Before the beginning there was …
I think Dawkins’ work in The God Delusion and that of other scientists is useful in helping to clarify a lot of the historical and hysterical claims made by many mystics and religionists about the true history of the Earth.
I also think we need to move forward beyond the US vs THEM approach to this discussion.
My way of combining what I learnt as a child about the Judeo-Christian-Islamic religious theory set out in the Genesis version and what I learnt as a grown-up about the current body of physical evidence in the Big Bang scientific theory is this:
• “In the beginning God created heaven and Earth” (Genesis)
• But what happened before the beginning?
• Before the beginning there was an awesome bang.
• A BIG BANG! A very, big, big, big bang.
• This bang was a meta-natural bang.
• This bang came from all of nature’s laws of physics and was the mother of all bangs.
• From this BIG BANG arose the Grand Operating Design of the whole universe that we know of.
• We can call this grand operating design G.O.D.
• Both religion and science are different ways that human beings have devised to try to explain and to understand the G.O.D.
Albert Einstein wrote, “What I see in Nature is a grand design that we can understand only imperfectly, one with which a responsible person must look at with humility. This is a genuine religious feeling and has nothing to do with mysticism … I do not believe in the immortality of the individual, and I consider ethics to be an exclusively human concern with no superhuman authority behind it.”
November 20th, 2009 at 9:31 pm
I think that einsteins comment has everything to do with mysticism. as it is now being understood. Buddhist mysticism tells us that the ego is not eternal, and nor is the self, mysticism then does not allow for immortality of the individual. Furthermore mysticism goes further than to make ethics purely human, it makes it purely individual. In Mysticism the only ultimate ethical imperative is to understand and express ones true will. this furthers unifying the ego and the self which Jung described as individuation.
Modern mysticism can agree with G.O.D. as Grand Operating Design (although still too small a definition of an infinite unknowable that lies beyond human perception). However, looking at the light only blinds, to learn about light you must observe what it shines upon. Us Humans.
October 11th, 2009 at 11:46 pm
Einstein’s insights “I do not believe in immortality of the individual, and I consider ethics to be an exclusively human concern with no supernatural authority behind it” contradict purveyors of eternal salvation and divine-driven morality.
February 14th, 2009 at 4:56 pm
g.o.d
gracious omniscient desire
would most very definitely ‘go off’..
naturally explode.. into a very very big bang