Today was easily the best day so far. Read for a bit, had a nice lunch in the cafe and sat by the duckpond for a bit more reading. Then went for a walk around the reservoir that I found yesterday. Very beautiful path, with bluebells and butterflies, little streams and a church. There was a path through the trees where I suddenly realised that there was nothing in my field of view that was affected by technology. It was all natural. I was happy for a moment. Then some big dogs appeared. Thankfully they didn't bite me, and their owners called them back before they changed their minds.
I wonder if there are dogs in heaven? The trouble is, half the people there won't want them and the other half will. Either way it won't be heaven for one set of people. So maybe heaven doesn't work like that. The KFC kids explained that there are several levels to 'doggy heaven', which makes more sense.
I wonder if evolution eventually creates a world where all creatures are nice? Certainly doesn't seem that way now, but the lack of carnivorous dinosaurs in Yorkshire is definitely a step forward. We can walk around the English countryside knowing we have no natural predators - except possibly insurance salespeople.
Normal people can stop reading now because I'm getting a bit theological. Today I also finished reading my 1st book of the Sabbatical -
'The Living God' by Keith Ward.
I always liked the quotes I read from Prof. Ward without ever getting round to reading any of his books. Here, in this book from 1986, he has a crack at explaining the whole of Christianity, starting with the rationality - the comprehensibility - of the universe. Which he thinks is in itself a good reason for believing in a God whose nature is to be rational.
Good start, and he says lots of other wise things. Like we shouldn't moan about the universe being unkind to us and think our prayers aren't being answered when our little corner of it doesn't conform to our ideals. Our little piece of it has to conform to the overall pattern first.
He asks and answers why the universe is a big as it seems to be:
"...the smallest and most insignificant conscious being is more valuable than all those millions and millions of light years of empty space."
Some years ago I thought of this thing called "complexity space" - a mapping of the universe which takes into account complexity. This means that simple bits of it - e.g. gas clouds or 'empty' space are tiny compared to vast volumes taken up by the massively complex items like humans. And so we are as important as God sees us.
More controversially, Ward says that:
'We can see God's kingdom as the final goal of evolution, the achieved society of growing love, knowledge, creative cooperation and friendship. We have to give up, as pre-scientific... Eden... sudden fall into sin ... sudden end to this wicked world just around the corner.' Instead we need the evolutionary perspective on human progress.
So there. No pre-mil mid-trib rap for him!
I still want to know if symbiosis ultimately trumps parasitism and if all dogs will be nice and if lions can lie down with lambs and still be lions. But then I want to know lots of stupid things.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
(Kept reading, therefore not 'normal')
ReplyDelete'Complexity space' : That's like looking at the ZIP-file backup of the universe rather than the uncompressed version.
Evolving into God's kingdom: That's the sort of thing people believed before the world wars. I thought our thinking had evolved since then!
I once heard a CofE vicar at a funeral declare that the person who had died would now be reunited with the dogs she had so loved on earth. That got me thinking about the 'Dogs in heaven' thing myself: Seeing as we depend on Jesus (John 3:16), dogs would have to have a 'Jesus Dog' come to be their saviour. After that thought I speedily drew the conclusion that dogs do not make it to heaven after all!
God bless your sabbatical!
Interesting - I don't know if God is low on diskspace so needs compression, but I see what you mean. Come to think if it, it would be 4 dimensional to include time as well. Unless the universe started about 6000 years ago. Maybe that's the evolution/creation debate done then.
ReplyDeleteWW1 was a big blow to Postmillennialism but that stream of thinking is still around with the likes of Prof. Ward. I think it's quite reasonable to see WW1 as a downwards blip in an otherwise upward trend. I'm certainly glad to be living now rather than 100 or even 50 years ago. But one nuclear explosion could convince me otherwise so I don't think we can be sure either way.
I agree a canine incarnation is probably inappropriate!