• In the last post, I said that I believe in evolution, in the same way I believe the sun is bigger than the earth. I should explain that in my mind, I was arguing against one of my friends who told me that evolution is "true for you", whereas creationism might be "true for someone else". She seemed to mean that there is no objective truth about evolution. In my fantasy, my last post completely persuaded my friend that the sun is objectively bigger than the earth, and that I am objectively related to my cat. In reality it would probably only strengthen her opinion that I am being a jerk about this evolution thing, and I should just drop it already.

  Along with evolution, I am almost completely certain that none of the amazing miracles in the bible, or any other holy text, actually happened. I believe that the world is basically made of atoms, or superstrings, or whatever, bouncing around according to impersonal laws of motion. The point of miracles is to suggest that it is also guided by God, who is best understood by concepts like morality and love, not by equations.
  

  Put that way, my belief sounds rigid, limited and sad. For example, I believe that the beauty of a piece of music is a manifestation of patterns of neurons firing, each following laws of quantum mechanics. I think people find this appalling because I seem to be saying you could write a computer program that would just follow certain chord sequences with certain probabilities and come up with something as moving as Handel's Messaiah. In fact, there are so many neurons involved that it would be stupid to try to understand music in such a reductionist way. I do not consider a high level process emerging from millions of neurons following impersonal laws of physics to be a cheap trick in the same way a simple computer program would be. Ironically, most of the miracles in the bible do seem like cheap tricks to me.

  So here's my personal dilemma. Can I have access to the things I like about religion without any of the false beliefs that are so often a price of entry?

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