Friday night TV

Just saw Richard Dawkins on Now being interviewed by Bill Moyers. It was a fantastic interview as both Moyers and Dawkins are intelligent, passionate, well read men. Note to self, ask for Dawkins' most recent book for Winter Solstice.

Dawkins' bafflement in the face of the 60% or so of Americans who really believe that the entire universe, including the earth and mankind, was created 6,000 years ago by God in six literal days echoes my own. It really is hard for me to wrap my brain around the fact that people will discard the evidence compiled by years, generations in fact, of investigation and study in favor of a comforting fiction. And really, what do they gain by it? Dawkins said in the interview that living a life in which you belive in the literal Biblical creation, even after having been taught the science and evidence behind evolution, is living a life which is terribly impoverished on some level. I agree with him there, though I know that people will say the same thing about my life if I don't accept Jesus, or Muhammed, or [insert favorite religious/political/social philosopher here]. But then, Dawkins also neatly quantified the difference: science depends upon critical thought, upon constant questioning and examination, while those others demand faith.

Faith's not something I grok. I understand it on an intellectual level, but in my gut, in my lizard brain, it fails to compute. My mind revolts at the thought of God as a sentient entity involved in the quotidian lives of hairless, tool using, Earthian apes. Maybe I'm missing something obvious. Or not.

Here's my question, what happens if (when?) we find evidence of extra-terrestrial life, intelligent or not? The holy shit storm of all time, a jihad to end all jihads. You think evolution gets religious panties in a twist, wait till we find "little green men".

What does it mean to have faith in a diety who constructed the world and humans in such a way as to make its own existence seem impossible? Faith is just a way to keep us from asking what kind of God would create the entire universe as an elaborate auto da fe.