Real Magic
Nnrgh - I can't sleep. Winding down time with a bit of a conundrum - I'm not eloquent on the subject, but here's the way it seems.
My fear is thus: If one assumes there is a "god", for want of a better term, then all I have spent the last 3 years learning about is pointless.
Why? If one assumes there is a "god", then all the glorious feats of science and biology that I am confronted with, baffled with, and amazed by are nothing but simple creations to him. It's not this apparent simplicity that upsets me, more the "magic". It' s all here by magic. Our hugely complex physiology is all there by magic, the brain... magic... he did it. Oh... How dull.
Here comes the revelation (I'm sure it's been said before a million times, a million ways, but it's a personal realisation that has got me thinking properly for the first time about this subject). Maybe it is "magic", but, magic that functions in a way we can describe - science. It is incredible, but explainable. Where does this leave God? There's no reason why there shouldn't be a God. Science can explain a lot extremely well (the expression patterns of Engrailed in the Drosophila parasegments to take a poignant example), but surely a point will be reached where we just cannot explain some things - they'll be outside our field of understanding? Is such a wangling in of God into scientific understanding just an "easy way out" for the religious? I'm no longer sure that it is. Many scientist are religious, and they are certainly not "deluded fools" as Dawkins would have you believe.
Why God? this is my main problem now. I've leaped over the "Science and God are mutually exclusive" boundary (that, incidentally, Dawkins still seems to be stuck behind), but why bother with believing in something so unbelievable, why bother with "Church" (though of course, by church I mean any sort of religious ritual)? I'm working through these parts slowly... but it's an interesting journey. This "real magic" point really has excited me, but I'm still nowhere near anything but agnostic.
Any (constructive - no knee-jerks) ideas are welcomed.
Stumble It!
2 comments:
Hey El Tommo!
Sorry I haven't been keeping up with your blog recently (or had any communication at all for that matter). When I reformatted my hard-drive I lost all my blog links. :S
I found this post really interesting - I hope your "slow and interesting journey" is a good one!
I don't think that the existence of God in any way undermines the amazingness of creation. Infact, I would say the complete opposite to you, if there is no God, then the complexities of the brain etc. are merely a product of chance: our emotions and consciousness are just merely a product of the firing of neurons and nothing more.
To address your issue of "Why God?", it's simply the negation of the premise that science and religion are totally independent and that the latter is false. If we concede that any notion of 'meaning' in the universe exists, and that the universe and our complex brain are not merely the product of chance and something out of nothing, then 'God' becomes the only explanation for creation.
"Why Church?" is purely a religious argument. If we believe that God exists, then it demands some sort of response rather than apathy as most of the British public choose. Maybe that discussion is for a later time, I'm just glad you're thinking about these sorts of things. :)
Hope your exams went well. :)
J-Fro
God's our word for this creator-person who makes the magic... Surely he names himself and everything else but we happen to be stuck with language, Sapir-Whorf and all that.
And yes, I agree with the other comment... to me, 'why church' seems to come after one's decided on and dealt with 'why God' and come to terms with the person in question.
Interesting blog - btw, (and I normally never say this!) don't read my blog, it will be quite er knee-jerky :D
Post a Comment