Oh, don't get me wrong, I love God.
In fact, I have now decided to state as unshakeable truth that, if religion (of any kind; I make no distinctions here) is the spiritual food and drink that we ingest, then music is the spiritual air that we breathe.
This must be so, because we can survive weeks without food, and days without water; however we cannot survive more than minutes without air.
And only God could have provided us menial Home Sapiens with the inspiration and creativity necessary to create sequences of sound vibrations of varying pitch, amplitude, and spacing, in the innumerable different arrangements that exist today and continue to be created, that bring joy to the over 6 billion people (and increasing) that live (and die) in the present.
But more to the point, it is also pure truth that religion (especially the ancient religions, now called mythology) evolved first and foremost to explain the things we do not understand.
The first religions centered on the sun, the moon, the seasons, etc. - all easily definable and explainable by modern standards, yet beyond the comprehension of our far ancestors.
As we Homo Sapiens have evolved, the discipline of science was created as we began to think more and more logically about the universe around us.
Throughout history, and continuing on to the present (and hopefully, on into the far future) things previously explained away as gods, or signs from the gods, or emissaries from the gods, or acts of the gods, etc. were slowly but surely replaced by true, logical, scientific explanations.
The rising and setting of the sun, first taken as the Sun God riding around the sky in his fiery chariot, was (eventually) discovered to be a ball of hot gas (although it was only after Einstein that we discovered it to be due to nuclear fusion).
The moon thought to be a Moon God, was discovered eventually to be the piece of spherical-ish rock that it is, that reflects light from the sun.
The planets, far away as they are, were taken to be different gods because they moved far differently from the ever-so-distant stars (which the Ancients believed to be stationary .. in fact, that is why planets are called that now. Look up the etymology of the word 'planet').
The oh-so-distant stars were considered representatives of the gods that their pattern composed - from which we get the signs of the Zodiac.
Anyone with a grain of common sense can see, that as time goes on - however fast, however slow - whatever we attribute today to God (or to the paranormal, or anything else not scientifically explained) will, eventually, one day be truly explainable and understandable by anyone, through science.
And yet, didn't I just say I love God? Indeed I did. And I believe that there will always be a place for religion in this world. Because even though science may eventually explain many of the mysteries of this world, there is always likely to be a small part of it that cannot be accounted for, and that small unexamined spot of research may be of equal complexity to the rest. Consider it as though it were a shape known as a fractal; no matter how deep one delves into a fractal shape, it never gets any less complex. Think about it. Or, read what Isaac Asimov said about fractals. If you can find it.
Wow, that was waay more than I expected from myself. =P
Still, it felt good.
I feel so wise. Let's see you convince me otherwise.
XD
3 comments:
hey... just read through the entire blog and it strikes me dat ur VERY bored... lol
Shows wt homesickness can do 2 u i guess.... doesnt bode well for me, does it?
Btw... O Wise Shaman of the Nerds... thx for sharing ur unltd supply of wisdom... may u hav such a stroke of lightning enlightenment before long... so... happy blogging to u too, n eid mubarak! :P
Very good post.
However, I think science and God (as a concept) are not mutually exclusive. Rather, they may likely mutually coexist.
One example: The "Big Bang."
Scientists' best suggestion as to the beginning of everything lies in the Big Bang theory. Yet, where did this infinitely massive compaction of mass come from? Their argument is that, essentially, it *always* existed.
This position is equivalent to a claim that existence began when time did. Further refining this statement, scientist's Big Bang theory relies on the one explanation they find so inconvenient: creation ex nihilo.
From Latin, with the meaning of "out of nothing, something." Quite interestingly, this is the same expression used in the Bible when it refers to it's own account of creation. Could it be that the creation of the universe IS the result of God's creation of the universe? One must allot for this possibility.
Furthermore, the world around us evidences wonderous, beautiful complexity; Our science has yet to completely comprehend the incredible variety in the universe.
Yet another something to consider:
The existence of the second law of thermodynamics has an interesting implication. Simply put, entropy in a system decreases over time, to the point where it reaches an equilibrium state of sorts. This is not unlike an inverse exponential function.
What does this imply? At horizontal position = 0, the energy is at an infinite complexity. Considering the world we live in, we never truly have an infinite number in nature. Hence, this is a very compelling model that shows that *time is not infinite*, time had to have begun at a certain point, before which nothing would have logically existed.
This observation also makes sense in practice; one doesn't see cellular mutations in a positive, evolutionary direction. Rather, cellular degeneration is witnessed 100% of the time. To restate the Second law of thermo, things degrade in general.
Now, with our beloved Laws of Thermodynamics (which are held by any self-respecting person to be true), how then can one say that species evolution is a truly reasonable explanation for how things came to be as they are? Surely, evolution as an everyday concept exists: situations evolve into more complex situations, ideas evolve into more complex ideas, thoughts are refined to more complex thoughts.
But, quite observably, species evolution would violate several natural laws in order to occur.
If you subscribe to this concept, then you implicitly, but effectively, disown most natural laws that were discovered *by scientists themselves*.
Clearly, this is a non-sequitur; a logical fallacy.
Wrapping this post up, Deism or agnosticism are the most logical belief sets to explain how things are. I know you love God, but also be sure to not set up science as a god--even athiests can live by that suggestion!
Science attempts to explain everything, but it does not, yet. Science is man's best shot at explaining what he sees in an objective manner, but the process is inherently somewhat subjective (our experiences affect our judgement). Sometimes, science must be revised to agree with new findings.
Whatever the case, I think that programmers can grasp the argument for creation by a Superior Being better than most.
Cheers to us, then.
Note: entropy always increases, never decreases. That's what I meant to say. Argument still stands if you transpose these words.
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