Reply #172: you give me too much credit SS!

[AlecBGreen]

not cleverly avoided, lazily avoided the question. I was thinking of your question (roughly, why would I call people who dont believe in 'my' God atheists). I had just started a youtube video on astronomy and it was really good so I skipped writing a longer answer. I just finished it so Ill answer your question.

When I say God, I am referring to the God of the Abrahamic religions. In modern discourse, this is what I assume most people mean when they say 'God.' There could be people who worship Odin and or Baal or whatever and call he/she/it God but they are a rarity IMO. Hindus believe in many gods and Buddhists none. Not too familiar with other religions but I think thats the vast majority of believers worldwide right there in those groups. So thats why i refer to people who dont believe in my Abrahamic God as atheists. Thats the only God we are all talking about as far as I can tell.

If you are interested in Astronomy, the video was really informative. Its about the current understanding of cosmology, the study of the universe. Its quite long (1hr+) but I really enjoyed it. You can see it here if that sounds like something that would interest you. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ImvlS8PLIo). One of the neat things he (Lawrence Krauss) said was that in the far distant future, the universe will be expanding so fast and will be so large that any observers in our galaxy will be unable to see any other galaxies and will have no signs of the cosmic background radiation and thus will not have any idea of the Big Bang or other galaxies out there. I thought that was a pretty neat fact, albeit rather depressing.