Wednesday, March 11, 2009

thinking about God again...

Is it my feverish brain that dwells on the immense complexity of God, religion and spirituality? Naw, I have been rolling these marbles around in my head for a while now. I am trying to define what I believe, and I am trying to decide whether it is important to pray - to whom and how? I am not Christian or Jewish. I certainly am not Muslim. I do not believe Islam is a religion of peace (just read Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali if you want an honest view). I am not Buddhist, and certainly not Hindu. There are truths to be gleaned from each of these religious views, but I am far from accepting any of them as a whole parcel. I do not believe any rights to religion should trump basic human rights. Just because the Koran says you can beat your wife does not make it okay. And yet...I cannot look around me at nature and believe that it was all some cosmic accident, that the Earth just came about by chance. I cannot contemplate the depths of space, the rate of expansion of the universe (just enough to keep the whole thing from collapse), the inter-atomic forces that define gravity and electrical charge, and the fantastically complex biology of my human child without thinking that there must be God, somewhere, in all these details.
What I do resent is the insertion of God into anything we cannot explain by science alone. The Jehovah's Witnesses are very cunning in some of their tracts to appear to 'prove' that a scientific explanation of the evolution of Earth is inadequate. For example, they point to the fossil record as 'incomplete' proof of Darwinian theory. There are too many gaps and jumps between species. Never do they discuss the process of fossilization and how capricious it is. Why did life 'suddenly' appear in the fossil record. And their answer is, of course, God. They insert God at every point. God made the DNA, God made the individual species separate, God made the dinosaurs and God took them out so we could be here. What this placement of God in all these holes does is to cheapen the wonder, the amazing creation and yes, evolution. There is no evidence that God made these things, just a lack of scientific knowledge of how these things come about. That does not mean that there will never be scientific knowledge, just that our current understand is not yet complete. Jehovah's witnesses would have you believe there is no Darwinian natural selection, no evolution at all. If so, did God make methycillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus? Why would God do that to us if God loves people so much?!? Did God make Ebola virus? People didn't do it. These things evolved from existing strains. To deny any evolution is to deny reason, rationality, and evidence. Why are 90% of South Africa's elephants NOW born without the ability to grow tusks? Because there is evolutionary pressure (granted, this pressure is created by humans, but so are many pressures) to not carry around thousands of dollars worth of ivory on their bodies.
So I do believe in evolution. I realize it does not answer all the questions of how we got here, but there really is no other way to explain why Down's syndrome occurs, why there are pathogenic bacteria and viruses. If God really is a loving, personal God, God would take away these bad things. And don't get me started on Satan...I don't believe in the devil.
So to recap: I believe in God because of the miracle of our existence, yet I believe in evolution as the origin of species, I believe that only God can create (that may be the best definition - Creator), and I believe that God cannot lie. If there are any satans or devils out there, it is just people, lying to save their butts. I also think God is Love, and therefore is in all of us.

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