Mere Christianity [2]
The first installment of quotes from Mere Christianity went well, so indulge me in a second post. Today's quote debunks Intelligent Design!
"One reason why people find Creative Evolution so attractive is that it gives one much of the emotional comfort of believing in God and none of the less pleasant consequences. When you are feeling fit and the sun is shining and you do not want to believe that the whole of the universe is a mere mechanical dance of atoms, it is nice to be able to think of this great mysterious Force rolling on through the centuries and carrying you on its crest.
If, on the other hand, you want to do something rather shabby, the Life-Force, being only a blind force, with no morals and no mind, will never interfere with you like that troublesome God we learned about when we were children. The Life-Force is sort of a tame God. You can switch it on when you want, but it will not bother you. All the thrills of religion and none of the cost."
POW!
"One reason why people find Creative Evolution so attractive is that it gives one much of the emotional comfort of believing in God and none of the less pleasant consequences. When you are feeling fit and the sun is shining and you do not want to believe that the whole of the universe is a mere mechanical dance of atoms, it is nice to be able to think of this great mysterious Force rolling on through the centuries and carrying you on its crest.
If, on the other hand, you want to do something rather shabby, the Life-Force, being only a blind force, with no morals and no mind, will never interfere with you like that troublesome God we learned about when we were children. The Life-Force is sort of a tame God. You can switch it on when you want, but it will not bother you. All the thrills of religion and none of the cost."
POW!
posted by Joshua @ 3:59 PM
3 Comments:
The brilliant Darwin exhibit at the Museum of Natural History (which you all need to see) had a great point to make about ID - That is, the theory accepts that science is responsible for much of nature, but the blanks can be filled in by God. The blanks have gotten more and more filled in over the years by science, so as the years go on God is pretty much going to get shut out of the picture.
Also, how is it humanly possible that 60% of the freakin country doesn't belive in evolution. I know we're dumb, but still....
Bono, by way of Cash, is appropriate here:
"They say they want the kingdom, but they don't want God in it"
As for the 60% of Americans who claim that they don’t “believe in evolution”: I think that is less a comment on people's stupidity, or gullibility, as it is a comment on the abject failure of our educational system. There are of course, a small number of truly deluded fundamentalists out there who probably think that God, and not aerodynamic lift holds planes aloft. However, I would wager that the vast majority of the people who claim they don't "believe in evolution" are simply woefully uneducated about science.
Now, to clarify, I am not saying that they simply "don't know the proven facts", but rather that their education has failed to give them a proper understanding of what science is, what it is not, how it works, and the sorts of questions it answers. Many people see a false dichotomy. Either you believe in evolution or you believe in God. What the hell does it mean to "believe in evolution?". You don't believe in scientific theories. You believe in the effectiveness of the scientific method and induction to discover facts about the physical world which can be used to support predictive theories, but belief, of the sort that religion calls for, doesn't enter into it. Science is a system for describing and predicting the physical world, and has, within it, criteria for evidence and fact. Theories are supported or unsupported according to their predictive success. But there can be no "proof" of the method itself, except that it shows itself everywhere to be effective and consistent. I am typing this on a keyboard made of plastic, and a screen of liquid crystals, powered by a lithium ion battery. It will be transmitted wirelessly to my router and from there to a server from which the rest of you will be able to retrieve it. I don't stop for a moment to question the method by which all these materials and devices were developed. Perhaps you could call that faith, but I would not. Religious faith accepts a certain realm as unknowable, or incomprehensible and makes the uncertainty into a certain and (comforting) constant. Originally, many aspects of the physical world were part of that realm (hence Kelly's point about ID), but I would argue that it is not a matter of various blanks being filled in until we push God out altogether. God, for educated and rational people, was pushed out of the physical picture of the universe quite a while ago. Belief that God (or gods) directly physically causes events in the physical world was a result of a bad picture of the world. There are many blanks, but accepting scientific inquiry (and you must either eschew cars, TV, phones, computers, planes, medicine and almost everything in the modern world, or else engage in Orwellian amounts of doublethink not to do so implicitly) means accepting that those physical blanks (Dark matter, unexplained medical phenomena, reconciling general relativity with quantum mechanics etc) are simply the result of our as-yet insufficiently sophisticated understanding of physics, biology etc.
Accepting the legitimacy and effectiveness of the scientific inquiry shouldnot, however have any impact on one's ability to have faith in a divine and unfathomable lord of creation who exists in all of us and outside of the universe itself. Real science doesn't have a blank for God, and it so it is in no danger of "filling him in". But because people are led, through misinformation, or their own intellectual sloth to believe that there is some sort of contest between science and religious belief, they continue to espouse absurd and inconsistent views.
First off, where did you get that 60% number, Kelly? Secondly, I imagine any poll on that issue would put people into the mindset not of, "do you believe in Evolution," but rather, "do you not believe in God,' as that's how the issue has been painted, not just since it's inception, but to a decidedly adamant degree in recent years. It doesn't matter how good the educational system is if the culture around it claims that science is for the hellbound.
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