A quick "religious" personal profile. I was baptised and raised Catholic as a child. I was an altar boy (don't laugh) for three years, ages 10-12, could recite most of a mass in Latin and knew what the words meant, well most of them, at the time. In my mid teens through mid twenties, I questioned many things (who doesn't during that time frame of their lives.) I became a self-proclaimed agnostic during that period.

That was also a period in my life where my primary activity was learning, both high school and college. Science was a focal point of my junior and senior years in high school, and my college major was pharmacology with a psyche minor. ...more science with some study of the human mind, often the human condition, mixed into the soup, which leads me to a response to your statement below.

>>But, Bob, that's the very definiton of "religion". See, e.g,, the first entry under "religion" on the Dictionary.com website:

With an albeit limited (as opposed to thorough) background in the sciences, I don't find the ability for one to conclude that there is a higher being that is responsible for our being, a belief that must be based in the holy books written through the millenia. The necessary combination of circumstances for life to just occur (any life, single cell life) due to the specific elements being in the same place at the same time are so minute, it is almost off the scale of probability. The best minds in science still can't replicate such a situation to this day.

Couple this unlikely occurance with the fact that it would have to happen in an environment where this life could not only survive, but thrive, multiply, then evolve into every species of plant and animal on this planet.

It is my view that what you and I see around us every day is not an accident nor some chance blending of elements a couple billion years ago.

The conclusion? The existance of a higher being can almost be proven by science. ...just as the ability to create life can also almost be proven by science, so that conflict is close to a toss-up. The tie breaker? Modern science unsuccessfully tries to replicate it.

It's here, and it wasn't an accident or a coincidence.

I know this statement is a stretch for many people, but I'm gonna write it anyway. A belief in God (or what ever you want to call it) can be backed up by scientific methods.

We do indeed have different interpretations of the first ammendment. I don't think this case is a first amendment issue. The plaintiff's child wasn't required to recite the pledge. The suit was filed because of where she saw and heard it happening. ...but, it was also filed after he decided that a suit to remove "In God We Trust" would have not been as successful, even in the 9th District Court.

Hope you are doing well my friend!
Bob