I don’t get Creationists.
Here we have a group of people who believe that God made the universe in 6 days. I’m with them insofar as to say God made the universe, but in 6 days? Really? Come on now, no-one gets a project of this size done in under a month. In fact I have it under good authority that this is the longest running project in the history of history. And it’s way over budget.
I reckon that reading the story of creation as told in Genesis and taking it as a literal interpretation is precisely why Jesus had to speak to the people of the time in parables. He said,
“This is why I speak to them in parables, because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand.”
Wow. Talk about opening a can of whoop-ass on your sucker way of thinking. In their defense, though, the people he was talking to then did not have any of the tools to facilitate an understanding of the physical universe that we have today, did they? To your average first century goat herder actually keeping wolves from eating your livestock was more important than say, referencing the subject on Wikipedia. So dumbing things down was pretty much the only option One had when One wanted to get One’s message across. Explaining how the principle of wave particle duality was instrumental in making the universe simply did not go down well with folks who had to dig their own toilets and then use a handful of leaves to wipe. And yes, I know that parables were used to explain theological concepts but considering that theology was their Dallas/Desperate Housewives/CSI, it’s not too much of a stretch to think that explaining the science of the universe in anything but story form would go down about as well as Seth McFarlane’s boob song went down with our Charlize.
But this is the 21st century isn’t it? We now have time to do more than just try to keep alive; we now have time to think. Time to reason. Time to figure out how everything fits together. Is it not also by the grace of God that this is the situation we find ourselves in? That we are beings capable of independent thought? That we now have time to look at what He has made and to stand awed in the absolutely astounding brilliance and incomprehensible intelligence behind it all? Does it make sense to insult the power that went into the intricacies of actually making the strings of string theory by saying that no, it was all done in a week? What is a week to God anyway? Can we assume that it is the same thing as we say it is? Surely the Bible itself contradicts this by having the sun only coming into existence on “day” three, because how can anyone say what the first two days were or indeed how long they were?
This leads nicely into evolution, then, because people were made last, innit? On “day” six together with all the other animals, just so we don’t get to thinking that we’re so vastly different from them. Still, God said,
“Let us make mankind in our image”
and
“In the image of God he created them.”
Which begs the question, what is the image of God? Well, according to John 4:24,
“God is a spirit”.
Is it then, truly, heresy to say that evolution happened under His guidance and only when we were ready did He infuse us with spirit? That we only THEN became human? What’s wrong with that? Isn’t it only the spirit of a person that matters once the flesh of the physical world is stripped away and eternity stretches out before us? Is it not the spirit that matters and all else is merely dust which belongs to the earth anyway? I hope so or otherwise I’ve got this whole faith this figured wrong.
But.
I don’t get Atheists either.
Here is a group of people who rejects the notion of god. Which if all fair and good since rational thought cannot possibly show that there is such a thing as a man in the sky that dictates all things that have happened and is happening and will happen. Very sensible since, if that is the case, did sky-man determine that I would make that typo four seconds ago? What if I did not make the typo, did sky-man decide that too? No, it makes no sense to have sky-man.
Okay, that’s obvious then. But what I don’t get is why it is necessary for people who think this way to make an actual effort to challenge the notion of the sky-man. Why would you want to print books and make movies and arrange lectures and do the rest of it, simply to discount something that is so obviously stupid? Why does Richard Dawkins write books about how there is no god, but never writes anything about there being no Nessie in Scotland? Surely both subjects are equally absurd. And I don’t think that it can be argued that religion causes more suffering than Nessie does because it also causes more good than the lake monster. And about the same amount of indifference. At the end of the day the only people to whom god matters are the people who reckon that such a thing exists, and hey, if they want to delude themselves, why not let them? Billions of people delude themselves into thinking Democracy actually gives them a voice in what is decided at a political level, and the world lets them believe that. Very few people feel strong enough about that farce to make it into a point of discussion, so I do not understand why it is necessary to have a discussion about whether or not god exists. I mean it’s just all so stupid, you know?
More baffling though is the apparent need to prove that god does not exist which, to me, seems prevalent among atheists. I mean like WTF? How can it even be possible to prove something, which by its very nature defies logic? Isn’t the concept of god intricately entwined with the concept of faith which, in turn, is the enemy of reason? Does such an effort not then negate the very basis of scientific study? To try to put measureable parameters on a concept that rejects the notion of empirical evidence simply does not make sense to me. I mean what’s the point? There is always going to be the out that no matter what your results are, god made those results. Also, who’s to say that we’re even capable of carrying out an experiment which can yield results one way or the other? As is the case with all other scientifically sound endeavors, the only thing that we can conclusively say at this point is that it is not possible to prove god, therefore the theory must be that there is no god. But it is just a theory. Until we know more we cannot make it into a law since future discoveries might make this theory invalid. For example, did you know that it is possible to see dead people? To see them walk and talk and interact with other dead people just like you and I do on a daily basis? No? Think I’m shitting you? Well, okay then, tonight go and rent Casablanca. Watch it on your TV/PC/iPad. You’ll see dead people too. Thus the theory that there is no life after death has been negated by the discovery of videotape. A stupid example, maybe, but tell it to that first century goat herder. I reckon he’ll be pretty impressed by your god-like abilities.
Fact is, to paraphrase Socrates; we don’t know what we don’t know. Creationists cannot know the mind of their God, and atheists cannot know what exists beyond the observable universe. Why not just let it be whatever it is?
Well, that’s the problem isn’t it? The problem is not whether there is a god or not, the problem is that human beings want to have their opinions validated. I want to be right and I want you to admit it.
Unfortunately, so does everybody else.
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