I like to think I'm protective of my sensitive personal info. I rip bills and credit card offers into confetti before throwing them out, I never give out my Social Security number, and I can spot a phishing scheme with the best of them. But I've recently come to realize that the safeguarding of my most intimate personal details is completely out of my hands.
Yep, Countrywide Mortgage just informed me that a now-former employee of theirs stoled my identity. They were nice enough to offer free credit monitoring for two years. Oh, and they offered me all sorts of great advice about how NOT to be a victim of identity theft. But they did overlook one important bit of advice- never deal with Countrywide Mortgage.
Last Monday at New York's Pierre Hotel, outspoken atheist Christopher Hitchens and physicist/theologian Monsignor Lorenzo Albacete met to tackle the question of whether or not science makes belief in God obsolete. According to the forum's hosts, Newsweek editor Jon Meacham and Washington Post columnist Sally Quinn, religion riles its vilifiers when it makes truth claims without evidence -- at least evidence that would hold up in a court of science. The conflict seems to stem from a difference in understanding as to what evidence and truth truly are.
I don't understand the point of the debate. Are religious people somehow obligated to bring in converts? Why should we fill up heaven with a bunch of people who are so reluctant to believe in the first place? I say, leave me the elbow room. This ain't multi-level marketing. You want to be a skeptic? Go for it. I will say one thing: if you don't believe in religion, then you're just substituting science for it. You're still not free of the irrational. Prove the Big Bang occurred, and not just something else that would have left the same cosmic signature. You can't. Prove Evolution is correct (not natural selection, that's obvious and not debated) by pointing out just one complete chain of fossil evidence wherein one species became another one (and please look up the meaning of "species" before you reply). You can't. Believe what you want, just don't be hypocritical. Acknowledge that whatever you think, you're accepting it on faith. I'm fine with it, personally. But some of science's greatest minds (like Albert Einstein) were religious. Who am I to argue with that? Chuck
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