Genesis Redux

©2022 by Vernon Miles Kerr  and VernonMilesKerr.com 

#FirstCuppaJoe for May 11 (thread)

Atheists don’t waste a lot of time with the “God thing.” Maybe that’s the advantage of ideology. All matters in the relevant subject are settled firmly, thus freeing the mind for other concerns. #Agnostics, on the other hand, spend part of every day on the question of “God.” I admit that I do. For twenty years, I was in a church that professed to be “Christian,” until the occason of its guru’s death led to its complete fragmentation and collapse.

Left adrift, without the constant doctinal brow-beating, I began to question the Bible’s contradictions — both internally and in regard to clearly established science. The main question, and the one that remains, is “How can a supreme all-powerful being wait until an intelligent species is more than a million years on a planet, in order to grace it with an instruction manual?

Then, more importantly, why would “They” (since a sole and supreme being has no need for gender) present a genesis-story that would so easily be proven a lie, only a few thousand years later? And, why do we even consider that “assemblage” of various authors spanning additional thousands of years, a single artifact, just because it’s usually bound together between two black-leather covers?

Couldn’t a Supreme Being have anticipated such an outcome? Of course they could. Then why bother? They wouldn’t, would they? Unless the real genesis of Planet Earth was only one of trillions set in motion on the possibly trillions of other Earth-like planets that would coalesce, after the so-called “Big Bang.” To imagine a purpose behind such a genesis-story keeps this agnostic’s brain occupied a significant part of every day. Here’s an imaginary new one:

Genisis Chapter One

In this Universe’s beginning God created matter and sent it continually accelerating outward, into this Universe’s “forever.” Within this creation, God imbued matter with certain propensities, qualities, which would make the eventual development of life inevitable, everywhere.

One of the propensities of matter was evolution. But, when matter evolved into life, that life would evolve to evermore complexity. So, Life—itself—was designed to defy the laws of thermodynamics which God had built into its own component matter. Life, itself, was given reverse-entropy, but individual living creatures were not. After reaching adulthood, entropy would take over and living creatures would begin to fade, then die.

God decided, I can extrapolate the results of evolution on each of those trillions of planets, down to each individual living creature’s life story but I chose not to. I chose to wait until the mind of a species begins to question its own purpose, then I will add a tiny fragment of my own mind to theirs’ — just enough so that they begin to sense my absense. In my absense, physically, they will begin to theorize on my essence and agonize to know their own purpose.

Of course many conflicting theories will arise in a species which is liberally spread around an entire planet. These theories will be called “religion” in whatever lanuage the species speaks. Like life, even the theories will evolve. Since a bit of my own mind is present in each individual, I will be able to sample the planet-wide consensus about “religion.” and the individual creature’s thoughts and experiences will not die because they are part of me. Will an individual planet’s consensus ever reach the truth? I chose not to peek, I enjoy being surprised.