This popped up on Facebook recently, a sarcastic offering
from a Christian site. I had to think: there is nothing about this meme that
“makes perfect sense”. The implication here being that since the poster doesn't
understand how everything came to be, it must be the work of God. In this case,
the Christian God.
I responded:
I responded:
Our inability to explain something is not a good reason to
say that “God” must have done it. Science peels the onion, layer by layer, and
we learn. We know now that the earth is not the center of the universe, nor is
it flat. The sun is not a god. There are no miracles other than everything
itself, and the “laws of nature” that control all of it in a specific,
predictable order.
These laws are never arbitrarily suspended by some interactive god answering a prayer. Two atoms of Hydrogen and one of Oxygen when combined under the same specific conditions will always yield water.
Period.
If people choose one of the more than 5,000 religions in this world to provide a metaphor that helps them better understand our existence, good for them. There are many paths and just because someone is on a different path than you, doesn't mean that they're lost.
There is one big miracle though, the miracle that is everything that ever was, is, and ever will be. But even that doesn't mean that “God did it”, unless you want to call the laws of nature "God".
Religion is crowd control, church is a business. But every religion is full of metaphors to help us understand that which cannot be understood. The trouble starts when we overlook the metaphor and take it all literally.
Sometimes things just are, and they don't require our understanding to be so.
These laws are never arbitrarily suspended by some interactive god answering a prayer. Two atoms of Hydrogen and one of Oxygen when combined under the same specific conditions will always yield water.
Period.
If people choose one of the more than 5,000 religions in this world to provide a metaphor that helps them better understand our existence, good for them. There are many paths and just because someone is on a different path than you, doesn't mean that they're lost.
There is one big miracle though, the miracle that is everything that ever was, is, and ever will be. But even that doesn't mean that “God did it”, unless you want to call the laws of nature "God".
Religion is crowd control, church is a business. But every religion is full of metaphors to help us understand that which cannot be understood. The trouble starts when we overlook the metaphor and take it all literally.
Sometimes things just are, and they don't require our understanding to be so.
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