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Richard Dawkins' Alternative Thought for the Day
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When a terrible disaster happens - an air crash, a flood, or an earthquake - people thank God that it wasn鈥檛 worse. (But then why did he let the earthquake happen at all?)
Or, even more childish and self-indulgent: 鈥淭hank you God for the traffic jam that made me miss that plane.鈥 (But what about all the unfortunate people who didn鈥檛 miss the plane?)
The same kind of infantile regression tempts us when we try to understand the natural world.
鈥淧oems are made by fools like me . . . But only God can make a tree.鈥
A pretty song, but an infantile explanation. It鈥檚 too easy. Lazy. The moment we put a little effort into thinking about it, we realise that God the creator is no explanation at all. He constitutes a bigger question than he answers.
Once, we couldn鈥檛 do any better. Humanity was still an infant. But now we understand what makes earthquakes; we understand what made trees. Not just trees like oaks and redwoods, with their underground root system like a huge, upside-down tree.
The arteries that leave the heart branch and branch again like a tree. There are about 50 miles of blood vessels in a human body.
Nerve cells, too, branch like trees. They are so numerous in the teeming forest of your brain that, if you stretched them end to end they would reach right round the world 25 times.
In the face of such wonders, do you fall back, like a child, on God? 鈥淚t鈥檚 so wonderful, so complicated, only God could have done it.鈥
It鈥檚 tempting, isn鈥檛 it. But it鈥檚 not a real explanation. Not the kind of explanation that actually explains anything. And it鈥檚 nowhere near as poetic as the true explanation.
Because the beauty is that humanity has grown up. We now know the true explanation. It鈥檚 gloriously simple once you get it, and more wonderful than our forefathers could ever have imagined. It makes use of yet another tree. The family tree of life. It began with something smaller than a bacterium, and it branched and branched to give all the species that have ever lived, whether extinct like the dinosaurs, or still hanging on like our own. Evolution really explains all of life, and it needs no supernatural intervention of any kind.
The adult response is to rejoice in the amazing privilege we enjoy. We have been born, and we are going to die. But before we die we have time to understand why we were ever born in the first place. Time to understand the universe into which we have been born. And with that understanding, we finally grow up and realise that there is no help for us outside our own efforts.
Humanity can leave the crybaby phase, and finally come of age.
Now there鈥檚 a thought for more than just a day!
Listen to Richard Dawkins' broadcast by clicking on the link on the right and read his response to listeners' emails.
What do you think of Thought for the Day? Click here to send an email or join the discussion on the .
Links
Thought for the Day page in 91热爆 Religion
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Richard Dawkins, a not so devout sceptic |
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...evolution and God are not mutually incompatible. If this thought makes me infantile, pass the rattle!
Vince Owen, Staffordshire
The 91热爆 still seems to believe that those who call
themselves 'religious' can somehow think more clearly,
deeply and meaningfully than those who call themselves
'non-religious'. How can the 91热爆 defend that bigoted view?
Amanda Baker
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