Artists

I was walking Rufus around the neighborhood thinking about art. I thought about all the best artists, the best poets, the best writers, actors, painters, sculptors, inventors, musicians. Now, because I am woefully ignorant as far as who the best of each of those are, I just thought about a few names that jumped to mind: Leonardo Da Vinci, Robert Frost, Stephen King, Ben Franklin, Michelangelo, Beethoven. The reason those guys are all so great is because they did so many great things. They didn't seem to run out of ideas. Now, that is probably pretty obvious. But then I started thinking about what that means about creation, and by extension the creator.

Typically, Christians get up in arms about the age of the universe. And, I suppose there is good reason. Usually those that get up in arms about it say that they are upset because they want to protect the bible or something like that (does the bible really need protecting?). But I think it could be something else entirely.

There is a particular branch of philosophy, though I'm sure some deny this is a philosophy, called humanism. Essentially, it elevates humanity to the central importance of the universe and considers religion and the supernatural to be absurd, or at the least irrelevant.

Now, what if those three things are all related? What if creation, humanism and a young earth are all the same or a similar discussion?

This is what I think. I think people are so upset about the idea that the earth could be billions of years old because that opens the possibility that God has been doing some other things for billions of years. It opens the possibility that humanity is not the most important thing ever created, or that we are at least not the most central. It opens the possibility that God has created, for lack of a better word, other peoples or races that he also loved. It opens the possibility that God is indeed the most magnificent creator/artist to ever exist, and that God is constantly creating and moving and doing new things.

If a human father can have several children and love them all equally, and if a human mother can remember all the wonderful things about each of her 15 children or whatever, then why couldn't an infinite Being love billions and trillions of created beings in unique and whole ways?

Obviously this is pure speculation, but in my opinion people get so bent out of shape about the possibility of having a very old earth because they start to feel their place in the universe threatened. But if God loves us, and Jesus died for us, then why would we ever think that we were going to lose our spot? And if in the first book of the bible it seems like God is working with some matter or place that already exists, and in the last book of the bible God talks about new creation, new heaven and new earth, then why couldn't God continually be creating new and wonderful things?