Dilemma...

Do I do my SSI Advanced Open Water in Melbourne, which would qualify me to dive wrecks? Or do I go diving with whalesharks in Ningaloo?

God, for and against

FOR:

The 7:30 Report had an article about the canonization of Mary MacKillop.

It disturbed me, listening to the interview with one of the petitioners for MacKillop's sainthood. The woman described how she had gathered the evidence of miracles associated with MacKillop, how teams of doctors reviewed the two cases of cancers inexplicably cured, and confirmed that there was no medical explanation.

It disturbed me because it seemed such a pagan ritual, so antithetical to science and reason.

And it disturbed me because if they were miracles, what does that say about God? Why would he cure some cancer suffers and not others, just because they asked the right one of his cronies for help? Does that sound like a benevolent and all-loving god?

I'm sure there's Catholic doctrine to explain why God hates amputees. Does anyone out there know it?

AGIN:

And swinging to the other extreme: straight after was Elders, with Andrew Denton interviewing evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins.

(transcript)

There's a lot to admire about Dawkins. He's an unabashed advocate of science and rationality, and vehemently opposed to the kind of irrational belief that leads people to fly airliners into skyscrapers.

But sometimes he seems to miss the subtleties. He once described religion as a form of child abuse. During the Denton interview, he questioned whether perhaps  children's fairy tales might have a pernicious effect upon the child mind, by giving the child the idea that anything goes, that there's no discipline to reality.

And that made me sad. Dawkins grew up in Kenya, with the African wilds as his playground. I grew up in suburban Melbourne, and my playground was the imagination. I loved Narnia as a kid, and Middle Earth, and I still grew up to be a good little atheist.

I don't believe in God. But I'd be an idiot not to believe in the importance of religion. Religion has been part of human culture for as long as there has been human culture. It's a deep human need, like art. Dismissing it as woolyheaded silliness isn't going to make it go away.

Maybe that's the value of fairytales: they teach children that just because you love something that doesn't mean it's real, and just because something's not real doesn't mean you can't love it.