. . . as someone once said: what has been asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence . . .
Beliefs determine what we expect and therefore what and how we interpret what we see.
There is no evidence without a theory that extracts it, telling us what it is.
Where the default position is that there is no God, there will be no way, for example, that such things as miracles will be accepted. These events will immediately be assumed to be part of the noise of existence, like a lottery win - random happenings resulting from a multitude of factors that are for the most part unknown and uncontrollable. The miraculous is discarded at the most basic level of identification in what is believed to be a random, chaotic universe.
What is not accepted as chaotic, are the physical laws of nature and the capacity to discern them through empirical research. This approach to knowledge is felt to lie at the foundation of nature - evolution. What works, makes it; what doesn’t is discarded. That’s why zealots like Dawkins sound like preachers, proclaiming their transcendent truth that empiricism and evolution are one reality.
But God is the Truth. And, one truth that is diminished, if not discarded has to do with meaning. When we ignore God, outside of power and survival, there is no meaning, only that found in the observed structure of the natural universe where everything dies, but may procreate. What remains otherwise are preferences and opinion. Since there is no true meaning to existence without a connection to God, we may be left either rudderless or at best, chasing after transient and illusory satisfactions. In the search for power or in the hope of a worldly transcendence, we may surrender our selves to the dictator, who represents and exerts the power of the group, on which is projected something deemed to be greater than the individual. People will die for that, a useless death, but consistent with an emphasis on evolution - the survival of the group.
But Christianity is not about power, although some may seek it though it’s worldly social form. People die for God, for love, the truth that transcends this world.
In the end, we see what we can see.
As the the second reading ends today:
“Moreover, we possess the prophetic message that is altogether reliable.
You will do well to be attentive to it,
as to a lamp shining in a dark place,
until day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.”
Daylight will come, the Light will shine, visible to all and making all clear.
In the meantime, it’s better to attend to the flame of revealed truth.
It is possible to lose one’s way in the darkness, which offers the illusion of protection, and turn oneself into an enemy of the Light.
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