Why aren't religious people more interested in cosmology?

Where did the higher intelligence come from?

Does the fact large amounts of children believed in the boogeyman, or that large amounts of dodos can't admit they lost their keys, so they say "someone must have stolen them!", mean it's so?

Nope.

Humans are wired to attribute agency to things whether there is or isn't.

Modern humans have trouble with it, imagine how easy it was for our ignorant ancestors to assume "well, someone must have put all this stuff here!".

What is the basis for this assertion?

Ah, once again you claim knowledge both of how religious people behave and how they should behave.

Can't say I've known many folks who are more obsessed with religion than you, is there something more here than simple philosophical disagreement?

Wake me when it happens.

C'mon now D, don't try and tell me a higher intelligence is beyond your imaginations reach.

As I stated, they're way short of certain at present. "Belief in science" dictates that one admits that, at least for the present.

No, it is not. "Garden variety" anything generally denotes a lack of any remarkable characteristic.

The statistics that say that so many don't even accept the findings of cosmology for one thing.

Of course. My disagreement with religion goes way further than an abstract philosophical difference.

Usually the co-mingling of the primordials. Fire and Ice, Matter/Anti-matter... take your pick

No, it doesn't. Nor does it negate the capacity for external conscious. That would take us into what's generally considered "spiritualism" though, and not what we're talking about here. Here's an answer anyways; A child feeling an unfamiliar presence is going to react fearfully, no matter what the intent of said presence (pretend there actually is one, okay?). It's dark and they're alone, waiting to fall asleep.
You can't find your keys. You walk past them six times as you circle the room clockwise. When you turn and walk the other way, you see them behind your wallet. Yeah, you probably just missed them because of the sight angle. If your mind leaps to someone snuck in and lifted your keys despite your wallet sitting there, you've got issues.

That they are right where you left them and then conveniently reappeared, well, compared to the key cat burglar theory, it almost makes more sense that it's my uncle Walt's spirit joking around. Even if all that is is a projection of my own psyche...

My "ignorant ancestors" navigated the ocean in 40' canoes, created trade routes through Europe, developed crop rotations, metallurgy, and literacy, formed parliamentary democracy and common laws...
Fucking primates!

Seriously D. Forget "higher" intelligences. Consider the chance that EVERYTHING (held the shift key with my let pinky for that) has life. Learn to work with metal or clay. Hell, learn to navigate by lodestone. For that matter, go help your mom in the garden... If you work with the elements, you learn their "personality".

Exactly. Go out naked into the woods and try to survive. You can't do it, I can't do it, but our ignorant ancestors knew which rocks to look for to make tools, knew how to take game to provide food and clothing, knew which plants were useful for medicines, which plants to avoid, and so on and so forth.

Greeeat. Another nimble jackass who's found Dawkinism as their religion.

The cosmologists don't even accept their findings, when they have them. Why should I, or anyone else for that matter, accept their findings when A) they can't even agree on the basics like the structure of the universe and B) can't explain how they got to those findings without me getting a PhD in Astrophysics and C) can't even plain the whys of the universe?

Go find your cosmologist and ask him why the Big Bang happened, what cause the Big Bang and he can't asnwer you. Ask him what the universe was like in when everything was a tiny singularity and he draws a blank because "the physics of the universe were different". Ask him about dark matter, the end of the universe, what happens to matter pulled into a black hole, dark energy, and if the fundamentla laws of physics are actually uniform throughout the universe and you'll get variations on "our best guess".

But it's science and the rational human mind and all of that, and sure they can't answer any of the questions you have, but they aren't some bronze age mythology so it's all okay.

Dare I ask what statistics?

They can answer some of the questions that we have. It is not a flaw that they can't answer them all. That is simply honesty.

And you can understand it all, at least on some level, without a PhD in anything.

Where is that even implied?

I can easily imagine aliens who've advanced so far, they look like Tron Legacy, but with molecular reality, instead of cyberspace bits.

But, it's safe to assume they evolved on their respective planet, instead of "creating themselves", or "being outside of time", or some meaningless apologetic hogwash.

They can provide details. They can't provide the big picture. It's like being able to describe a tree in intricate detail but not knowing anything about the forest it is in. That isn't providing the alternative to religion you make science out to be.

Well, except for believing every animal on Earth could fit in a wooden box, or that dead people who've started to smell can rejuvinate to full animation, but still have scars of their death, etc, etc, etc...

Course, if you grilled each and every churchgoer in this country, you'd probably find a diverse patchwork of how much of that stuff they truly literally believe, or how many believe it at all.

Which would render "garden variety", meaningless.
Except to moosh people into a homegenous identity mass with a few well placed buzzwords for the sake of a debate point, which I guess would be the way it goes with you, except that's what you're sniffy about Rick seemingly doing.

That's lovely, and I'm sure at least one of the folks who thinks for a fraction of a second that invisible ninjas stole his keys is an automotive engineer.

I'm not interested in an "alternative to religion". Religion sucks.
It's disappointing that you aren't interested in reality, about which there are lots of things that we don't know.

That believers say there are things they don't understand about God is not accepted by you. Why should we let you slide when you say it about yours?

That's not "garden variety", that's "willfully ignorant stereotype", and it's just as wrong as the people who call all Atheists evil and untrustworthy.

I have no problem with thiests saying that there are things they don't understand about God. It's what they say that they do understand, and the inconsistencies those things have with themselves and with reality that are my problem.

Ooookay.

You're projecting.

Wrong. The Catholic Church officially endorses the Big Bang theory, and the Episcopal Church is warm to the idea. http://www.lightandmatter.com/evolution/index.html

Also, the Latter Day Saints like the idea as well.

Latter Day Saints also like the idea that they'll get their own planets filled with virgins to rape after they die, and that the American Indian's skin was stained red by the blood of the second coming of Christ.

No. Get your facts straight before you try trolling, FBI.

If you're named after the angel Morona, shouldn't we call you Morons?

Again, if you're going to troll me, get your facts straight.

Here, I'll help you: You're thinking of Moroni. He's simply the last BoM prophet, who abridged one book in the BoM (Ether), leaving final comments in his father's book (Mormon) and wrote his own (Moroni) before burying the Plates and delivering them to Joseph Smith as an angel.

Mormon abridged the other 11 books in the BoM, inserted some comments as the Words of Mormon and wrote his own book. And to note, we're not named after anyone in the Book of Mormon. It's a nickname that non-members gave us and we've moreless embraced it since; we're Latter Day Saints.

And a point of amusement, there is a guy named Moron in the BoM, which the pronounciation guide says is Mor-un.

You're still morons.