I was reading The God Delusion, by Richard Dawkins, today and it's pretty swell. In it he points out that there is a reasonable chance of life on other planets. He says there is between 1 and 30 billion planets in our Milky Way Galaxy, and there are probably about 100 billion other galaxies in our universe. When you view the universe as that big, it seems hard to believe that a personal God exists that cares about humans, their prayers, their actions, their emotions, etc. This of course assumes you believe in evolution and a universe older than 6000 years. Apparently a fair amount of my extended family doesn't, but oh well. I went to a religious university that some of my cousins were not allowed to go to because they taught evolution. I have a really hard time respecting people nowadays that don't believe in evolution/science. It's probably a petty thing of me to do, but we're living in such an amazing universe, and human knowledge is starting to really push the envelope of what was previously known. I'm guessing most of my fellow poker players also believe in evolution etc, but they probably don't have the history of coming from a conservative Christian background. One of the biggest clues is that gambling is considered a sin, lol. Having to overcome stigma from my religious family and finally understanding how elegant and awesome the discovery of evolution really is, is a pretty sweet feeling.

I have to really contain laughter at family parties when their primary reason for wanting their kid to go to private school is to avoid learning about evolution. Being in such stark denial of scientific fact is baffling to me.

If anyone knows some fun science books that talk about our universe in an interesting way, I'd be really interested in learning more :)