Thursday 17 January 2013

Answers in Genesis

http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/cm/v4/n1/man-image-of-god

Many thanks to Kathleen on CP&S for running this link on there.

It sets out, neatly and concisely, a very great many of the objections I have regarding organised religion.

It's this kind of material that makes me increasingly confident in the total implausibility of it all.

Here's just one example:"True, the earth and animals too have a place in God’s economy, but essentially, the world was created as a place for man to live (e.g. Romans 8:19–22)." A year or so, I would probably have laughed that off with a mild joke. Now it seems open and pernicious nonsense and the root of much contemporary evil. I honestly believe that and, instinctively and viscerally, disagree with the idea.

And then the author, one Prof. Randle-Short, apparently - gravely tells us:"Adam mirrored Christ the man of Galilee even more nearly than Christ would have resembled his own half-brothers. If this is so, it seems almost blasphemy to consider Adam sired by a shambling ape."
It would be, I suggest, hard to find any ape more shambling than, for example, myself. Or Randle-Short himself, I shouldn't wonder.
Most apes are very nimble indeed. Any fool knows that.

Since I retired, about eight years back, I've been thinking about God, as we envisage Him, a very great deal and the more I do so the less likely it all seems to become. An honest God may well be the noblest work of man, but we haven't succeeded so far, I believe.

I'm also beginning to think Dawkins is emerging as a major figure of our times, and for history. Rather like Huxley.
I might ultimately be proved wrong of course, but I'll be long dead and won't care.

The article above is forced  - yet again - to dig up and dust off poor old C.S.Lewis, dead himself these many years, and set him tottering shakily about, muttering to himself: "..A clever waxwork can be made so like a man that for a moment it deceives us; the great portrait which is far more deeply like him does not."
So what? A painting is not like a waxwork, We know that.

Well, what's the alternative? Chesterton? And Lewis not even able to swallow Catholicism on his own behalf.
Did try though. Inbedded tribal loyalties were too strong.
That's what it's all about, really.

Dawkins is alive. I think he will go into history rather like Shaw, Wells and Russell. Quoted less and less frequently as the years pile up, but respected.
And remembered.
Why do the Christians, let alone the Catholics, currently have nobody of his stature?
Can it be the "material" they are obliged to work with?





2 comments:

john konnor said...

"Since I retired, about eight years back, I've been thinking about God, as we envisage Him"...people seek God as they subjectively see him...so they never find him ...if we follow the clues we find him...as a hunter simple tracking is fine...systematic tracking works better still....however we need to employ speculative tracking in our hunt... :-)

Patrick O'Gara said...

To seek God, "as we subjectively see him" implies his existence, John. Of which I'm no means sure. But I agree that I expressed it badly, as "we" all have our own idea of God. Or not.
That is to say, many people "envisage" God as being non-existent. It is the idea of God that we actually envisage, not the reality. I think I've made it worse now. Oh, well.