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for those who may not have web access, here is a piece from my new e-journal: HERMES & MERLIN: Mythic Ways of Knowing Technology ISSUE 1.0 How was the universe created? To reply: "God created it", immediately begs another brave question: "How did God arise?" If we agree that this is an unanswerable question, and accept that God has always been, why not save a step and agree that the universe has always existed. Then, there exists no need for a cosmic creation. However, there is another way to consider the origin, life, and death(?) of the Cosmos. It is a way of knowing several milllenia old, still faithfully embraced today by a peoples who, several thousand years ago, based their religious timescales on the same numerical expression as modern scientific cosmology. Of all the great world faiths, the Hindu religion is the only one dedicated to the idea that the Cosmos experiences infinite deaths and re-births. For over 3,500 years(!), the Hindus have studied, experienced, and come to a way of human-world-cosmic knowing through timescales that only recently have been utilized by science. A Hindu Brahma year is 8.64 Billion years long! And there exist even longer time scales that dwarf our current estimate of the age of the Cosmos. For the Hindus, the universe is but the dream of a God, who, after 100 BRAHMA YEARS(!) (8.64 Billion times 100!) of cosmic creation and sustainng dreaming, dissolves into a dreamless slimber and the current cosmic incarnation melts away. Following another Brahma century, the diety stirsa, recomposes, and begins to dream a new cosmos--the great cosmic lotus dream! For every cosmos, there exists a dreaming god--an infinite number. (These thoughts were inspired and originally presented by Carl Sagan in his award winning tv series: COSMOS) j.r. [log in to unmask] WebMaster For Hire/4 WebSites/"HAVE PORTABLE-WILL TRAVEL" http://www.west.net/~mythhawk/Index.html (Includes TWO FREE E-Journals!) "Remember: no matter where you go--there you are"-Buckaroo Bonzi