Check out this Opus cartoon on Salon.com, then come on back.
I’ve long thought it self-important to think that a God would pay attention to anyone in particular, given that there are so many other people on Earth. But this Earthbound sense of self-importance is just the tip of the iceberg. There are many other planets to consider.
Carl Sagan offered his own spin on this same general point. This undeniable point that we are each such a tiny speck in a tiny corner of the universe convinces me that most organized religions are absoutely wrong when they confidently tout that their version of “God” cares. To think that God (if there even is a sentient God) has nothing better to do than to fret about whether YOU:
1. went to church last week to grovel before Him,
2. had sex with someone to whom you weren’t officially married, or
3. cursed, or got drunk or whatever . . .
. . . is the height of parochial arrogance and ignorance. Believers who are truly humble must consider that if there is a God, that God might not have any interest or capacity to care for you. Ignoring this possibilty is not the humility so many believers claim to have. God (if He/She exists) might find humans to be boring just like most of us get bored with ants after looking at them for a few seconds.
Most bureacratic religions claim that each of us is important enough to merit personalized attention from the alleged Creater of the Universe. To the extent that religions hold this belief, they are holding it without a shred of justification. My point is simply this: it is sheer arrogance to think that the Creator of the Universe notices anything you do.
Whether or not a God exists, then we are alone. Maybe we are truly alone or maybe we’re alone for all intents and purposes. But we are on our own. We need to work together, respecting each other as real sentient beings if we are to find any meaning in our lives.
Hi Erich,
Thank you for the cartoon. It makes a good point. And like billiard balls, knocked about some old ones still resident in the back of my mind.
1. Nearly every point of view has(is) a point. (like looking at the night sky)
2. Look at me! (implied in nearly every point ever made)
3. Nearly every perspective is a spec. (a poignant point of Carl Sagan's.. see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p86BPM1GV8M)
I felt I had to insert the word, "nearly" to avoid the error: There are
(nearly) no absolutes.
I can watch ants for hours….. before getting bored ;-).
But in the Physics way, we, as individual observers, are at the centre of our own individual event horizons and thus at the centre of it all. That however does not imply that we are at the centre of attention, except for our own.
I think we are connected, at the very least, by a collective unconsciousness that we hook into via our hardware (per Jung).
Showing our uniqueness through consciousness and our commonality through unconsciousness. Self-interest and altruism are the shifting foreground and background effects of this. Our sense of being observed makes some sense if looked at in this way. And also of being the observer.
The Creator isn't asking anyone to "grovel". It is tough to learn we are lawless rebels. The "shred of justification" is that He is not limited by time as we are. You are making assumptions from your own point of view, and your own limits.
He can spend an eternity in the present nanosecond and not be diminished at all. If you could do this you could answer any question, number the hairs on a person's head, any person, all people. He dwells anywhen without limit.
It's true that "we need to work together". Of course how to accomplish this is the whole debate. He offers a way, but too many, out of pride and ignorance, reject His laws, thinking they can do better, {thinking they have done better}. History shows the folly in that. God's way has never been tried, accept by a few individuals.
How about "respecting" Him as a "real sentient being". Maybe He is telling the truth and we are just too myopic to see it.
LJC: Given the thousands of years since the Bible was collected and published, you don't think that any of the numerous cults/faiths/religions have earnestly tried to live exactly by the many vague and sometimes contradictory edicts that you and they believe are God given?
Anyway, this post is about how big Creation really is. The comic simply points out that a random minuscule slice of sky reveals hundreds of visible galactic clusters, each with hundreds of galaxies, each with billions of stars, each with several planets (on average). It is reasonable to believe that the same laws and forces of nature that we have discovered here work there, as well. Given that, the chance of there being advanced life on some of the planets in that tiny snapshot approaches certainty. Multiply that by the millions of other snapshots it takes to fill the rest of the sky.
If God only got it right right here, then that is a miracle, indeed!
God is infinite, of course He got it "right" everywhere, meaning He is still getting it right. Creation is not finished. One of Jesus' names is "the beginning of the creation of God". He has just barely gotten started.
God has the capacity to do it all. He can create all the galaxies, etc. etc etc. and still have a personal relationship with every individual "real sentient being" on all of them. God is not limited to measuring things and using logic and being reasonable. "In Him we live and move and have our being." God is bigger than creation and can {is able} to do with it whatever He wills.