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The other day, coming home I thought I saw a dog in the field so I slowed my car down to a creep. It was a doe...a beautiful baby doe. She lifted her head from eating and looked directly into my eyes for a full minute. THAT was God! IMO that was God showing off saying, "Take the time out to really notice what I have done." I must have sat there for a good 3 minutes before the doe took off, just weeping because of the beauty of what He's created and because He chose me to show this to.
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59 comments
I've seen the same thing and marvelled at the complexity of nature, the interwoven ecosystems and the aesthetically overwhelming raw beauty of it.
To think, that given time and circumstance, the planet has evolved to its current state of beauty. Darwin really understood this complexity and produced his treatise "On the Origin of Species", which so skillfully and thoughtfully taught us our real space in the scheme of things.
As research progresses in genetics, Darwin's theory has been proven correct with each advance in our understanding of that science.
Your god pales in comparison to the reality and grandeur of the evolutionary processes.
Deer were common where I lived. Coyotes weren't rare either.
But one time I saw a harfang des neiges (a snowy owl, I think?) right in front of the kitchen window and that made me realise the ultimate Truth:
I lived in the most awesome place ever.
I so nearly could have let this one go. Cool, you saw the beauty of nature and it gave you a warm fuzzy. Fab. Call it God, call it natural processes, call it both. Hell, call it Gerald, for all I care. That's cool you appreciated it...
and because He chose me to show this to
...and then you ruin it by anthropocentrizing so heavily that the omniscient and omnipotent Creator of the entire universe did it all just so you can get your warm fuzzy. And that Slovenian orphan that died of leukemia at that same moment...?
So on the one hand...
The material world is evil, and Christians are supposed to reject the world in order to focus on God.
And on the other hand...
Everything in the material world was created by God and is beautiful evidence of God's existence.
You know, to ME, saying "Goddidit" actually lessens how amazing it is.
On one hand, you have simplistic elements that formed intricate systems that somehow found a way to work together to create something so complex.
On the other hand, you have omnipotence. If something all-powerful does something...so what? He's ALL-POWRFUL! Nothing an all-powerful being does will ever amaze me, simply because it is all-powerful & therefore everything is no effort for it.
Short version: Both the religious & the non (except in the case of nihilists) are amazed by life & the universe in general. They simply have different reasons.
God: "Hey you, Sophie! (And don't think I don't know your real name!) Forget wars, famines, natural disasters, disease, bigotry and hatred. Forget global warming, deforestation and general destruction of the ecosystem. Forget the violence of life on the planet that I could stop with the snap of my divine fingers. Instead look at this little baby deer (whose mother was killed by some redneck hunter who has since stuck her head on a wall). I call him Bambi. Now crawl in abject humiliation, worm, and worship me for all eternity! Worship my divine magnificence and grace for allowing a pathetic parasite like you to view the grandeur of all that I have created. Weep for the beauty I have shown you and don’t think of the fact that he won’t get beyond three years of age before someone nails his head to a wall or he ends up as road kill. (I already know which it will happen; I planned this thousands of years ago.) Now, have a nice day. (That's an order, by the way.)”
My grandparents live in the mountains of Arkansas. We see deer there all the time.
What you saw was the wonder of deforestation, the fact that you were awed at a doe.
After which, I took out my AK-47, the hunting rifle I bought myself last Christmas, and shot it full of holes.
That was an even more beautiful moment.
I had tears in my eyes as I drove away and left the carcass to rot.
i was driving along this road the other day i had to get home because i was tired and bored and somne arsehole stops their car and stares of into this feild for three minutes because of this arsehole sitting in the middle of the road i hit heavy traffic and was stuck in the treaffic for three hours.
(Hypothetical comment (i cannot drive))
My favorite sight's been a pair of fox kits playing with a kitten, a few weeks back near a train track.
It made me remember that kittens and foxes are adorable.
No deities need be involved to think stuff is awesome.
Psh. City dwellers, please.
IT'S JOST A DOE, YOU MORON.
just weeping because of the beauty of what He's created and because He chose me to show this to.
Very good. Now compare that to the rest of "God's creation", including such delights as the pork tapeworm, which can burrow into your brain and kill you with seizures, malaria, HIV, the Guinea worm, brown/black rats, mycobacterium leprae, screw worm flies, botfly larvae, the truly delightful tongue-eating isopod, and similar gut-twisting horrors. Still feel an overwhelming sense of beauty?
I agree. The natural world is a place of great beauty and awe.
And then you had to start weeping about your invisible friend and how awesome he is because you saw something neat and you think it was him and he would never do anything like that for a nonbeliever. Is it at all possible for you freaks to stop licking Jesus' balls for one second? One measly second? I mean, honestly.
Oh no, I shot Bambie mother!
It's worse than that, son. You shot God.
You need to get out more, Sophie.
You have sharp eyes if you could sex a fawn, btw.
"...a beautiful baby doe. She lifted her head from eating and looked directly into my eyes for a full minute. THAT was God!"
Doe, a God, A Female God.
....
God's pretty prideful.
Ha - Sin paradox.
Hm. What does it say about me that I expected the ending to be:
"She lifted her head from eating and looked directly into my eyes for a full minute. Red was smeared all around her mouth! People I know said she must've been eating berries, but I just KNOW it was blood! She was ripping apart her fellow deer because of all the gays in the world! Athiesm and butt secks is causing satan to attack deer!"
This site has completely destroyed all my faith in these people - not that I really had any to begin with.
Brain_In_A_Jar: That's where I was going, too. What's your favorite parasite, dear? And praise God also for the brown bear -- a magnificent creature in its own right -- that will tear that doe's head off with one swipe of a paw.
What's your favorite parasite, dear?
I know you really asked B_I_A_J (if the question wasn't hypothetical) but I had to mention that my favorite parasite is [i]Leucochloridium paradoxum[/i] .
I've seen doe, as well. They are beutiful. But they evolved that way. Personally, I'm glad they did.
And of course, everyone else in the thread backs her up crying "God is great!" while not thinking about how He's not so great to millions of starving Africans.
Not to Fundamentalist, but her narrow worldview is what bothers me. As others here have commented, it makes me think of all the things in the world that are not Great.
A doe is God? What, then, is a moose in the field, or a hart? I've seen both, several times, and I was just struck by the beauty of Nature. Not by divine intervention.
How could you tell from that distance whether the baby deer was female or male? Perhaps you mean a roe deer fawn? That's the one with the white spots on its sides.
All things dull and ugly,
Confused?
So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!
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