Small World, Large Universe

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.

God is the LIGHT AND TRUTH

God is the light and truth. The devil is the deceiver. There is no such thing as magic as most people understand it. WE do not understand God. In fact we cannot understand God. It diminishes God if we try to explain any of his methods or reasons in terms we can understand. At best, at the point we are at now, we can glimpse the enormity, the wonder, and the vastness of Creation. With the tools we have now we can look, measure and strive to understand. When we look at the light from the farthest galaxies we can see, we are seeing light that left there 13 Billion years ago. Some say this is only an illusion. The devil is the spinner of illusions, not God. To say this is an illusion tries to imply that we understand something beyond what we can see with our own eyes and tools; something of God. Something of how he does things. It implies that God would do something in terms we can understand, that the Creation of the whole Universe is something we might understand. Similarly when some say that Creation occurred 6000 years ago they are trying to bend reality into a time frame of humans. Nothing else in the universe infers that anything in the Universe came into existence in the time frame of humans! You would have to ignore all the rest of Creation to believe that anything God does happens in terms we understand. It is obvious that Creationists are the spawn of the Devil. You only have to believe in God to believe that. Here is something profound to consider: God and science CANNOT disagree. The laws of physics ARE the laws of God. If God did things by magic why didn’t he just create man out of the supposed nothing he made all the rest of Creation out of. He created man from dust and breathed life into him. Careful research will tell you that God did not create everything out of nothing. He used a palette from which to draw his materials. Maybe he created all the materials too, but he DIDN”T create creation out of nothing. I can’t say if he was bound by the laws of physics or created the laws of physics, but the laws are there and God either created them and/or simply used them. If I decide to write a book about this I can go through Genesis paragraph by paragraph, but that is not necessary right now. Anyway, I think we ought to study physics (and Science et al.) in our pursuit of understanding. I think we are far enough along in our development as human beings to stop being in denial about the facts that are inconvenient to our beliefs. The pure beauty that science allows us to see and understand only serves to glorify Creation and display its elegance. Einstein wanted to “see the mind of God” in the mathematics. Maybe we’re not ready to understand at that level, but even a little glimpse is worth it. Faith and proof are not mutually exclusive. Right now we need both together. We don’t have the tools or the sophistication to have proof alone. We are too smart already to be satisfied with faith alone. Darn that apple.