Adopted son Nathan and some of his friends got me to thinking about this topic. They use fancier language than I do; it's sort of like being able to understand a foreign language but not being adept at or comfortable speaking it. Plus my INFJ mind often doesn't go A B C D E F G you know. It tends to jump around the alphabet and pop out words instead of going strictly in a 'normal' order.
So I'm going to use my own language and my own processes.
I'm not sure there's any conflict between God and Science although people have been conflicting about it since who flung the chunk, which is a L'Amour-ism for a really long time, as in as far back as anyone knows and no doubt before that.
I don't happen to think that Science dis-proves God; The more we learn, the more we realize that everything fits together and makes sense in ways that the OT and NT times didn't have the technology to explain (before and after too, but you get what I mean) - until recently, relatively speaking, who knew the stuff that some of us do and most of us could learn if we put our minds to it?
Not me; I'm no scientist but I'm well aware that the advances have come fast and hard, and sort of suddenly when it comes right down to the big picture of the human race.
'There is no God.'
'Prove it.'
There is a God.'
'Prove it.'
Pfffffft.
Here's a 'for example' for you:
Fibonacci: one of my most favorite things, and probably the most ancient symbol of all except maybe for the Circle.
And what's Fibonacci?
The Spiral.
1.618
Balance.
Not too much, not too little.
The Golden Mean.
From our DNA to the universe in which we live.
It's everywhere.
And the most ancient peoples we know of used the Spiral, all over the world - peoples whose cultures probably rarely if ever intersected.
It's a mathematical equation.
Were they doing advanced math so long ago? I don't know. Nobody knows, but it was a very long time before the OT and NT days that the symbol was in use.
So does that make it a pagan symbol?
And who says 'pagans' were/are wrong in their belief systems?
Sorry, off topic.
Anyway, my point is that, from my own personal perspective, there really is no conflict between God and Science - they're essentially one and the same.
We learn how universes are born; and there's a method at work all the way down the line, or so it seems to me. A natural progression that we learn more about all the time - by noticing stuff, by experimentation, by trial and error, by thinking about an apple falling from a tree ... our world is a lot more orderly than it appears to most of us.
Science is finding answers and solutions that were unavailable to the ancients - but still they knew stuff.
Fibonacci, for example.
Once you start looking for it, you see it everywhere.
It's an ancient concept so why can't we seem to get the hang of it in our own current world, in our nations, in our own lives? It's been holding everything together since ... well ... since who flung the chunk.
See, this has been on my mind for a very long time - I've been working on a set of books and the setting is the about the beginning of what we typically refer to as 'The Dark Ages' - a long time ago in some ways but not so long in others, depending on your perspective.
Anyway, I was looking for symbols to incorporate into the artwork I was supposed to be putting together for this project ... old symbols. The Holy Trinity (God) and Faith are central to the spiritual lives of my Characters - and along comes the Son a few hundred years or so before the time of my Story - Christianity.
But God is one heck of a lot older than Christianity, being as the world is a lot older than Christianity.
So, what would the ancestors of my Characters have believed, what would they have passed on to the generations between, and to those of the 'transitional' stages?
Up pop a couple of familiar symbols.
The Spiral.
The Dove.
The Circle.
The Cross?
Not really.
Not until just after, or just about the time of, this first set of books did the Cross become a symbol for the Son.
Digging around on line I found that the Dove, which we use as a symbol for the Holy Spirit part of the Trinity, was in use as a symbol for the Mother a long time before Christianity.
Okay I can get that - makes sense to me that the Trinity is comprised of a logical combination of Father, Mother, Child - can't have one without the others, hello.
So I've got one symbol: the Dove for the Mother. Other faiths used other birds sometimes but I figured a raven might not get the message across ...
The Cross comes along too late to be the symbol my Characters would have used for the Son.
Now all my life I've heard that there is no symbol for the Father.
But there is - in my opinion - and after a year of searching for something, ANYTHING I could use, I realized it had been staring me in the face all along.
Fibonacci - Creation, Life, Death, Eternity
And that makes sense to me too.
As a symbol for God, the Spiral is the most logical thing in the world.
When it comes to the Son - the Child part of the Trinity, I'm going with the Circle I think - because nothing is more inclusive and eternal than a circle ... yada yada ... not all crosses have circles on them; those that do are called 'Celtic Crosses'. And why would that be? My Characters being Celt, generally speaking, the Circle of the Son would have made sense to them - it would also symbolize the continuity between the old ways and the new; the absence of conflict, the uniting of the whole, blah blah blah I'll spare you the rest of the spiel.
So.
Something new comes along that makes sense.
That doesn't mean you throw out the old, because the new knowledge probably serves to reinforce what you already believe, even if it seems to contradict it.
There's a whole lot more that we don't know, even with all the stuff we're learning as we go along, than we DO know.
Science isn't in conflict with God; it's all a part of the whole, just like everything else.
When it comes to prophecy, yeah I think some of it is hogwash - but maybe not all of it. And sometimes you just don't know exactly what or when it really refers to. Matter of fact, most if not all of it.
Dreams?
Well, I've had more than a few actually happen. Is that prophecy? Or what? Coincidence? And what about the ones that don't seem to make any sense at all until you think about them in terms of symbolic meanings?
Enoch isn't in the Bible; apparently his visions were just too far out in left field for inclusion, who knows? There are quite a few that got 'weeded out'.
The thing about prophecies is that they're so esoteric, and mostly unclear, that it boils down to a matter of interpretation - and timing.
If I had anything to wager I might bet that in every crisis of this world somebody or other runs across one or another of the ancient prophecies (biblical or not) and tries to make them fit in with whatever's going on in the world at the time. And why does this happen?
Because if a prophecy hasn't come true yet it might be happening NOW. And maybe it isn't going to come true until several thousands of years in the future - or ever, for that matter - or maybe it did and nobody caught it (end of the world maybe excluded) - but it might. It's not like those guys included specific dates to go by; that would be counter-productive (if you're of a cynical nature) because what would be the point of prophesying if it's that easy for people to understand - takes the mystery right out of it.
Did any prophet ever say, okay such and such is going to happen exactly three thousand five hundred and forty seven years from today (and specify exactly when 'today' was) so somebody make sure to keep these my words safely preserved for several millennia just so I'll be proved right clear down the road that far?
I doubt it. The whole point, as I see it, was to scare the ever-livin' daylights out of everybody, thinking that such horrendous things might possibly come to pass in their lifetimes so they'd best pay attention and toe the line all along just in case - don't want to be on the wrong side when the time comes, right? Incentive is incentive.
If, say, a prophet predicted a military win or defeat for example, maybe s/he just had some real good spies and some experienced soldiers. Or say s/he 'predicted' something or other but it wasn't written down until a few hundred years later - well for heaven's sake, what kind of validity would that prediction have? Someone's say-so after the fact? The winners write the history books. And they might just take it into their heads to do some heavy editing or a lot of creative writing.
And what if some guy uses some psychedelic drugs and then writes down his hallucinations? Are those prophecies? Depends on who you ask, I reckon - and whether or not anybody wants to take the time or make the effort to fit them into the boxes provided by current events.
And some things are common sense, backed by solid history and the knowledge of human nature.
If-then-then, the basic A-B-C of psychology: Antecedent, Behavior, Consequence
Having just studied the 'fall' of the Roman Empire a couple of things pop into my head.
One is that if a government gets too big for its britches, then people get sick of it and start kicking up a fuss, and the whole thing falls apart.
Or, if you put power into the hands of 'outsiders', then they end up in the driver's seat, and you might end up where you don't want to be which would be out of the driver's seat. That goes for England too, for that matter, back in the day. Same as with Rome - they hired people to do their dirty work for them and ended up with those people in control. And who's to say it didn't all turn out for the best in the end? Seems to me the ones who ended up in the driver's seat were smarter than the ones who hired them in the first place, but that's just my opinion.
Anyway, if you read the Federalist Papers and do some homework on our Founding Fathers, you're going to find some mighty well-educated people. They knew what had worked in other times and places, why it worked, why it ended up NOT working, what flaws there were, and how to avoid them. Talk about some prophets.
They knew the principles of Fibonacci and used them in the creation of the United States. Checks and Balances, you know. Separation of Church and State. United States = State/Federal and the rights and responsibilities of both. yada yada Read the Constitution.
If we've ignored their warnings and prophecies, and failed to implement their recommendations, whose fault is that but our own? They TOLD us what to watch out for and what to do when it cropped up. And those words of warning are just as 'missing' to us as the 'missing' books of the Bible - hmmm - for the same reasons perhaps? Surely not - and they're not destroyed or banned, just ignored.
The Constitution provides BALANCE.
Off topic again?
Nope.
I've heard it said that America is becoming a Godless nation.
Now THAT'S hogwash.
There is no such possibility. Whether we all happen to call God by the same name or not, 'no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.' (Desiderata) There's no such thing as Godlessness.
And what is God but the concept of Creation, Life, Death, Eternity - the Spiral - Fibonacci - PHI - a scientific/mathematical reality - tested - tried and true - empirical data and the whole nine yards. It's what holds our world together and what made it happen in the first place.
That's God.
And it doesn't matter what we believe or don't believe (don't have a fit, just listen for a minute) as individuals. God is still the same one and only God there has ever been and the universe is still going to continue unfolding as it should.
That's the Spiral.
To US, of course our specific Faith matters, and the course of world events has been changed more than once by conflicts between faiths - but that doesn't change the fact that God is still God and that the universe is still just keeping on keeping on unfolding as it should.
What's that catch-phrase? 'It goes to the Quality of Life'
All we have is each one life (even if you believe in reincarnation, you still only get one life at a time) in which to be as happy and productive as we can.
If/when prophecies become reality, there's not a darned thing we're gonna be able to do to stop them or change them (else they would prove false and not true prophecies at all, right? In which case we still can't stop or change reality.) - all we can do is the best we can do to get ourselves through them. Maybe Destiny is a real thing, too. Maybe we're all pre-programmed to live our lives out as the Fates decree and none of us actually have any Choice at all in the matter.
I don't happen to take that view, but that doesn't mean it might not be true anyhow, whether I believe it or not.
So.
Where have I gotten myself in the course of this pattering spree, besides several hours further along in the course of my life?
1) And what is God but the concept of Creation, Life, Death, Eternity - the Spiral - Fibonacci - PHI - a scientific/mathematical reality - tested - tried and true - empirical data and the whole nine yards. It's what holds our world together and what made it happen in the first place. That's God, folks. And God IS our world; runs our world; is the ultimate in Power and Control (in a good way); has been, is, and will always be everything we have known, now know, and will ever know. How is that not God? Where's the conflict? God is Infinity. Math and physics as well as spirit. We've got minds, bodies, and spirits. That's a trinity too, but a different topic.
2) If/when prophecies become reality, there's not a darned thing we're gonna be able to do to stop them or change them. Else they would prove false and not be true prophecies at all, right? In which case we still can't stop or change reality. The universe is still gonna unfold as it should.
3) So there's no use in fretting about it all. The universe is going to unfold as it should, no matter what. We're all just along for the ride and we can enjoy it or be miserable - that much IS up to us.
Just sayin'.
All we can do is the best we can do with what we have to work with at any given time. So why not focus on the 'best' part of that equation in as positive a way as we can?
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