Can religious belief really match the wonder of science?
Tonight I went out into the garden, for a cigarette.
As I stood there, smoking, I looked around at the moon and the starry sky and the wisps if clouds, at the plants, darker shadows against the backdrop of the moonlit night, that turned the darkness of the bushes into mottled shade, I saw a glow in the undergrowth.
I wondered at the cool, bright light, it was not the diaphanous glow of a cats’ eyes, for those would blink, nor could it be a torch, for that would shine a beam somewhere further than itself. Was it St. Anselmo’s fire, I was not in a swamp and there were so no marsh gases to burn.
Was it a star, fallen to earth and lost in the damp coolness of the darkened greenery? Or a tiny alien ship, hiding from view? Perhaps it was a fairy, or a pixie, carrying a minuscule lantern?
I had to investigate, so, crouching by the wall, looking through the perforated brick I tried to gauge where it was located.
After a while I climbed on a ledge, I saw that I was seeing a shiny leaf reflecting the light of the moon that peeped through the branches above.
At first I felt disappointed, there was no fallen star, no tiny alien ship, no fairy and no pixie; but then I began to wonder about the nature of perception and how the ignorant mind observing something wondrous and unusual has several choices open to it.
It can ignore it and return to its mundane concerns, it can decide to make-up some outlandish explanation, or it can go and investigate.
A leaf reflecting the moonlight then seemed to me a metaphor for the wonder of the world, the moon, sun and stars, all inexplicable to the primitive mind.
Some have chosen to accept and ignore them, others have constructed myths and gods to explain them, however implausible, while others have set about discovering what it is made of, how it all fits together and science evolved.
I find myself glad that I went to take a look and that I found that a tiny leaf hidden in the undergrowth, by sheer chance, against all odds, reflected the light of a celestial body millions of kilometres away.
Improbably, through that tiny discovery I had a glimpse into the religious mind, that would rather sit in darkness and call a leaf a miracle, instead of setting on the path to knowledge and open itself to discovery, surprise, disappointment even, but open nonetheless, instead of being content of remaining ignorant and dazzled by myths, legends and lies.
This has reminded me of Richard Dawkins’ “Unravelling the rainbow”, which lies still, unfinished, on my shelf. It made me want to go and read it again, from the beginning, and revisit his weighty tome on the glory of knowledge and discovery, countering in far greater depth than I can, here, the accusation that science kills romance and wonder.
Like him, I believe science opens the mind to wonder in a way that no mythology of gods, miracles, angels and portents can.
Therein lies the eternal joy of learning something new every moment of our lives, instead of revisiting someone else’s tales and convoluted lies about a god I have never seen.
In nature and in the universe beyond our world, I see a host of the the most amazing miracles, each a wonder in itself, from the vastness of the cosmos to the unravelling discoveries of particle physics.
An atom, though not really much like a solar system, yet in some ways behaves a one, to my mind, and each electron might be a planet, inhabited by bipedal creatures hat muse at the existence of their universe, which I call my body.
I do not require them to worship me, I made no conscious contribution to their existence and such adorations would be both, undeserved and wasteful.
I would far rather they studied Universe Me and discovered that matter is made of particles, put together thus and thus, that energy behaves in this and that way, that the two interact in predictable ways, mostly, and that even the unpredictable can be understood, if they put their microscopic minds to it.
I would encourage those who consider science dry and unromantic to look again, to study and learn to appreciate the exquisite beauty of the universe, the world and ourselves and be grateful that we ave evolved such a wonderful brain.
Many miss the point: it isn’t necessary for the "god" they believe in to be the creator anymore than it it is necessary that I "create whatever inhabits the atoms of Uiverse Me. I simply exist, whatever inhabits those subatomic dimensions simply exists, there is no act of "creation", just existence on many levels, all contained within each other, like Russian Dolls.
Thus gods are surplus to requirement, if we allow ourselves not to be afraid to explore, we become part of that continuum… without need for mythologies to justify our wonder, nor of gods to explain what, in time, we may or may not understand.
I love how there’s no mention of scientific laws and theories in the bible but whenever a new scientific discovery is made the religious folk chorus ‘oh yeah..well erm…god did that!’ Rather convenient that no matter what a sane person discovers or says about the universe and life, a religious believer can just say ‘god made that’.
There is no arguing with them, leave them to their frankly, really boring fantasies, whilst the rest of us learn and discover the real wonders of life and the universe. It’s their loss that they don’t seek out truth because it’s a million times more amazing that the little ‘miracles’ in that old book they bang on about.
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