A great blog by Tom Gilson, Thinking Christian, has an equally great post dismantling a Washington Post article that epitomizes the double-standard of "tolerance" applied against the Christian faith (and often other faiths too, but most often the Christian faith) in modern western society:

“All Beliefs Welcome, Unless They are Forced on Others”

There is a weasel word used here: "forced". The original article title mentions "forcing" beliefs on others, while the article itself is really talking about when people "take their theology out in public". Of course we would never want anyone to try to "force" their religious beliefs; but what's wrong with sharing our faith (in love) with others?

If Christians truly believe we have found the greatest love, greatest hope, and greatest truth in the world, why would it be wrong to winsomely share that faith? I might argue it would in fact be wrong to keep such a wonderful thing secretly to ourselves!

So, the Large Hadron Collider was turned on, and unsurprisingly, the Earth has survived. At least, according to this helpful site, the world is still here:

http://hasthelargehadroncolliderdestroyedtheworldyet.com/

Good to know!

I have to wonder though about some people's comments regarding the tests that will be performed using the LHC. One commenter on the news.au.com article linked above stated "hopefully this thing will show that god does NOT exist!" It's his/her right to hold that opinion of (s)he wants to, but I think the idea that God could be disproved by any experiment such as this is a bit misguided.

As far as I can see, the experiments that will be run can tell us a lot about the conditions at the earliest moments of the Big Bang. But they cannot tell us anything about what precipitated the Big Bang. How can we, as members of the universe created by said Big Bang, living within its confines & limitations of time and space and matter, discover what lies beyond time and space and matter?

The results of the studies will no doubt be very interesting, but I don't think we should look to them for proof or disproof of God's existence.