Hawke wrote:

If the judge had come up with 139 pages of the opposite conclusion
would you have thought it was so good?

Webster says that religion is a cause, principle, or system of beliefs
held to with ardor and faith. I think that the way some people hold to
atheism it could qualify as some sort of religion.

Don't atheists claim to "know" what does not exist in every nook and
cranny of the universe? Although they are stuck on this tiny speck of a
planet and they haven't been any place else they still know that God
doesn't exist anywhere in time and space and beyond. Knowing everything
is called being omniscient. So I guess that if they are omniscient,
they must be god. If they don't know everything then they must be
sticking by their beliefs by some kind of faith.

Look at it this way. Say that you are convinced that there are extra
terrestrials and that they visit, and have visited the earth many times over
thousands of years. Say that you and thousands or even millions of other
people believed the same thing. Now I come along and say no, there are no
ETs and there is no evidence there are any. While you and your fellow ET
believers may qualify as a religion but as for me, who simply does not
accept the truth of your belief, not agreeing with your group doesn't make
me and people who also disagree with your group part of a religion. We
simply don't believe in a concept there is no evidence which supports it.
It's the same with Atheism. People saying they don't think there is a God
simply see no evidence proving that belief and reject it's veracity. That
hardly makes one part of an organized religion, does it.

As to the creation case, I would accept any ruling by a judge that was based
on empirical facts and sound reasoning that was not impeded by any kind of
personal bias. In this case the judge was a Bush appointee and I believe a
churchgoer. But after seeing very easily through the phony assertions of the
ID advocates his only choice was to reject their claims. That's why I would
accept his analysis of the case at face value. Don't you?

Hawke

I like the ET example but it is slightly different from what's going
on. ETs should be physical beings that could be proven scientifically.
Many people say they won't believe there is a god unless you can prove
him scientifically then they go on to say that science can only
consider things in the material or natural world. But what if it's true
that god is outside of nature (supernatural)? By definition their
science cannot consider it. To say they won't believe until he is
proven scientifically means it'll never happen. Not very open minded.

The High Priest of the natural world, Carl Sagan, said that the
universe is all there ever was, is, or ever will be. How did he know
that? There's no proof. It must be faith.

Imagine that there was a 2-dimensional world where there was only north
and south, no UP.
People living in that world had developed a science that fit their
2-dimensional existence. A three-dimensional person comes along and
they can't see him, only his footprint. Their 2-dimensional science
will never be able to prove he exists. Does that mean that he doesn't
exist?