Also, Danny Boyle's Sunshine. Good movie. TERRIBLE SCIENCE.

Those don't count.

Also, Ungoliant.

Pretty sure it's because of this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recapitulation_theory

Having gone through high school biology in that long ago (8 years ago) world where you learned about the fossil record for evolution instead of the genetic record, I was an OEC for about 5 years, and pretty ambivalent (i.e. undecided) about evolution for a couple after that. Check out The Language of God by Francis…

Unfortunately it doesn't mesh well with biology. I'm going to reply to your main post just so it gets a little more visibility.

Pretty sure it's on the floor of the Persian gulf, which only flooded about 7 or 8 thousand years ago, and which makes a ton of geographic sense based on the geographic description given in Genesis and based on the Abraham's cultural heritage. http://news.discovery.com/earth/ancient-desert-oasis-echoes-of-eden.html

I love games of pin-the-cognitive-dissonance-on-the-mouthy-atheist. You're welcome to put your money where your mouth is and pick up where I left off in my conversation with corpore-metal, but if you're boring or if I have to rehash what's already been said, I'll just ignore you.

One last thing I forgot to mention. As far as atheist scientists who agree with my evaluation of physicalism go, J.B.S. Haldane is a famous example ("If my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain, I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true ... and hence I have no reason for…

Yeah, I'm not saying it was okay, I was just pointing out that you might not actually have been the intended target, particularly since he supported you later.

Or.....his email wasn't talking about you, but was talking about all the people who were studying their own groups and he didn't have to change any opinions of anything to be a supporter of your work? Cool that you got supporter motivated though. Seems like the right response.

Ah, an appeal to Laplace's demon, eh?

The existence of a Big Bang doesn't automatically imply there must be a god.

Adding indirection to the paradox.

Which is funny, because I thought last years was arc was pretty crap, and so far I've loved this season. Actually, I should say that I thought Moffat's realization of the arc was pretty crap, not that the arc itself was crap. All the ideas were right, it was the execution that was lacking. This season some of the…

Thank you for such an such an eminently thoughtful comment. You say a lot of things that I actually agree with. But you did say two things that I want to address -

Arguments from first cause are useless.

Plenty do. The problem is when you have civilizations at different levels interacting and exchanging technology, but not necessarily all being at the level required to develop AI. Check out Stargate as an example.

Why does there have to be reason? Really, I'm dead serious in asking that. Why does there have to be a reason?

You didn't really answer my question, so let me ask you again more pointedly: would you describe the religious beliefs of any of the people I just mentioned as deserving of that categorization, and if so, what reaction would you expect from them if you said so to their faces?