gods and the limits of the imagination
We imagine our gods along the same lines as aliens, we always give them human qualities of one sort or another.
My thoughts on how evolution has left little space for the particularities of religious belief are echoed by Stewart-Williams, who also believes that evolution provides a direct, and in fact insurmountable challenge to belief in a deity, however characterised. One of the most interesting points he makes is that evolution provides a special case of the problem of evil, in that it’s nasty, cruel and wasteful, since only the fittest survive and the rest fail and perish miserably. Actually this made me think perhaps irrelevantly, about Shakespeare, who tried so hard to keep his line provided for into the following generations, dying (miserably?) without realising that that line would be snuffed out within a generation or two. I suppose the point is that there’s more than one way to ensure that your ‘sort’ will flourish into the future. Then there’s me with no heirs, no legacy, ergo a completely wasted life.
Evolutionary theory can account for some of life’s arbitrary cruelties. For example a mother (I’m not talking of humans here) will let an unhealthy child die a lingering, agonising death, while putting all her efforts into healthier offspring. Such suffering will seem arbitrary and needless from a creationist perspective, and will seem to contradict the idea of a benevolent deity, but it’s accountable within highly competitive evolution, which calls for an abundance of offspring of which only a percentage can be expected to reach maturity.
Theists can rescue the belief in God by arguing that evolution doesn’t account for life itself, the ‘breathing of life’ into the first organism, as Darwin himself put it. Nor does it account for the origin of the universe. However, theories about the formation of life from inanimate matter are being developed and refined as I write, and though we may not have the complete picture for some time, there’s no reason to suppose that it won’t simply be a matter, pardon the pun, of physical and chemical organisation. No need to invoke a god to explain the process. As to the origin of the universe, that’s admittedly a tougher nut to crack, but I must say, the idea that a god was involved in this origin is further beyond my imagination than any other explanation.
This brings me to the vital question of imagining God. In the Judeo-Christian tradition at least, we’re generally asked to think in terms of certain attributes, such as Supreme Goodness, Omniscience, Omnipotence, all wrapped up in Perfection. But these attributes, so blithely enumerated, are actually not so easy to conceptualise. I have no real trouble conceptualising Superman’s x-ray vision or ability to leap tall buildings at a single bound, but Divine Perfection’s a bit more of a stretch to my mind. In any case the apparently universal view that this god demands to be feverishly worshipped and eternally thanked seems to me to reduce him, her or it to something so embarrassingly egomaniacal as your average human being. If the thing really exists, can’t we be more respectful than that?
My thoughts on how evolution has left little space for the particularities of religious belief are echoed by Stewart-Williams, who also believes that evolution provides a direct, and in fact insurmountable challenge to belief in a deity, however characterised. One of the most interesting points he makes is that evolution provides a special case of the problem of evil, in that it’s nasty, cruel and wasteful, since only the fittest survive and the rest fail and perish miserably. Actually this made me think perhaps irrelevantly, about Shakespeare, who tried so hard to keep his line provided for into the following generations, dying (miserably?) without realising that that line would be snuffed out within a generation or two. I suppose the point is that there’s more than one way to ensure that your ‘sort’ will flourish into the future. Then there’s me with no heirs, no legacy, ergo a completely wasted life.
Evolutionary theory can account for some of life’s arbitrary cruelties. For example a mother (I’m not talking of humans here) will let an unhealthy child die a lingering, agonising death, while putting all her efforts into healthier offspring. Such suffering will seem arbitrary and needless from a creationist perspective, and will seem to contradict the idea of a benevolent deity, but it’s accountable within highly competitive evolution, which calls for an abundance of offspring of which only a percentage can be expected to reach maturity.
Theists can rescue the belief in God by arguing that evolution doesn’t account for life itself, the ‘breathing of life’ into the first organism, as Darwin himself put it. Nor does it account for the origin of the universe. However, theories about the formation of life from inanimate matter are being developed and refined as I write, and though we may not have the complete picture for some time, there’s no reason to suppose that it won’t simply be a matter, pardon the pun, of physical and chemical organisation. No need to invoke a god to explain the process. As to the origin of the universe, that’s admittedly a tougher nut to crack, but I must say, the idea that a god was involved in this origin is further beyond my imagination than any other explanation.
This brings me to the vital question of imagining God. In the Judeo-Christian tradition at least, we’re generally asked to think in terms of certain attributes, such as Supreme Goodness, Omniscience, Omnipotence, all wrapped up in Perfection. But these attributes, so blithely enumerated, are actually not so easy to conceptualise. I have no real trouble conceptualising Superman’s x-ray vision or ability to leap tall buildings at a single bound, but Divine Perfection’s a bit more of a stretch to my mind. In any case the apparently universal view that this god demands to be feverishly worshipped and eternally thanked seems to me to reduce him, her or it to something so embarrassingly egomaniacal as your average human being. If the thing really exists, can’t we be more respectful than that?
posted by Stewart at 1:37 pm
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home