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a universe  QUOTES

51 " 1. Myth: Without God, life has no meaning.

There are 1.2 billion Chinese who have no predominant religion, and 1 billion people in India who are predominantly Hindu. And 65% of Japan's 127 million people claim to be non-believers. It is laughable to suggest that none of these billions of people are leading meaningful lives.

2. Myth: Prayer works.

Studies have now shown that inter-cessionary prayer has no effect whatsoever of the health or well-being of the subject.

3. Myth: Atheists are immoral.

There are hundreds of millions of non-believers on the planet living normal, decent, moral lives. They love their children, care about others, obey laws, and try to keep from doing harm to others just like everyone else. In fact, in predominantly non-believing countries such as in northern Europe, measures of societal health such as life expectancy at birth, adult literacy, per capita income, education, homicide, suicide, gender equality, and political coercion are better than they are in believing societies.

4. Myth: Belief in God is compatible with science.

In the past, every supernatural or paranormal explanation of phenomena that humans believed turned out to be mistaken; science has always found a physical explanation that revealed that the supernatural view was a myth. Modern organisms evolved from lower life forms, they weren't created 6,000 years ago in the finished state. Fever is not caused by demon possession. Bad weather is not the wrath of angry gods. Miracle claims have turned out to be mistakes, frauds, or deceptions. We have every reason to conclude that science will continue to undermine the superstitious worldview of religion.

5. Myth: We have immortal souls that survive death.

We have mountains of evidence that makes it clear that our consciousness, our beliefs, our desires, our thoughts all depend upon the proper functioning of our brains our nervous systems to exist. So when the brain dies, all of these things that we identify with the soul also cease to exist. Despite the fact that billions of people have lived and died on this planet, we do not have a single credible case of someone's soul, or consciousness, or personality continuing to exist despite the demise of their bodies.

6. Myth: If there is no God, everything is permitted.

Consider the billions of people in China, India, and Japan above. If this claim was true, none of them would be decent moral people. So Ghandi, the Buddha, and Confucius, to name only a few were not moral people on this view.

7. Myth: Believing in God is not a cause of evil.

The examples of cases where it was someone's belief in God that was the justification for their evils on humankind are too numerous to mention.

8. Myth: God explains the origins of the universe.

All of the questions that allegedly plague non-God attempts to explain our origins still apply to the faux explanation of God. The suggestion that God created everything does not make it any clearer to us where it all came from, how he created it, why he created it, where it is all going. In fact, it raises even more difficult mysteries: how did God, operating outside the confines of space, time, and natural law 'create' or 'build' a universe that has physical laws? We have no precedent and maybe no hope of answering or understanding such a possibility. What does it mean to say that some disembodied, spiritual being who knows everything and has all power, 'loves' us, or has thoughts, or goals, or plans?

9. Myth: There's no harm in believing in God.

Religious views inform voting, how they raise their children, what they think is moral and immoral, what laws and legislation they pass, who they are friends and enemies with, what companies they invest in, where they donate to charities, who they approve and disapprove of, who they are willing to kill or tolerate, what crimes they are willing to commit, and which wars they are willing to fight. "

Matthew S. McCormick

57 " THE GAME

In a field just like bubble we were. I could not count the number of us. And the field was infinite, like a universe and also like emptiness. We all knew each other but we had no names for one another but meaning was all we had, feelings were all we used. It was not strange, not unusual. We had no sense of time or existence but we were very much alive. In this place we had no need of eating, drinking or sleeping. There was no work and no assignments. No one was above another, we were all equals. No language or race, it is amazing how life could be, existence in emptiness. I was part of all and all was part of me.
Until time came when few among us were chosen. Chosen by our own choices, to take upon them a challenge in another realm. We all use to call this “THE GAME”. Once they had decided, each one of them would choose a role thereafter. And few time after they had chosen their roles, like electricity they would be taken from among us and go to a place we didn't know. Until a certain time they would return to us not knowing any more where they had been. Hmmm... It was kind of curious to many of us. The idea of conceiving something; taking up a role. A role? What was that? For what purpose? We didn't even know what a role was. It took too much effort to try even imagining what could be a role. There was then an elder among us. Well elder is too much to say. Someone among us who use to give us the rulers of the game and give us definition of the role.
What was the game we asked him. He said to us, the game is call life? What is life? We asked; life is the game but it is also the game of death? What is death we asked, well death is the game of life and in between there's a space which is called existence. In this game you will have the chance to choose your role, be a character in the story, make choices, fail and win sometimes. Have a family, learn, grow and then exit through the door of death, and return right here. Is death a door or a game? We asked him, well it is kind of both so is life. He said to us. How many times can we play this game? We enquired from him further, as much as you like, it all depend on how much you enjoy it. It was then at that time that I started thinking about this game, that time when I noticed, I was becoming different from all of us. The time I started making the choice already only through the ideas of conceiving what other possibilities could be out there... To be continued. "

Marcus L. Lukusa

59 " When Warren was a little boy fingerprinting nuns and collecting bottle caps, he had no knowledge of what he would someday become. Yet as he rode his bike through Spring Valley, flinging papers day after day, and raced through the halls of The Westchester, pulse pounding, trying to make his deliveries on time, if you had asked him if he wanted to be the richest man on earth—with his whole heart, he would have said, Yes.
That passion had led him to study a universe of thousands of stocks. It made him burrow into libraries and basements for records nobody else troubled to get. He sat up nights studying hundreds of thousands of numbers that would glaze anyone else’s eyes. He read every word of several newspapers each morning and sucked down the Wall Street Journal like his morning Pepsi, then Coke. He dropped in on companies, spending hours talking about barrels with the woman who ran an outpost of Greif Bros. Cooperage or auto insurance with Lorimer Davidson. He read magazines like the Progressive Grocer to learn how to stock a meat department. He stuffed the backseat of his car with Moody’s Manuals and ledgers on his honeymoon. He spent months reading old newspapers dating back a century to learn the cycles of business, the history of Wall Street, the history of capitalism, the history of the modern corporation. He followed the world of politics intensely and recognized how it affected business. He analyzed economic statistics until he had a deep understanding of what they signified. Since childhood, he had read every biography he could find of people he admired, looking for the lessons he could learn from their lives. He attached himself to everyone who could help him and coattailed anyone he could find who was smart. He ruled out paying attention to almost anything but business—art, literature, science, travel, architecture—so that he could focus on his passion. He defined a circle of competence to avoid making mistakes. To limit risk he never used any significant amount of debt. He never stopped thinking about business: what made a good business, what made a bad business, how they competed, what made customers loyal to one versus another. He had an unusual way of turning problems around in his head, which gave him insights nobody else had. He developed a network of people who—for the sake of his friendship as well as his sagacity—not only helped him but also stayed out of his way when he wanted them to. In hard times or easy, he never stopped thinking about ways to make money. And all of this energy and intensity became the motor that powered his innate intelligence, temperament, and skills. "

Alice Schroeder , The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life