You know, sometimes I forget the shocking consequences of believing in evolution (properly, not in a cissy "ascent of Man" kind of way) and also believing in the existence of a Creator.
It means that all those thistles and thorns, the painful births and all the rest of it aren't the vindictive actions of a God who's grumpy that a couple of naturists ate an apple without a licence. Oh no. God's not that arbitrary. God prepared the thistles, thorns and painful births up front. All the chaos and catastrophe - they're not retrospective punishments, they're part of the plan, laid down - to whatever degree - in advance.
I don't know why, but this gives me a deep sense of comfort. It's nice to think there's a purpose - however it works out.
I have a list of questiona to ask when I get to heaven. Like "why fleas?" I haven't written the questions down so I keep forgetting them. Oh, and tape worms? Why tape worms?
ReplyDeleteI don't know. Are they particularly musical?
Delete'Like'
DeleteYes, that Adam stuff I blogged was orginally inspired by a dodgy sermon. Painful childbirth is a natural consequence of trying to pass something the size of a large melon out through an exit designed for something far smaller, nothing to do with poor old Eve and her Five a Day. If only I'd had the gumph to challenge the speaker at the time!
ReplyDeleteWell we need large heads to fit all those brains in - so maybe that's the curse that goes with Knowledge? Be brainy, have painful childbirth.
DeleteNot sure about all that scientific proof of evolution, but as it's evidence based, I have to acknowledge that it possibly happened that way.
ReplyDeleteBut I prefer the King James Version it's language is so emotive and evocative that I would love to believe in Creation as written.
I suspect that I'm one of those people who don't see, yet believe, because it's the only sensible explanation that I can come too, without being a brain surgeon.
You mean Satan didn't bury the dinosaurs to confuse us? Seriously? I gotta get better science books.
ReplyDeleteThe biggest issue I see is that people continue to see time as a one-directional thing. I don't think there is a "plan" as much as God is outside of time and therefore experiences it all at once. He knows everything that's going to happen, because for Him it's already happened - it happened all at once or He can experience it all at once. Anyway, it's an interdimensional mind twister for sure...hard for a 3D creature to fathom the experience of a higher dimensional being. Which is why He's God and we're not.
AE, so you reckon we live in a clockwork universe? interesting, no need to speculate about the outcome of Euro's then.. Germany have already won? :)
ReplyDeleteFar from it, Steve. If we lived in a clockwork universe, then all those "Schrodinge's Cat" experiments I've been carrying out have been cruel and unneccessary. Rather than simply cruel.
DeleteWhat with the Quantum Theory and human free will, I sometimes think of God as an "Agile" Project Manager. God knows when the sprints are due to end. But the full detail of what's going to turn up is down to the low-level activity of the Creation itself.
And don't forget that with String Theory, there is an alternative universe where Steve McClaren won the Euros and is regarded as the greatest manager of all time. Although to be fair, in the whole Multiverse, there's only one universe like that - and 712 which have talking chickens.
Schrödinger, of course. Typo and lack of an umlaut on the android.
DeleteYou are confusing me Anonymous. I thought it was God that buried the dinosaurs in order to give the scientists something to think about while the God-fearers spend their time on the important stuff like 'why suffering?'
ReplyDeletePidge, I read it in an actual, real book, therefore it MUST be true!!
DeleteBut, Anonymous, I read it in a book by a true Bible believing Christian who knew to the day when the world was created. It MUST be true because it had a photo of a fossilised sandal footprint on top of a fossilised ammonite!
ReplyDeleteIf it had a fossilised ammonite on a fossilised sandal, then you're talking...
DeleteWow! Two real honest to goodness books saying two different things....well somebody buried those Dino bones in order to trick us....personally, I find Satan trickier...but God holds a lot of things close to the chest, so maybe it was him after all. Let's convene a committee in true Protestant style to investigate.
ReplyDeleteI read in a science fiction/fantasy book (don't know if it was Terry P or David Brin or someone else entirely) about a crew operating a terra-forming machine which created new planets and they got the sack for burying a pair of boots in one of the deepest fossil layers of rock which the scientists would discover once the early neathanderals had evolved to the pitch of civilization when such discoveries could be made.. and this showed me how creation and evolution could work at the same time because God clearly MADE the world in an EVOLUTIONARY way...because, like the nuns at my school kept saying "Nothing is impossible for God"... am I making sense here? Thought not. I understand what I am thinking even if you don't. Back to the treacle well.
ReplyDeleteI reckon you're thinking of Pratchett's "Strata"?
DeleteI thought it might be worth googling that sandal print and sure enough I found it! Memory failure, it was a trilobite not an ammonite.
ReplyDeletehttp://manvsarchaeology.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/1sandle-print.jpg