Sunday, May 22, 2016

The Nature of Your god



Is your god kind and beneficent? Does he also have the power to move heaven and earth, that is, to actually control events on earth?

OK….4 choices…

Yes to both. Kind and powerful. (the one Christians are fond of)

So, you have an all powerful and kindly being superimposed upon a world with us mortals experiencing things like the holocaust, various tornadoes, and  a quick one two punch with Bieber and Kardashians. So to live in that world and keep your god you have to add a dash of ‘works in mysterious ways’. Ways that are so mysterious that children dying of  terminal illnesses, limbs being ripped off in train wrecks, small pox, and Atilla the Hun while seeming to be horrible to lowly creatures such as us are actually part of an intricate plan that is so, so fucking sweet and beautiful that we just can’t see it for what it is but trust me it’s really awesome!

Yes and No. Nice guy but powerless.

This is a sad god. Having created the universe he can only sit back and watch as shit just keeps happening. I can see him in a worn out Barca lounger, drinking a flat Dr. Pepper and, OH NO...there goes another one. Sniff. Saw it coming but, you know . . .

No and Yes. Tough guy and plenty powerful.

This one actually might fit reality the best. Bad ass, leather wearing, thunderbolt wielding, motorcycle riding god damn GOD! You fuck with me? ME? I will send a fucking tornado right up your double wide ass. Shit I’m sorry I even created you you piece of shit! NOW PRAY TO ME AND WATCH IT NOT HELP!

No and No. Not so nice and powerless.

This is like the ‘get off my lawn’ guy. Plenty of venom but powerless. “Look at that. Another one of those twerps shot another one in the head. Like I give a rats ass. Why, I ought a do something. . .”

I kid and yet. . . What is the nature of your god?

Sunday, March 20, 2016

Evolution and the Ever Fucking After

   
In short, mutations happen. When there are forces at work that select for one trait or another changes happen. Traits are passed on.  New species emerge.

It can be easily proved. Ask any farmer who selects for a particular strain of corn or a particular flavor of pig. With a selection process - change happens. Nature provides an array of selection processes.

Things are the way they are because they got that way.

Now then. Assume that there is an afterlife. How does this fit in to this process? When life first emerged from the primordial ooze did the ever fucking after come with? Are there one celled creatures in heaven? And, what end would an afterlife serve?

All of this depends on the idea that the afterlife is ‘not of this world’. Some other existence. Some other dimension. But, again how would this fit in with the process of change, mutation, new life, change, mutation , new life . . . Where in all this would there be a reason, a need, an explanation for living beyond death?

Maybe it is just a human thing. Maybe we are special and we get an after life. Neanderthals too? China man? Australopithecus? At what point did we grow a soul that lives on? What evidence for this? To what end?

A religion that hangs its hat on life after death cannot embrace evolution. Evolution - the most unifying, simplifying, ‘explanifying’ idea in the history of science. You have to deny all of that. All of it to believe that you’re not really going to die. That you’re special. So you live in a stuck place where an old idea (evolution: 150 years or so) scares you and doesn’t fit in our world view. So you put on your blinders. Deny ALL evidence that doesn’t fit that world view and live in that stuck place.

And just bore the hell out of me.