Is God Throwing Rocks?

This morning when I read about the meteorite, no bigger than a Volkswagen Beetle, that entered the Russian atmosphere a few hundred miles east of Moscow, it was a sobering reminder of just how fragile our lives are on this small blue planet.

Compared to the size of the earth, the meteorite was only a speck of dust, yet it caused hundreds of injuries and millions in damage from the shock wave.

Our species, arrogant as it is, nevertheless is vulnerable to extinction at any time by any one of the billions of these things caroming around within our very own solar system. We had a near miss by one named Asteroid 2012 DA14, just today, Feb 15th 2013. (I prefer to call it a near hit) It was much larger and if it had impacted on land would have caused total destruction of an area of over half a million acres. If Asteroid 2012 DA14 had crashed into the sea, (a more likely event)  tsunamis would have been more massive that the Dec. 2004 event that killed over 230,000 people and caused billions in property damage.

The really sad part is that Christians believe that we are the cause of all this. We are all worthless miserable sinners and if it were not for sin, none of this would happen.

How pathetic.

Why is this? How can the critical thinking of otherwise intelligent and kind people be so flawed?  Richard Russell, the brilliant mathematician and philosopher provides what I think it the best answer. (EMPHASIS IS MINE)

“Religion is based, I think, primarily and mainly upon fear. It is partly the terror of the unknown and partly, as I have said, the wish to feel that you have a kind of elder brother who will stand by you in all your troubles and disputes. Fear is the basis of the whole thing -- fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death. Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion have gone hand in hand. It is because fear is at the basis of those two things. In this world we can now begin a little to understand things, and a little to master them by help of science, which has forced its way step by step against the Christian religion, against the churches, and against the opposition of all the old precepts. Science can help us to get over this craven fear in which mankind has lived for so many generations. Science can teach us, and I think our own hearts can teach us, no longer to look around for imaginary supports, no longer to invent allies in the sky, but rather to look to our own efforts here below to make this world a better place to live in, instead of the sort of place that the churches in all these centuries have made it.

What We Must Do

We want to stand upon our own feet and look fair and square at the world -- its good facts, its bad facts, its beauties, and its ugliness; see the world as it is and be not afraid of it. Conquer the world by intelligence and not merely by being slavishly subdued by the terror that comes from it. The whole conception of God is a conception derived from the ancient Oriental despotisms. It is a conception quite unworthy of free men.

WHEN YOU HEAR PEOPLE IN CHURCH DEBASING THEMSELVES AND SAYING THAT THEY ARE MISERABLE SINNERS AND ALL THE REST OF IT, IT SEEMS CONTEMPTIBLE AND NOT WORTHY OF SELF-RESPECTING HUMAN BEINGS.

We ought to stand up and look the world frankly in the face. We ought to make the best we can of the world, and if it is not so good as we wish, after all it will still be better than what these others have made of it in all these ages. A good world needs knowledge, kindliness, and courage; it does not need a regretful hankering after the past or a fettering of the free intelligence by the words uttered long ago by ignorant men. It needs a fearless outlook and a free intelligence. It needs hope for the future, not looking back all the time toward a past that is dead, which we trust will be far surpassed by the future that our intelligence can create.”

I would add to Russell's analysis that religion  is also nurtured by laziness. It takes effort to know while believing takes  no effort at all.