Anyone can see that the universe and life is indeed complex. But, this assumption leaves unanswered an even greater question. If the universe and all it contains is too complex, etc. to have arisen without a creator, who is the even greater creator who created the creator? The creator of that creator? Etc. Etc.
By their own reasoning, that creator would have to have been far more complex and wondrous than the creation he, she or it brought into being. Who or what gave rise to something or someone exponentially more complicated and wondrous than anything we see in the resulting universe?
Just saying that first cause, or God, always existed is a non-answer that requires an incredulous amount of faith. It is illogical.
Reason demands that at some point the beginnings of life either arose spontaneously or someone or something caused it all to begin. I find it much easier to believe that organic molecules interacted to produce the first primitive amino acids and then life forms than to believe that cosmic energy of some sort magically combined to form a being or force infinitely more massive and complex than any computer devised by man could ever aspire to be. If I couldn’t begin to produce anything remotely akin to myself, how did an omnipotent, omniscient, omni-everything creator somehow spring into existence?
Don’t tell me I have to take it on faith. There are plenty of people with that mental approach who are determined to kill me and wipe out the civilization thinking men have produced so their superstitions can keep future generations enslaved and ignorant. Not long ago, that same attitude permeated the Vatican and produced the former Dark Ages.
That attitude still permeates the thinking of far too many people. The same determination to enforce the ignorance of blind faith on the world is at work today every time zealots attempt to force “creation science” into the curriculum of another school, or the adherents of a particular superstition demand that everyone else be forced by law and decree to adhere to their religious prejudices, requirements and dogmas.
There has to be a beginning to everything that exists. That includes anything referred to as “god.” Somewhere, somehow, something came to be out of nothing. At least, science, quantum physics and mathematics continue to give answers that shed light on more and more of the mechanisms involved. Scientific understanding continues to grow. Religious dogma remains static and unreasoning.
Whether science can ever shed total light on the ultimate origin of everything remains to be seen, provided one of the religions predicated on blind faith in some deity doesn’t exterminate all of us before we have the chance to determine those answers. Or, stamps out the scientific advances that would enable us to stop extermination through celestial cataclysms like a comet striking earth again. I would be more optimistic if we still lived in a polytheistic world where people tolerated and even honored the imaginary gods of their neighbors.
Christianity and Islam have, in their zealous turn, through crusades and jihads, made that tolerant attitude all too rare. I fear we may be looking at total extermination in the name of blind faith in some deity. Or, we could face a worldwide bloodbath and another destruction of civilization to make way for a new Dark Age of superstitious ignorance that may never end before humanity inevitably becomes extinct through one chance happening or another. The demise of Tyrannosaurus Rex and a host of his contemporaries demolishes any human pomposity to which I might be prone.
I have no faith someone’s imaginary friend is going to step in and prevent it. Winning the lottery is much more likely.
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AMEN! (with tongue in cheek) This is why I play the lottery with optimism!
ReplyDeleteWell said, Al. Yes, scientists are constantly studying most everything and many are, in fact, seeking to postulate a Theory of Everything. This may go on for as long as humans continue to avoid that extinction you discuss, but at least some good things come around for humanity due to much of that study. Can't say the same for all the time wasted in studying phantoms!
My philosopher friend is an 86 year-old scientist engaged in such searches. His website, longhighsurvival.org, reveals some of his thinking. He tries to write for the mass market, but his terms are typically still hard for most of us to grasp. But it's worth the effort to read it.
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