Isnt thinking and consciousness an evolved form of instinct? Animals have instinct and we are just more evolved than most animals and so have our instincts and personality traits.

I really dont know if this is true and it has nothing to do with religion, but maybe Arcadian knows how it works, since he's studying it.

What you need to do is take a step back from reality and just reflect on your own existence. And then I ask myself these questions: why do I exist? Why is my mind associated with this particular body, and not someone else's? Where was my mind before I was born? Where do I go after I die?

One of the toughest questions I ask myself is, "is this the only life I'll ever live?"

Ugh, so many difficult questions and only one i can really anwser...

Why do I exist?

Well, apparently it was a warm and hot summernight in 1988 and dad pulled the trigger.

But really those questions will, in my opinion, just make your head spin. The problem is you'll never get an anwser and the thought of that makes these questions in my opinion, maybe not a waste of time but not as interesting compared to other things which I do value in life.

This topic is becoming really interesting.
This is my story: I live since I was born in Rome, the capital of Catholicism, and I've passed 14 years of my life in a school managed by nuns.
Do you want to know if I believe or not in God?
I don't believe in God at all.
Religion is based on too many misteries and I have not faith, I want facts.
Anyway I don't want to impose my skepticism to others.
So, in the same way, parents shouldn't impose their religion to their sons and let them decide and choose their path when they will be adults.
I know this is an utopian vision, but it is the best I can imagine for our future.

I am an agnostic. I was raised in a Fundamentalist Church (Church of Christ), but I always had my doubts about literal Biblical truth, denial of fossil evidence, etc.
I am not anti-religion, but I think a secular worldview makes more sense than believing in so-called "sacred texts" over the findings of science. Not that I don't find religion a fascinating topic, in a purely academic sense!

I still go to Church on a fairly regular basis (almost every Sunday), however. I like to sing hymns! Plus, my family goes there, as do many of my old college chums.

I am a strong believer in God. Although I understand why many people don't believe or struggle with faith I will mention one or two things at this this juncture which may be helpful.

First, while there is mystery in religion there is also considerable evidence for the existence of God. Many world class scientists, men like John Polkinghorne, http://www.starcourse.org/jcp/ , Francis Collins, http://www.biologos.org/ , Alistair McGrath, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alister_McGrath , and many many others - http://www.cis.org.uk/ . While who believes what proves nothing these men demonstrate that faith is not incompatible with being a deeply thinking and trained scientist.

We have to be ruthless with ourselves in the sense that we have to understand how our faith, or non faith, has been influenced more by our experiences of religious people - and sometimes that hasn't been good. Equally, speaking from personal experience, I have had some excellent experiences with Christians, and some not so good.

Some will rightly say that the mechanism of natural selection does away with having to posit a creator. That's actually absurd, like saying that because we can explain the jet engine it does away with Frank Whittle, it's original inventor. The mechanism of natural selection tends to produce convergent answers to developmental branches of the evolutionary tree which argues just as much for a creator as against one.

The historic evidence for the life of Jesus is about the strongest for any person in antiquity. Museums around the world hold about 9 - 12 medieval documents which prove that men like Julius Ceaser and Plato lived. Museums around the world hold something like about 15,000 - 18,000 medieval copied documents which are copies of the New Testament documents. With that volume of documents exhaustive textual analysis has shown how reliable the copies actually are.

There are numerous good internet links on the subject which don't reflect extreme fundamentalism in either the creationist or athiestic stable.

I also Believe in God. I mean you just cant have a universe by chance. For example. if you take all the ingredients to bread. if you toss it up in the air its not coming down a loaf of bread. you can do this for years and will not come down as a loaf of bread. It neads to be baked to make a loaf of bread. Just like the earth cant have just been made by chance or the fact we came from apes. But this is my view and I dont want to make any arguments with people.

This discussion is really great! You guys talk good . . . and that's the truth. Owenowen, you are so right. Many very highly educated people (Oxford U, Cambridge U, Yale, Harvard etc.) believe the universe is so intricate and complex that it had to be designed by a Higher Intelligence . . . not necessarily the God of the Bible, but a higher being just the same. Atheists get so uptight (i.e., strident) . . . perhaps that is because they have encountered some strident believers in their lifetime and that turned them off. What a shame. To me it all boils down to this, no matter what scientific explanation you offer to explain where everything came from, it ends up at the very beginning of all things, with something that just happened, with no cause for it to happen. God, to me will always be the one who is the cause of whatever happened in the very beginning. It makes sense. Nothing just happens. Never has, never will.

Also, human consciousness does have something to do with this discussion. Afterall, one of the most widespread beliefs of most of the world's religions is that mortals have a soul. And isn't it possible, even very possible, that the soul is another word for human consciousness. One could argue that dogs, cats and other animals have consciousness, but I ask you seriously, do dogs or cats know they exist, and do they ask themselves questions like this one - - Is there a God? I doubt it very much. Do dogs and cats write poetry, or have a favorite song or peice of music? Do they have a concept of "fairness" and "fair play"? They do have a survival instinct, and a self-preservation instinct, but would a dog or cat give his life for something abtract like the principle of freedom or democracy? I sincerely doubt it.
No one has ever photographed a dream or a thought. Yes we measure such things with an EEG machine, but are a few squiggly lines on a peice of EEG paper the same as the actual face of my deceased mother in my dreams telling me she's OK? Human consciousness, in my opinion has a profound spiritual dimension which cannot be explained by electric energy and impulse measurements. I believe we all have a soul in us which is non-corporeal, (i.e., has no material substance, therefore is spiritual).

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