[Pete]

Why would anyone spend time defending what is true?

Exactly. What is your answer?

You can describe science and the history of science but isn't science a pointless, meaningless endeavor? If there is no God and we are merely the consequence of evolution, then existence is actually meaningless. It follows that anything we do, including science, is also meaningless.

So, again I ask (and sincerely), why bother?

[CarrotAndStick]

It follows that anything we do, including science, is also meaningless.

So, again I ask (and sincerely), why bother?

Perhaps to distract Man's uniquely powerful and conscious thinking mind from worrying too much about the apparent endless purposelessness of his existence as a species, in a journey through time, religion was invented by almost all, if not every, human culture.

OK, I admit I'm drunk.

[js1138]

If there is no God and we are merely the consequence of evolution, then existence is actually meaningless.

If God is omniscient and omnipotent, as generally depicted, then everything we do and ever will do is already known. In the mind of God we as static as butterflies pinned to a museum display for amusement -- perhaps the amusement of other gods and demigods and angels. All our hopes and fears, all our ambitions, all our joys and sufferings are like a two dimensional tapestry in the eyes of God, who is outside time, and can see the whole of time -- past, present and future -- at once.

How does it feel to be a museum display? What is the point of your life and your sufferings?

Free will? You might imagine it, but what does it mean to a being who can see all of time at once?

[From many - one.]

I know a few agnostics and an athiest. They are among thefinest, most idealistic folk I know.

Yor premise seems to be a bit odd... that if their is no God, there is no purpose or reason to life. There was a long time before the Judeo Christian God came to be perceived, yet in early writings, ad those of cultures that do not include the concept, there seems to be no sign of such depressive attitude.

[King Prout]

from a "life is all there is" standpoint?

1. why not?
2. we like to understand things, for the sake of understanding them.
3. we like to understand things in order to come up with technical solutions to problems which make life less pleasant than it could be.
4. Understanding how the mechanisms of life work might just possibly teach us how the mechanisms of death work, and allow us to switch off those genetic factors leading to decrepitude and death.

all, from a life-is-all-there-is, perfectly sound reasons based entirely on natural self-interest.

happy, now?