God is always interested in adultery, homosexuality, apostasy and countless petty affairs. He is a prude and malevolent, jealous micro-manager.

While you’re not a creationist, your holy text undeniably supports creationism, which is upheld – if the polls are to be believed – roughly half of the American population. Don’t evade the issue.

“”"Perhaps you could relieve me of my ignorance. “”"

It might take a while. Do you actually want to be relieved of it?

“”"Surely you admit that for thousands of years monotheism has posited a tiny, anthropocentric universe with the God of Abraham has a petty God.”"”

A very unintelligent characterization to say the least. Tiny? Nothing of the sort. Anthropocentric? Again, nothing of the sort (except perhaps with respect to written reference frames, which is standard protocol for any writing including modern science texts). A petty God? Well, you don’t really have a reference against which you can make that analysis.

“”"Today, creationism continues the tradition in part by positing a universe a fraction of the real universe not in size but in age.”"”

Hmmm… Let me know when you grasp the concept of “scientific interpretation” a bit better.

Ubuntu,

I love your characterization of theism (and your characterization of the “insignificance” of earth and its place in the universe!). It proves yet again that you don’t actually have a clue what you are talking about. Keep up the good work.

-Matthew

Matt-

Perhaps you could relieve me of my ignorance. Surely you admit that for thousands of years monotheism has posited a tiny, anthropocentric universe with the God of Abraham has a petty God. Today, creationism continues the tradition in part by positing a universe a fraction of the real universe not in size but in age.

Carl Sagan wrote in Pale Blue Dot:

In some respects, science has far surpassed religion in delivering awe. How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, “This is better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant. God must be even greater than we dreamed”? Instead they say, “No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way.”

-Trent

I still have faith that we’re too arrogant about what we think we know versus what’s really out there. I’ve had too many coincidences in my life to believe it’s just a chemical process that explains love, depression, happiness, joy, etc.

This post inspired me to write more:
http://www.douglaskarr.com/2007/07/22/knowing/

Relatively well said. Pseudo-biblical “scholars” need to realize that a partial paradigm blend won’t work.

Ubuntu,

I love your characterization of theism (and your characterization of the “insignificance” of earth and its place in the universe!). It proves yet again that you don’t actually have a clue what you are talking about. Keep up the good work.

-Matthew

“I have faith that there’s something bigger out there!”

I’ve heard this line again and again. But consider for a moment the vastness of the cosmos as science describes it. Douglas Adams’ opening lines to The Hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy were

“Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.”

Faith – and by that I of course mean its religious incarnations – describes a tiny world ruled by a tiny, petty God. Reason – through science – shows us a world of infinite beauty, awe, and mystery. Not only is there something bigger than all of us, there’s an entire universe (and perhaps a multiverse) of majestic giants to be explored.

People snicker when the bible says the Earth was created in a few days. I wonder why they never stopped to think that there really wasn’t such a thing as ‘a day’ before the Earth was created. Perhaps ‘a day’ was a billion years?!’.

You could certainly interpret it that way. But then you run into the problem that the order of creation is quite different from what science tells us. For instance, the Earth and many of the living things upon it were made before the sun and other stars, according to Genesis. Even if you interpret each of these days as 3 billion years or thereabouts, it still doesn’t jive. Sorry, but even with day-age theology, there is simply no way to reconcile Genesis with the current scientific account. You must either decide that Genesis is simply wrong, or decide that Genesis is entirely true and that the scientists’ account is wrong.

Matt- sounds like a plan. ;D

We’ll make a road trip out of it. You grab some of your atheist buddies, I’ll grab some luny fundamentalists, and we’ll pack a few 30GB hard drives and a truckload of lenses and go shoot some photos… Even if people don’t want to watch us argue when we get back, at least we can show pictures!