Question I don't know if this is correct, but assume for a moment that it's fair to say that in the last two hundred or so years, people in the Western world believe less in God than they used to, and that in fact amongst the 'intelligentsia' a belief in God is seen as a sign of ignorance. It seems to me that if this is true there is something negative about it. There must be mystical aspects of life that science or rationality can't account for, and if the general belief in God deteriorates, what can mankind use to think about it? This might be confusing so I'll put it another way... a belief in God puts humans in a greater context than just themselves. It gives them some kind of connecting factor, and also a way to explain the abstract and intangible. If that goes, what happens to us? Can science and the mysteries of DNA and evolution accurately replace it? Don't we lose some beautiful, mysterious aspect of life? Or do we replace it with popular fiction, film, urban legends, etc? I'm sorry if this question is a little unclear, but it's a little unclear in my head which is why I thought I'd ask you guys. Thank you.

Accepted:
December 31, 2005

Comments

You want mysteries without God? For heaven's sake (well, maybe not...) just look around you! Despite all of the advances of science (about which, no one of us is wholly expert, nor could we even possibly be), the world will be filled with things we do not know and do not understand. Mostly, we pay no attention toi the vast amount and degree of our ignorance. Aristotle said, "Philosophy begins in wonder." From any human perspective, the world is simply filled with wonders--because our limitations will always prevent our knowing much, relative to what is out there. You want a greater context than just yourself? Just open your eyes and look around you! Think of all the other people in the world, and how different their esperiences are from yours! If you want to preserve the "beautiful, mysterious aspect of life," then for goodness sake don't give your mind away to some God (whom you could never understand anyway, and therefore who cannot at all help "to explain the abstract and intangible." Just open yourself up to the degree and profundity of your ignorance--and then allow yourself to wonder at all you don't know--or at least some of it!