> I didn't mean for this thread to turn into religious persecution.

> I don't know if have much more to add to this thread(everyone else is doing so well. La! I don't even know the meaning of half these philosophy concepts!), but I really hope that I have cleared this up. I don't want to attack religions, and I had sort of meant to avoid it fromt the start. I'm not sure what I'll attempt in the future, but I'm beginning to think it is not possible to talk about life without someone's religion being insulted(at least as far as I'm concerned. I think agnostics give off a natural religion offending aura). So, again, sorry if I made you feel you had to defend your beliefs. It was my intention to explore, and not defeat them...

Melanie, the very first philosophy concept you need to learn the meaning of is "debate". That's what we're having here. You started it by posting about your views on something and asking for opinions. Nobody was offended, and you are doing Sam and others an injustice by assuming their reasoned response to your post shows that they were.

Yes, you made Sam feel like he had to defend his beliefs. Also yourself, myself, Dave, Darien, Issachar, Stephen, whitehelm, and every single other person who replied. That's what a debate IS. You defend your beliefs, I defend mine, and thus we see which set of beliefs stand up better. In the context of forum posts, it doesn't matter whether this is a wide-ranging set of beliefs in God or just a belief that one particular fact is correct. As a physics major with an interest in philosophy, I assume you are familiar with the scientific method. It applies in philosophy and forum posting just like anything else.

Philosophy would not EXIST if everybody just said "This is what I think. I want to know what you think, but it sure as hell isn't going to change my original opinion, and when you tell it to me I'll probably take offense if it's different from mine anyway." That is what you are doing, whether you realise it or not.

Responding to somebody's opinion with a differing one is not "religious persecution". Nobody's religion has been "insulted" here, unless the mere fact that other opinions EXIST is insulting to them (and I don't believe for a minute that any of the religious Rinkies are as childish and brittle as that). The natural evolution of a forum thread into other related areas is also natural and not something to be taken personally. As far as "exploring ideas, not defeating them" goes, well, what's the point of exploring ideas if you don't intend to defeat the ones that turn out to be wrong? This is how we progress, both personally and as a species.

You started an interesting thread which has garnered many dissenting opinions and branched out in numerous interesting ways. For the sake of your future studies in both science and philosophy, you need to understand that this is how both debate and the scientific method are SUPPOSED to work. If you ask questions, you'll get answers, but you have to be open to learning something from them.