It would seem to take more faith to be an atheist than any other religion.
They are betting their eternal life that there is no God in the relative absence of a transitional forms fossil record (http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=absence+transitional+forms+fossil+record&fr=yfp-t-501&toggle=1&cop=mss&ei=UTF-8).
The "dirty little secret of paleontologists (http://search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt=A0geu8Gj4m9IswoAVp5XNyoA?p=dirty+little+secret+of+paleontologists+transitional+forms+fossil&y=Search&fr=yfp-t-501&ei=UTF-8)"
Quote from: link=topic=19.msg19#msg19 date=1207349393
It would seem to take more faith to be an atheist than any other religion.
They are betting their eternal life that there is no God in the relative absence of a transitional forms fossil record (http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=absence+transitional+forms+fossil+record&fr=yfp-t-501&toggle=1&cop=mss&ei=UTF-8).
The "dirty little secret of paleontologists (http://search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt=A0geu8Gj4m9IswoAVp5XNyoA?p=dirty+little+secret+of+paleontologists+transitional+forms+fossil&y=Search&fr=yfp-t-501&ei=UTF-8)"
Stephen Jay Gould, a well-known evolutionist and professor of geology and paleontology at Harvard University, has stated, "The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology. The evolutionary trees that adorn our textbooks have data only at the tips and nodes of the branches; the rest is inference, however reasonable, not the evidence of fossils."
"But paleontologists have discovered several superb examples of intermediary forms and sequences, more than enough to convince any fair-minded skeptic about the reality of life's physical genealogy." Stephen Jay Gould, Natural History, May 1994
"
Transitional forms are generally lacking at the species level, but they are abundant between larger groups."
Stephen Jay Gould, Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes, p.261
Atheist finds God (http://search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt=A0geu8EHoXBIGH4B3uVXNyoA?p=atheist+finds+god&y=Search&fr=yfp-t-501&ei=UTF-8)
CIA World Factbook:
Religions:
Protestant 51.3%, Roman Catholic 23.9%, Mormon 1.7%, other Christian 1.6%, Jewish 1.7%, Buddhist 0.7%, Muslim 0.6%, other or unspecified 2.5%, unaffiliated 12.1%, none 4% (2007 est.)
Perhaps only 4% of our population is smart enough to be atheist or agnostic.