God

God Moves in a Mysterious Way
by William Cowper

God moves in a mysterious way
His wonders to perform;
He plants His footsteps in the sea,
And rides upon the storm.

Deep in unfathomable mines
Of never-failing skill
He treasures up His bright designs,
And works His sovereign will.

Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take,
The clouds ye so much dread
Are big with mercy, and shall break
In blessings on your head.

Judge not the Lord by feeble sense,
But trust Him for His grace;
Behind a frowning providence
He hides a smiling face.

His purposes will ripen fast,
Unfolding every hour;
The bud may have a bitter taste,
But sweet will be the flower.

Blind unbelief is sure to err,
And scan his work in vain;
God is His own interpreter,
And He will make it plain.

'I refuse to prove that I exist,' says God, 'for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.'

'But,' says Man, 'The Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED.'

'Oh dear,' says God, 'I hadn't thought of that,' and promptly vanished in a puff of logic.

'Oh, that was easy,' says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing.

Once or twice--well, no, not a god, actually, but a responsive spider. 1. sitting on the ground with her (then)lover, Ted, in some afternoon-filtered sunshine. Late late autumn in a part of the world where winter barely arrives --the sun is still strong on on skin and clothes are still light weight. Ted is leaving soon and they are uncertain of when they will see each other again. Ted sees a tiny spider walking on the leg of his jeans. He says to the spider, »Tie me to Belle--c'mon, I'll give you a quarter.«
Immediately, like a close up slo-motion sequence from a PBS science special: the spider launches a gossamer web thread into the air, with a kind of shower of crystal almost-sparks, the thread sails across the gap between the lovers and connects at Belle's knee. The spider walks across.

An agnostic dyslexic insomniac is someone who stays awake all night wondering if there really is a dog.

God, the center and focus of religious faith, a holy being or ultimate reality to whom worship and prayer are addressed. Especially in monotheistic religions, God is considered the creator or source of everything that exists and is spoken of in terms of perfect attributes—for instance, infinitude, immutability, eternity, goodness, knowledge (omniscience), and power (omnipotence). Most religions traditionally ascribe to God certain human characteristics that can be understood either literally or metaphorically, such as will, love, anger, and forgiveness.

I am God. You are God. My cat is God. Well, actually, 'God' isn't really the word I'm searching for. Let's call it 'anima mundi' – world soul.

Aged three, I was spotted with my mouth open as my revered five-year old cousin (just back from Scripture class in kindergarten) told me in lordly fashion »God is everywhere, you know, he is even in that wheelbarrow...«. No doubt the reason why one is nearer God's heart (and backside, sitting in that wheelbarrow) in a garden than anywhere else on earth.

It does no good to try to reason with someone whose first line of argument is that reason doesn't count.

»God is dead« or so says Nietzsche (sorry about the spelling). But all he really meant was that we need to stop blindly accepting traditional, objective values.

You're talking about creation, but didn't evolution disprove that?
Let's leave evolution for later, if you don't mind. We're not talking about how all things got to their present form; we're only talking about how the material universe came into existence in the first place. In that sense, yes, we're talking about creation.

This isn't contrary to the idea of evolution, and it isn't contrary to science. One of the leading astronomers of our age, for instance, Robert Jastrow, says that scientific research about the universe has led to one extremely important conclusion: "... I am an agnostic in religious matters. However, I am fascinated by some strange developments going on in astronomy‑partly because of their religious implications and partly because of the peculiar reactions of my colleagues.


"The essence of the strange developments is that the Universe had, in some sense, a beginning—that it began at a certain moment in time ... for the astronomical evidence proves that the Universe was created ... in a fiery explosion...


»Theologians generally are delighted with the proof that the Universe had a beginning, but astronomers are curiously upset. Their reactions provide an interesting demonstration of the response of the scientific mind—supposedly, a very objective mind-when evidence uncovered by science itself leads to a conflict with the articles of faith in our profession. It turns out that the scientist behaves the way the rest of us do when our beliefs are in conflict with the evidence. We become irritated, we pretend the conflict does not exist or we paper it over with meaningless phrases. « (Robert Jastrow, God and the Astronomers, New York: Warner Books, 1984, pp. 11-16.)