Tiiba comments on Rationality Quotes: November 2010 - Less Wrong
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From desert cliff and mountaintop we trace the wide design,
Strike-slip fault and overthrust and syn and anticline...
We gaze upon creation where erosion makes it known,
And count the countless aeons in the banding of the stone.
Odd, long-vanished creatures and their tracks & shells are found;
Where truth has left its sketches on the slate below the ground.
The patient stone can speak, if we but listen when it talks.
Humans wrote the Bible; God wrote the rocks.
There are those who name the stars, who watch the sky by night,
Seeking out the darkest place, to better see the light.
Long ago, when torture broke the remnant of his will,
Galileo recanted, but the Earth is moving still.
High above the mountaintops, where only distance bars,
The truth has left its footprints in the dust between the stars.
We may watch and study or may shudder and deny,
Humans wrote the Bible; God wrote the sky.
By stem and root and branch we trace, by feather, fang and fur,
How the living things that are descend from things that were.
The moss, the kelp, the zebrafish, the very mice and flies,
These tiny, humble, wordless things--how shall they tell us lies?
We are kin to beasts; no other answer can we bring.
The truth has left its fingerprints on every living thing.
Remember, should you have to choose between them in the strife,
Humans wrote the Bible; God wrote life.
And we who listen to the stars, or walk the dusty grade,
Or break the very atoms down to see how they are made,
Or study cells, or living things, seek truth with open hand.
The profoundest act of worship is to try to understand.
Deep in flower and in flesh, in star and soil and seed,
The truth has left its living word for anyone to read.
So turn and look where best you think the story is unfurled.
Humans wrote the Bible; God wrote the world.
~Catherine Faber, The Word of God
I want to upvote this twice.
This comment being upvoted +21 doesn't fit my model of LessWrong voting, because it personifies the natural world with a God-concept, even if it is advocating for science and evolution. Am I missing something?
So should every every metaphor be voted down? Or just personifying metaphors? Or just metaphors mentioning deities?
I downvoted it because it perpetuated the myth that Galileo was tortured. Plus, God knows, the poetry was pretty awful.
I figure this particular one strikes some as a bit iffy since the metaphor is so close to the salient metaphor the actual creationists are using and treating as a non-metaphor. Metaphors, like "God wrote life", closely associated with unsympathetic real-world groups tend to carry a bit extra baggage. The matter is of course confused further by the original context where this was written as a response to creationists.
"Plus, God knows, the poetry was pretty awful."
I could agree with you more. But I won't.
What details have you got about Galileo? I'd heard that he was shown the instruments of torture, and recanted at that point.
Well, there is some dispute whether he was "shown the instruments". A historian named Gingerich apparently argues that the showing never took place. But, in any case, threat of torture is not torture - or at least it is not what comes to mind when the myth of torture is repeated. The myth is a falsehood, which, if repeated by someone who knows better, is usually referred to as a "lie".
Sounds like mock executions - they're not actually being executed...
I suspect it may be something similar to what NihilCredo said; rationalist quotes from theist sources are just so much fun.
It's good art advocating for science.
It beautifully promotes Joy in the Merely Real, and strongly encourages the pursuit of knowledge.