Beyond Belief 2006 Videos

Over the 2006 Thanksgiving holiday I stumbled upon a series of video presentations that were given at the Beyond Belief 2006 conference. "What's that?", you might ask? From the description on the website:

Just 40 years after a famous TIME magazine cover asked "Is God Dead?" the answer appears to be a resounding "No!" According to a survey by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life in a recent issue of Foreign Policy magazine, "God is Winning". Religions are increasingly a geopolitical force to be reckoned with. Fundamentalist movements - some violent in the extreme - are growing. Science and religion are at odds in the classrooms and courtrooms. And a return to religious values is widely touted as an antidote to the alleged decline in public morality. After two centuries, could this be twilight for the Enlightenment project and the beginning of a new age of unreason? Will faith and dogma trump rational inquiry, or will it be possible to reconcile religious and scientific worldviews? Can evolutionary biology, anthropology and neuroscience help us to better understand how we construct beliefs, and experience empathy, fear and awe? Can science help us create a new rational narrative as poetic and powerful as those that have traditionally sustained societies? Can we treat religion as a natural phenomenon? Can we be good without God? And if not God, then what?

This is a critical moment in the human situation, and The Science Network in association with the Crick-Jacobs Center brought together an extraordinary group of scientists and philosophers to explore answers to these questions. The conversation took place at the Salk Institute, La Jolla, CA from November 5-7, 2006.

So far, I've watched about 8 of the 10 videos. Considering each video is about 2 hours, that's quite a bit of viewing. Overall, I understand those with faith... and yet at the same time I have doubt about the concept of a personal god where the Earth is just a tiny blue dot in an unending sea of galaxies and star systems with planets.

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Faith

Faith comes by hearing from the Word of God. Faith is not something we do, but something HE does.

We do live by faith, not by works, But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace,longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness,temperance.

For by grace are we saved through faith: and that not of ourselves: it is the gift of God.

These promises have held for me when darkness comes and faith is shaken.

I examine those who try and shake my faith, by logic and the Word of God.

Christians are criticized by those that would shake faith. One of the big examples
if reporting that all Christian believe that the world is 5000 years old. This is attribute to someone who had time on their hands, counting all the 'begats in the Bible. PSHAW! I could not hang my faith on statements such as those.

Peace................Ed Dunagin


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