Just Some Questions

No I don't believe in souls, whatever they are. In my experience most people start mumbling vague contradictions when asked directly what they mean by soul.

I grew up celebrating Christmas though my parents never really emphasized the wacky religious component. They do however observe it as a celebration of Jesus' birth. Today I see it as a wonderful opportunity to spend time with family and exchange gifts. Nothing wrong with that.

Admittedly I don't know much about Buddhism but I'm always wary of anyone who tells me they know the "truth" and that there are certain rules and a path I must follow to find "enlightenment" and happiness. Smells like BS to me but it seems relatively harmless and it encourages people to play nice (I can play nice all on my own thank you very much!). So if that's' your cup of tea then by all means, I truly respect a person's right to believe in whatever they want, regardless of how ludicrous it might be...That being said I want to point out that I detest its belief in karma and rebirth. Buddhist basically believe you accumulate positive or negative karma through out your life based on certain rules someone made up. Then, when you come back to Earth, your position in society (if you even get to be human) will be determined by your past life. In other words, if your **** poor, handicapped, and miserable you probably deserve it and no one should pity you. If your rich and powerful, you obviously earned it. Rather convenient for those in power don't you think? This or course justified and reinforced the social caste system seen in many Buddhist countries through out history and even today (Ahem! India im looking at you). If this isn't evil I don't know what is, I encourage you to look into it.

As for scientology and the end of the world, it isn't even worth my time discussing such stupidity.

Hope I answered your questions!

I celebrate Christmas as I get a day off, get together with the family and engage in all the normal rituals. Just because you don't believe in God doesn't mean you don't like rituals and celebrations. A time to remove yourself from the normal routine and concentrate on family, food, wine and good times.
The scenes of bethlehem, the sheep surrounding the manger etc have a comforting factor to me - to me they symbolise family, love, nurturing etc. I try and take what I can from the Jesus story, but I don't have to believe he was a supernatural being to do this. It's not really that important whether he existed at all.

Oh, and Souls?
Well, I think "believe in" would be too strong a word. I'm pretty vague in my thinking about what a soul is.
I certainly don't think anything lives on when we die. Unless you can count that we live on in the memories and thoughts of others, but of course eventually we are totally forgotten.
I might use the word "soul" to describe a deep sense of identity but I don't think this is what you mean - you probably mean a definate entity that has existence when we die, or before we were born. If that's the case then no, I don't believe in souls.

IWish, I think what your referring to with respect to the end of the world goes something like this. On December 21st, 2012, the Earth, Sun and the center of the galaxy will come into perfect alignment. This, doomsayers predict, will cause some excess gravity that will bump us off our orbit.
As it turns out, if you look at the star charts, its true. The sun earth and center of the galaxy do come into alignment on Dec 21. 2012. What doomsayers don't tell you is that this happens EVERY year on Dec. 21... Most of these theories were created by people who didn't take enough science in school. Trust me... the world won't end 2012.

the world will end for millions on 12/21/12 as will it end for millions on 12/22,23,24 and so on, it's called death, no big deal.

A lot of genes are invovled. Also there are regulatory genes so even if you have the same base pair combinations in your genome there are geens that regualte the activity of other genes so the proteins and thus the hormones that are produced and casue the emotions we see as personality are influenced in very subtle ways. The permutations of thes effects are so numerous they are vitually impossible to predict, hence phenotypic plasticity and evolution.

I celebrate Xmas cos it's being a date on which celebrations have been held long before Christ showed up. I guess i'm just a traditionalist. Same thing for Easter, previous ceremonies adopted by the Church and now we get a day off work. I now want all the other religious beliefs to have official days off work and i'll celebrate all of them.

Ah, IWish, always a pleasure. Without beating around the bush:

Xmas - Yes I do partake in it, but I don't celebrate it. As others have said, I appreciate the time off work. You don't need to believe in virgin births to do that.

Buddhism - Read around and find out more. Yes, it's certainly less aggressive than Christianity, but those of us in the Western world may not appreciate whether or not it is indeed 'forced' upon others locally as it is done here.
There are different aspects of Buddhism, so I summarise cautiously, but there are indeed deity-like figures. And reincarnation. And souls. And 'penalties' for not living in the prescribed way. And, therefore, control.

Scientology - It's a cult. If you have to pay to get in, if they don't tell you what it involves until you get in, if insiders are forbidden to reveal its secrets to outsiders, it's a cult.

2012 - I can tell you exactly what's happening in 2012 - the London Olympics. On behalf of all of us, may I take this opportunity to apologise for the public transport.

I like your description of the 'man-god-turned-zombie' ... it reminds me of a t-shirt I saw once, which said: "He died for your sins ... he came back for your brains!"

On the subject of living forever, and to paraphrase a source whose name I've forgotten, why dream of immortality when we don't know what to do with ourselves on a wet Sunday afternoon?

IWish, funnily enough I'm having another conversation elsewhere which touches on this one; the common concept is genes.

Dawkins proposed the Selfish Gene theory in his book of the same name back in the 70's, and it has held weight. Essentially the gene becomes the basic unit of evolution, and the evolutionary aim of reproduction is not to create more creatures, but to perpetuate the gene.

Therefore genes, in a way, 'live forever'. According to natural selection, a successful gene will enable successive generations to pass copies of itself through the ages.

So when we talk about 'living forever', it's already happening! Some of the genes in your body are copies of genes that existed hundreds of millions of years ago. Go the gene!

Good question. If a gene survives in a descendant it is an exact copy of the same gene in the parent. If that gene only exists in one of the parents, it has a 50% chance of surviving. The tighter the gene pool, the more likely a particular gene is to be present in both parents, in which case it has a 100% chance of surviving.

We can trace the lifespan of a gene by identifying it in other species. Humans share certain genes not just with other mammals but also reptiles, birds, even insects. Evolutionarily we are talking tens if not hundeds of millions of years!

Biologically we certainly are indulging in some kind of ******. You share well over 99% of your genes with all other humans (as a point of interest you also share 98% with chimps, 95% with mice, 45% with yeast and 2% with all cellular life. Go on, shag some yeast!).

If memory serves me correct, there are over 25,000 genes in a human, so even when a child is 'varied' by the mating of its parents, it's not by much, bearing in mind that far less than 1% of those genes will be unique to each parent.

Anyway, I don't want to hijack the story - everyone else, please do post answers to IWish's questions in the meantime!