Dear Bernie,

Many scientists are believers in God. A personal friend of mine is an excellent physicist and openly proclaims himself to be a Catholic, yet he firmly believes the heliocentric model and sees no reason why this should diminish God. Other Catholics do not see this the same way. For instance, Robert Sungenis and Robert Bennett have strived to correct what they see as a gross error on the part of the Catholic Church.

I am a scientist and a believer in God, yet I have discarded huge chunks of the Bible. Many dislike my approach. Marshall Hall, for example (and in whose style your post seems to be written), requested that I take a link to his site off my site. Jack Lewis requested that I remove his name from the credits of drawings he has done for me. "Christians" write to Steven and I gloating that Marshall asked for the link to be removed (how did they know this?). They make comments and use language which, quite honestly, I have not experienced from atheists! This I find sad, but I will not be shaken. I have resigned from many, many churches and my former "brothers" and "sisters" have then shunned me as though I were Jack the Ripper. No problem. God is still there.

You mention "true/correct religion", but do you know what this is? Is it just your current church? Is it Marshall's church? Is it Jack's church? Is it Islam? Is it Buddhism? Is it Greek Orthodox? Is it ... Well, whatever it is, it is not science.

However, this is primarily a science forum and, although I do allow some theological debate, we should not lose sight of this fact (freelists actually provide the facility for the purpose initially specified).

In science, we cannot just dismiss enormous distances because they don't seem right. I'll openly admit that they don't seem right to me either, but that will bring us nothing but the bashing of our heads against the establishment brick wall. It is not all a conspiracy, there is genuine science and reasoning behind it. Not all these men were atheists by any stretch of the imagination. If we are going to demonstrate a flaw, then we must demonstrate the flaw to all, not just to ourselves.

For the celestial poles argument against the heliocentric paradigm, the distances to the stars does not matter. Only when heliocentrism is demonstrated to be wrong should we turn our attention to stellar distances, amongst other things.

Neville