[Arm-netbook] Totally derailed topic

[Christopher Havel]

Science is something I can and do believe in. I'll take what can be
concretely proved over what can't, any day of the week.

That said, I do reserve a bit of reverence of a sort (for lack of a better
term) for what cannot be determined through strictly Cartesian means (i.e.
deconstructing a thing into its component elements, on the belief that the
larger thing's functionality will become evident through said
deconstruction)... it was Douglas Adams, I believe, who noted (quite
truthfully) that, "[i]f you try and take a cat apart to see how it works,
the first thing you have on your hands is a nonworking cat." There is
something that is inescapably metaphysical about life itself and how it
comes about, at least in this world at this time, and I have a sort of
respect for that -- an understanding between me and the universe, if you
will, that there may be something that science can't explain that's going
on there.

But that's really about as close as I get to religion or faith. Organized
religion, quite honestly, seems to me an exercise in podiatric
self-marksmanship (if you'll forgive the euphemism) -- if the point of the
whole thing is to bring you closer to God, why put structure and
organization and the inevitable middlemen that such things bring with them,
in between you and Him...? It simply doesn't make sense to me that, in
order to speak to God, you have to go through something to the effect of a
human bucket-brigade -- which sounds like an open opportunity for things to
go like a game of Telephone, amongst the other disadvantages.