Through our intelligence and understanding, humans can manipulate material reality in ways that far surpass what any other species (that we know of) can do.
From splitting the atom to smashing them together, from the atom bomb to the Higgs boson, and from the Mandelbrot set to the multiverse, humanity has separated itself from all other earthly species through the power of its own mind.
To all other species, therefore, we should be revered like gods. And even though we are much more like all the other species on our planet than we are like an omnipotent, omniscient, infinitely and eternally perfect, immaterial “God,” that can exist entirely outside of all time and space, we think we are all perfectly capable of understanding the mind of that God nevertheless, even though our best experts have very little understanding of the simpler minds of any of those “lesser” beings we are so much more similar to, and even less of our own.
In fact, the very religions that tell us all how incredibly imperfect we truly are, also assure us that they are all perfectly capable of explaining to us what “the stain of original sin” has rendered us incapable of ever truly understanding on our own.
But for them to say that they can understand the mind of God, in other words, is like one of those “lesser” beings on Noah’s ark claiming to know more about Noah than all the rest of the animals on the ark combined.
And this is what the Christian calls “humility,” which the Atheist spells h-u-b-r-i-s.
From splitting the atom to smashing them together, from the atom bomb to the Higgs boson, and from the Mandelbrot set to the multiverse, humanity has separated itself from all other earthly species through the power of its own mind.
To all other species, therefore, we should be revered like gods. And even though we are much more like all the other species on our planet than we are like an omnipotent, omniscient, infinitely and eternally perfect, immaterial “God,” that can exist entirely outside of all time and space, we think we are all perfectly capable of understanding the mind of that God nevertheless, even though our best experts have very little understanding of the simpler minds of any of those “lesser” beings we are so much more similar to, and even less of our own.
In fact, the very religions that tell us all how incredibly imperfect we truly are, also assure us that they are all perfectly capable of explaining to us what “the stain of original sin” has rendered us incapable of ever truly understanding on our own.
But for them to say that they can understand the mind of God, in other words, is like one of those “lesser” beings on Noah’s ark claiming to know more about Noah than all the rest of the animals on the ark combined.
And this is what the Christian calls “humility,” which the Atheist spells h-u-b-r-i-s.
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