> >Not that religion isn't important, but just that God's purpose, or I suppose the law of the universe(which I do not believe in, so I am with Stephen on that), is already working out.
>
> Um. Stephen has been saying constantly throughout this thread that he DOES believe in the "law of the universe" as opposed to divine purpose. You do realise that, right?

Before people assign beliefs to me, could somebody tell me what the "law of the universe" is? To pre-emptively clarify my position an many matters philosophical: I am a materialist, which means I believe only in the existence of physical reality. Above and beyond that, I believe there is an objective reality that exists outside of our own sensory perceptions, though I grudgingly recognize that I can't prove this. I'm also a very strong empiricist, which means I only believe in things that can be empirically proven to be true. This is contradictory to my previous statement, so let me just say that while I can't be *sure* an objective reality outside of myself exists, I'm confident it does.

I do not believe in any sort of god, fate, karma, soul, universal mind, spirits, or "energy" as defined by the "psychics" on talk shows. I don't know where the "law of the universe" falls into all of this, but I most certainly believe there are hard and fast physical laws that govern the interactions of all energy and matter in the universe -- this is sometimes called physics.

Stephen