This beauty used to be a regular visitor to RAF Kinloss and Lossiemouth.
NC-121K 141292 of VAQ-33 at Lossie 14.11.75…

We live on one little planet revolving around a sun, which is just another star.
It is estimated that there are around 500,000,000,000 such stars in our Milky Way galaxy alone, and our best estimate is that there are 100,000,000,000 galaxies in the whole universe.
In the great scheme of things, all of us humans are no more important than some splattered fly on a windshield, or a grain of sand on Mars, and it would only take a very small cosmic incident to wipe us out altogether, and the universe would carry on as if nothing had ever happened here.
To me, religion is just a comfort blanket for frightened souls, who just won’t accept how vitally unimportant we all are, and must invent a powerful being/deity to look after our wellbeing. It hinges on mankind being the centre of the universe (made in God’s image), which is entirely laughable…

Here’s hoping you feel differently before you die!
Ryan

No disrespect intended, but why would Kev35 want to feel differently before he died? I’m just playing Devil’s Advocate here, but to me, that remark implicitly implies that your opinion/beliefs are right, and his are wrong…

Pierre, the famous French fighter pilot, takes his girlfriend, Marie, out for a pleasant little picnic by the River Seine.
It’s a beautiful day and love is in the air. Marie leans over to Pierre and says, “Pierre, please kiss me!”
Pierre grabs a bottle of Merlot and splashes it on Marie’s lips. “What are you doing, Pierre ?” says the startled Marie.
“I am Pierre, the famous French fighter pilot! When I have red meat, I have red wine!”.
She smiles and they start kissing. Things began to heat up a little and Marie says, “Pierre , please kiss me lower down.”
Our hero tears her blouse open, grabs a bottle of Chardonnay and pours it over her breasts.
“Pierre ! What are you doing now?” asks the bewildered Marie. “I am Pierre, the famous French fighter pilot! When I have white meat, I have white wine!”.
She giggles and they resume their passionate interlude: and things really steam up. Marie leans close to his ear and whispers,
“Pierre , please kiss me much much lower!”. Pierre rips off her panties, grabs a bottle of Cognac, pours it over her pubes, then strikes a match and sets the cognac on fire.
Marie shrieks and dives into the River Seine.Standing waist deep, throws her arms into the air and screams furiously,
“PIERRE , WHAT THE F#@K DO YOU THINK YOU ARE DOING?”
Our hero puffs his chest out and says defiantly,
“I am Pierre, the famous French fighter pilot! When I go down, I go down in flames!”…

The MiG-29 has some beautiful lines and curves, stuck on great big tractor wheels – lovely…

It’s strange you mention that, because lately I’ve felt that the complete opposite is true – those who don’t believe in God are being demonised (so to speak).
The western world is run by people with an almost fundamentalist view of religion, like Gordon Brown (and Tony Blair before him), and Obama (and Bush before him!). The war against Iraq could almost be looked on as a crusade for them…

I often wonder if senior clergy and theologians actually believe it themselves, or are just involved in it as an intellectual exercise. But I suppose it boils down to the fact that they can’t prove God does exist any more than I can that he doesn’t.
And if there is no God, there’s been one hell of a lot of wasted time, energy, and lives over the last few millenia, all over the planet!

That Jesus was an actual person is recorded in contemporary historical Hebrew and Roman documents. He must have been an extraordinary man of his time, but a lot of the ‘facts’ written about him in the Bible were completed centuries after he died, by people with their own agenda.
The New Testament amazes me, though. Even though it was written when most of the known world was a brutal, bloodthirsty place, the message is peace and love – it is a great manual on how to live a decent life.
What I find hard to understand is how many intelligent people can simply accept that his Dad was some kind of divine omnipresent being, who watches over us and cares for us. I put it down to the fact that people just can’t accept that this life is all there is – they must believe that things will be better in the next life, when they finally shuffle off…