26 August 2007

Echoes of Thoughts

A post at Pharyngula has this rather beautiful comment:

I just can't seem to get past how small and constrained the theists seem to want to make the universe, like their creation myth is actually more impressive that what is really out there. Their great god just comes across as this petty ignorant bully doing bad slight of hand, and I just can't see the great part. They seem to think if they tell me often enough it might some how be true. How does any of that compare favorably to trillions of stars, billions of years, billions of interlocking evolving life forms, resulting in a being capable of appreciating the irony of just how pathetic religion is? I just don't get it. ~Venger

I might not have stated it exactly this way, but I've had the same reaction. Literalist Christianity comes across as this tiny, dank box that seems to think that it's a jewel-studded palace. I look at a tree, and I'm filled with awe to think of its ancestry going back millions of years; of the competition it faced to make it down into this age; of the trees that might have been had a storm not hit at the wrong moment, or a volcano not gone off; of the sheer heritage and history represented by that one lifeform.

To posit a "Creator" of trees cheapens it. It's nothing more than a descendant of a glorified lamp-post built not so long ago. No heritage. No life. Just another dead thing in a dead landscape. It's like the little kid at the Soda-Geyser. He turned up his nose at the geyser as "man-made." I don't see "god-made" as any different. It didn't come to be of itself; it was forced into being, enslaved into its current form. A tree that grows from other trees, that grew from still simpler lifeforms, that came originally from molecules that no one would recognize as living, now that is something miraculous and awe-inspiring. It is what it is, and no one made it what it is; it just is.

ADDENDUM: Speaking of Trees...

4 comments:

John said...

I'm really not impressed with CS Lewis' apologetics. My mom, however, is a huge fan. So I had Lewis shoved at me from an early age.

As a child, I found that I could enjoy 'Narnia' as long as I ignored all the Xian symbolism. The sam goes for the first two books of his sci-fi trilogy. (I never could get into 'That Hideous Strength')

The rest was more than I could take, even as a kid.

Qalmlea said...

I tried reading the passage at Pharyngula. The idea that every society will have rules of interaction is accurate, but his assumption that every society's rules will match his preconceived expectations is, well, silly. One example: We've had "might makes right" societies, where if someone is capable of taking "your" seat after you've claimed it, they are, in fact, expected to.

However, this morning, I can't help but casting it as a Monty Python sketch. Lewis is talking to the camera, and mostly it's a close-up of his face. Every so often there's a hint of something...disturbing and metallic behind him. When he admits that he himself has difficulty following the "rules," it pans out and we see people strapped into various torture devices. Perhaps this is the time to admit that I'm at least two hours short on sleep...

John said...

That argument is silly, but accepting it is necessary to his later assertation that the Judeo-Xian god is the source of moralit

Hmm...

Qalmlea said...

Ever notice that the high-and-mighty morality types tend to ignore all the god-sanctioned genocide and rape in their "source of morality"? Oh, wait, those were UNbelieviers. They don't count. Some morality THAT is.