that every religion states that it is the one true path (not all) but if God is all powerful, why can't every religion be true at the same time even if they contradict each other?

And what Bill Mahrer movie?