Warning: Most of you are going to stop reading this before you reach the bottom.

I felt I had to reply to this thread, even though every other part of me was screaming to leave it alone and run away to a nice island somewhere. OK, so here goes:

It's not my place to dismiss anyone's beliefs. My own (whacked) belief system states that it's utterly wrong to do so, so I don't mean to cause any offence here. First off, a background. I'm atheist, and consider myself very logical. I also spend some of my time practising telekinesis, magic, and basically the control of the world around me. Whoa there, hang on. I'm obviously some sort of nut job if I believe in science and magic. Well, I'll come back to that after I start tackling Stephen's textage. Note: I'm addressing the whole thread here, not taking pot-shots at Stephen. Don't come chasing me with a knife.

First, and trivially, I do think the word "energy" is overused and misunderstood. But it is a scientific definiton that you're using there, and people are free to use other ones if they wish. Even though they may be wrong.

I think that it's wrong to say that a "belief" in science is OK, and a belief in a religion is OK, but a belief in (for example) astrology is bumf. They all revolve around the same basic idea of finding some way to explain what's going on.

"I believe that chemicals released from the countless cells in my brain and throughout my body control the way it thinks, acts, responds, and lives overall."

"I believe that my life is affected by God. I also believe the above."

"I believe that my life is affected by the stars. I also believe in that chemical stuff. And God."

None of those seem to me to be particularly WRONG AND EVIL AND IMPAIRING THE VERY EXISTENCE OF CIVILISATION. It all comes down to one thing:

Science *is*, in many ways, a belief system.

It's a complex belief system, as it has logic at its heart and so requires everything to explain everything else. Instead of attributing that brilliant flash of light and roaring from the sky to some angry thunder god, it attributes it to the interaction of charges and so on. Neither explanation is inherently more correct than the other, the only difference is in the details and the complexity of the situation. We know all sorts of crazy stuff about charged particles now and can utilise them in exciting ways. Science allows us to take A and B and deduce C, something which other belief systems lack. But how does the universe work? No one knows. We can explain bits of it in various ways, but it's all just an interpretation.

On the more sociological side of the post, people that are extreme in any belief are to be worried about. Anyone that attributes their entire life to astrology is frankly dangerous, but so are people that form extreme opinions on religion or those who can say that particle interactions mean there's no such thing as conscious decision-making.

The thing to remember about science is that it changes. Quantum physics is a stupid and ridiculous-- oh, what? It kind of works? Damn. Science is always coming up with new ways of explaining things, ways that kick out the old knowledge or add more rules to the book. At one time science said we should drill holes in the head to release evil beings. Nonsense. We should ingest living organisms to kill the beings within us making us ill. Nonsense. We should puncture the skin, allowing stuff to escape... oh.

So what affects your choices? Is it all down to science? God? Voices in your head? Distant galaxies? Answering that would be a truly Big Thing, and it's not so easy to dismiss any answer as incorrect.

Someone mentioned feeling sorry for people who believe in magic "because the world would be a boring place without it." I don't feel sorry for people who believe in God for exactly that reason. Do you?

And going back to my magic/science bit: criticise me, mock me, even shun me if you will. I've had all of those happen already. My life is my own, and if I choose to spend a spare five minutes trying to summon forth a flame, I shall do so. And I shall probably continue to do so until I actually manage it. If I don't, ah well.

I'll be dead in 50-60 years, so it won't matter to me or to anyone what my beliefs were. As long as I accept responsibility for my actions, it really doesn't matter what I thought controlled them.

Mat"The way I feel at the moment, this will probably be my penultimate post"thew