, April 2002
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Go outside on a sunny day. Feel the warmth on your face as you squint at the sun... You try and imagine how far away it is... 93 million miles... Nope - it won't fit in your head... Smile as you consider that the sun has been burning for 4.6 billion years; and has enough fuel to last another five billion years. You decide to enjoy the time you've got ;> Watch as a bird flies off with a worm to its nest. Think about the struggle for existence faced by all living things. We humans aren't so different - and don't have it so bad... At least you're not the worm! Feel the grass beneath your feet. Dwell on the fact that plants with roots have been around for 350 million years; and that hominids have been walking around on two legs for all of four million years... You come back at night. You try and count the stars you can see - but there are just too many... You remember some lines from Monty Python: "Our galaxy itself contains a hundred billion stars; It's a hundred thousand light-years side to side; It bulges in the middle sixteen thousand light-years thick, But out by us it's just three thousand light-years wide..."You remember that the light from furthest we can see, with the most powerful telescopes, left on its journey over fifteen billion years ago... It's too big for the human brain to cope with - but it's still wonderful to think that you are here. For some reason, you think about Jesus Christ... A man supposedly born 2,000 years ago. You think of his claims that he came to Earth to save us from ourselves - and that only by believing him can we be "saved". Saved from what, you wonder? Can you really believe that a Universe so big, so immense and so staggeringly beautiful, could have one all-powerful creator, intimately involved with each human being? It just doesn't make sense. What would have created the creator, you wonder? And can you really believe that a creator would send down one man, 2,000 years ago, to say that "salvation" came only through him? And that everyone else would be damned... What sense does that make? You think of all the well-meaning crazy people who have claimed to be god-men, and the very human mythologies of the ancients... You wait until dawn, and marvel the sun rises up above the horizon. You resolve to enjoy the world as it is.
From an original posted on the GodAndScience Messageboard on 16 April 2002. |
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