SIMPLE MINDED SIMPLICITY

Creationists universally fall back on the simplistic argument that the universe had to arise from the action of an intelligent designer, conveniently neglecting to include an explanation of where such an intelligent designer could have come from.  A former friend of mine who no longer wants any contact with a heretic like me assured me that creator just "always existed." 

No explanation of origin needed in his simplistic view of cosmic reality.  That's magic carried to its ultimate.  Little children and backward savages can find magic like that believeable, but adults of this relatively enlightened age should be able to think a little more deeply about such matters.

Come on now.  If the universe is too complex and awesome to have arisen spontaneously, a creator which had of necessity to be even greater and more complex couldn't have just happened either. 

Scientists, mainly physicists, continue to seek the answers of ultimate origins.  It isn't an easy process, but they are making progress.  Most theories include something called a "singularity" that exploded.

Do I understand that? 

No.

I just see the end result and wish I could be one of those physicists searching for the ultimate answers.  Even human reproduction and reproduction as a whole used to be a great mystery, but we now understand quite a bit about it and are learning more every day. 

Instead of an intelligence giving rise to everything, everything evolves by a slow process from base hydrogen into intelligence.  So far, we appear to be the ultimate evolved intelligence.

Let's use that intelligence to find the answers, not cop out to the simplistic answers bronze age tribalists pulled out from under their turbans or whatever they wore on their heads. 

YOU CAN'T CURE STUPID

As usual, I went to Huffington Post as one of the first things I do in the morning to keep abreast of what is happening in the world.  It's my home page.  I clicked on the following article:

"Unlike many other states, Texas does not ban workplace discrimination based on gender identity, sexual orientation, or marital status. But don't be alarmed; the Lone Star State is working on that whole civil liberties thing. Last week, Republican State Rep. Bill Zedler introduced HB 2454, a bill that would establish new workplace protections for proponents of intelligent design. Here's the key part:

An institution of higher education may not discriminate against or penalize in any manner, especially with regard to employment or academic support, a faculty member or student based on the faculty member's or student's conduct of research relating to the theory of intelligent design or other alternate theories of the origination and development of organisms.

And you thought Berkeley was crazy. On the upside, maybe the University of Texas will be able to help a few of the folks who are falling through Texas' fraying social safety net. Out of a job? Come up with an elaborate theory about how a flying spaghetti monster created the universe. A tenured professorship awaits."

Don't get me wrong.  I like most Texans, just like I like most other people.  But there is an element of ignorance and denial of reality among them that makes them, and by implication, the whole United States of America, the laughing stock of the educated and enlightened world.  It pains me no end that my son had to move to Houston to find work and that my little and brilliant grand daughter has to be subjected to that kind of irrational educational system.

My other blogs make it abundantly clear how ridiculous this kind of statute is.  Therefore, I'll just let it go at what has already been said.

 

 

THE REAL QUESTION

Today, we hear a lot about intelligent design from people who dogmatically proclaim that creation and life is too complex and unique to have arisen by chance. To their way of thinking, such complexity proves the existence of an anthropomorphized creator that planned and organized it all.

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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