LJK touched on a bunch of points concerning religion:

>When one's life is heading toward the end, of course one starts
>thinking about God, especially in case you pissed him off during
>your lifetime.
>
>Isn't it scary to think that we have been given just 70 years on
>average to get our acts together, or face an eternity of suffering
>in a really nasty place? Does this merely prove that religion is
>full of it, or that our Universe was designed by an insane yet
>frighteningly powerful being?

It's not so much scary as frustrating and infuriating. From the
standpoint of our consciousness, we human beings are almost
god-like. However our consciousness is trapped inside a
hunk of meat programmed to self destruct in less than
100 years. This is very frustrating. I need at least 300 years to do all the things that I'd like to do. Assuming that our everyday reality
is not an illusion, e.g. "The Matrix", I believe the concept of
Heaven and Hell are fairytales and not worth serious discussion.

>Makes me wonder if we were created in some lab by another
>universe based on that theory that you can "pinch off" a new
>universe with enough energy and technology.

Here's the basic argument: It's theorized that our "universe" is just one universe in a "multiverse". The Laws of Physics in a particular universe are driven by a limited number of "magic numbers' that are fixed at the time of the universe's creation. These magic numbers are set by chaos which also drives the process of creating universes within the multiverse. Most universes have physical laws that do not enable stellar formation or the spontaneous creation of intelligent life. Out of the untold trillions of sterile universes, we were "lucky" to exist inside the universe that enabled our self awarness. This is a variation of the "refridgerator light theory", i.e. the refridgerator light is always on because whenever we open the refridgerator door to check, we see it glowing. If the universe did not allow for intelligent life, we would not be here to discuss it.

Now there is a major flaw in this theory. If our existance is due to a pure cosmic fluke, then our universe should be boring, i.e. the random process that created our existance should simply have created us and nothing more. One can imagine our being nothing but black-and-white shadows floating around inside a molecular lattice of a neutron star. All we could do is recognize each other, have conversations and that's it. Because our universe is indeed interesting, it is argued that our universe is an artifact. Now we get to the punch line: Maybe we ***are*** just shadows floating around in a molecular lattice. Maybe what we perceive as real, is really a collective dream to fight against the boredom.

Gary