That's perfectly fine if it gives you comfort. You are right, there's more, the universe is so big and so vast we've barely even scratched the surface of what its secrets are, we may never know everything before it eventually rips itself a part (or contracts depending on the theory). But history has shown that there tends to be a logical solution to things that were once the place of gods. The thing is in the last 500 years science has eaten away at these characters and their place in the universe, slowly but surely they are being reduced to bit players because we are discovering the real meanings behind how things work. And as technology gets more and more advanced that's only ever going to continue. There is more, a lot more, but as history as shown we will actually work it out at some stage, and that to me is actually the greater achievement, that's when we truly reach our full potential. At the moment we are still at a stage in human development where the old myths are trying so desperately to hold on, even going so far as to create nonsense like intelligent design as a means of justifying their teachings. But at some point I'm quite confident we will rise above that, we will reach out full potential as a species and these religions of today will be looked back upon as being no different to ancient Green, Roman, Pagan, Mesopotamian, Egyptian or Norse ones. And that my friend is the one heaven Atheists do think is possible.
I agree; and I am very optimistic about the future.
However, so much damage has been done, I honestly think that in some respects society has regressed in spite of advances in technology and understanding of science.
I mean, I may be wrong, but its my understanding that the young earth creationist movement, its popularity, and the attempts to claim scientific credibility, is a relatively recent phenomenon.
In the 19th century the geologic time scale showed the Earth to be much older than previously believed; and most people were apparently willing to accept that.
Take this source with a grain of salt, I guess.
http://www.beyondcreationscience.com/index.php?pr=Read_Chapter_6
The reason the 19th-century dispensationalists accepted an ancient earth is simple: the idea of an ancient earth was the dominant if not universal belief among Christians at the time, even long before Charles Darwin.
Gary North, another historian who differs with Noll on many points, concedes that young-earth creationism was intellectually dead at the time of the Scopes Trial. He says:
[Bryan] was not a six-day creationist. Because, in 1922 there weren't any six-day creationists in the Protestant religion. There was only one guy anyone had heard of who held the position and that was a man by the name of George McCready Price.
The chapter goes on to describes another dude called Morris who thought a literal interpretation of Genesis and Revelation go hand in hand (you're more likely to believe the later if you believe the former). These literal views of Genesis convinced a radio preacher who spouted this stuff off on the radio for millions of Americans.
But Morris was a nut that thought Jesus was coming within his lifetime.
The signs have been increasing in clarity for many years now. I remember my grandmother quoting an evangelist she had heard talking about Mussolini and other supposed signs of that day, predicting that Christ would return in 1933. When the atomic bomb exploded in Japan in 1945, even though I knew better than to set dates for Christ's coming, I was certain His return was so near that I almost decided not to go to graduate school. I have kept a plaque reading PERHAPS TODAY! on my office wall for almost 50 years now, and have noted that the signs which seemed so obvious 50 years ago have continued to grow in intensity with each passing year. Surely the Lord is coming soon!
It's thanks to nut jobs like this that think they see signs of the end times in everything that young earth creationism became what it is today. How sad; how utterly frustrating. And you can hear many fundamentalists today with the same sort of views; not just in young earth creationism, but utterly convinced 'soon! soon! Jesus is coming soon! All the signs are here!', and they keep saying it as half a century passes, and as more and more decades pass.
The scientific understanding of the age of the Earth and evolution has only improved and become more robust in that time and yet young earth creationism is probably more popular now than its ever been. It's very, very sad.
The information age has been a double edged sword. People have access to vast amounts of information right at their fingertips, but ignorance spreads through the same technology, creationists eating up info only from pre-approved sources, existing in their bubbles, immune to the other aspects of the information age.
I don't think the media helps, either.
Yet I remain hopeful. As time goes on, any curious youngsters can easily come across the info to rebuttal the falsehoods of their fundamentalist upbringing, the progress of science will leave fundamentalism more and more behind in the dirt in which they have nothing to show for all of their claims.
