Well if you guys couldn't catch it by the name, I'm the biggest Matrix fiend in the universe....trust me, this applies to the thread.
1999 - New Years Eve
While the US partied and danced to Prince's 1980's hit, I tossed and turned in bed with the worst case of food poisoning. I for SURE knew I was going to die. I was scared, yet I refused to go to the hospital. The drama queen I am, I opted to stay and suffer this long and grueling death. Well, it didn't seem so bad afterall in the current light of my life. I'd had a degree in English Arts for four years with nothing to show for it; I was working as an underpaid and under-respected secretary at a social & golf club; I'd been trying to crack into screenwriting for three years and failed miserably; I was slowly breaking up with my girlfriend...it was a bad way to go into the New Year, let's just say.
But all that was trivial because my biggest issue in life was religion. I'd been raised Lutheran up till 12 or 13, then my mom decided we were going back to the Baptist church. By 15 I discovered heavy metal, and hence all the wonderful Anton LeVey and Aliester Crowley books. By 16 I was Wiccan and had NO problem in letting my not-too-educated parents know it.
By 18, I was a college freshman who got bunked with a born-again x-tian. It actually didn't take long for her to covert me because on the first day of college, I was so distraught with my spritual and sexual life that I just wanted to be a nun anyway. Hell, Catholics had prettier churches and cool chamber music. I could live w/ it.
But no, back into the Pentacostal, dancing, spinning give-all-your-money to the building fund, the tithes, the offerings, the other offerings and even more offerings while we buy our pastor a BRAND NEW JAGUAR! yes, we did that one year and I actually was happy...as I drove my '88 clunker Chevy.
By 1992, I dropped out of college to go to a local university closer to home. By 1994, I'd found so much wrong with the Church and its interpretation of the Bible, that I went back to Wicca and called myself the hybrid X-tian Crafter.
And all the while, I possessed a paralying phobia of death. Dreamt of hell, dreamt of heaven, dreamt of demons and devils - those Ozzy records will do it to you, I'm tellin' ya.
In 1997 I was introduced to Buddhism (the one Tina Turner practices). I shrugged at it. It was WAY too different for me, yet the practice attracted me a bit.
By 1998 I was practicing quietly, all the while BEGGING GOD for answers, saying, "if you don't want me to practice this, why did you show it to me?" It was the Adam Syndrome, you all know that one, where Adam blames GOD for giving him Eve who ate of the fruit and bade him to eat it too? Heh, I LOVE reading that.
I prayed nights, sobbed, cried, wanted to committ suicide because the world was soooo effed up and there were no true answers. And as an astrologer and tarot reader, I was grossly distraught because I found my crafts to be accurate and useful, yet they were abominations to many of the mainstream religions.
And then March 1999 came. It was the Wednesday before Easter and I was invited to my professor's church for an Easter play. It was okay. Their church was really quirky and funny, so I liked it. But that evening, I didn't want to go home for numerous parental reasons, so I drove around until I realized I had pop cans in my back seat. I cashed them in and decided to catch a movie. It was 9:00...the only interesting thing playing was the Matrix...and it changed how I looked at my own life.
NOW, while I see profound beauty in The Matrix on a gazillion-different levels (won't go into them here), I had to say all the above to say this one thing: Like Neo had to realize who he was and what his potential was to stop the agents, all of us must do the same to battle the everyday challenges that come against us. We all must go through the same catharsis and realize that the god man seeks is within himself. It is not a graying man sitting on a throne of heavenly clouds, an Islamic prophet, a carpenter's son, or an Indian prince turned esthetic. They, like all of us, are embodiments of god and the manifestation of god-like potential (power).
God, in the simplest of terms, is the will of man to do good, to progress and help his fellow man progress. God lives in the compassion of one's heart, the unconditional love and all the joy that comes with it. God is the ability to forgive and to grow. God is the ability to learn from errors and be responsible for one's actions.
In that, I simply call "god" the spirit of the universe. Much like the Native American's Great Spirit, I call upon the Universe often for everything from spiritual questions, to matters of my heart, to matters of my pocket, and yes even to matters of my sexuality. I mean, hell, if can't talk to the Universe (or God) who shares this body with my very soul, who CAN I talk to? Though I don't have all the answers, I do have a sense of peace now in my life I've never had since I could remember. Ever since kindergarten, I had a fear of death, and somewhere in my crazy life of 1999, I lost that fear altogether.
RE: The Science end of things.
I SUCK at science, yet it intrigues me. On a spiritual side, however, I've been where our earlier posters have when they said they "gazed at the face of God" and then ran like bats outta hell. I did it too. It's a scary thing to have burning questions and then be given the answers. Why? The more you know, the more you're responsible for. Nothing has scared me more than the revelations I've had in the past 3 or 4 years. I wake up mornings praying I can call my life just one huge drama laced with one coincidence after another, but I can't anymore. I have to accept what i am, who I am and why I was put here - like all the rest of you. Believing in God is not the test here, it's believing in your own ability to be the best human being you can possibly be and, hopefully, take a few others with you along that path.
Hope I didn't bore you.
A-1 
A-1 
do YOURSELF a favor and pick the little guy up and gently put him where he'll be safe. 
please? There are beings above You who may or may not help You when You need it.
gus.
it was Floyd. And where did Floyd hit? Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina. Has Orlando been hit by a huricane yet? I'm really begining to think that we should do the opposite of what it says in the Bible simply because the imperical evidence is that God isn't on the side of all of those fanatics, but on the side of those who can think and reason for themselves. Those places that are more secular seem to be thriving while theocracies flail in the dark ages.