Rachel’s Musings

As posted on the Frame Problem, over 11,000 American clergy are openly opposed to teaching Intelligent Design (ID). In the meantime, ID is gathering support not only from Christians. I’ve been reading “What is Enlightenment,” which is probably more Buddhist than Christian inspired, certainly pulsing with spirituality. They announced a “great weekly podcast on science and consciousness.” Of course, I had to check that out… I haven’t listened to any of the PodCasts yet but I thought some of the summaries are already very illuminating. Check this out, for example: post 26. Greg Koukl bemoans the supposed materialistic bias of the debate on ID. In another post (#30), Dr. Elisabet Sahtouris accuses us skeptics of assuming that the universe is not living. Huh? The universe is full of life! There is just not this weird energy that supposedly connects everything. And she accuses us further that we have not provided any proof for this assumption. Aside from the fact that she is misstating the assumption, assumptions are generally not proven - that’s why they are assumptions, not hypotheses (and even those can’t be proven, only disproved). It is sad that a person who is supposedly a scientist doesn’t understand the very basics of the scientific model…

My favorite ID in a new cloak article in WIE is “Which Came First: The Chicken or the Big Bang?” Similar to David Korten in his book The Great Turning, Tom Huston presents intelligent design without a God but with a consciousness. Huston relies on Paul Davies to present the idea that during the time of the big bang a “self-creating universe in a teleological backward causation” reached in and adjusted the laws of physics at the time of the Big Bang to ensure that the universe can support life. So, somehow, somewhere, something reached back in time to trigger the creation of the universe as we know it. Well, okay, maybe I am missing something here but to me this sounds like a nice fairy tale, just like the other creation stories.

Also, these examples indicate that there is not that much difference between spirituality and religion: both lead to the suspension of critical thinking. Granted some come up with some nice stories. The problem is that they don’t see these stories as such but rather as valid theories that “may become the top contender for explaining why the universe” is as it is (to generalize Huston’s statement).

I have to agree with the Bertrand Russell quote that Huston presents at the end of his article: “The universe is just there and that’s all.”