This is reality in a universe without God: there is no hope; there is no purpose. It reminds me of T.S. Eliot’s haunting lines:
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.What is true of mankind as a whole is true of each of us individually: we are here to no purpose. If there is no God, then our life is not fundamentally different from that of a dog.
— William Lane Craig
I heard this quote recently, and I immediately thought, it’s also not fundamentally different from that of a god. If God is the “uncaused first cause,” then his life has no higher purpose. There is no “reason” for him to exist. In fact, when you really get down to it, the best reason for God to exist is to explain our own existence. Doesn’t that minimize his importance when you look at it that way? So many of the arguments for God really come down to saying:
We’re so magnificent and complex, we simply can’t be an accident! There must be some reason for our being here! So if we exist, God must exist.
Talk about arrogance! We think so highly of ourselves that we insist the Universe was created for us. But this insistence creates an interesting problem. It claims that we’re so amazing, we deserve to have a higher power interested in us. But this higher power doesn’t deserve the same thing?
If our lives are empty and meaningless without God, what does it say about God’s existence? Wouldn’t his be just as meaningless and empty?
On the other hand, if we say his existence isn’t meaningless because he infuses it with his own meaning and purpose, why couldn’t that same thing be true of us? Instead of having a purpose given to us, we make our own.
Matt Dillahunty of The Atheist Experience answered the issue this way:
You know, to put it simply, I guess this whole line of argument really just seems like wishful thinking to me. Am I missing something? Do you think the “higher purpose” argument is convincing to many people?
Finding Truth 
Speaking of dopamine —
Yes, I know, Nate – you had a thread going with literally thousands of comments, and now it’s like a ghost town over here, and I feel badly about that. But the truth is, we’re dopamine whores, Nate – we’re all over at VioletWisp’s No Such Thing As Conversion thread, defending atheism from a theist, biker-looking guy with a foot-long gray beard, a shiny bald head, and the manners of a Mike.
So…Loyalty? – Dopamine, with a side of adrenalin? Gotta go, Nate –!
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exactly right, the bride of Christ,
jeezzuuuusss gonna nail every man, woman and child on his wedding night.
these people gonna be soooo luuuuuccckkkkyyyyy,
cause according to scripture,
jeeezzzuuusss is well hung.
I’ve been saying that for years but no one ever believes me.
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Fell right into my trap as planned.
The catch here is that the 144,000 to be Jesus’ bride are all virgins. That would rule out fornicators, married people (or divorced people) and the prepubescent.
Jesus is thought to be on the short side — under 5’2″ maybe less. And he is said to be not that handsome: Not having a desirable visage.
For those who are sensitive to such things, he has a beard.
And he’s kinda old, having a white beard and being 2,000 years or so old.
Also has scars. You know, from the nails and being beaten.
The irony is that he probably doesn’t want gay guys, even if they qualify to the above requirements, although his affectionate connection to John is suggestive….
Anyway, if you were to make it, expect lots of competition. 144,000 isn’t exactly a small number for a harem.
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“Also has scars. You know, from the nails and being beaten.”
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“Jesus is thought to be on the short side — under 5’2″ maybe less.”
How Jesus is pictured, and how he more likely REALLY looked:
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B.O.M. you and your traps, I fell for it again, when will I ever learn.
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Hmm, the whole bride of Christ thing… Makes you think twice about those two disciples known as the “sons of thunder”…
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Hi Nate, ok, Ark’s last comment seems to indicate that he’s grown weary of me commenting on his blog, so I’ll respond to your last couple of comments here, (cuz I do think they are good ones…)
You said, “At least for me, it’s not that I reject the Christian God because he’s a despot — he could certainly be a despot and still be quite real. It’s that the Bible portrays him as a despot while describing him as loving, merciful, etc. That’s a contradiction. It seems like a believable mistake for people to make long ago, when human sacrifice was still practiced on occasion and when gods were tribal. So it’s either just a myth, or this is an untrustworthy god. If he were real, I would believe in him, but I like to think I’d have the strength of character not to worship him just as I hope I wouldn’t have been a “good Nazi” under Hitler.
This is one of the most common criticisms of the God of the Bible, which I personally find rather interesting when compared to the amount of times I’ve heard people complaining about the theistic beliefs in a figure like, say, Kali, who dances around with a necklace of human skulls around her neck… (nobody seems threatened or offended by that for some reason, so interesting why certain “imaginary gods” are so much more of a threat than others….)
But does the Bible really portray God as a “despot”..?
First, yes, in the Bible, God kills people. Directly. Lots of them. If for yourself, that fact means God is automatically a despot, regardless of whatever additional qualifiers or nuances might be found upon further examination, then I suppose it’s a moot point to discuss. Personally, I would suggest that the fact that the God of the Bible is portrayed as having ultimate power, ultimate moral authority, and does in fact exercise that power/authority at times He of His choosing where He goes so far as to prematurely end the lives of certain people whose behavior He has found particularly egregious, does not mean He is a “despot”, but rather, a King/Ruler/Authority. We all understand this to be almost a conditional aspect to considering any being as a “god”, yet then it is used to then disqualify that being as an “acceptable God”..?
The question of course becomes one of asking whether or not God was justified in killing the people He killed. Like you said, it could very well be that God was NOT just, or good, or loving, but simply a blood thirsty, power-hungry freak who fancies creating people simply for the sake of killing them off willy nilly. And as you said, that is not how the Bible describes Yahweh, so what’s the Truth? Is the Bible lying, or are our perceptions perhaps a little off?
Part of my response to Ark earlier included a description of my coming to believe in a literal interpretation of the verses in Genesis 6. I wasn’t including that to be “cheeky” or cute, but to explain something that was in fact a very serious and gut-wrenching part of my process in coming to accept the entirety of the Bible as being true, and literally so, not just as “allegory” or “mythology”….
I did a great deal of looking into the whole question of the Nephilim, and was rather amazed to come out the other side having discovered that this belief in “angels having offspring” was actually totally ubiquitous during the time when even the New Testament was written. All the “church fathers” believed it, and not even as some “bizarre theory”, but it was so universally accepted it wasn’t even something that was often mentioned, let alone debated. I find that very interesting. Anyhow, the point of correlation is that it very much does tie into the so-called “genocidal” God as alleged to be murdering scores of innocent people in the flood and later in the conquest of Canaan. If God was in fact not murdering hapless human inhabitants, but actually cleansing the land from “Nephilim tribes”, (human/angel hybrids) then, you may very reject the idea outright, but in the very least you have to reconsider the charge of God being a mass-murderer of humanity. Mass murderer of hybrid beings perhaps, but then, who has the authority to decide which creations were “valid” and thus deserving of preservation, and which ones were wholly and utterly aberrations, worthy of being erased by the Creator’s hand? I would say God has that right. Anyhow, I wasn’t trying to be facetious whatsoever, although I realize how much it could’ve come across that way…
However, there ARE plenty of other examples where the Bible describes God suddenly and violently killing people in various ways, whether it was Korah being swallowed up by the earth, or all the Egyptians suffering under the plagues in Egypt, or even the Israelites dying in the desert over time, instead of being allowed to enter the Promised Land. In every case, God has the right to determine when and how people die, because He is God, but does that automatically infer that He is tyrannical, or unloving, or unforgiving..? Somehow we have come to the place of believing that the two are absolutely inconsistent, that the only way an all powerful God could be loving was if He never enacted immediate judgement on anyone, for any reason. I’m not sure where this reasoning comes from, but I would suggest it could use a little questioning…
The bottom line is, because He is God, and we are not, there are going to be instances on this side of eternity where we, as finite beings, are simply not privy to “the whole story” anyhow. It’s a little strange, don’t you think, for us to reject there being a God who is beyond us, because we are not actually functioning on the exact same level as He is, in every way, knowing everything ourselves, and understanding everything He does to the degree that He does. It’s basically like saying, “I reject God because I reject the idea that He could possibly understand something better or to a degree that I do not…”
I find that funny as well, because I encounter this kind of attitude in my own children all the time, yet their insistence that they know all they need to know about a given situation doesn’t convince me that humans can be quite limited in their scope and comprehension of certain things, and at times I simply have to tell them, “Well, I’m your Dad, and that’s how it’s gonna be, cuz you don’t understand everything about this issue yet…”
The main reason I don’t believe in God actually just comes from lack of evidence.
I suppose evidence differs depending on who is demanding it, and what is allowed to “qualify” as evidence. If it has to fit in your test tube, or be some kind of personal experience whereby you saw the face of God with your own two eyes, then that is a rather limited arena…
So let’s look at it like this. Most Christians say that God wants a relationship with people, and Jesus was sent as a sacrifice so we could mend that relationship that was severed in the Garden of Eden. When asked why God appears so hidden, it’s said that if God made himself known to us, it would wreck our free will.
However, God supposedly made himself known to a number of people in the Bible, and Hebrews 11 still says that these were all people of faith. Even Moses still had the ability to disobey one of God’s commands, which led to him being left out of Canaan. Solomon interacted with God, but supposedly fell away and served other gods later in life.
So the idea that God can’t reveal himself without circumventing free will is not supported by the Bible.”
This was the main thing I wanted to respond to, because I think your whole point here is really just based on a faulty definition, or faulty wording, or faulty something…
You seem to be equating the phrase “Made Himself known to”= “Made someone believe and put faith in”.
To be “known to” someone else, simply means they know about you, know who you are, know you exist. Well, the Bible says that Satan fully knows that God exists, yet he does anything but love and serve and put his faith in God!
I don’t know where you heard such an argument like “If God made Himself known to us, if would violate our Free Will”. The Bible sure doesn’t make that argument. It actually says that God makes Himself “known” to us all the time, in many ways. It says that even that thing we today call a “conscience” is in fact a sort of “echo of God’s law” written on the heart of every person. I would say that this itself is one of the strongest evidences of God that exists in the universe.
I have yet to hear an atheist, or deist, or mystic, or someone who believes in “panspermia” or whatever, give any sort of viable explanation as to why there exists an innate sense of morality within mankind. Sure, you will hear plenty of rambling circular thought-bombs talking about “situational ethics” and how “morality is evolving” and so and so forth, but truly, upon any amount of serious inspection, they implode, fall flat, disintegrate.
Even the staunchest of atheists isn’t going to be found spouting off something about “transitional ethics” if say, their child was just murdered…. They are going to feel a visceral and concrete sense of true, definitive violation of a moral absolute, because that’s exactly what has occurred.
Anyhow, I suppose I’m rabbit-trailing onto the topic of moral absolutes (probably because these discussions always seem to get there eventually), when I meant to address your comment about Hebrews 11. Basically it’s pretty simple. Yes, God made Himself known to people, and in turn, many of those people responded with faith. Some did for a while, like Solomon, but his heart turned away and he did in fact embrace some pretty nasty, pagan gods and practices. (a lot of Christians in fact don’t realize how messed up Solomon was by the end of his life…)
But… Solomon and Moses don’t exactly hold to the comparison you were making, because yes, you are correct in saying that faith in God doesn’t mean we aren’t still capable of disobeying Him, but the essence of true Faith isn’t moral perfection, but simply Trust. God did indeed prevent Moses from entering into the land of Canaan, because of his disobedience earlier, BUT, it’s very interesting to read elsewhere in the same book of Hebrews where it explains how when we look back to guys like Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and then later Moses, how they were all “promised” that land (hence the term, “the Promised Land”…) yet none of them actually received it. Abraham lived there, but never possessed it, never owned it, never gave it as an inheritance either, so did God not make good on His promise? But then Hebrews explains what it all means, what the entire Abrahamic covenant itself was all about! It wasn’t about land at all, in the temporal, earthly sense. It was about “entering His rest”, meaning the hereafter, the “New Jerusalem”, the ultimate, eternal “Promised Land”, what is so often referred to as “heaven”… So basically, yes, Moses disobeyed, and there was a “temporal consequence” to that action, yet it didn’t nullify Moses’s saving Faith overall, and in the end, God’s sovereignty used it to keep Moses OUT of the physical land of Canaan, to serve as a sign, a proof, to those Israelites who would later misunderstand and misinterpret the covenant made to Abraham, losing sight of the Kingdom of God, and making it all about themselves and their desire to establish an earthly kingdom, apart from God’s reign….
Remember what the Israelites did when they saw the mountain consumed with fire, and the voice of God thundering down on them…? They saw God in a spectacle that few people ever will in their lifetimes, yet somehow it wasn’t enough to coerce them into belief, into true, trusting faith…
Faith is not merely a consequence of what “evidence” and experience goes in, but on the condition of the heart, the willingness to submit and be humbled before someone beyond our control, beyond our ability to critique and judge for ourselves in every case. It means forgoing the desire to think we ourselves should have every right to “eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil”, as it were…..
Wow that was long. Sorry, but there ya go. Response in earnest! Thanks for reading, if you got this far….
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fantasies are fun
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“Faith is not merely a consequence of what “evidence” and experience goes in, but on the condition of the heart, the willingness to submit and be humbled before someone beyond our control, beyond our ability to critique and judge for ourselves in every case. It means forgoing the desire to think we ourselves should have every right to “eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil”, as it were…..”
It’s funny. I am willing to submit and be humbled, as I have demonstrated in my life. It is completely clear to me that there are many powers greater than myself. I do not think we have the ability or the right to know everything there is to know. I have experienced some very strange phenomena, for which I have no good explanation.
Yet I do not believe in a god. Why is it too much to ask for a deity to have shown concretely that he or she exists, to me, before I believe? Why is it that the requirement for faith is specifically NOT concrete evidence? It would seem so much simpler for a god to just make it clear that he or she exists, be rightfully believed in, and get on with it.
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Stranger than Fiction,
You said,
“This is one of the most common criticisms of the God of the Bible, which I personally find rather interesting when compared to the amount of times I’ve heard people complaining about the theistic beliefs in a figure like, say, Kali, who dances around with a necklace of human skulls around her neck… (nobody seems threatened or offended by that for some reason, so interesting why certain “imaginary gods” are so much more of a threat than others….)”
I’m not sure it’s that we’re all accepting of kali, but more that we’re less affected by kali where we live. The god of the bible is all around us and also the god we grew up with – so he’s the one that’s “in range” so to speak.
Regarding whether or not god is portrayed as a despot, I don’t really care what we call him, but the bible does say that god is just and loving and merciful. Sure, it also says he’s wrath and vengeance as well, and I do not think that these descriptions have to be contradictions, but I do think in some of the descriptions, the nature of god is contradicted.
Just a few examples,
1) God killed David’s baby to punish David for a crime David committed. To you, is that just? Even Ezekiel 18: 19-21 seem to say it is unjust.
2) God commanded the slaughter of Canaanites so that the Israelites could have their land. This slaughter included women and children. In some instances the young girls were spared, as long as they were virgins, for the Israelites’ use. Is this just, righteous or merciful? It’s similar to what ISIL is doing now – is that okay? And you say the god of the bible was right but that ISIL is wrong, then are you saying that the actions themselves aren’t wrong, and that an action is only right or wrong if god says it is?
You also said this,
“The bottom line is, because He is God, and we are not, there are going to be instances on this side of eternity where we, as finite beings, are simply not privy to “the whole story” anyhow. It’s a little strange, don’t you think, for us to reject there being a God who is beyond us, because we are not actually functioning on the exact same level as He is, in every way, knowing everything ourselves, and understanding everything He does to the degree that He does. It’s basically like saying, “I reject God because I reject the idea that He could possibly understand something better or to a degree that I do not…””
Isn’t it also interesting that people are more merciful than god? I cannot think of anyone, under any scenario, that I would like to torture for eternity. I cannot fathom killing random babies because I want their parent’s homes and virgin sisters for myself. God requires people to ask for forgiveness before he gives it, often people forgive without a word or any prerequisite – but I digress…
I think the real bottom line is that what you know of god is merely unsubstantiated claims from other men. These men wrote the bible, claiming to speak for god. Other men translated it and copied it, and edited it, etc – all men, not even angel/human hybrids – ordinary men. Why base your faith on their claims?
Evidence isn’t hard to grasp as a concept. What evidence did the apostles have? Or Elijah, or Gideon or Moses, or pick one… Now, what have we, but an old book of claims with scientific errors like, “a seed must die before it will grow,” and confusions on where birds came from (water or earth – gen 1 & 2) and the list goes on. We have evidence, but from my perspective it’s not in the bible’s favor.
And you said this,
“It actually says that God makes Himself “known” to us all the time, in many ways.”
It may help if he did it in a real and tangible way, like he did with those people in hebrews 11, where they knew, without a doubt, that he was real. Now you may be thinking, “I know without a doubt,” but you don’t, you only believe, and there is a difference. How do you know? Because of the bible or because a feeling in your heart? How about knowing the same way you know you have a real father and mother? Because you see them for real?
And morality is very likely something we’re born with. Humans aren’t the only ones who show it, but all animals who live in communities and groups exude it… you’re not suggesting they read the bible too? If it looks like scientific answers you’ve heard or read “fall flat” it could be that you haven’t really read up on the subject or adequately thought it through. Are you suggesting that morality (as the common def. goes) doesn’t make sense? I think it does.
“Remember what the Israelites did when they saw the mountain consumed with fire, and the voice of God thundering down on them…? They saw God in a spectacle that few people ever will in their lifetimes, yet somehow it wasn’t enough to coerce them into belief, into true, trusting faith…”
I do remember. It is something that only did they not trust after walking through the read sea, after leaving the plagues and now after seeing the burning mountain that they did not trust. And not only did they still not trust, they also thought that golden calves were just as powerful – which in reality could be a hint that those afore mentioned miracles (that cant be repeated) weren’t as grandiose as the book claimed…
man, it’s just that it’s a claim about that god, and then that claim changes some when the israelites encounter other influences like the Persians and it’s all just a bunch of claims in an old compilation of books that the Catholics put together…
why do you find it believable?
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Nothing despotic about that, is there –?
And why “thousands?” Why not billions, or millions, such as we have today? Unless that number is all of which Bronze Age authors could conceive. But wait – this is god! Surely HE would know, wouldn’t he? And supposedly it IS in his words!
I really don’t have time for this – you swat one down, and another one pops up! It’s like cockroaches!
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(you seem to have plenty of time for it when no one is challenging your hysterical lobs…)
I’m not sure I follow the point you are trying to make. It seems you understand that verse in Exodus to essentially be saying that “visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children” (or simply “punishes the guilty”, in other versions…) to mean some kind of murder/death/kill type of enactment. It’s not saying that God kills the children of the guilty, unto the third and fourth generation (cuz really, how would that even be possible, if he instantly smote the first generation of children, how would they make more children..?) There are many types of “punishment”, and in essence it is talking about consequences for sin, as a sober reality, and this verse really is a pretty stark reminder how so many of the decisions I make do in fact impact the lives of my own children, and their children, etc… Consequences are real, and the verse is simply pointing to that as an example of a way in which God does meet out types of punishment. But this doesn’t contradict the statement about God being merciful and gracious, because in fact the scripture says that the punishment for sin is death, and if God wasn’t inclined to mercy, He’d have simply wiped us all out a long time ago. Yet we’re still here, so, if there is a God, He seems to have spared us all from annihilation…
However, your picking on the term “thousands” as some kind of glaring irrationality is rather absurd. It’s a literary device, simply meaning “lots”. Not quite the embarrassment to the concept of divine authorship you seem to think it is…
But anyhow, “I really don’t have time for this”… (?) Funny how I keep hearing that. First it’s haughty challenges about how “no thinking person could explain Christianity, or even attempt to make a rationale presentation of this genocidal God” etc., and then as soon as you present something to chew, anything to show that it’s not the fish-in-a-barrel shootout you think it is, suddenly everyone’s got better things to do and resort to even more angst-filled, straw-man arguments….
I can’t help but wonder if it really isn’t just the idea itself of there being a God who has the “right” to kill us where we stand, if He chooses to do so, that doesn’t sit well with us…? It prompts such indignant resistance…
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Oh yeah … that loving, tender, gracious “God who has the ‘right’ to kill us where we stand.” Just the kind of god that makes my heart sing.
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“you seem to have plenty of time for it when no one is challenging your hysterical lobs…”
I had things to do, I got them done – now that really IS strange behavior, isn’t it?
I never said any of that – you really should look into those meds —
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@Truth…..
When one acknowledges that the Pentateuch is fiction, – and it is, how on earth does any of this make a blind bit of sense?
In fact , all we have to do is take two things from the OT to completely rubbish your entire tome.
Moses and Noah ( flood).
Accept these as fictitious then your whole delicious delusion collapse like a house of cards.
Unless ….you are able to provide verifiable evidence that overturns the findings and conclusions of virtually the entire non-evangelical scientific and scholarly world?
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stranger than fiction,
the bible is an old book of claims that superstitious men made, at best – why place so much stock into those claims? In other words, we don’t have anything that god said, but only things that people said that he said.
is killing a man’s baby just, if the baby was killed to punish the father for a crime the father committed?
Is slaughtering toddlers and baby boys just or merciful when done so that one group can take the land, homes, positions and virgin girls of another group (similar to what ISIL is doing now)?
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Hi truthisstrangerthanfiction, let me be the first to welcome you to Nate’s blog. Do you have a shorter name / nickname that you’d like to be called? I’d like to respond to a few of your points:
1. You made a point that we all have an inherent moral conscience and that this is very good evidence for a god.
This case is laid out pretty well by C.S. Lewis in his book “Mere Christianity”. I do have a few concerns about it though. First, it appears to me that there is no universal agreement on a large portion of moral issues such as abortion, homosexuality, alcohol consumption, smoking, eating animals, death with dignity, stem cell research, fornication, divorce, polygamy, women’s rights, etc. Second, it appears the things that we do agree on (murder and torture) could be explained naturally by preservation of the species. In other words, instincts (like empathy) that help a species survive have a better chance of proliferating than destructive instincts. Third, it appears that some humans are born that do not have these empathic instincts (I am thinking of psychopaths) which is fortunately a small number, but would indicate a deviation from the universality of this moral “conscience”.
2. You made a point that Yahweh, as described in the old testament, has supreme authority and that claims that he is “despotic” have no relevance because he is in control and has the right to do so.
I think when atheists make claims like this they are trying to point out internal contradictions within the texts, not necessarily saying that they “don’t like him”. I mean if you don’t believe someone exists it would be silly to not like them. Does anyone dislike Thor?
As William pointed out there are several instances in the Bible when judgments by Yahweh appear to be “unfair”. This would be in contradiction to other portions of the Bible that say he is “fair” in a very utmost sense. Killing David’s baby for David’s sin, killing 70,000 men when David took a census, killing the firstborns in Egypt for pharaoh’s stubbornness – these are cases when a judgment is given to those who did not commit the crime (i.e. unfair).
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Hi strangerthanfiction,
Sorry I didn’t get a chance to reply sooner. And let me echo Dave’s question about whether or not there’s a shorter name you’d like to go by? 🙂
Several other people have already asked you questions that are similar to what I would have asked, so I’ll try to stay very brief.
First, if there really were human/angel hybrids, why should we assume it wouldn’t be just as immoral to slaughter them as it is humans?
Secondly, as a couple of have already pointed out, the way these individuals were destroyed is pretty terrible, and it’s hard to white-wash it. I used to view these things similarly to how you’ve laid it out (as you can see from this golden oldie), but I’ve since come to view it differently: I agree that God (if he exists) would be beyond our understanding in many ways. However, terms like “loving, merciful, just” are pretty easy to understand. And events like a global flood, commands of genocide, and punishing people for someone else’s crimes are also easy to understand — and the two categories don’t really mesh together.
If the Bible is an accurate portrait of God, then I want to know that, even if I don’t like it. But as William pointed out, the Bible was written by men (anonymously, for the most part) and compiled by men, and it appears to have a number of faults. So when I see these potential contradictions in the character of the god it describes, I don’t say “well, who am I to judge God?” and accept their claims. Instead, I become very skeptical of what they’re saying.
And that relates to my final point as well. I agree with you that knowledge of god’s existence and faith are not quite the same thing. However, it’s very hard to have real faith in a being that can’t be shown to exist.
Thanks again for the conversation, and welcome to my blog! 🙂
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I wasn’t trying to imply that you specifically said those things, I was admittedly making a generalization about the kinds of responses I’ve been receiving from atheists in general as of late….
But now that you mention it, gee… “You should look into those meds”.. You’re so clever. I never would’ve thought of simply accusing someone else of mental illness as an attempt at discrediting them…. 😉
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thetruthisstrangerthanfiction,
do you have anything else to add? a few more responses, perhaps?
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You’re so clever. I never would’ve thought of simply accusing someone else of mental illness as an attempt at discrediting them….
It’s certainly a reasonable explanation, as would be being under ten.
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BTW, not interested in discrediting you, only in understanding the reasons, in the 21st century, for your belief in any religion that involves magic.
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“magic”……
How much of what you and I experience every day and now accept as completely normal and mundane, do you think would be completely mind-blowing to someone from say, a hundred years ago, to the degree that they would perceive them as “magical”…?
How is it then that you cannot hardly conceive of the possibility that there are now, even still, a great many facets to the universe we live in which our “advanced” human minds have barely began to comprehend…?
So much of the supposed conflict between “science” and “magic” can be quite easily overcome by bridging the gap created between the two largely created by semantics.
One person might call it “the magical fire-less oven”, and someone else just “the microwave”…
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Well, when your god’s magic reaches the point where there’s a common term for it, drop me a line. Meanwhile, please give those meds some serious consideration —
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