the voice of god
When a man speaks to God that is called prayer. When God speaks to a man that is usually known as a delusion. Usually but not always. For some reason many people are prepared to accept that there are exceptional people who God talks to directly.
When God does choose to speak through a man for some strange reason he contradicts himself. For a supreme being with omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence and a beneficent character this is very strange behaviour.
I cannot help thinking that if God wanted to save the world by sending down his only son he rather cocked up his strategy. Why did he send Jesus when he did? That is, after thousands of generations of men had died without the chance to be saved and yet before mass communications had been fully developed. It seems rather a mystery. If leaving millions of men's souls unsaved is not a problem why didn't he wait until say, 1970/2000, to send his son, then the whole world would be in a position to hear his words today on the world-wide media that an omniscient God must have predicted? God must have written off the souls of millions of people before deciding to send in his boy. That strikes me as rather dumb for an omniscient God.
"Prophets hear the voice of God and talk with him. God reveals himself to prophets and they do his work. Lunatics hear voices in their heads. The difference is only good public relations."
OK, let us grant that God cocked up the timing but he got the rest right, didn't he? No. He talks to his prophets such as Moses, Jesus, Mohammed, the Mormons, Moonies and the rest and gives them conflicting messages. Or perhaps he only speaks to some of them and the others are evil manipulators. It strikes me as terrible strategy. If mere mortals are going around pretending to spread your holy word why don't you turn them into pillars of salt or smite them with a thunderbolt? If you want your message delivered by men and to be understood by men why not tell several men the same message, at the same time, across the whole world? That would convince me, if the same story about the will of God emerged from four or five cultures at once, met up, got translated and were found to agree. That would have in church like a shot. But God has missed his chance. If such a thing happened today everyone would think it was a conspiracy.
Naturally the believer answers this scepticism by chastising me for even daring to consider the motives of God. I cannot help it, I have been educated to question everything, I make no apologies for extending that questioning, even into the mind of God. Or more accurately into the mind of a hypothetical God.
My beliefs in the supernatural are quite clear. The supernatural is an oxymoron. There is the natural world, natural laws operate, these are knowable but not yet fully known. The extent of our ignorance of natural laws is impossible to measure. Two hundred years ago scientists would probably estimate that they understood half of what was knowable, I guess today's scientists might guess the same, in another two hundred years they still might guess the same. The more science learns the more the extent of the unknown. But there is nothing that is unknowable. That is my faith, or more respectably, that is my working hypothesis.
God is an invention of man, a social construct. All human societies have some form of religion, from simple animism and ancestor worship through polytheism, monotheism and deism. From the earliest periods of history there have also been a growing minority of atheists. Many atheists have seen through religions and found them hollow. Others have seen how they operate and propagate themselves and have come to reject them because they can see why they exist. I reject religion on both grounds. I know there is no God. I know why we invented him.
I understand what other people are perceiving when they say they feel the presence of God, it is a common illusion. My brain knows that my vision has a hole in the middle of it, where the optic nerve leaves the eye from the wrong side, there is a gap in my perception, I can prove it to myself logically with "magic tricks" but my brain also "knows" that my vision is perfect. One form of knowledge is learned, one is instinctive and not open to logic. The religious believer knows there is a God in the non logical way I know my vision is perfect. Both are wrong.
There is a hole in my vision because my distant ancestors in the Cambrian era evolved a pit of light sensitive cells with the nerve fibres in front of the light sensitive parts. Any sensible God or digital camera designer would have started again, putting the light sensitive parts of the cell next to the clear liquid filled reservoir and put the wiring round the back. But all fish, reptiles, birds and mammals have to put up with this design fault, wiring on the inside of the eye, and a great big bunch of unseeing nerve fibres right in the middle where the eye really wants to focus. This is a fact that many teachers will gloss over, they will tell you that there is a "blind-spot" in the middle of your vision, they will show you how to demonstrate it to yourself, they will not point out the implications.
The implications are that it is not possible to come up with any argument from design to explain this fact. Only evolution explains it. Once a simple eye had emerged wired up in this way it was not possible to invert it without making it work less well in the short term. Evolution cannot go backwards, even half a step, just as a river only ever flows downhill even if it meanders for miles. Evolution can only make our eyes better by making subtle changes, turning our eyes inside out, to be the right way round, was only an option for a brief period of time in chordate evolution. No such mutation happened at this time. It is now too late.
It may be of some comfort to know that squid and octopuses have eyes that are very similar to ours but with the nerves where they belong, behind the photoreceptors. They were evolved completely separately, we have no common ancestor with eyes. This is to my mind one piece of evidence for the non existence of God that will outweigh every weeping statue, every vision of the virgin and every tomato with the message "there is no God but Allah" in its pips. It is proof every animal was not created from scratch, made perfectly by an all wise God, it is very strong evidence for evolution. Evolution cannot start again from a blank design, evolution turned a second rate basic design into the beautifully functioning eyes we chordates use today.
with thanks AU
When a man speaks to God that is called prayer. When God speaks to a man that is usually known as a delusion. Usually but not always. For some reason many people are prepared to accept that there are exceptional people who God talks to directly.
When God does choose to speak through a man for some strange reason he contradicts himself. For a supreme being with omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence and a beneficent character this is very strange behaviour.
I cannot help thinking that if God wanted to save the world by sending down his only son he rather cocked up his strategy. Why did he send Jesus when he did? That is, after thousands of generations of men had died without the chance to be saved and yet before mass communications had been fully developed. It seems rather a mystery. If leaving millions of men's souls unsaved is not a problem why didn't he wait until say, 1970/2000, to send his son, then the whole world would be in a position to hear his words today on the world-wide media that an omniscient God must have predicted? God must have written off the souls of millions of people before deciding to send in his boy. That strikes me as rather dumb for an omniscient God.
"Prophets hear the voice of God and talk with him. God reveals himself to prophets and they do his work. Lunatics hear voices in their heads. The difference is only good public relations."
OK, let us grant that God cocked up the timing but he got the rest right, didn't he? No. He talks to his prophets such as Moses, Jesus, Mohammed, the Mormons, Moonies and the rest and gives them conflicting messages. Or perhaps he only speaks to some of them and the others are evil manipulators. It strikes me as terrible strategy. If mere mortals are going around pretending to spread your holy word why don't you turn them into pillars of salt or smite them with a thunderbolt? If you want your message delivered by men and to be understood by men why not tell several men the same message, at the same time, across the whole world? That would convince me, if the same story about the will of God emerged from four or five cultures at once, met up, got translated and were found to agree. That would have in church like a shot. But God has missed his chance. If such a thing happened today everyone would think it was a conspiracy.
Naturally the believer answers this scepticism by chastising me for even daring to consider the motives of God. I cannot help it, I have been educated to question everything, I make no apologies for extending that questioning, even into the mind of God. Or more accurately into the mind of a hypothetical God.
My beliefs in the supernatural are quite clear. The supernatural is an oxymoron. There is the natural world, natural laws operate, these are knowable but not yet fully known. The extent of our ignorance of natural laws is impossible to measure. Two hundred years ago scientists would probably estimate that they understood half of what was knowable, I guess today's scientists might guess the same, in another two hundred years they still might guess the same. The more science learns the more the extent of the unknown. But there is nothing that is unknowable. That is my faith, or more respectably, that is my working hypothesis.
God is an invention of man, a social construct. All human societies have some form of religion, from simple animism and ancestor worship through polytheism, monotheism and deism. From the earliest periods of history there have also been a growing minority of atheists. Many atheists have seen through religions and found them hollow. Others have seen how they operate and propagate themselves and have come to reject them because they can see why they exist. I reject religion on both grounds. I know there is no God. I know why we invented him.
I understand what other people are perceiving when they say they feel the presence of God, it is a common illusion. My brain knows that my vision has a hole in the middle of it, where the optic nerve leaves the eye from the wrong side, there is a gap in my perception, I can prove it to myself logically with "magic tricks" but my brain also "knows" that my vision is perfect. One form of knowledge is learned, one is instinctive and not open to logic. The religious believer knows there is a God in the non logical way I know my vision is perfect. Both are wrong.
There is a hole in my vision because my distant ancestors in the Cambrian era evolved a pit of light sensitive cells with the nerve fibres in front of the light sensitive parts. Any sensible God or digital camera designer would have started again, putting the light sensitive parts of the cell next to the clear liquid filled reservoir and put the wiring round the back. But all fish, reptiles, birds and mammals have to put up with this design fault, wiring on the inside of the eye, and a great big bunch of unseeing nerve fibres right in the middle where the eye really wants to focus. This is a fact that many teachers will gloss over, they will tell you that there is a "blind-spot" in the middle of your vision, they will show you how to demonstrate it to yourself, they will not point out the implications.
The implications are that it is not possible to come up with any argument from design to explain this fact. Only evolution explains it. Once a simple eye had emerged wired up in this way it was not possible to invert it without making it work less well in the short term. Evolution cannot go backwards, even half a step, just as a river only ever flows downhill even if it meanders for miles. Evolution can only make our eyes better by making subtle changes, turning our eyes inside out, to be the right way round, was only an option for a brief period of time in chordate evolution. No such mutation happened at this time. It is now too late.
It may be of some comfort to know that squid and octopuses have eyes that are very similar to ours but with the nerves where they belong, behind the photoreceptors. They were evolved completely separately, we have no common ancestor with eyes. This is to my mind one piece of evidence for the non existence of God that will outweigh every weeping statue, every vision of the virgin and every tomato with the message "there is no God but Allah" in its pips. It is proof every animal was not created from scratch, made perfectly by an all wise God, it is very strong evidence for evolution. Evolution cannot start again from a blank design, evolution turned a second rate basic design into the beautifully functioning eyes we chordates use today.
with thanks AU
