Thursday, May 13, 2004
Just what I've been thinking all along
And there's two things going on there. One is the sense that, if God made the universe, and he made it good, and he loved the universe so much that, as the Christians believe, he sent his only son, it's up to us to honor and respect and get to know the universe. I think it was Francis Bacon who said that God sets up the universe as a marvelous puzzle for us to get to know him by getting to know how he did things. By seeing how God created, we get a little sense of God's personality. And that means, among other things not going in with any preconceived notions. We can't impose our idea of how God did things. It's up to us to see how the universe actually does work.
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And the other assumption you have to make is that it's worth doing. If your idea, if your religion is to meditate and rise above the physical universe, this corrupting physical universe, you might say, you're not going to be a scientist, you're not going to be interested in Mars. So it's a religious statement to say the physical universe is worth devoting my life to. Seeing how the universe works is worth spending a lifetime doing.
The above wisdom is from Brother Guy Consolmagno, the curator of the Vatican's meteorite collection. [The Vatican has a meteorite collection! how cool is that??] There's a whole interview with him and it's great stuff -- he puts into words exactly how religion and science aren't an either-or proposition. and really, we need more people communicating that Truth to counteract all the Creationists out there.
Looks like Br. Guy's got some papers over here, and judging from the titles I really oughta give them a looksee. especially if his writing is anywhere near as coherent as his speaking (and why wouldn't it be?), cuz this might be exactly the kind of stuff i need in my personal faith struggle.
(via John Scalzi's Whatever via a whole lot of other folks. Go read John's post as well, since it's got a nice bit of fiction he wrote that addresses the same topic. It's good writing [as is most all of his writing], plus i'm a sucker for fiction that has the Devil as a major character!)
...
And the other assumption you have to make is that it's worth doing. If your idea, if your religion is to meditate and rise above the physical universe, this corrupting physical universe, you might say, you're not going to be a scientist, you're not going to be interested in Mars. So it's a religious statement to say the physical universe is worth devoting my life to. Seeing how the universe works is worth spending a lifetime doing.
The above wisdom is from Brother Guy Consolmagno, the curator of the Vatican's meteorite collection. [The Vatican has a meteorite collection! how cool is that??] There's a whole interview with him and it's great stuff -- he puts into words exactly how religion and science aren't an either-or proposition. and really, we need more people communicating that Truth to counteract all the Creationists out there.
Looks like Br. Guy's got some papers over here, and judging from the titles I really oughta give them a looksee. especially if his writing is anywhere near as coherent as his speaking (and why wouldn't it be?), cuz this might be exactly the kind of stuff i need in my personal faith struggle.
(via John Scalzi's Whatever via a whole lot of other folks. Go read John's post as well, since it's got a nice bit of fiction he wrote that addresses the same topic. It's good writing [as is most all of his writing], plus i'm a sucker for fiction that has the Devil as a major character!)
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