darth_ender said:
The primary difference is where I ultimately come to my conclusions. Obviously, if I believe in God, I believe him to be several rungs above us. I do believe we are incapable of understanding him or his reasoning. However, if I believe him to be such a superior being and I trust that his reasoning to be far above my own, I can still trust that he is capable of teaching me on my level. Going back to the primate analogy, though a chimp cannot comprehend our motives, our reasoning, our "ultimate questions," we may teach the chimp something. We can teach a chimp some art, some more advanced communication (primitive levels of sign language), and can give very limited insight into our way of thinking. God, though far above us, is infinitely knowledgeable, infinitely capable. Sure he would know the exact ways to teach his children how to understand on some basic level what his motives are, what our greatest questions can and should be. Chimps can be taught, and we are far more capable than chimps. I believe God has a lot to teach us.
Very good - Yes, this is one possible scenario and a logical follow-up to my post, from the point of view of someone with a religious foundation.
Indeed, from a scientific viewpoint, I would list your description as one hypothesis among many, and to some degree in place of the one I offered. At that point, in the absence of any sort of "test" that could potentially advance one of them (or another) to the level of "theory" (to which I think any scientist would agree none exists), I find myself considering which is the more likely scenario amongst possibilities. To wit, here are two such possibilities, the two brought up so far (later I will bring up others):
- [mine] We are one of many species in the universe, trapped by our limitations just as other species on earth are (even) further trapped by theirs, and we, like them, are unlikely to ever know very much about what it all "really means", or
- [yours] The highest form in the universe is communicating with us and telling us to do some seemingly illogical things, for our own good.
While I would agree that #2 is certainly possible, if I am even going to consider it, then I need to explore it. When I do, I find that there are other equally compelling interpretations not on the above list. My reasoning therein goes back again to the chimp:
From the chimp's perspective, if a human teaches it how to paint, or do sign language, that person might as well be God. The chimp, if it is capable of such thoughts (and it might be) considers the possibility that indeed we are Gods, it has no way of knowing there is anything higher, and so concludes it to be true. And lo and behold, YES, we DO tell it to do things that don't make any sense to it - like staying out of the cupboard, or not running out the door into traffic - things that it can't understand why it isn't allowed to do, but are definitely important that it do (or not do)... just like our God is supposedly doing for us.
Thus, if some seemingly omnipotent being really came down from the sky and performed miracles and told us to do certain things, wouldn't it be much more likely that it was simply a slightly higher species, such as we were doing with the chimp? We spend a LOT more time communicating with dogs, cats, rats, chimps, etc., than we do trying to communicate with earthworms. I would think that the entity most likely to try and communicate with us (or help us, or experiment on us, or heaven forbid tease us) would be one not so much higher than us. To us it would seem infinitely above us, because it can do things we cannot even fathom.
Further, opening that possibility contradicts the supposition that what we think is "God" must be good and must be followed. It could just as well be some race that is breeding us. Maybe that's why we're not supposed to be homosexuals. Or it could be a little kid toying with us. Or it could indeed be good, and we should follow its rules even though it isn't a God. There are many possibilities.
Some possibilities are scary, especially since most interactions between humans and lower animals are decidedly to the animal's detriment, and in many of those cases the animals are made completely unaware of their impending doom.
One of the biggest differences between science and religion, is the notion of "sacred". Science holds nothing sacred. So the biblical interpretation of things is certainly possible, to a scientist even. But when I think about what is the most likely interpretation - even supposing the observations described in the Bible really happened - in the absence of a supportable theory I think that there are more likely interpretations than what religions conclude.
And I haven't even yet discussed what I consider to be far more likely still - that the observations in the Bible didn't really happen at all. How many people saw Luke miss with the grappling hook? How many alien abductions have been reported? What about all the wacky stuff on late night radio? Why is it that only those wild stories in the Bible (Koran, etc.) are the "miracles", and the others aren't? From a scientific viewpoint, indeed, the Bible stories really could have beeen miracles, just like indeed maybe there really were prints out there where Luke missed with the grappling hook. But I think it is far more likely that those "miracles" simply didn't happen, for the same reason that it is far more likely - and there is more evidence supporting - that Luke didn't ever miss with the grappling hook, and that we really DID land on the moon. (note that I say this despite the fact that my mind tells me I saw Luke miss the grappling hook!)
Which therefore brings me back full circle, to hypothesis #1, above, and why I remain an atheist.