Thursday, September 21, 2006

MuteMath: About to Blast-Off

Check out MM's newly designed webpage, which features a very cool and well-done promo video:

Mute Math New Tour/Album Promo

Go see them live, if at all possible.

Gap

A friend and I tonight got to talking. I fleshed out some thoughts I was having while driving to work the other day. When thinking about the evolution vs. creationism debate, you hear all the regular theories. In Barnes & Noble, I saw some book by a brilliant Christian scientist who states that God created the world, but through the mechanism of evolution. I've heard this one before - nothing new. Except that I had a new thought:

God has always been, at His heart, relational. He's always had the fellowship of the Trinity; He's (maybe not always, but for quite some time) had a host of angels around Him in heaven. There was always relationship. So, from what we know of the personality of God, would God create a world that has vast spaces of time where nothing could relate to Him? I'm discounting the idea of God having deep relationship with primordial matter.

From the account in the Bible, God was either in relationship with the Trinity, with the angels in heaven, or with Adam & Eve in the garden at any given time. I don't believe He would have gaps of time waiting for something human, with a soul and the ability to think and relate. It seems inefficient, if not downright wasteful. I also believe God can create human life on the spot - He's that powerful. I'm not sure I see Him waiting millions of years for humanity to come about through evolution (although time as we know it here on earth is like a second to God).

Not that He couldn't do it in this manner. I'm just trying to think about the personality of God and weigh it against an earth that's supposedly billions of years old. What's the point?

Monday, September 18, 2006

Taking Credit

I was thinking today about taking credit for things. Particularly, when someone has a brilliant, genius idea.... are they to receive all the credit? When Einstein came across the theory of relativity in his thoughts, where did those thoughts come from? There are two avenues to take here: one is the way of humanism, where praise is heaped upon the individual and they are lauded as an amazing mind. The second route is one of ascribing the praise to God. Basically, this boils down to what you believe about the origin of everything.

Where do we get our thoughts? Who or what inspires us when we think? In other words, who/what is our muse?

Does that ever occur to anyone to figure out where our thoughts derive from? If we are blessed with the ability to figure things out and to think abstractly, does it not make sense to give credit to God? However, if God doesn't exist, we must figure out where our cognitive abilities come from.

The question, I think, begs WHY? Why would we think, why would we have a thought that, say, would lead us to create a vaccine for a deadly virus? Why are we even thinking of these solutions? Survival of the fittest, some would say. That makes sense to a certain end. Of course, with the aforementioned situation, we might revisit the question of why would a loving God allow such a deadly virus to exist in the first place?

We can go into that question at another time..... for now, I'm questioning why we think of brilliant ideas. I believe we are given the opportunity to think these thoughts from God. Once again, this question begets another one. Why do some people get the opportunity to think these ideas/discover these amazing truths, while others don't? Who chooses "the lucky ones?" Is it simply "fate?"

We will probably never know what process goes into why an Einstein becomes an Einstein in the annals of history. Food for thought.....