Well, that about wraps it up for Gd

[sharplittleteeth]

From last night's Enough Rope, and the interview with Sir David Attenborough:

Andrew Denton: When you see this sort of stuff, do you ever get a sense of God's pattern?

Sir David Attenborough: Well, if you ask...about that, then you see remarkable things like that earwig and you also see all very beautiful things like hummingbirds, orchids, and so on. But you also ought to think of the other, less attractive things. You ought to think of tapeworms. You ought to think of... well, think of a parasitic worm that lives only in the eyeballs of human beings, boring its way through them, in West Africa, for example, where it's common, turning people blind. So if you say, "I believe that God designed and created and brought into existence every single species that exists," then you've also got to say, "Well, he, at some stage, decided to bring into existence a worm that's going to turn people blind." Now, I find that very difficult to reconcile with notions about a merciful God. And I certainly find it difficult to believe that a God -- superhuman, supreme power -- would actually do that.

---

I used to believe in God. For about six months, when I was eighteen. I felt His presence, a benign and all-powerful being, watching over me with His love.

Then the feeling went away. And I was left to think about what it all meant.

And I concluded that vague feelings of cosmic love did not constitute empirical proof. So... until God gives us something solid and verifiable to go on, I refuse to believe in him.

And even if he turned up tomorrow for a DNA test and tour of the chat shows, that doesn't mean I'd worship him.

The whole parasitical worm thing is one of the reasons.

Comments

[morgan303.livejournal.com]

Interesting you should say that. I believed in God twice. Once when I was a really little kid and they started Religion classes at school - I'd been raised on mythology and in Hindu and Buddhist countries, and at 7 years old or whatever I was, I was quite happy to accept that Christians could have a god too if they wanted. But He stopped making sense after a little while.
Amd then again at some amorphous period in my teens when I read Walter Scott's Ivanhoe. Brian de Bois Guilbert was way too cool not to get sucked into the whole believing in god thing. It lasted about three days, or until I finished the book. It didn't come back.