I have a new blog up that I'm going to use for my astronomical hobby. If you're interested, please visit Images of Creation.
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The civics of the Kingdom of God
12 comments:
I liked it but couldn't comment there. I love to comment, so without the ability to comment, my love didn't last. Do you think outer space is beautiful? I don't find it so, but your notion that it is also God's Creation makes it more open to this possibility in my view. I often forget that outer space exists. I am much more focused on inner space. Which I think is beautiful, because human.
Kirby,
I'm still surprised you couldn't comment. What's stopping you?
you astronomy wonks sure are lazy
do you think we'll live to experience gratuitous space travel
i mean what if you and kirby and i were to meet on mars
what then
jh,
you astronomy wonks sure are lazy
We've had a real run of cloudy weather. Last night was clear, but the humidity was off the charts, so the scope stayed in again :-(. I have choir tonight, but Thursday's looking pretty good. I'm actually very hopeful of the Thanksgiving weekend. No moon, and Orion will be up.
But I surely could have picked a place to live that was more suitable for my hobby, or a hobby that's more suitable to the place I live.
do you think we'll live to experience gratuitous space travel
I'm doubtful. The problem is that it takes a lot of energy to get people out of the gravity well, and the ways that we know how to do it are expensive and polluting. If the space elevator folks ever get there act together (now that's a technology!), maybe then.
i mean what if you and kirby and i were to meet on mars
what then
I suspect that you and I would find a nice martian bar, and try out the martian microbrews and listen to the local martian music. If we were short on either, I'd brew, and you'd make music. We'd probably try out the local Christian franchises, and/or start one if no one else had. My wife would tag along, and you'd find her even more entertaining than you'd find me. I'm an intellect, she's a force of nature.
Kirby would boycott our church, and write poetry about Adam Smith on Mars. He'd come to the bar just to be sociable (and to have an audience for his poetry), but he'd order Pepsi, complain about the music, and leave a quarter tip. ;-)
Nice. The moons stretching out from Jupiter at times are quite impressive (can see 4-5 with binocs with clear sky..or me ancient tasco). Rings of saturn--faintly. Or
sun filter and...stare at El Sol.
But space ..well doesn't look like ...Jeebus had much to do wit' it.
I laughed pretty hard about the representation of the three of us.
I laughed pretty hard about the representation of the three of us.
Glad you liked it :-).
'Tis been a long strange trip. Not sure we're near the end.
J,
But space ..well doesn't look like ...Jeebus had much to do wit' it.
I take seriously the notion of creator God, who built a universe that evolves lawfully, but not deterministically. Of course, the historical program of natural theology, of looking for evidence of and insight into God through contemplation of nature, seems unlikely to convince anyone who doesn't already believe. The cosmos is a de facto Rorschach test. We see what we see, and often project our own values onto the result. I don't see anything wrong with this, at least so long as we're honest about it.
And what I see is a universe created by God, a good, if dangerous universe. A beautiful universe that God sees with love, and which I try to see the same way. Those are my values.
Of course, I'm comfortable with materialistic explanations too. I just see them as answering very different questions. "How" vs. "why." It's not original, but it works for me.
A deistic inference may perhaps be warranted--what divine Order!--but traditionally judeo-christian? No comment. A supernova, or great oscillations in solar activity, and...bad hair day. See my comment on Queequeg's reflections on Design as well (ie, a black plague-- another bad hair day).
J,
A deistic inference may perhaps be warranted--what divine Order!--but traditionally judeo-christian? No comment.
I'd consider the program of natural theology to be almost miraculously successful if it was sufficient to carry an adeist (to coin a word that more accurately reflects in its roots the concept ordinarily associated with the word athesim) to deism. I do this because I want to introduce at nuanced definition of atheist to mean belief in a God who is relationship with humanity, and active in history.
You make a distinction between "a deistic inference" and "judeo-christian." I would describe this position as being deistic but atheistic, which is to say, it reflects a belief in creator God, albeit an impersonal God whose interaction with humanity ended with his creation of our universe. This was, the pretentions of the religious right notwithstanding, a pretty fair way of characterizing the faith of Jefferson, Franklin, and many of their peers.
But let me drag the anthropic principle into the discussion. I've long thought of the anthropic principle as a kind of post-hoc parlor trick, but I'm beginning to see real merit to it. The universe we live in seems oddly tuned to facilitate the evolution of order, which is to say, it seems oddly tuned so as to make it possible (perhaps even likely) that creatures such as ourselves would ultimately be present in it. This argues, if only from the principle of self-importance ;-) that not only does God exist, but he/she is also present in history. This seems much less ridiculous to me than a multi-verse of unobservable (and mostly uninteresting) universes.
But if God is present in history, how do we know him/her? I'd argue that it is not crazy to look in history for evidence of such interaction. This isn't to say that religions per se have been accurate or even adequate carriers of the revelations that have been entrusted to them, but it is to say that there is signal present in history that can still be extracted from the human encrustations present in all religion (organized or not).
Taking a more traditionalist line, Jesus (by which I mean the historical Jesus, not the Jesus of fundamentalists) is a figure of history who seemed to his contemporaries to be uniquely able to present God as being not only present in history, but present with them. In time, his followers came to understand this as meaning that God was present through Jesus, and indeed, Jesus was God.
This is not to say that the second (speculative) step, "Jesus is God," follows logically from the first (conservative) step, "God was present through Jesus," as the modern unitarians attest. Still, it is a step that I've taken with many others.
I suppose what I'd like for you to see is that a traditional Judeo-Christian God is very different from the god of the right. The traditional Judeo-Christian God accuses us, yet saves us despite our sin. The god of the right accuses everyone else of sin, and justifies us as saved by our own merits. These two, God and god, are intentionally confused by the right, but you and I do not need to be confused.
Thx for commentary Dr. Stu, and when time allows I will think about it--tho, note I have never claimed to be an "atheist".
In brief, natural theology (or Design so-called) combined with human history itself doesn't seem sufficient IHO to justify a leap of faith--there may be horses (some might view Equus as Design/anthropic/teleology, etc), fruit trees, crops (photosynthesis itself), and resources--and then are hordes of locusts arriving at harvest time, etc.(or..mounted Huns). That may be a bit cynical--so be it. One believes--or tries to do the right thing, more or less--with evidence lacking, I guess. Sort of Pascalian.
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