[ExI] The void left by deleting religion

[spike]

> Max More wrote:
> > A question for those, like spike, who found religion to be "an
> > extremely positive experience"--especially those of a Fundamentalist
> > belief system... period of
> > aggressive, sometimes obnoxious, atheism. I'm curious how others felt
> > as they struggled out of those chains.  Max


At age 20, in college with a new and wonderful sweetheart, I was very happy
and life was good.  A professor used one of those nifty new inventions
called the video tape recorder to tape Carl Sagan's Cosmos.  We viewed these
each Wednesday evening at our physics seminars.  Those Cosmos episodes were
a total mind blowing experience.

In one of the chapters there is a short section about evolution that hit me
like being whopped side the head with a 2 by.  Max you once mentioned that
you often had to waste time in your philosophy classes explaining the very
basics of evolution to your students.  It occurred to me after seeing
Sagan's pitch that I had gone to public schools thru high school and had
never heard a decent explanation of the whole concept.  The teachers
introduced paper tigers or avoided the topic all together.  I didn't dig
into it earlier because I was more of a physics/math/space/machines kinda
guy, never did much with biology.

I spent the next several months totally engrossed in studying evolution to
try to debunk it, totally neglecting everything else including my
engineering classes and the new sweetheart.  I am amazed she didn't throw me
back.  I had been told that the evidence for evolution was scant and filled
with inconsistency.  Found to the contrary that there is a mountain of
evidence for evolution, filled with consistency.

Spent the next couple years trying to unify fundamentalist religion with
evolution.  I could not.  Spent the next decade trying to decide if it
matters.  It does.  The sweetheart married me anyway, 23 years and counting.
{8-]  Then the internet came along and changed everything.  Then extropians
showed up on the internet, and I found that there are others like me.  

If you have never seen Sagan's Cosmos, get that and do so forthwith.

spike