‘I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use and by some other means to give us knowledge which we can attain by them.’
-Galileo Galilei
This quote by Galileo illustrates better probably than I ever could one of the beliefs which I have come to accept as core to my comprehension of the universe: God has enabled humanity to think for itself, and to arrive at a great many truths by its own cognitive processes. While certain aspects of God’s nature are not fully comprehensible – his unfailing love of humanity, his revelation of this love through Jesus Christ, and the process of salvation through Christ’s sacrifice – and while we certainly are not capable of using our comprehension to save ourselves from sin, we, having been made in God’s image, share with him the capacity to understand his Creation, the things of physical nature similar to our own.
This blog will attempt to arrive at some of those truths, however futile an effort it might be, by thinking critically and (hopefully) objectively about the premises upon which certain conclusions are founded, and following those premises through to new conclusions which might be the same or different. It will also serve as a repository for my thoughts on various scientific and musical topics of interest (see About Mike) and, more lightly, a venue through which I can share my musings on pop culture.
Please feel free to join in and tell me how obtuse I am being at any time; the more the merrier, right?
Incidentally, the title of this blog is taken from the album of the same name by rock band Muse, and I think it serves perfectly as a succint description of this blog’s subject matter. The header was cropped from an image of grand design galaxy M81taken by Dr. H. Michael Sommermann, professor of physics at Westmont, with Westmont’s 0.6-meter Ritchey-Chrétien reflecting telescope.
