On being asked what one could conclude as to the nature of the Creator from a study of his creation, J.B.S Haldane is said to have answered, "An inordinate fondness for beetles."
A book's been published by the Press
Of Cambridge University.
Its readers will have great success
In modeling divinity.
(An undertaking, I confess,
That doesn't much appeal to me.)
If you're into theology
And want to model the Creator,
This "how-to guide", read carefully,
Gather and then sort the data,
Formulate a the-o-ry,
You'll have a model not much later.
If there's a God of any kind
I'm fairly certain, at the end
Of all your labor, you will find,
Whatever effort you expend
That God's a thing the human mind
Is much too small to comprehend.
If you desire to pursue
The Giver of the Moral Law
I'd say the proper thing to do
Is pray in reverential awe
And not feed lots of data to
Some formal theoretic maw.
In Genesis the tale is told —
The incident is much renowned —
That when the world was six days old,
God formed God's image out of ground.
In each and every human soul
God's chosen model may be found.
I'm very skeptical that God'll
Value an inferior model.
This is part of the collection Verses for the Information Age by Ernest Davis