Once more into the fray

This one is mostly for the people who have replied to this blog.

Again.

I’ve been really, really slack replying to the people who have commented here – I’ve had a lot on my plate, and it’s always been easier to just leave it one more day. When I am on WordPress, I’m usually just picking the easy or interesting targets in the creationist camp and having my wicked way with them – to varying degrees of success.

However, two things have hit me recently.

Firstly, I was browsing over Open Parachute today and realized something – Ken keeps a really, really fantastic blog. Go see it. It’s good. It renewed my enthusiasm for blogging.

Secondly, I’ve stumbled across some of Carl Sagan’s videos on YouTube. I’ll link my favorite one at the bottom of this page. Good old Sagan really hammered home to me how I’ve been going wrong with this whole atheism/theism thing.

To my mind, the world as presented to us by the natural sciences is not only useful – it’s beautiful, potent, and moving. Spirituality doesn’t merely survive when it is de-coupled from the trappings of religious dogma. It flourishes.

So between Ken and Sagan, I’ve come to realize that I do have something to say. To delve into metaphor, religion is food for the soul that was cooked up in the infancy of our species. We weren’t particularly skilled chefs back in the day – we cobbled our first dish together with primitive tools and ignorance regarding the subtleties of our ingredients. Maybe it was a hearty meal at the time – but since then, time has moved on past its use-by date and the meal has expired and become rotten, ridden with clergy maggots.

Fortunately, our modern culinary skill surpasses the chefs of old – we now have a sumptuous banquet for the mind – food for thought from every discipline and persuasion constantly being refined and refreshed by steady and professional research. We have the occasional pretender that tries to slip poison into the well of knowledge, but on the whole the kitchen is getting very good at detecting to any such foul play and responding quickly and decisively to remedy the situation.

I’ve been spending my time pointing out the rotten meat and moldy vegetables in the overall soup of religion. Problem is that the people who are so keen on that particular meal don’t understand the point, because they haven’t seen into the real heart of science. To them the natural sciences are boring, bland, and stale. They may have been to the restaurant, but the entrée of bread and water turned them off. They didn’t stay long enough to taste the main course and realize that the bread was just there to cleanse the palate and stimulate the appetite. It’s like trying to explain why fast food is so horrible to a person who’s never had a good roast dinner, with mashed potatoes, Yorkshire pudd, steamed fresh veggies, and plenty of gravy…

Anyway, instead of pointing out the maggots, I’m going to give my culinary skills a try and dish up a good meal for those poor souls who have been living on instant noodles and coca-cola. They don’t know what they’re missing.

So it is with a profound feeling of quiet gratitude that I wander down the sandy beach, placing each shaking, stumbling step into the footprints left behind by the like-minded men and women who have come before me. A lofty path to tread – but the goal is all the better for the striving, is it not?

So the first task is to reply to the outstanding threads on my blog by the end of the week, and then start producing something new on a weekly basis – and see where it goes. Wish me luck.

That’s enough out of me for now; I leave you in the capable hands of Carl Sagan.