Letters to the Editor
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Who is God?
Someone so powerful that he created (insert your favorite means here) a universe so imensely large that it would take 30 billion years traveling at the speed of light to go from one end to the other. A universe containing thousands of billions of stars. Made up of matter whose basic constituent may consist of "strings" so incredibly small that their existence can only be surmised but never observed.
The being who did this also decided to make himself known and impart his wishes about how life should be lived to a small tribe of people who made up maybe .01% of the world's population at the time. He talked to these people over the centuries ignoring everyone else and in fact showed preference for his "chosen" people allowing them to slaughter the others who lived in the land he gave them so his chosen ones could live in Israel.
Why would a being who can create the universe at the same time be a being who could pick a few thousand Jews to be his favourite humans.
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A different term, or an up-front definition would be nice
Let me first state that I believe in evolution. I do not believe in a being in the sky. That said...
The fury with which the first atheist posters here at Salon have attacked this article comes as no surprise to me (King's sports-blog post on George Carlin last week features a lengthy dialog regarding what I refer to as "fundamentalist atheists"). Strict materialism, or positivism (a more sophisticated form of materialism) always ultimately bumps up against "that which it cannot explain". The fact that the science that these materialists have bound themselves to--in full integrity, I might add, with the belief that it can answer all of life's mysteries--hasn't answered all of life's mysteries pisses them off so intensely it has become one of my favorite entertainments!
Further, it looks suspiciously like it is incapable of answering them (most string theorists agree it's too abstract at this point to ever be proved evidentially). This recurring sturm and drang is evidence of a cognitive dissonance within atheists resulting from absolute belief in something that ultimately is ill-equiped to expose any Absolutes.
Religion has a similar problem that manifests almost identically when challenged on factual grounds.
My problem with this interview is the heavy reliance by Giberson on the word "God". Mr. Giberson, you are avowedly Christian, and by identifying that at the outset you set in motion a chain of cognitive associations that go along with a Christian notion of God. I get from your answers that you do not believe in God as a man in the sky or some sort of autonomous agent acting on creation in a willful manner. Unfortunately, your reliance on the term "God" short changes much of your argument off the bat.
Why not either use a different term for the ineffable force you believe God to be--Ground of All Being, Infinity, All, Creation As A Whole, Life, etc--or define what you mean my "God" at the outset, reminding readers of your "higher" definition as you go along?
Not that that would change any of the first four posts in this thread at all, but it might keep open the minds of others who are willing to entertain the idea that "God" is a pretty decent metaphor for the The Unknown so long as we strip it of its anthropomorphic aspect.
I would very much like to know your thoughts on this idea.
Thanks for another great entry in the Atoms and Eden series.
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How amazing is the brain?
This is the sort of thing that brings me back to wondering at the marvel that is the human brain.
Karl Giberson is obviously a brilliant guy. When he uses his science brain he is all about logic, reason, and evidence.
But when his religion brain pops up you get stuff like this:
But I believe in God, I believe God is personal and that God exists and cares about the created order. I think it's a very reasonable belief that God interacts with creation and that experiences people have of interacting with God are profound and deeply meaningful.
Or this:
How do we know there isn't some similar mechanism by which God interacts with the world, that God can be understood as a spirit, that God is more like consciousness than a material object?
Same physical brain, but different contexts clearly call into his consciousness different - what is it? - "wiring schemes". Or something.
The theists just never seem to notice the glaring dissonance of passages like this, contrasted with the evidential approach, taken only a few moments before.
It is odd indeed how strange is the brain. But that strangeness should be a challenge to understand it, and not a call for the hands to wave over the Awesome Mystery.
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Of course God exists...
... but the question ought to be about why he is so bad at his job. Based on his performance in his last few thousand annual evaluations, he has many opportunities for improvement.
He had a great creative spurt once upon a time, but has been resting on his laurels for eons. A bit like Sir Paul McCartney, come to think of it.
Most of the acts attributed to him by insurance companies, such as hurricanes and tsunamis are of no benefit whatever to human beings, supposedly his favorite species.
He seems to have played no part in the really important advances like inventing antibiotics, the saxophone, or the Internet.
His sales force, though well-paid and earning great commissions and cradle-to-grave (and beyond) benefits, seems to be particularly prone to sexual misadventures that impedes its overall effectiveness and lead to charges of hypocrisy. Many branch offices have made little progress in promoting equal opportunity.
Perhaps we should open up the field to more competition. The retail parishioner can only benefit from a greater choice of deities.
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This guy says what I've said all along about Genesis...
...that it is intentionally vague - that the birth of the Earth is deliberately obscured because G-D's creative process is unfathomable to the human mind. Compare it to the sometimes excruciating detail of say, Leviticus and you will see -even in English - that Genesis should not be taken literally because it is not literal. It is figurative, metaphorical, obscure, whereas painstaking details on how you build a portable temple or make specific sacrifices are quite literal. All Genesis really tells us is that G-D started the ball rolling.