If you easily take things as miracles, you probably won’t
be tempted to discover the reasons why (and kill any interesting conversation
directly):
-
Why do leaves fall down in the autumn?- I don’t know. It must be a miracle.
- Why doesn’t this boat sink?
- I don’t know, probably a miracle.
- Why do I get hungry when I don’t eat?
- Must be a miracle.
Would Einstein really promote such kind of intellectual
sluggishness? I don’t think so. The secret is in the timing, I guess: the “it’s a
miracle” answer should not come directly after the question has been asked. I’m
of the opinion that one should investigate, reflect and go so deep that there
is only one answer left: “it’s a miracle”.
Max Planck, too, once confessed “I became a believer
because I got to the end of my reasoning and I couldn’t think any further. We
all stop thinking too early.”
I’d say many religious people say “It’s a miracle” too
quick, while atheists claim they never do. But where do they stop then? What
comes after their final “why”? It can’t be the “I don’t know” because then they
wouldn’t be called “atheists” but “agnostics”. I would like to once meet a real
atheist, not the “I don’t care” or “I just don’t believe” variety; one that
really went the whole way, got to the end of his reasoning and stayed there,
satisfied.
There’s one more reason I’m particularly attracted to
rainbows. It has to do with my address: 42 is “The angle rounded to whole degrees for which a rainbow appears (the critical angle)”, according to Wikipedia. Whatever it means. As far as miracles go, I'm not too critical…
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