RE: "God will even the score"
August 17, 2013 at 9:17 am
(This post was last modified: August 17, 2013 at 9:18 am by Tonus.)
I think it's a qualifier that masks an inner conflict. When you learn about god from a believer, it is usually a very positive and good deity that is described. God is the ultimate good, he is pure and clean and just in every way you can imagine, he really cannot do any wrong. Then you read or hear of him doing something terrible, or threatening to do so, and you must pass on this information or warning. What do you do? You play the part of the good guy. "Look, I hate to be the one to tell you this, because I really like you and want what is best for you. But if you don't straighten up and pay Don Jehovah what he demands, we're going to have to break your arms. Repeatedly. For all of eternity. And I just don't want to have to do that, but what Don Jehovah wants... Don Jehovah GETS. Capiche?"
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould