[...] relevance in society today, or mythology, for it’s quaint point of view for folks unable to grasp epochal aeons of time (check out my opinion in the 7th paragraph of this blog entry) [...]

The “irreducible complexity” argument is a tired one and was not, so far as I saw in that book, mentioned. After about the halfway point I do admit that I began to skim somewhat and so may have overlooked it.

I suspect that we may just find that our current view of physical reality is simply not sufficient to “bracket” or otherwise contain what we would consider to be our “universe”. It may not even be valid to try to do so but is rather a requirement brought about by the view rather than the reality that it purports to represent. Much like you need to resort to non-Euclidean geometry to simplify representation of some aspects of our physical reality, our very conception of “beginning” and “end” and even “here” may be fundamentally inadequate foundations upon wish to pursue such inquiry.

I wasn’t aware of the experiment to which you refer to at CERN. I had thought that was already pretty well established by the various atomic fission / fusion experiments validating Einstein’s famous formula. The most exciting thing that I knew of coming down the pipe (and I must admit that I don’t follow this as closely as I would like) were some experiments to find the elusive Higgs boson particle.

I agree with your review of Intelligent design vs Evolution. I am on the side of Dawkins. You made no mention of “irreducible complexity” which always gets a mention in any talk of ID.

I think you are right when you say that the human brain struggles to conceive of geological time so evolution is difficult. The other difficulty we have is understanding “nothing”. What is beyond what there is? If we try and describe an empty space with nothing in it we have to contain it in something. As cosmology takes us closer and closer to the beginning there comes a point when we will have to conceive of something before time and matter. Even “before” is a term relative to time and if there was no time how can there be a “before”

On November 24th this year there is an experiment being conducted at CERN to establish a link between matter and energy. ie is matter formed out of energy. As our governments have spent over 6 billion on this one event we should all take a keen interest.

And, of course there’s the Southpark take on him which wasn’t overly flattering but still entertaining ’cause that’s just Southpark

But I really like what he’s doing for the non-theistic movements.