One of those bizarre family coincidences
Bookworm on Oct 16 2011 at 7:44 pm | Filed under: Uncategorized
My sister, her husband and I are all people who believe in evolution and the Big Bang. I discovered yesterday, though, that we also all believe in some variation of intelligent design. My brother-in-law believes that something, someone or some species seeded the universe with DNA (perhaps several times over) and then let evolution take its course. My sister is a deist, although not religious. She believes that there is some God-like figure out there who got things going. I hesitate to put the name “God” to whatever it is that existed before the Big Bang, but I find it hard to believe that our universe is an accident. There are too many things that seem to resist the notion of random evolution.
Basically, the more the three of us know about the wonders of our world, the more we find it impossible to believe that it all happened by chance. So maybe there’s also a reason for Barack Obama, the OWS crowd, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Michael Moore, Janeane Garofalo, the Muslim Brotherhood, Al Gore, and . . . oh, never mind. Some things really do run counter to the possibility of intelligent design.
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Bear in mind evolution also created intestial parasites.
“So maybe there’s also a reason for Barack Obama, the OWS crowd, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Michael Moore, Janeane Garofalo, the Muslim Brotherhood, Al Gore, and . . . oh, never mind. Some things really do run counter to the possibility of intelligent design.”
My nominee for the October 2011 Bookworm Room Quote of the Month.
BW: Some things really do run counter to the possibility of intelligent design.
Free will explains a great deal.
There is matter and there is anti-matter.
The names escape me now but it was a discussion between two Professors at a University on one of their offices that I am recalling. The visiting Professor commented on beauty of the kinetic model of the solar system in his college’s office. “Where on earth did you get this? I have never seen anything like it.” “I don’t know. It was not here last night. Perhaps some dust blew under the door and it congealed into this marvelous system.” “HA! That’s a good one! No really. Where did you get it?” As I said it was not here when I left last night. Yes, I think it was cosmic dust.” “Preposterous! You expect me to believe that!?” “Why not? You expect me to believe that about the entire universe”…
Being of small mind and limited knowledge can any one show me anything that did not have a cause?
Family matters heh vs anti family-matter. The way I explain it to people who ask is to say that I am a deist and when they respond with “what do you mean by deist” I basically say that I believe God exists or that a higher power than mortal humans exists in this universe, but that the nature and existence of this higher power is not necessarily going to be what Revealed Religious texts say such a God is. For example, Christianity describes god’s nature as benevolent or loving, but that is attributing a mysterious high power with human like qualities based upon insufficient basis. When people ask further, I continue to say that miracles and the power attributed to God, in prayers and other venues, I believe exists and is real. A few things I give as examples off the top of my head would be prayers working to cure or aid someone that is sick or in danger of dying. I would have mentioned battles fought that were won seemingly as if God’s providence had shined a light of protection down upon a people, totally unexpected given the military realities except I held back; the American Revolution or various fights against Muslims by Christian Europe would count as such divine providences. I held back mainly because talking about wars or military matters is a specialized subject and I don’t tend to introduce the subject unless I know someone’s stance on war, peace, pacifism, and so on. I predict based upon previous analysis that whenever I go on about war and violence, my aura changes and some people may be unable to handle the intensity afterwards.
My natural interest is to probe other people’s views and find out what they are interested in and why they believe as they do, but mainly through indirect methods. For instance, I’ll sound their beliefs out by talking about Jesus Christ and how he, historically, brought peace to the Middle East by preaching to people that they should not rebel against Caesar, the Roman Empire, and to obey the temporal power because one’s soul is governed by god’s divine power. After Jesus Christ’s death or cruxifixion, the Middle East, specifically the Jews, erupted in rebellions 3 times: all of them invited large scale massacres on the part of the Romans. Hundreds of villages were burned to the ground and the roads were lined up with crucified rebels miles upon miles. Finally the Romans had killed enough people to suppress the Jewish craze for religious-political union that was intolerant of Roman cultural practices (like sacrificing animals on Temple Mount to Zeus or something). Christ had told people to separate the authority of government from the authority of God. The Mormon Group I talked with looked like they were especially enraptured. One Jehovah’s Witness father and missionary, who brought his son with him, nodded in sage agreement. Another Jehovah’s Witness couple, wife and husband together I assume, looked interested in my tale: the woman more than the man.
From the commonality of Jesus Christ, I could tend decide whether I want to pursue that point of commonality. For the difference is obvious: I do not believe the Bible accurately described God’s nature or his motivations. The power of God or the historical nature of Jesus Christ, which is also part of the Bible, I do not dispute. I think this stance is particularly strange to some people. The doctrine is pretty simple. Christians say and believe that God works in mysterious ways: that God’s goal or methods cannot be known by fallible, mortal, and non-omniscient humans. Well, since that is the case, the bible’s authors themselves would fall under this category of “fallibility” and being erroneous in their interpretations. Since the Bible is not a work dictated by God himself, only indirectly through the hand of disciples and prophets, the Bible can be re-interpreted: the events themselves may have happened but the way they were interpreted may not have been totally accurate, either in their time or ours. The only way to reject this doctrine of mine is to say that what is in the Bible is INFALLIBLE and totally true, as interpreted by the prophets themselves. Well, that would make that Christian sect the same as Muslims. Because Muslims also say that the Koran cannot be rewritten or reinterpreted, because that would be rebelling against the wisdom and power of God.
The most likely reason the prophets back then were able to write Revelation or Genesis in the Bible was probably because they obtained some kind of insight into the universe. Whether you call this God’s knowledge or something else doesn’t really matter, since the exact nature of such a thing is yet unknown. But assuming that a person back in 0 BC saw images of the Big Bang… how do you think they would describe it? How much of it would they understand?
Not much. So they would describe what they saw. Light. Darkness. Form and motion. That’s it. And 7 days? How is one able to count to 7 trillion when they can’t even do basic addition and math, eh? It might as well have been 1.0 X10 to the SEVENTH POWER, and all they heard was “seven” and “one”. So inadequate interpretation. Some with the Middle East education back then, even a classic Green education, would understand only a limited amount of what divinities wanted them to see.
To me it matters not where the universe came from or who caused it. That’s not something I care about or even care to know about it. It’s one of numerous mysteries around. I’m more concerned with human motivations, behavior, and ideals. For example, I speak much about strength and power, and how an individual that seeks justice must also seek power or they have no right to justice or mercy. That is a natural law, as well as the human condition. Nobody really cares about you if you are nobody and about to get destroyed by a nuke or a black hole or a super nova. You don’t have the power to stop it and neither do they. So you don’t get a choice, so you can’t really complain. If you felt so bitter about your powerlessness, you should have whipped your race into constructing star generators, dyson spheres, and other ways to harness stellar forces sooner. The dinosaurs complained bitterly about asteroids and that junk. What good did it do them?
So, because humans would destroy themselves if we didn’t have a higher power to strive towards, this necessitates that a higher power exists for human progress to continue. For if there is no higher power, than humans are, ethically, allowed to do anything with little to no consequences. But we know that there are plenty of powers in this universe MIGHTIER than humanity. So thus we are saved from the path of evil, for a time. Humans still abuse power and kill people just because they find it enjoyable: just because they have the power, they use it to smash down the weak like how Democrats conduct their operations. They think that no retribution or backlash will come down from high. They think they are safe. That’s why they keep doing it. But what if they weren’t safe? Can humans really progress to what we were meant to do with a bunch of Leftists and Democrats in charge of our destiny and fate?
The problem with Barry Soetero et al, at least if I was an evolutionist, would simply be, in the words of my co-worker, “Darwin at Work.” As it is, however, they are victims of the fall of mankind just as we are. (Genesis 3) But for the grace of God there go we. It really is a matter of first things. Fundamentally, they are atheists with a twist. They are self-deified atheists. As someone has said, “If God is dead, then someone has to take His place.” The self-deified are truly detached from any reality. They try to claim they deny ultimate reality while claiming that there is an ultimate reality, which is that there isn’t one. In essence it is a self refuting argument and yet there they are. They will believe anything that bolsters their own self-image. They may profess a belief in God but upon closer examination, God is they. As far as intelligent design, you guys need to get up to speed. Evolution is quickly becoming passé for the very reason you stated. The more we know about the cosmos and biology the more impossible evolution becomes. The problem is stated by William Dembsky in his book, “The Design Inference,” as a problem of “causal adequacy.” The process of evolution is not adequate to cause the super complexity as seen in molecular biology and biochemistry. Additionally, the recent discoveries about DNA is that it is coded information and works very much like software does only on a super supplicated level. DNA is the chemical instructions for how everything in biology is made. As Dr. Steven Meyer of the Discovery Institute and author of, Signature in the Cell, points out, ”our repeated and uniform experience tells us that information has only one source and that’s intelligence. That intelligence is beyond nature. The design found in biology and the cosmos is far too complex for extraterrestrials to “seed” the earth with- impossible in fact. Evolution in no wise can account for the super complexity in biology and anyone that says it can has not thought very deeply about evolution or biology for that matter. I love this quote by Robert Jastrow, “For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance, he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.”
― Robert Jastrow, God and the AstronomersYou should check out these two videos to help you get a stronger grasp of intelligent design vis a vi s evolutionary dogma. Both are excellent. 1. Privileged Planet 2. Newly released,Metamorphisis
As someone has said, “If God is dead, then someone has to take His place.”
Perhaps it is this quote, usually attributed to G.K. Chesterton: “When people cease to believe in God, it is not as if they believe in nothing, but rather that they will believe in anything”.
Ymar says: Well, since that is the case, the bible’s authors themselves would fall under this category of “fallibility” and being erroneous in their interpretations. Since the Bible is not a work dictated by God himself, only indirectly through the hand of disciples and prophets [...]
The explanation I’ve heard for the infallibility of the Bible is that the Books’ authors were all guided by the Holy Spirit during the writings. Of course, even if accepting that, it hardly shuts the door to doctrinal interpretation. I know a Methodist minister who believes that all writings on Jesus’ miracles are fictional, and serve only as metaphors and are in the Bible solely to provide effective “competition” against pagan religions.
“I know a Methodist minister who believes that all writings on Jesus’ miracles are fictional, and serve only as metaphors and are in the Bible solely to provide effective “competition” against pagan religions.”
Mike, does that include the resurrection? If so what’s the point “if Christ be not raised“?
I would agree that the writers were guided by the Holy Spirit. When I speak of infallibility I mean to say that as originally given. Erosive forces have changed things a small bit (parts Mark 16 for example) but nothing that pertains to coming to know the G-d who humbled Himself and was found in the form of a man, pitched is tent among us and dwelt for time with us and was tempted in every way that we are tempted to rebel against His Father’s will even to the point of death on a Roman cross and yet did not miss the mark set before Him. Archaeology is correcting those minor ‘errors’ mentioned earlier. Curiously though for me is the small amount of errors over the long history of transmission that is most impressive. The Dead Sea Scrolls show an entire scroll of Isaiah 1500 years old, minimum that matches what we have today nearly word for word. Imagine a telephone party game whispering from ear to ear for 1500 seconds and what would you have? The Bible on the whole is truly remarkable even being historically and geographically accurate even to the ancient Pangaea that geologists refer to toady. How could they have possibly known that?
Interpretation must be done via exegesis not eisogesis – that is to draw out of the text what is says and be transformed by it rather than looking for proof-texts which support my preconceived ideas with which to beat you over the head. Does that mean to take the Bible literally? Here’s a saying that we all use even the empirically based scientists use even though they know it is not true in a literal sense ” The sun rose today”. Did not. The earth travels around the sun to make it merely appear to rise in the sky, the sun is stationary. “Eat your heart out” “Put your nose to the grindstone” “You’re so funny! Stop! You’re killing me!”. Compare with “If your eye or hand cause you to sin pluck it out or cut it off, for it is better to enter the kingdom of G-d maimed that to suffer the fires of hell’. Literally cut it off and pluck it out?? All this to say Genre is key to understanding whether to take something literally or not. This is where the letterest (one who does not consider genre by taking everything literally) will get into trouble reconciling the two creation orders in Gen 1-2. Without recognizing the poetry employed in describing what must have been a most beautiful thing of creation we get stuck on the literal wooden 6 day creation and 6,000 year old earth of Bishop Usher. When Jesus said tear down this temple and I will raise it up in three days and the crowd marveled “”it took 40 some years to build this temple and you will raise it in three days?” In the gospel according to John (the most different account) states that he was speaking of the temple of his body. When the other gospels state that he was resurrected we can take it literally not metaphorically.
One last point. When I look at the lack of a perfect Church I have to remind myself to look at the founding ‘Church’ of the Twelve Apostles one of whom was a devil. Jesus: “What were you two talking about on the road back there?” “Uh, who would be the greatest…” Can’t you just hear Jesus slap his forehead? There is no perfect Church, in fact the base acknowledgement to qualify for membership is admitting that one has missed the mark of G-d’s righteousness and are willing to make a U-turn on the road of one’s life to live for the King and not one’s self, to become a living sacrifice as it were. As one has noted elsewhere the problem with living sacrifices is that they keep squirming off of the altar.
There are only a limited number of Christian sects that believe in such. The mainstream ones, including Catholicism, only believes in the infallibility of the Pope, not the Bible itself. The New and Old Testaments are very hard to reconcile, due to that some religious groups prefer to believe God was angry back in the day then got calmer after Jesus Christ removed the previous sins. Calvinism, for example, believes God has a predestined plan, thus this can be termed infallible or not open to interpretation. However, what God’s plan is, is then open to interpretation. Because the Old and New Testaments preach change and forgiveness of the past, Christianity is flexible but also fractious. Islam, however, has a more solid foundation and is not open to interpretation compared to other religions.
Even if a religious believer views the Holy Spirit, what Jehovah’s Witnesses call the essence or divinity of God (metaphysical description), they cannot reject the fact that the humans used to write it were flawed and were originally in possession of Adam and Eve’s original sin. Thus they cannot reject the possibility that however perfect the insight given to humans by a Holy Spirit was, that it couldn’t be corrupted by human nature. Not if they believe in Genesis, Revelation, and the Garden of Eden at least.
Macg asks: Mike, does that include the resurrection? If so what’s the point “if Christ be not raised“?
No, the resurrection is critical to God’s Covenant with Man.
The miracles are those that Jesus performed himself. This interpretation is that God never did and never does perform such “personal” miracles.
(My own current state of belief is probably closest to “agnostic Deist”. I have just enough faith to believe that yes, there is a God; He is a conscious Supreme Being and transcends space and time and is the Creator of the universe; there is life after death for us. Beyond that my faith fails me, and I have no idea what the truth actually is, or will be.)
“The mainstream ones, including Catholicism, only believes in the infallibility of the Pope, not the Bible itself.”
Only the Catholics think the Pope is infallible – at least that is their doctrine.
Y”The New and Old Testaments are very hard to reconcile, due to that some religious groups prefer to believe God was angry back in the day then got calmer after Jesus Christ removed the previous sins.”
It is not so hard as G-d in the Old Testament is seen as loving and benevolent and G-d in the New Testament can be seen as angry. It is just the emPHASis is on another syLABel. It is the same G-d that seeks reconciliation but there seems to be limits for those who perpetually reject Him. God pursues relationship, we run and hide in the finest fig leaves we can find.
Mike: “The miracles are those that Jesus performed himself. This interpretation is that God never did and never does perform such “personal” miracles.”
If that is the case then Jesus could not have been raised for he said he would raise himself. You minister friend is badly mistaken. The words of the narrative leave little doubt for mere stories to counter paganism.
I want to thank you for your honesty of where you are in the faith journey. You are in good company. If your faith is something you want to hold on to then may I suggest to ruminate on the words of Christ regarding perseverance? This is in the sense of keep on asking, keep on seeking, keep on knocking and it will be given to you.
Grace and Peace