Isn't the Internet an interesting thing? The world just keeps getting smaller and smaller. Most people do not realize that the dynamics of how things have worked for the last 10,000 years with humans is going to HAVE to be altered to take into consideration this basic fact. Our perception of the universe and therefore our perception of anything bigger than ourselves, like religion, the meaning of faith, who can be our friend, who is a member of our tribe, all the things where scale is involved, are being forced to change. The Earth is getting smaller and the Universe is getting bigger. Having information at our fingertips, on any subject, as soon as it is discovered, is such a paradigm change that concessions to this alteration must be made.
Fundamental beliefs, that have weathered the test of time up till now, are going to be affected. Some think this means their beliefs will be eroded, but in actuality it should mean that they are growing, dare I say, evolving. Sticking to traditional interpretations, in light of new or expanded information, is nothing but stubborn ignorance, forced ignorance of the most heinous kind. Falsely linking an old way of thinking to a strict adherence to a belief system and then essentially making it a crime of some sort to think any other way is a crime against humanity, knowledge and truth. Religions seem to take the hard line of adherence to belief the most seriously. It seems to me that they are simply afraid that if it is taken any other way it will undermine the entire religion. Knowledge will blow them clean out of the water, and God forbid, we can’t allow that, can we? Better we believe, for example, that we are being fooled by incorrect scientific interpretation of the facts then not believe the world is as old as the Creationists say it is. To deny the literal word of the Bible, somehow, lessens the entirety of all of creation according to their interpretation. I have to say it appears to me they protest too much. Faith should not require the abject denial of truth to make it work. We supposedly figured out that the Earth was not the center of the solar system, the Universe, or anything physical for that matter, a long time ago. It may be the center of, what seems to be, a rather limited view of the Creation. When it comes to the Universe I have to believe that size is everything, size in all four standard dimensions. You look at it and you know, in your heart, soul, and mind that if God is responsible for all this then we have little chance of figuring out God in His greater context. If a God is not responsible we are simply just really very small. For the Creationists to bring it all down to human size makes them nothing less than non-believers of the Real God, deniers of the Universe, Heretics. The complete and total arrogance of their selective truths speaks to their underlying lack of faith in their faith. When what you believe is sorely contradicted by facts, or at least by what you can see with your own eyes, it may be time to make a slight alteration to your faith. When you build castles in the air, the castle is only as strong as its foundation. People talk about faith like it has to be non-changeable in any way. That to do so means you made a mistake and when it comes to God no mistakes are allowed. Well, guess what, we are human. Mistakes are part of our repertoire. Believe that if we alter our beliefs in the direction of truth, God will smile. We need to grow and learn and strive to understand. What needs to change most is your definition of Faith. I have said before that if God wanted it to be easy on us he would have made the Universe fluffy. If he really didn’t want us to figure it all out he could have created us too stupid to comprehend it. At least he could have put that apple tree somewhere we couldn’t reach it. Makes you wonder if God is crazy or crazy like a fox.
Faith and science cannot disagree. Many want to say that they are separate somehow and do not need to agree. I say, “If your Faith can’t hold up to science, your Faith needs to be tweaked”. We have recently heard the term Inconvenient Truth. Truth sometimes requires interpretation. I prefer to say Inconvenient Facts. If we actually have the Facts, the truth cannot be far behind. Faith, by definition, does not require any backing. This is a very bad weak point for faith. Anybody can shove in anything to the basic faith structure and try and pass it off by saying we must take it on faith! A similar semantic game was played on us concerning patriotism. None of us believes that anything that erodes our rights can actually be patriotic, especially when our country is all about our rights in the first place. If we accept into our faith anything that takes unfair advantage of the fact that we have faith, we are making a similar mistake. Because it is Faith, we have to be cautious about what we actually want to include in it. Who gets to say? The Church? A hypocritical television evangelist? While it is easy to believe who and what we want to believe, that does not make it correct. Long ago The Church decided what to include, and not include, in the New Testament. Now we treat it as if it was a book that came down from the mountain like the Ten Commandments supposedly did. Unfortunately it is only that part they wanted us to see that we have now and where it came from before that we only have their word for. This is somewhat sketchy for my taste. I only have to look at the Universe to suspect that God exists. There is little room for politics in that kind of faith and a lot of room for science. There is also room for growth.
