JoeTheJuggler
Penultimate Amazing
- Joined
- Jun 7, 2006
- Messages
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I've been listening to an audio version of Dawkins' latest, The Magic of Reality, and he made a sort of parenthetical point that I had never heard before.
Myths and religions purport to explain a wide variety of phenomena: how the leopard got its spots, why humans speak many different languages, how plants and animals came to be, etc.
But they don't explain anything about microscopic life! Their all-knowing deity never bothered to reveal anything about bacteria, for example, or dust mites.
(The above is pretty much all paraphrase of what Dawkins wrote in this little section of the book. Sorry, I'm listening to it as audio, so I can't offer any exact quotes.)
I'm curious as to what sort of apologia will be offered.
Perhaps they'll argue that humans wouldn't have been able to understand the concept of little animals too small to see. (I would respond, why not? Once we had microscopes, the idea caught on easily enough. As a child, I was willing to accept the proposition even before I'd ever had a chance to look through a microscope myself.)
Maybe they'll argue that these things just weren't important. (I would respond by pointing to a number of silly "revelations" whose importance certainly pales in comparison to the importance of knowledge of bacteria. Stephen Jay Gould wrote about the "modal bacter" pointing out that the majority of life is very simple archaebacteria. Arguably, these things have had a more profound effect on the Earth than any other group of organisms. If God is an omniscient creator of all life, bacteria must be extremely important to him. They're certainly important to human health and livelihood.)
What else might they argue?
Obviously, my position is that the reason there was no divine revelation about microscopic animals is that there is no divinity, and all so-called "divine revelations" were just made up by humans. It's certainly the most parsimonious explanation.
Myths and religions purport to explain a wide variety of phenomena: how the leopard got its spots, why humans speak many different languages, how plants and animals came to be, etc.
But they don't explain anything about microscopic life! Their all-knowing deity never bothered to reveal anything about bacteria, for example, or dust mites.
(The above is pretty much all paraphrase of what Dawkins wrote in this little section of the book. Sorry, I'm listening to it as audio, so I can't offer any exact quotes.)
I'm curious as to what sort of apologia will be offered.
Perhaps they'll argue that humans wouldn't have been able to understand the concept of little animals too small to see. (I would respond, why not? Once we had microscopes, the idea caught on easily enough. As a child, I was willing to accept the proposition even before I'd ever had a chance to look through a microscope myself.)
Maybe they'll argue that these things just weren't important. (I would respond by pointing to a number of silly "revelations" whose importance certainly pales in comparison to the importance of knowledge of bacteria. Stephen Jay Gould wrote about the "modal bacter" pointing out that the majority of life is very simple archaebacteria. Arguably, these things have had a more profound effect on the Earth than any other group of organisms. If God is an omniscient creator of all life, bacteria must be extremely important to him. They're certainly important to human health and livelihood.)
What else might they argue?
Obviously, my position is that the reason there was no divine revelation about microscopic animals is that there is no divinity, and all so-called "divine revelations" were just made up by humans. It's certainly the most parsimonious explanation.
