Saturday, September 13, 2008

Is God Really in the Details?


Just a question and a note here: How long has man seriously been involved in truly scientific inquiry? Surely, there were some discoveries made going back even thousands of years, but the results of many of those efforts have either been lost, or were thwarted, often by the powers that be.


Only since the Renaissance has there been a more or less uninterrupted and concerted effort to discover our origins along with other scientific inquiry. Given the totality of human history, those few hundred years are hardly a blip on the proverbial screen. Look at what has been accomplished just since, say the middle of the 19th century in science and technology. To believe that humans can NEVER reach a core of understanding about the universe, our origins, and our place within it, is at the least, selling ourselves short.


Much of what we know and can do today would have been thought the stuff of magic or fantasy just a couple hundred years ago. Thousands of people were burnt at the stake for just imagining such things. Humans have an enormous capacity to explore and understand. Most of us, myself included, have no idea about much of it. Scientific research has become so specialized, so concerned with seeming minutia that again, most of us can't relate to it. Ultimately, the trick will be to put it all together, to assimilate all of the discreet data into a cohesive and manageable understanding of it all. I won't predict that we WILL accomplish that, but I do believe we CAN.


While, I suppose it is possible that the ultimate answer to it all could be something that one could aptly call a god, at this juncture, however, that is no more likely than hundreds of other possibilities. Further, the possibility that the answer is an omnipotent, omniscient god consciously involved in the second to second lives of us humans is so remote to be considered ludicrous. It is a human conceit to believe that we are the one and only chosen beings of god.


As I have asked before: What possible interest could an all powerful, all knowing entity have in such insignificant beings such as ourselves? I always think of "Star Trek TNG" and the character "Q" played, I believe, by actor John Delancey, who had god like powers over the fate of all humanity. He was depicted as being contemptuous and bored by humanity, but then alternately intrigued and curious about us as well. In my opinion, the former view would hold sway more often than not.

2 comments:

Michael May said...

I agree. I often ask, "if the invisible man is really out there...why doesn't she just reveal herself and end this debate? Clearly, everyone would fall in line and vote Sarah Palin for President if they knew for certain that god existed. It's the great invisible god hoax.

Terry S said...

Well, this question is at the heart of Rupture. Over the 3 years I've been writing on this site, I have had about every argument for and against god's existence presented in everything from reasoned discourse to spittal spewing rants. I have been damned to hell by a number of loving christians.

If the big guy exists, it would sure solve our ultimate conundrum regarding our origins and our ultimate end if hesheit would just stand up and identify himheritself presumably with adequately impressive claps of thunder or some such that would completely dispell our skepticism. But alas.

TLS