h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I would not define myself as a theist, an atheist, or even really a nontheist. I am neutral... I am still trying to make up my mind about the universe, and intend to be doing so for the rest of my life. If there is one thing I hold to closely, it is that I know that I don't know very much.

And yet, I have to ask myself... if I were to assert, in an argument, that the reason behind the earth's rotation was due to the efforts of a large rodent running on a treadmill at the planet core, I would probably be dismissed by the majority of people as a lunatic for thinking so. If I were to assert that the reason I had presents under the tree on Christmas morning was because a large, magical man slid down my chimney and put them there, I would probably be dismissed by the majority of people as naive, or stupid. So it astounds me to no end when people seriously assert that the supreme manifestation of Life, the Universe, and Everything is an angry, patriarchal Judaic humanoid space ghost (or the totem of his crucified Avatar), and are tolerated by almost everyone as having a respectable point of view about the world and its workings.

That's not to say that I have no use for the concept of divinity or of religion as intellectual or scholarly topics. I am acutely interested in metaphysics, ancient history, and to some extent, eastern mysticism, all of which I think have some bearing on the ideas at hand. But, it would be pretty strange if I, not being a trained physicist, were to stand up on a pulpit once a week and lecture people about the ins and outs of particle spin. So why do so many people suffer to hear the opinions of semi-illiterate boobs as they blather away from pulpits about topics that are equally beyond their imagination, let alone education?

And yet... isn't there something to this... subjective reflection of the void full of shapes and textures that we refer to as the self? The universe... or some small corner of it... has shaped itself into forms that express, and feel, and think, and respond to other parts of itself with meaning and participancy. The universe is alive, and it seems to want to see itself, like some gigantic eye opening. It is not gentle in its quest... life... pushes, and gnaws, and claws at any opening. It devours itself to further its progress. Sometimes I think that God is perfectly exemplified by the Ebola virus.

I expect that this sort of topic, the ultimate nature of being, is one that very few people, theists or atheists alike, are comfortable thinking about very carefully. Far easier to blame it all on some giant, gaseous war-god who exists "beyond our understanding", or on "random happening", random in this case meaning, of course, "beyond our powers of observation". We are scared to know.

"It is terrible to see a man who has the incomprehensible in his grasp, does not know what to do with it, and sits playing with a toy called God."

-Tolstoy

Uniqueness is all.

the problem with the semi-illiterate boobs is that, well, when it comes to religion, anybody's entited to an opinion, aren't they? unlike religion, physics has a built-in falsification system. So the semi-illiterate boobs demand respect and when they don't get it the rest of us are accused of being "elitist", even if we dismiss their arguments as unfounded or illogical.
The dalai lama has no more evidence up his sleeve than sid down the street, and while the dalai lama has little problem with this and is very intelligent and cool and collected, sid is free to use this to his advantage any time he wishes.
Uniqueness is the flip side of sid, the semi-illiterate boob's rambling. It might seem like a contrast of positive and negative, but it's still the same coin, right?