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Months after buying it, I'm finally going to get a chance to read The Lost Symbol. Though I'm sure a good portion (not to say even 50%) of the "stuff" in the book is grounded in fact, it's still basically purely escapist reading. I wonder, too, if the book follows the same paths as the others: old well connected guy found dead, beautiful daughter/niece helps solve puzzle that takes Robert Langdon all over the world. We'll see.

On the golf forum there's a thread going on about Christianity and I'm impressed with how respectful it's been to this point, though I've got a light trigger finger and will close the thread if it gets out of hand at any point - we don't need to get a bunch of people mad at each other.

But, away from that, some of the points being made in favor of religion are, well, they're stupid. One guy has said that he believes the earth is only about 20,000 years old because "it's common sense." Others are using the Bible as proof of other things in the Bible. They'll then claim - when their logical error is pointed out - that others are relying on books as well (referring to science books, articles, etc.).

A few random thoughts:

• I've said before and I'll say again that I don't think I'll ever believe in a God who punishes people who never have the opportunity to hear of him. The whole "if you're not Christian you're going to hell" thing has to be bullshit because some people are never even exposed to the idea of Christianity - why would some good God punish them? If that's the case, that God isn't worth believing in to begin with.
• Evolution is fact. The Big Bang Theory is not, but what's to say God didn't create the Big Bang, too? Heck, in some ways, "God created the Big Bang and knew of everything that would come after it, because he designed it all to happen" is, in many ways, far more awesome than "God created an earth and put people on it."
• The Bible was not written by God himself. It was written by people. It's a book of stories, people, c'mon.
• My one comment in the thread was something along the lines of "Religion is faith in the absence of fact, not faith in spite of fact." The earth is not 20,000 years old. If your religion teaches you that, you need to rethink some things.

My thoughts remain fairly similar to what I wrote about a year ago. And a friend even included that video in the thread.

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