One of the compulsions for me to write this blog was the sheer number of militant atheists that I encounter on the ‘net. They’re all over the place, mocking religion, and generally prancing about with what appears to be an innate sense of superiority.
Of course, there are some fairly out-there members of Christian faith, so they’ve got plenty of targets they can mock.
See Jesus in a Jello Pudding cup? There’s an atheist blogger out there ready to make fun of it, and two hundred college kids on Reddit ready to up-vote the item.
Of course, all this bugs me a bit. When things seemed the darkest for me, I found an inexplicable peace in the words of the Bible and the homilies of our local pastor. I had labeled myself as an agnostic, someone who believes that there are indescribable higher powers at work, although we have no clue what they are. But what I heard in church rang true in a very powerful, life-affirming way.
I have a theory that God reveals himself in the manner in which we’re best able to perceive him. Five thousand years ago, that may have been as voice behind a burning bush pounding words into stone tablets. Two thousand years ago, that may have been through a rabbi of possibly divine birth who wandered through Judea. Different voices, different forms, different times.
Today? I wonder if God is revealing himself through the mathematical precision of the universe. The universe as revealed by science is stunning and complex, driven by laws which are mankind’s greatest challenge to understand.
As complex as it is, the universe, as cosmologist Fred Hoyle once wrote, seems to be a “put-up job”, designed so that creatures like us would eventually show up.
Here’s an interesting quote from an article in Salon that I found in a similar blog:
…more and more physicists point to various laws of nature that have to be calibrated just right for stars and planets to form and for life to appear. For instance, if gravity were just slightly stronger, the universe would have collapsed long before life evolved. But if gravity were a tiny bit weaker, no galaxies or stars could have formed. If the strong nuclear force had been slightly different, red giant stars would never produce the fusion needed to form heavier atoms like carbon, and the universe would be a vast, lifeless desert. Are these just happy coincidences? The late cosmologist Fred Hoyle called the universe “a put-up job.” Princeton physicist Freeman Dyson has suggested that the universe, in some sense, “knew we were coming.”
Yeah, that.
I read about how science has failed to prove the existence of God, and I wonder if folks have <lame cliché> missed the forest for the trees </lame cliché>
You need proof that something weird is up? It’s right in front of you.
I think a number of the atheists I’ve met on the web are too quick to embrace science and reject faith, and too many faithful too eager to do the opposite. My suspicions is that, as smart as we think we are, humanity still is an adolescent, searching for our purpose. And the universe will continue to hold mysteries our little monkey brains don’t yet even know exist.
If you’re loony enough to read this blog, you might want to check these items out as well:
Salon: We are meant to be here
The 2001 Principle: The Fine-Tuning of the Universe
Guardian: The weirder edges of the universe
Templeton: Does science make belief in God obsolete?
Newsweek: Will Physicists Find God?
Live Science: How scientists really feel about God
