Epiphany and Dawkins

Tradition has it that there were three wise men who made a pilgrimage to visit a baby in a stable having consulted their astrological charts. Whether or not the tradition is true, the Bible appears to indicate that there were an unknown number of Magi bearing three types of gift for the infant Christ. I think it's safe to assume that these were indeed a group (of however many) of wise men. They had read nature (cf Psalm xviii (xix)) and purely on the strength of their research they managed to find precisely what they were looking for, namely the infant God.

And then there are other learned men who say that because it doesn't fit into the rationalist way of thinking, there can be no God. Richard Dawkins thinks that to even be religious is an insult to the proud achievements of mankind (which must logically include the nuclear bombs being dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki). This is his religion: he is an atheist, he believes that there is no God. I suspect that his line of philosophy would also work to render questions about the presence of God absurd, i.e. the modern equivalent of St Augustine's "What was God doing before creating the Universe? Preparing Hell for those who ask such questions!"

Yes, I am close minded about the existence of God, and proud of it. Dawkins can say all he likes about me deluding myself and offering all those rationalist proofs as to why I shouldn't. first as a mathematician, I know that Goedel's theorem of incompleteness says that any axiomatic thought has statements that cannot be proved within the system. God exists. I don't need to prove it. The onus probandi is with Dawkins. Epiphany is the celebration of the God-given ability to use God's creation to find Him. If we look out into space we see His work. If we look into the atom, we see His fingerprints. If we could look upon our soul we would see the sticky label attached by the Creator to our back : "made by God, and boy is He pleased."