"How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, 'This is better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant'? Instead they say, /No, no, no, my god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way/." - Carl Sagan, shortly before his death
Given the vastness of the 13.8 billion year old, 213 duovigintillon (69 zeroes) cubic kilometer Universe and the miniscule limits of humanity’s knowledge and awareness of that entirety, no deity conceived on Earth can be anything other than imaginary. What makes this even more so is the desire of humans to create deity in their own image, which, of course, makes following the deity easier. As well as serving one’s own prejudices and bigotries and material self-interest.
Given the vastness of the 13.8 billion year old, 213 duovigintillon (69 zeroes) cubic kilometer Universe and the miniscule limits of humanity’s knowledge and awareness of that entirety, no deity conceived on Earth can be anything other than imaginary. What makes this even more so is the desire of humans to create deity in their own image, which, of course, makes following the deity easier. As well as serving one’s own prejudices and bigotries and material self-interest.
To believe is to reject faith. To believe is to define, and therefore to
control. Belief is not an act of
submission. Belief is an act of
domination. Belief makes oneself
superior by controlling that in which one believes. Therefore, belief, in anything, is
blasphemy. To have faith, one must give
up belief. One must surrender the wish
to control.
Humans, and very likely members of any other sentient and
sapient species in the vastness of the universe, lack the capacity to perceive deity
other than what can be produced in their own imaginations. Certainly not one deserving of the title “God”,
one who creates, redeems, and transforms the universe throughout the infinity
of space and the eternity of time.
Especially since in order to create, redeem, and transform Being, such
an entity would necessarily have to be Beyond Being.
Arrogant hubris beyond belief comes in the form of a single
small ethnic group of a 200,000 year old race (subspecies) of a 2 million year
old species on a single planet in a ten planet star system in a galaxy of 200
billion stars and 40 billion class-M planets which is merely one of 500 billion
galaxies in that universe claiming to be the one “Chosen People” of their
particular imaginary entity is like being the mouse that roared, except that
the mouse would be relatively smaller than a single viron. Or to put it into a more earthly perspective, a bit like the youngest child of the poorest family of sitio Gasdam in barangay Dau in the municipality of Mabalacat in the Republic of the Philippines claiming to be the rightful emperor of the world. Which, of course, merely demonstrates what I
said above about belief.
Any deity tiny enough to be under the control of such a
cabal is too small for our universe.
No comments:
Post a Comment