God's Creation: He Seems to Think Big

Writing a post in another blog (Apathetic Lemming of the North) had me researching flint tools and current estimates for the age of the universe. The post itself will show up tomorrow morning, and deals with an Air Force captain who says that space aliens are turning off our nuclear weapons and the government is covering it up.

I don't take his claims all that seriously: not because I think space aliens are Satanic, or the government can do no wrong. I have trouble buying the idea that people who travel between stars (minimum - 'they' could be from another space-time continuum) would be interested in shutting down our nuclear weapons.

That's where my research into flint came in.

Come to think of it, if the space aliens were meddlesome missionaries who were out to help us whether we wanted it or not - and that's another topic.

Checking out the age of the universe and some related matters, I had to wade through quite a lot of what's called 'creation science.' Some of it quite imaginative.

I Prefer Living in the Real World

Well, maybe Bishop Ussher was right.

Maybe God looks like Charleton Heston in the role of Moses.

Maybe we're living inside that "dome in the middle of the waters" and NASA is a Satanic plot to deceive the faithful. All that talk about orbits and landing on other planets. There's nothing about Olympus Mons in the Bible! That proves that NASA is lying!¹ (If a person pushes the 'it's gotta be in the Bible' assumption to include phenomena some Bible-thumpers have accepted.)

I doubt it: but then, I also assume that airline pilots aren't agents of Satan. The flight paths some of them take would be hard to explain, if ancient Semitic cosmogony was spot-on literally accurate.

Still, it could be done. People can be very imaginative.

Besides, I'm a Catholic, and it's 'well known' how Catholics don't believe the right things and aren't allowed to read the Bible and stuff like that. (See "If Catholics aren't Supposed to Read the Bible, How Come We're Told to Read the Bible?" (May 31, 2010))

Why do I accept the idea that

• Gregor Mendel and Copernicus weren't lying through their teeth?
• Earth is roughly spherical?
• Things change?

It's not because I don't think God exists.

God; the Universe; and Bayonne, New Jersey

It's because I think God exists, and that He created a world that is orderly. (Genesis 1:1-Genesis 2:4)

Sure: Genesis doesn't mention the alpha constant. It doesn't mention Bayonne, New Jersey, either. Or the continent that New Jersey is on.

That doesn't mean that North America doesn't exist.

The way I see it, God made us - and knows that we are able to work out some things on our own. Like how to make automobile engines and how rapidly objects fall.

I've Got a Brain: Maybe I'm Supposed to Use It

Do I think it's wrong to be interested in God's creation? No.

Do I think it's wrong to use our minds to study God's creation? No.

I also think it's not wrong to use our legs to move from one place to another: although God could, I'm sure, move us around if He wanted to. But He gave us legs: I don't think it's a great stretch of the imagination to think that He expects us to use them.

God Thinks Big: I'm Okay With That

Could I worship God if I lived in a dome that kept the waters from flooding the comparatively small patch of real estate I lived on? Sure. No problem.

There's a huge body of evidence indicating that the world isn't quite like that. Can I worship God in the world as we have reason to think it is today? Sure. No problem.

I might not have made creation quite this big, or this old: but I'm not God.

It looks like He's decided to make a world that is almost unimaginably vast. I am not going to tell the Lord of Hosts that He can't do that.

Related posts:

• "Nuclear Weapons, Space Aliens, Conspiracy Theories, and Getting a Grip"
  Apathetic Lemming of the North (September 24, 2010)
• "Science vs. Religion: the Same Tired Old Line"
  (June 5, 2010)
• "Home Schooling, Religious and Moral Instruction, and American Culture"
  (March 6, 2010)
• "Astrobiology, the Vatican, and the Meaning of Our Existence"
  (November 12, 2009)
• "Copernicus, Galileo, Science and a Reality Check"
  (October 26, 2009)
• "Catholic Church, Creationism, Evolution, Facts and Faith"
  (March 5, 2009)

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¹ There's nothing about Olympus Mons in the Bible! True enough, but the 'it's not true if it's not in the Bible' argument isn't used all that much these days, or applied consistently.

For good reason: that line of reasoning, consistently applied, would require devout residents of New Jersey to believe that they live in a place that doesn't exist.