ponderings on the reading

"So now I am giving you a new commandment: Love each other. Just as I have loved you, you should love each other. Your love for one another will prove to the world that you are my disciples." (John 13:34-35)

This is the Gospel reading for Sunday. Here we see Christ commanding that his disciples should love each other as he has loved them and this love shall prove their discipleship to the world. In every case here, it is agape-love. Note, too, that it is by their fruits that they should be known to the world.

So, how has Christ loved the disciples? Does he show favouritism? What about Peter, the well-meaning shlemiel? Or Mary Magdalene, the invisible apostle? What about Thomas, the ever-practical Missourian? Or James and John, the sons of Thunder? Or Judas, who Christ knew would betray him?

To each and every one, he shows love and understanding equally. The form that love may take is different, as each person is different, but the love is still there. Are we not to show this to each other? To everyone? That is how it works. Not by coming to church or wearing a cross, not saying a rosary or knowing the hymns...but by loving one another. That is the fruit of our faith and it is by the fruit a tree is known.

Sorry, Dr. Dawkins, the evidence does not support your science

"Faith, being belief that isn't based on evidence, is the principal vice of any religion. ... Well, science is not religion and it doesn't just come down to faith. Although it has many of religion's virtues, it has none of its vices. Science is based upon verifiable evidence." - R. Dawkins

I have a number of friends and associates who are agnostics and/or atheists, all of whom strongly believe that science is superior than any sort of faith-based system. As someone who openly has faith and believes, I am commonly on the receiving end of rants not unlike Dawkins' above.

Full disclosure time. I hold three degrees in the sciences and have been professionally involved with applied, natural science for over two decades.

Returning to the main point, Dawkins, Hitchens and others like them forget/ignore the point of science and one of the underlying fundamental articles of science. Science (specifically applied science) is about gathering knowledge about the world and organizing and condensing that knowledge into testable laws and theories. The present method of doing so involves creating models which simulate and explain the natural world. To do so, there are a certain number of underlying assumptions which are agreed upon at the first. If mathematicians do not agree on the value of the number one or agree on the base numbering system, then 1+1=2 may not be an absolute truth. Ergo, science is based upon agreed-upon assumptions.

This leads me to the fundamental article which they are ignoring - that the nature of the universe is constant. Evolution, to use Dawkins' hobby horse, is a well crafted theory based upon a single data set. There is no verifiable evidence to support the idea that life follows Darwin anywhere else in the Cosmos. Similarly, the fundamental laws of physics (including universal constants and the ilk) have been proven to hold true in our local neighborhood, but nowhere else. Yet to refer to that belief in evolution (or String Theory or Q.E.D.) faith would be worse than saying bad things about his mother.

My point is not to denigrate the work of these people, nor to hold a faith-based system of belief above (or in contradiction to) science. Rather, it is to highlight that science is, itself, a faith-based system of belief. One thing I have learned in my direct dealings with the natural world is that our universe does not read textbooks or reports or what the 'authorities' declare. The apple does not fall from the tree in accordance to Newton's law of gravitation, but rather the law of gravitation describes what the apple does of it's own accord. We're back to the finger pointing at the moon again.

In a TED Talk that he gave, Dawkins asks the question "Are there things about the universe that will forever be beyond our grasp?" He then spends the remainder of the time explaining how, due to the constraints of human conception, there are. How different is that from saying "Is God unknowable?"

I stepped out of the house this morning to go to work and had to stop for a moment. The sun was just up enough that everything had a slight golden cast and the light breeze carried with it the songs of several birds. A robin stood at the top of the large spruce, heralding the day. As I watched, a pair of mallards slowly winged in, landing on the creek beside the house. The whole of it had a bucolic air which was almost surreal in the wonder and beauty.

No matter what my personal turmoils are, how I feel, the wheel of life continues to turn.

It is a new day.

This is the day that the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it.