Have you seen this, Sam?  If this prediction is credible, the "infancy" of our universe is an incredible understatement.

http://www.fathom.com/cours...

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nov...

I would think that if life has a special and supernatural component, then the environmental conditions on planets wouldn't make any difference.

I'm not saying that there is no such component.  I happen to think that there is.  I'm only saying that life and consciousness may be a million times more abundant than we believe is possible, if we no longer limit our considerations to the paradigm of familiar biological reproducing organisms.

I have never heard a good explanation about what caused the big bang, what banged, where did the energy or material come from to form the explosion.  How can the universe end and how could it have not ever been?  These questions are the ones that keep bringing me back to a God [ what ever name suits you].

Thank you ApolloDawn and yes I have seen those. Magnificent beyond imagination when we attempt to even speculate about such possibilities. But there are other possibilities, some expressed in the many myths and legends of which we still have no certain knowledge. Mysteries abound, but I wish we had the world leadership with the wisdom to take care of our own planet before they do us all in.

Hey Dale, after all is said and done I believe we will all find out by and by like the old hymn says.

Sam...

The potshots at those scientists and thinkers who have considered the questions you raised are absurd.  Dismissing their work and thinking as some sort of conspiracy of ideology, as a "Darwinist stranglehold," signals that you are unable to engage their arguments and evidence in any meaningful manner.  This isn't some sort of elitist snub, it is merely a reminder that your HONEST choices boil down to 1) learn the science so you can discuss it intelligently or 2) argue why you have special access to answers to these questions unavailable to tens of thousands of biologists, paleontologists, zoologists, and life sciences researchers who have spent decades of their lives performing millions of experiments and testing theories of origins.  But it is simply intellectual dishonesty to make room for "Creation" by an imaginary magical buddy through hand-waving toward an imaginary conspiracy of science.

I have 2 questions that I think of as gateway inquiries.  I have yet to read any satisfying answers to either and I would appreciate your thoughts.

1)  You and I presumably share a long and open-ended list of thousands and thousands of Gods that neither of us believe in.  That list includes Thor, Nepthys, Hotei, Olorun, Yarilo, Kwatee, Kinich-Ahau, Apocatequil, and Huitzilopochtli.  Now, these are all deities actually worshipped by from tens of thousands to millions of people.  Anyone wishing to research these non-existent deities can start at Godchecker ( http://www.godchecker.com/g... ).  Neither of us believe in any of them:  well, I don't anyway...

We also share an even longer list of nonexistent Gods which have yet to be worshipped by anyone, including Pepsicoketab the secondary creator of tiny bubbles, Yahwesusllah the tripartite deity of fused monotheism, and the Flying Spaghetti Monster.  Well, that last one may be worshipped already.  The Pastafarians of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster and their ubiquitous pirate-fish logo are the fastest growing church on Earth.  ( http://www.venganza.org/ ).  But, and I hesitate to admit this, I do not believe in any of these, either.

I just add one other imaginary magical buddy to our shared and very long list of imaginary magical buddies, I add yours.

My question is this.  What evidence can you present that your imaginary magical buddy is real which is better than the evidence you yourself have concluded is inadequate for the reality of all those nonexistent deities?

2) Your holy book seems to me clearly the work of men (and a rare woman) situated in particular cultural, social, and technical contexts rather than a work which transmits any knowledge or insight from a being with access to information and understanding from beyond those contexts.  One would think that a divine text inspired by men who communicate with an omniscient and omnipresent entity would contain content which was unavailable to normal men living in those times who did not communicate with a deity.  There is no such information.

For example, an all-knowing creator would know about proteins, chromosomes, DNA, mitochondria, and even cells.  Those are, after all, the stuff of life.  And IT would certainly know about electrons, protons, and neutrons, the elements and molecules, cations, polymers, quantum physics, relativity and gravity.  IT would surely know that IT placed us on a large sphere that rotated every 24 hours and that it revolved around the sun annually, one of a number of planets which did so.  IT would know about the billions and billions of stars in each of the billions and billions of galaxies in the Universe as well as about black holes, supernovas, and the Big Bang.

None of that is in your Holy Book.  The complete absence of any information or insight not available to ordinary men and women at the time that text was thought up tells us everything we need to know about whether the authors had any special access to the mind of any special beings or not.

My second question is this.  What evidence is present in your holy text that it is anything more than the work of normal men and women of their time, men and women without any communicative access to any God or Gods?

Like I wrote, these are "gateway inquiries" for me.  The first is a basic ontological question:  why yours when you dismiss everyone else's?  The second is a basic epistemic question:  why treat your text as holy when you dismiss others as prosaic?

My position is as stated and I have my reasons and a long lifetime to consider them. I am content with my thoughts and hope you come to the end of your life content with yours. Thousands of books and thoughts out there outside this extremely limited forum and you are not looking for answers but argument. Carry that out in a post of your own. By the way, you will never find me referring to any books including the Bible as "holy" any more than I would some man or woman.

I don't think that something being a myth or a legend deprives it of its worth, any more than I believe that being able to explain something scientifically depletes it of its spiritual aspects.

The perception of spiritual value or import is often seen to depend on its mystery.  This perception need not be necessarily true.

If consciousness is a physical or metaphysical phenomenon that arises when matter and energy become able to interact in a responsive and purposeful manner, then organic life as we know it provides a good platform for consciousness, but it need not be the only possible platform.

We in the Western countries have a way of confusing organic brain function with consciousness in itself.  While the first is the most familiar platform for the second, we are premature to assume that it is the only one.

The distant future of the universe that my links allude to may be home to a kind of consciousness that operates and responds so slowly and subtly, to the slightest of forces, that we could hardly become aware of its existence.

I have often said I love a mystery; and while I don't think the word "premature" is accurate since many have always looked worldwide for answers it is mystery that drives us to explore beyond the material world about us.

That's a good observation.