Christianity for the Next 1000 Years: Design of Intelligent Design

In the beginning, God created skies and earth.

Greetings!  Thanks for your visit. 

I am attempting to pose answers to many problems today that make it difficult for people to be persons of faith with integrity, that is, without being embarrassed when our other brothers and sisters make faith sound so lame and unbelievable.

Intelligent design is one of those concepts that makes our faith appear to be unscientific.  We should rethink it and be honest about what it means.

Intelligent design comes to us from the late 18^th Century philosopher, William Paley, who wrote a book entitle Natural Theology wherein he proposed an argument for the existence of god that has been dubbed the teleological argument.

The argument goes as follows.  You are walking in a desert and find a watch.  The design and intricacy of the watch indicates a watchmaker.  

When we look at nature we see a great intricacy and complexity that is greater than a watch’s; hence, being has been designed and made by a nature-maker whom we call God.

There are many things wrong with all the arguments for the existence of God, but this one in particular has some special inconsistencies.  One of them being that it uses analogy to make its case.  

Analogies, like similes and metaphors, make interesting comparisons, but they prove nothing.  We live in an age that requires evidence and data.

Arguments for the existence of God prove nothing since they already assume God exists.  

They turn out to be interesting puzzles rather than real solutions, but the teleological argument is truly special.

Paley’s so-called teleological argument is also flawed because it suggests that looking at the watch reveals the nature of the watchmaker.

That could be anti-gospel for us as we look at nature’s grinding dispassionate death roll over every living thing.

Teleology is a combination of the Greek world telos which means “end” and logos which means “study, doctrine, word, etc.”   It is the study of purpose in nature.

Scientists balk at the idea that nature has an eternal or divine purpose.  A grand scheme of things or a final aim of life is certainly not evident in parasites and viruses. 

In fact, extrapolating purpose out of a natural process is interpretation in action.  It serves the hermeneutical principle of “I’m going to find God in everything by God or die trying.” 

That all for now.  Blessings…

Christianity for the Next 1000 Years: Design of Intelligent Design

In the beginning, God created skies and earth.

Thanks for visiting my blog.  I hope you are well and happy. 

I am attempting to pose answers to many problems today that make it difficult for people to be persons of faith with integrity, that is, without being embarrassed when our other brothers and sisters make faith sound so lame and unbelievable.

If Christianity is not going to deteriorate into superstition and irrelevance, we must exercise our right as modern generations of believers to express our faith with the science we know to be true today, just as ancient people expressed their faith with their flat earth cosmology.

I know many people who believe silly things who are not the least bit embarrassed, although they would be if they could just hear how their arguments from the mouths of rival religions sound the same. 

For example, Muslims also make the argument that their religion is logically certain for everyone and all time just because their book says it is. 

How do we know their book is true?  Well, Gabriel the angel told Mohammed what God wanted him to dictate so that all humanity would have what would eventually called The Koran.  Hearsay so it seems is the stuff of book based religions.

We pay such believers the respect that the logic of fanaticism requires, but we are hardly persuaded by their certain logic.

It is the same with our fundamentalists, who are nice people, by and large, and quite sincere. 

I never met a Christian whom I didn't like, but when my brothers and sisters wish to ensconce silliness and superstition into law as if they were science, I must dissent.  

Our faith is going the way of Zeus and his gang if we do not dissent with kindness and respect.

I have been writing about intelligent design lately.  It is one of those unintelligent concepts designed to give faith its imprimatur, but ends up making our faith look silly. 

Intelligent design for worship is very appropriate.  I must admit however that intelligent design does not sound transcendent or venerable.  It is the design of those who thought it up to capture somehow the cold steel of an objective description in the phrase so that it might be taken seriously as science in a court of law.

For worship, however, who has not been in awe of a mountain range?  Who has not watched grackles, mockingbirds, and crows wrangle over bread crumbs, giggling as they dive and leap and fuss at each other until one of them wins the space?  Who has not marveled at the night sky, the half Oreo cookie light of the moon made thinly opaque by passing clouds?  The quickest meteorite can transform a grownup into an excited child.  Have you ever followed an ant?  Have you ever sat on your porch or sat beneath a tree, closed your eyes, and inhaled breath and sound? 

Intelligent design does not sound very poetic to me.  It’s the metaphor of the uninspired accountant or lawyer, not the vision of a prophet-poet.  I see the world and meditate on creative design or the intelligent explosion of panoramic Being-itself.

We are bombarded daily with a most splendid life, a world coruscating with magical being, and we cannot help but feel the profoundest wonder at it all. 

Intelligent design does point to a sense we have about the world.  It is the veneration expressed in language that inspires us as people of faith. 

Of course, science evokes veneration too, the wonder of discovery.  Science is often a wonderful source for contemplation, but it should never be sullied by doctrine.

Until next time:  blessings…

Christianity for the Next 1000 Years: No Science Here

In the beginning, God created skies and earth.

Welcome back.  I hope you find inspiration and a reason to keep believing, today.  I shall write a little more about Intelligent Design.

INTELLIGENT DESIGN IS NOT SCIENCE

One reason why it does not work as science is because there is no method that drives intelligent design.  Intelligent design is an interpretation of select observable events with one concept too many being used to draw a conclusion.

The “one concept too many” is adding a god concept to what process that occurs naturally.  Whatever occurs naturally would occur whether there is a god or not.

For example, we can observe cancer cells destroying healthy pancreatic tissue and conclude that there is a cause and effect relationship between that process and the cause of a death in a patient.  

We do not actually see a god or an evil spirit in the process.  That is added in our imaginations.  From a scientific point of view, it is like adding an epicycle to explain planetary motion.

I would argue that intelligent design is a relic from an ancient way of thinking about the universe.  The problem about the relationship between nature and God is not faith, but philosophy and language.

LANGUAGE IS A PROBLEM

The theologian, Paul Tillich, suggested that maybe we should dispense with the word "God" for a while since it carries so much baggage.

I agree, but what other word might we use?  I cannot conjure one nor would anyone else.  When I pray, I just speak to God as God and “You.”  That is devotional language, the language of prayer and contemplation.

.

Theologically, I always use “God” and try to avoid gender pronouns. 

The problem, again, seems to me to be not God, but philosophy and language.  So much that is old, unnecessary, and mean is often carried along with the word “God.”  

There is another way to think about “God” that is modern and more sensible.

Thanks for coming. Until next time: Blessings…

Sabbath

Thanks for visiting.  It's Sabbath time.  I'll be resting today.  I hope you visit tomorrow.

Christianity for the Next 1000 Years: ID Reconsidered

In the beginning, God created skies and earth.

Welcome back.  I want to continue writing about intelligent design.

SCIENCE

I heard a professor once say that scientists who keep splitting atomic particles eventually will discover that everything is based on nothing.

Look at quarks.  When I was a kid atoms were the building blocks of matter.  Now, we hear of quarks, and they are not described as having mass as we think of mass.  Instead, they are described as flavors. 

Now, we have the Higgs particle, the so-called God particle, a designation that physicists despise, and we shall be hearing more and more about it in future physics textbooks.  Does it explain the cause and the mechanism of Being?

What is the basis for reality?  Will we ever know? 

GOD

Now, I'm not going to leap from what we do not know to God.  There are few things more pathetic than hearing a preacher talk about science, and how God can be found in those places where science does not have complete information.  

I heard Billy Graham say that he learned long ago to stop telling scientists what they can do.  I think that is wise because every time scientists make a discovery, and God has to retreat, it gives atheists cause to celebrate.

That kind of thinking is lousy theology and leads to superstition.

Indeed, it is cheating.  God is the word we use to personify the power of Being.  The word "god" is a worship word, a theological metaphor, not a precise scientific quantifier.

In prayer, meditation, and contemplation God is where we fix our attention.  That is the devotional experience of God.  

We need to realize that God is not a being like we are.  God is not a Supreme Being.  That would make God a being among other beings.  No, God is the power of Being.  There is no place where the universe can be that God does not transcend.

By the way, for a more thorough explanation of what I am writing here, go to Paul Tillich’s Systematic Theology, volume one, and read the section about God.

INTELLIGENT DESIGN RECONSIDERED

Being is what-is.  I am not trying to trick anyone here. The word "Being" points to the totality of everything without a personification.  Being resists nonbeing.  The power of Being resists nonbeing.  

We can imagine that there could just as well be nothing instead of something.  There could just as well be nonbeing instead of being.

God is the word we use to personify that power of Being.  Theology attempts to explain God. 

Intelligent design is a personification of nature.  It ascribes intent and conscious purpose to processes that just do what they do.

Intelligent design is a personification of being. We look at what-is and see the hand of God.  As poetry, intelligent design works, but as science it does not work at all.

Thanks for visiting.  Please feel free to respond.  Blessings…

Christianity for the Next 1000 Years: Intelligent Design

In the beginning, God created skies and earth.

Intelligent Design: Paredolia

God people cannot help but see intelligent design in experience. From a scientific point of view, it is an illusion, but where’s the fun in seeing everything scientifically?

The reason intelligent design is an illusion is because nature just does what it does. It follows natural law. Nature needs not a guiding hand or mind to do its thing.

I remember the time I attended a Christian fiction writing group at First Presbyterian Church in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Many of the members of that church, at least the ones I have met, are fundamentalists and Calvinists so imagine my surprise when none of them knew I would be there since I was predestined to show up.

Okay, so I resorted to church humor. For those of you who do not know, John Calvin, Protestant Reformer and scientist burner, believed that every moment and molecule motion in life is preordained by an all controlling God. Predestination takes all the fun out of free will in a Baskin Robbins.

Incidentally, there's an old story about John Wesley, the father of the Methodist Church, who rode his horse out into a field where he met a Calvinist.  The Calvinist said, "Brother John, God preordained you to meet me here today."  

John Wesley turned his horse around and rode away.

At the Christian fiction writing group we read our stories to one another, and then we sat around and chatted. One of the church members mentioned that we needed rain, and we should pray for rain.

In other words, God controlled the weather.

I reminded her of the water cycle. She looked genuinely stunned, as if she had never heard of such before.

Of course she had, but maybe as a God person, she was so absorbed in the theological way she related her experience to the world, she had forgotten or failed to make the connection.

Two plus two equals four whether there be gods or not.

Those Darn Atheists

Indeed, an atheist would argue that our perception of intelligent design happens because our brains receive sensory detail and from that data, our brains create patterns that oftentimes look a whole lot like us.

For example, a person looks at a Martian landscape from a telescope and sees a face or a city.

There’s a word for that you know. It’s called pareidolia. Atheists are dead-on right about that.

By the way, the etmology of pareidolia is “para” which means “beside” and “eidolon” which means image or idol. Walt Whitman wrote a little about eidolons in Leaves of Grass.

Ever the dim beginning

Ever the growth, the rounding of the circle,

Ever the summit and the merge at last, (to surely start again,)

Eidolons! Eidolons!

Who hasn’t sat on a commode and seen faces among the floral designs of bathroom wall paper? Surely, I’m not the only person who does that.

Thanks for visiting me. Please feel free to respond. Blessings…

Christianity for the Next 1000 Years: Intelligent Design

In the beginning, God created skies and earth.

Preliminary Remarks About Intelligent Design

Although “intelligent design” is not scientific, it is how God people experience nature.

Before I begin, let me remind my readers that all of humanity are people of God. When I write “God people” I am not singling out people of faith in a prideful way that suggests that we are superior to everyone else.

Judging from the silly things God people say and think, as well as the terrible things some of us do, I would underscore the statement that we are not superior to anyone. There is much room for humility among us.

And the last time I checked, humility is a Christian virtue.

Us Versus Them

I am also not conceiving of an “us” and “them” dichotomy. That is prideful, for when we think of ourselves as “us,” the temptation is to think of “them” as less holy, wonderful, magnificent, awesome, good looking, smart, savvy, patriotic, and just plain fun to be around.

It seems to be human nature for everyone to believe they are the finest people in the world, but the person whom I seek to emulate said the finest people were the LEAST among us. That knocks all of us fine ones out of the running for being so great.

God People

Instead, I am using “God people” as an unhyphenated designation for people who relate to their experience of life, world, and people through faith.

Hindu, Shinto, Muslim, Christian, Jew, Zoroastrian, Buddhist—the whole lot are God people in so far as they sense and celebrate divinity in their experience.

If I started my own religion today, I would still be a God person. Joseph Smith was a God person, as nutty as all the other starters, and even if he were a fraud in his heart when he was murdered, his deception was how he experienced faith.

By the way, that biology professor whom I wrote about, the one who wrote the Genesis account of creation on the blackboard, he was a Mormon. 

God People and Faith

Faith is very human, and therefore imbued with human personality. God people sense that our faith participates in the divinity toward which it turns. Many of us indeed sense that God is Who, not What, so thus we relate to God as personal.

Thanks for reading my blog. I welcome your comments. Next time, I will write more about intelligent design. Blessings…