The WAL

Pre-empting the short rant I had planned today, many years ago I engaged in a disturbingly short speculative discussion with a friend of mine whom I considered overly religious but was too polite to say anything to him about it.  And before anyone gets upset about that statement, my definition of overly religious is when it intrudes into every conversation you have and you feel the need to convince your friends of the right of your beliefs.

“Do you ever wonder if there’s anybody else out there?” I asked.  Seventeen and not really sure that I knew everything but just coming to grips with how little I really did know.

“No.”

“Really?”

He nodded.  “Why would a perfect God need anything other than us?”

“Ah.”  Yes, that’s all I said.  Seventeen, remember?  Now what I thought was a little different.  What incredible arrogance!  ‘Why would a perfect God need anything other than us?’  Why would a perfect God settle for us?  Look around this planet we’re trying to ruin and then think about how bloody big your perfect God, or not, made the universe.  Argh!

Missing my reaction entirely, he then recapped a couple of articles he’d read recently and talked about how Christian Scientists are finding different explanations than those put forth by mainstream science for phenomenon like redshifting of distant galaxies that actually support the idea of a stable, non-expanding universe.  I.e., the universe is still just exactly how God made it 6,000 or so years ago.

Right.  Until that moment, I’d no idea how far gone he was.  Any scientist who happens to be Christian and feels the need to call him or herself a Christian Scientist is unlikely to be doing anything remotely like science.  S/he is pulling theories out of his/her ass to make the facts fit a particular world view.  Science, on the other hand, is about figuring out how things actually work and adjusting your worldview to fit the data.

“Ah,” I said again.  In the interest of friendship, I let it go with an eye roll or two and changed the subject.

A news article from yesterday’s Windsor Star seems to bring the Catholic Church marginally into line with the rest of the world in a very unexpected way, at least to me.  Apparently the vatican’s chief astronomer and scientific advisor to the Pope doesn’t see the conflict between believing in God and the existence of life elsewhere in the universe.  After all, creation is a pretty staggeringly huge place.  The Big Bang is okay and the universe being billions of years old doesn’t mean that God didn’t create it.

Wow, backup from a really surprising place.  Maybe there’s hope after all.

Apparently the battle scene is going to go on a little longer than I originally thought.  Afterwards, some clean up and a coronation.