Fundamentalist Religion is Blasphemy

Try to fathom a cosmos that is so immense that it takes a beam of light fifteen billion years to travel from one end to the other. Who can fathom fifteen billion years? Now try to think of the size of the universe by calculating the speed of light at 186,000 miles per second, 11,160,000 miles per minute, 669,600,000 miles per hour, 16,070,400,000 miles per day, 5,869,713,600,000 miles per year. Now all you have to do is multiply that by 15,000,000,000. That’s the size of the universe. We literally do not have words to express that number. It is incomprehensible and ineffible.

Who among us has ever seen an atom, let alone the subatomic particles that constitute these mini-universes? When I was in high school, it was enough to tackle protons, neutrons and electrons. Now we’re obliged to contemplate quarks and leptons and neutrinos. And only recently we added a new subatomic particle, the Higgs boson, the so-called “God particle.” In those old days, outer space was filled with planets, stars and galaxies. Now just try to imagine a black hole, an area of space where mass is so dense and gravity so strong that it swallows light. Swallows light?! Go figure.

Now imagine someone claiming that he or she has the infallible absolute truth about the deepest mysteries of this immense cosmos all contained in one book. Is there a book, a doctrine that I can just read and then say, “Now I know; now I understand?” Where’s the priest, the pastor, the prophet even, who can explain to me on a Sunday morning all of what takes place in the far reaches of the cosmos and in the infinitesimal internal structures of an atom. What expert would have the hubris to present a book that would claim to unravel all of these mysteries?

Wouldn’t we consider any attempt to reduce cosmic grandeur to a single book to be a diminution of that grandeur? Would that not seem a vain attempt, devoid of significance, empty, trifling? Now consider the fact that all of the words in the Bible that are translated “blasphemy” have to do with exactly that. They are all words that mean empty, hollow, vain, trifling, and they refer to the attribution of these qualities to God. Blasphemy is the trivialization of divinity.

Those of us who are religious understand that there is a consciousness, a being perhaps, who created and maintains this immense, mysterious cosmos. And when it comes to this being, yes, there are those who claim to have all of the secrets explained. Yes, they say, there is a book; no not a book that could explain all of the mysteries of the cosmos. That’s incomprehensible, ineffible, hidden. But the being who created and maintains this immense structure, that’s easy. Just read this book.

To suggest that a single book could possibly reveal the will, purpose and operation of the creator and sustainer of the universe is beyond hubris; it is a trivialization of the divine and is, therefore, downright blasphemous.