Omnipotent - Having unlimited power; able to do anything
Omniscient - Knowing everything
These definitions are from the Oxford English Dictionary online. These are two adjectives often used to describe Yahweh. Richard Dawkins in "The God Delusion" makes a great point that a god that is both Omnipotent and Omniscient is contradictory. If that god is Omniscient, he knows of EVERYTHING that is bound to happen, yet billions blindly pray to him seeking personal gratification (which is rather selfish) and hope that the Omnipotent god will answer their prayer. If the Omnipotent god does answer this selfish request, this action ultimately cancels out the validity of the Omniscient god; one cannot be both.
The second point I wish to touch on tonight is the idea that this Omnipotent god created a vast universe, so vast we're still searching and finding new items that boggle our minds, and that we're the only life that he created. Let's talk this through; we reside in the outer edges of a swirling arm of the Milky Way galaxy. Our eye in the sky, known as Hubble, has opened up the celestial doorway to a vast number of galaxies that were all unfathomable a mere century ago. We know that there are billions upon billions of stars in the billions of galaxies that are now estimated to populate this universe. Our solar system requires just one star, a single celestial body at the center of it all and we are fortunate enough to be at a favorable distance from it so we are not cooked like Mercury or Venus and also have the advantage of massive gas giants of Jupiter and Saturn to thwart impending asteroids from coming too close. We have an ideal setup in our little nook of the universe, but to think that we are the only life in this chemistry lab known as the universe is very primitive, and to think that God is the creator of it all is a very lazy answer. The odds of someone winning the Powerball Jackpot is 1 in 195,249,054. Everyday new planets are being discovered just by gauging the wobble of distant stars from the gravitational force that planet has on the star. It is highly unlikely that we as a species will map every star system in the universe in any of our lifetimes, but I would say that the odds of winning the lottery are right in line with life being elsewhere in the galaxy.
As a nation, we need to revitalize our sciences once again. After World War II, we smuggled in some of the great minds from Nazi Germany and thrust America into the Superpower status we now enjoy. Sadly, conservative Christian fundamentalists see science as an attack on religion and are doing everything they can to prevent science from being taught to its fullest in schools. Science is there to ask a question, and through testing, experimentation, gathering evidence develop an answer. Religion is the lazy way out (why is the sky blue? Because God made it blue. It has nothing to do with the light being scattered by the atmosphere). Religion and faith, if we let it, will impair this once great nation. Yes, we have the freedom of religion, but that does not entitle for the Conservative Christian Core to force their beliefs on the rest of society. Religion and faith are personal beliefs and should be kept as such; I want my children to learn of evolution, not idiot design. I want my children to be able to ask why and be able to go into a library to find an answer in a science journal, not rely on a book with contributors who had their own personal agendas in writing stories from other stories of the time and then a group of men gather to select which ones will be best to be the Word of God.
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