In another PJ Media post exploring themes from Superego, I write about what’s the future of religion.
Science! It’s given us lasers and spaceships and explained the many great mysteries of life, like what is the sun, where does lightning come from, and what’s the deal with platypuses? Every day, the men in the lab coats tease out more secrets from this universe, and technology solves more of our problems (remember back in the day, when if you were lost in the woods, you couldn’t pull out your phone and quickly look up the filmography of the guy who played Balki in Perfect Strangers?). So as we go into a future with robots and a greater knowledge of quantum physics, what exactly do we need thousands-of-years-old texts on morality for?
Enjoy. And discuss.
There’s also another excerpt of Superego at PJ Media if for some insane reason you haven’t bought and read the book already.
One of your best… ever!
It’s not Platypi?
(Sigh) every time I go to PJ media to try to read one of Franks essays, the page locks up on me.
After hitting Refresh 5 times and still not getting to the end of the 1st page of his article, I gave up.
@3 4of7 – You’re not alone. Apparently they load up that site up with so much electronic wizardry that, although they can maintain that it works fine on the latest hardware and software, those of us with older stuff just find the ads loading . . . and reloading (while we’re reading) . . . and reloading . . . and reloading.
Great article Frank. I may not even add my usual snark. (ouch!) The chief purpose of man is to glorify God. I’m planning a celebration service right now. To God be the glory great things he hath done…
Aside from browser plugins that disable javascript and flash and even ads, you can give the Readability version of Frank’s article a perusal, Gentlemen.
I apologize, gentlemen, it seems that Readability redirects to the original article rather than the clean version so they cannot be shared. In any case, you can enter the original PJ url in https://www.readability.com/shorten and it will show you a clean version.
By the way, Balki is Bronson Pinchot! I had to look that up. I always confuse him with Augusto Pinochet, the dictator of Chile, because of their many similarities.
@5: “The chief purpose of man is to glorify God.”
That makes God sound like a narcissist.
@9, I think that depends on what “glorify” means, Jimmy. If it simply means “praise”, then you are right. But “glory” just refers to a representation of God’s greatness. For example, we can glorify Him by how we live our lives. By analogy, our behavior may be a reflection on our parents and how we were raised. We may be their glory. Other examples include a woman’s beautiful long hair being her glory. *ducks* *looks around* phew, only guys here, it seems. 🙂
So, after all my tangential blustering above, I finally finished Frank’s most excellent article.
The only flaw I can see is that his argument is so rational and empirical that one might be inclined to believe that there actually is some objective truth to some religion.
I wonder if this is addressed in Superego. I’ll find out when I receive my signed copy! 🙂
Ah, Fly, the pursuit of Godly righteousness. That doesn’t make God sound like a narcissist.
(BTW, one of my favorite Star Trek lines of all times is, “What does God need with a Starship?”
For that matter, what does he need with human beings?
We could get into some really deep philosophical discussions regarding Frank’s book and his take on the future of religion – but this is a humor site and we’d get cast off!
Yeah, that was a good episode. A guy pretending to be God in order to escape imprisonment on a planet, IIRC? Or am I mixing episodes.
Let’s see. If you were omnipotent and everything you imagined could be accomplished in an instant, what would be left for you to do?
I think that the only meaningful thing would be to create things that you do not control. Not just any chaotic thing or instinctual life, but life with some awareness of consequences and the free will to choose. In other words, intelligent life as we know it. After all, some things, such as love, are not possible without free will.
So, I guess God “needs” us because He has chosen not to control us, but He still hopes that we will choose Him and His ways. God would not have need of a starship Himself, but He might have things for us to do with a starship. Things He cannot do Himself because it would violate free will… well, except under rare circumstances — circumstances which I do not understand myself.
I’ll look forward to chatting with you about Frank’s book and its religions once I’ve read it. Perhaps if we end every post with a smiley face, we’ll stay in our host’s good graces. At least, that has worked for me so far. 🙂