Tempestuous Darwin

Both ecstatic and rather tired at post-time last night, I was less than clear in laying out the dichotomy I've noticed.

Again, first off, an open and reasoning mind will see that there is no conflict between the most basic concepts of God – creative, divine sentience who created the universe – and of science, as a discipline that studies the form and function of the selfsame universe. There is the term "intelligent design" offered in opposition to scientific contention of no tangible God discovered… pshaw! They are one and the same; the universe is so obviously an expression of order, structure, that it screams out it was designed, and is maintained, by an intelligence we cannot fully grasp. No dichotomy. 

Except… there does appear to be a leap of faith or intellect between noting a creative and sustaining hand behind and within the universe, and actual doctrinal/dogmatic expression. I.e., the recognizable beauty in both spiral galaxy and sine wave, says nothing about tithing or rendering to Caesar.

Is that clearer?

In noting this gap, I note also that I stand already on the far side of it, in the ranks of admirers of science and practitioners of faith-rich religion. How did I get here? How can anyone else get here?

Brother; that's a call for theology and philosophy… and beyond my easy skills at present… so over time we'll nibble away at it regularly.

Our friends who practice Earth magic, wicca, paganism, and so forth, all have a deep love for and appreciation of our planet, and the seemingly near-infinite realm in which it rests. This love and regard for Mother Earth is sorely lacking in many, many souls who subscribe fully to Christian practice, tradition, and dogma.

Wake up, people – both you who fear a satanist sabbat in every midnight city park, and you who think Christianity is a no more than a convenient excuse for the undereducated to beat you over the head with a crucifix! Love of the earth, and keen stewardship of our resources, are expressions of faith in themselves. (I'll examine stewardship more closely in a later post; Spartacus and I have been engaging in some serious dialoging and head-beating on this and related topics).

Wiccans and paganists fall short by stopping there. Many seem at least to seek, if not actually embrace, a much earlier, far more primitive faith-tradition. This topic, too, is deserving of greater study and expounding in a future blog; there is a beauty and other things worth closer exam in their faith expression.

The problem with Earth magic is… what happens when you leave the Earth? The universe is so much more than this cooling pebble flung from a nondescript little star off toward one little arm of an easily-missed spiral galaxy. Don't know about you guys, but I'd love to walk on the soil of another world, someday – I might have been born several generations too soon, though.

The point is, focusing on your crystals, your tarot, your aromas, your astral houses… ties you down to this one little planet. My God, though, is bigger than that… and I'm hungrier than that, too.

This group is hardly science-minded by any stretch of the imagination, but they still rest there across the gap of faith with the soul-shut science-only crowd. How do you get here from there? It's easy to do (said the man buzzing past on his flying carpet)… yet hard to explain (carpet zips out from under man, who falls – baffled but unbruised – back to earth). So we'll chew away at that one, too, in further blogs.

At least one of the bridges across this gap (I suspect there's more than one) is the hypothesis that we are here for a reason ( = purpose behind creation), since it can easily be demonstrated that our minds, by their very nature, were not made for this world. (For a later posting also; sorry.) I tried to explain this one in person to Spartacus last year; he smiled very kindly, and I could see in his patient eyes that I'd departed the realm of the sensible. Oh, well.

Further along this bridge are the concepts of divine love, and divine revelation. But, again, I need to clear out and hit the hay; sorry to leave you hanging.

Ah… it's a suspension bridge!