The Multiverse: Big Bangs Without End

Sky and Telescope ^ | 9/18/08 | Dan Falk

[Soliton]

I was getting on you for making a rather rude comment about the rapture

There will be no rapture as described in those books. There is very little Biblical support for a Rapture. It is primarilly based on two verses in the Bible, "For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever." 1 Thessalonians 4: 16-17. Out of this, a huge mythology has grown up.

[NinoFan]

Fellow Christian here.

I avoid most religious debates because they simply don’t interest me, but I do have to wonder why so many atheists on the Internet spend their days going on and on about God, mocking theists (mostly Christians), and acting like grade-A buttholes. If they are correct, then this life is all we got. Is being a keyboard warrior in defense of atheism really the best way to spend that limited time? Is acting like a jerk with a chip on his or her shoulder making good use of one’s 70+ years? I know most atheists don’t really believe in any universal truths, but still, assuming the few they will conveniently treat as fact due to the success of western culture, being a jerk fails pretty big time. Why not spend the free time learning a language, helping out the fellow man, or bonding with others? That would make a lot more sense to me, but most atheists (Internet) I know do not possess the ability to simply shrug off those they don’t agree with. It’s very odd.

[csense]

...I do have to wonder why so many atheists on the Internet spend their days going on and on about God, mocking theists (mostly Christians), and acting like grade-A buttholes.

Why did Cain lie, and act belligerently towards to God, when Cain probably knew that God had seen what he had done to his brother? Answer that and I think you will have answered your own question...

[NewRomeTacitus]

Since my early childhood I’ve been plagued with occasional dreams of extreme vividness and linear quality that relate an alternate life in the same body. The names of things familiar are different and technologies differ with further differences in histories, national boundaries while friends appear who I know (in the dream) I’d trust my life with - while having no counterpart here. It’s not even the same Mikel.

It’s varied from artist to politician to something in the medical field...very scary waking knowing procedures I’ve never been trained in! The knowledge faded quickly but looking up the details confirmed that that Mikel knew his stuff. That one made me consider parallel universes and the possibility that alternate selves may be “bleeding” into each other through proximity at certain times.

I know dreams are the brain’s regurgitation of events in an attempt to file and discard. These damn things occur once or twice a year and override any alarm clock. They’re realer than any other dreams and are logical start to finish.

I’d check myself into an institution if this wasn’t the sole totally nutty enigma. Sane on all other fronts except for “seeing” horns on Obama’s head where the Godless see a halo. Those horns are a controllable figment I prefer to retain.