No. of Recommendations: 6
Our range of view into space is very, very narrow.
Understatement by a million, billion percent. And yes, “predictions” of things unknown is perilous, if not foolish. Take any human before 1750 and explain electricity to them and they’d think you were daft. Atomic structure? Rididiculous.
That said, “religion’, as it is understood in our species and culture, as it has been understood in all cultures, involves mysterious invisible and unknown forces, generally anthomorphized as beings who exert control in our lives, but without the slightest bit of accountability. It seems useless to bother paying attention to such, just as I would forgive the 17th century citizens for not listening to my lecture about toasters and radar and vehicles powered by electrons.
If the day comes when Santa Claus (for example) turns out to be real and someone catches him in the act of slipping down the chimney (apologies to Tim Allen, of course) I will happily change my mind, just as those citizens lucky enough to be alive during the birth of the knowledge of electricity did.
Until then it made no difference, no sense, and frankly - given the retrograde attitude of religionists these days - is probably a terrible thing to participate in, much less hope for. (Sidebar: even in Ben Franklin’s time churches refused to put lightning rods on the buildings because “if it’s god’s will to burn it down…” Meanwhile barns and other tall buildings which were not so stutifyingly dogmatic did so and protected themselves. And only 50 or 100 years later the churches allowed as how they might have been wrong and publicly declared…. Oh wait, not they didn’t They just quietly added lightning rods and carried on pretending they knew what else they were talking about, which of course they didn’t.
Yeah, there’s much to be learned in the vastness of space, without question, but I am doubtful that we will find invisible beings watching us and writing down who’s been naughty and who’s been nice.
