Things That Are Made

_{Gil Dodgen

February 19, 2010

Intelligent Design}

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I’ve evolved, and here’s my evolution: Richard Dawkins became Antony Flew who became C.S. Lewis. (Of course, I’m not in the same league as Flew or Lewis, and God forgive my Dawkins past.)

Things that are made. I have a faint recollection of this phrase from some ancient text I once read. Things that are made are designed and engineered. We all can recognize them.

I would like to offer the following hypothesis: The universe was rigged. It was designed for discovery (a thesis put forward in The Privileged Planet), but also designed in such a way that there would always be an escape clause in the contract for those who are committed, for whatever reason, to reject the obvious. If it weren’t for the escape clause, we would have no free will.

Random mutations, an infinitude of in-principle undetectable universes, and other such silliness are modern manifestations of invoking the escape clause.

Comments

Caterpillars are pretty ugly And you would never via fossils be able to show that caterpillars were the same creature as butterflies. :-)tribune7_{February 20, 2010
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Allen, Despite all of our disagreements I understand what you are saying about learning while you teach. Just when you think you are the top rung of the learning ladder- whack- something new comes along- or you dig a little deeper into something you thought you knew so well and find more mysteries await. But to me that is what being human is all about- exploration to gain knowldge. But anyway- Newton used science as a method to understand "God's" handy-work.Joseph_{February 20, 2010
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As for being a teacher, I have to admit that when I started out three decades ago, I thought I knew quite a bit. Now, after more than 33 years of learning about biology, I am astonished (and humbled) by how little I know about it. But please, Mung, enlighten us. Tell us how we are to know and completely understand everything about everything, so that I may impart this totality of your knowledge to my students.Allen_MacNeill_{February 20, 2010
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Mung: "That Which Is" is the totality of everything that ever was, is, and will be. According to what you have written here, we can most assuredly know all of this. Please explain how we can do this, so that we can all become "all knowing".Allen_MacNeill_{February 20, 2010
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I am distressed by any agreement with Allen and his "unknowable god."
I think that “God” (which I prefer to refer to as “That Which Is”) is quite literally unknowable.
If God is unknowable, then it follows that no one can know God. If no one can know God, then Christianity is false. Here's what Allen has to say: God is "That Which Is." "That Which Is" is unknowable. Since that which is is unknowable, one has to wonder why Allen is a teacher. That which is cannot be known. So what is that that can be known? That which is not? Given Allen's predisposition to foolishness, I have to take anything he write with a grain of salt, if that.Mung_{February 20, 2010
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Sorry, I just realized that JDH had already made that point. :)CannuckianYankee_{February 20, 2010
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Also, I think it should also be stressed - and in agreement with Mr. MacNeill, that "the world through its wisdom did not come to know God."CannuckianYankee_{February 20, 2010
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Mung, my intention was not to minimize this point, but to stress that God is revealed sufficiently through the incarnation. But your point is well taken.CannuckianYankee_{February 20, 2010
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This is the whole point of Christianity – that God has revealed Himself to us in the person of Jesus Christ, and through the Holy Spirit.
God has also revealed Himself in the things He has made. Man was made in the image of God.Mung_{February 20, 2010
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Allen_MacNeill: " Personally, I think that “God” (which I prefer to refer to as “That Which Is”) is quite literally unknowable. We are finite beings with limited perceptions and even more limited cognitive abilities, and therefore cannot “know” That Which Is." You know Allen, I find myself agreeing with much of what you stated here, but to a point. The point where I depart from this analysis is in the area of revelation. God can be known if he reveals Himself to us. This is the whole point of Christianity - that God has revealed Himself to us in the person of Jesus Christ, and through the Holy Spirit. Without these revelations we cannot know God. Others may disagree, and in fact have a pointed revulsion to this idea, yet it continues to be a strong belief among hundreds of millions of human beings, who don't all hold them out of spite for those who disagree. On the contrary, the desire of the Christian is to welcome others to the same belief with the understanding that through this particular revelation God can be known.CannuckianYankee_{February 20, 2010
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Sometimes I wonder if the things around us aren't metaphors for life. Caterpillars are pretty ugly and then go through a kind of death and emerge more beautiful than ever. Maybe death is transformation. By showing us seeds turning into something different, God is showing us that we are like seeds. If you look at the stars and galaxies you can see how infinitely small we really are. But as far as we know, mankind is the only creature here that has a clue about just how large the universe is, which makes us special. We don't know what awaits us, just as an acorn doesn't know what it's like to be an oak tree. Maybe the choices we make in this life determine what we are to become in the next. If we make choices that only serve ourselves to the detriment of others, then we probably turn out like some useless weed that's poisonous or just food for the animals, or maybe an acorn that's crushed on the asphalt to become ant food. And the ones who make the better choices are the acorns that grow into oaks. If you can't be trusted with something small, who is going to trust you with something greater?Davem_{February 19, 2010
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good point guys. God was around long before the scientific method, so God had to make his existence something that would be clear to the long lineage of humans who once had no luxury to sit around and think about how things worked. (I'm from the old earth camp, and therefore I'm talking about humans from at least 100,000+ years ago) If knowledge of new things made the existence of God more clear, it would not be fair to the cultures that had no access to things like printing presses, telescopes, scientific methods, etc. This is why belief in God has always been higher and more stronger in areas where "earthly knowledge" is not up to par.Fross_{February 19, 2010
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JDH, Some great points. I think the early gnostics believed that God had a special ear for things esoteric, and so they decided that only people initiated into a particular esoteric right could be saved. That would make God highly unfair in my view. Yet, such are the leanings of many a materialistic religionist (read 'liberal') these days. And then there are those who refuse to believe because God has not explained himself nor 'expanded' Himself completely or enough to accord with their sophisticated understanding of things. I have this to say about that: Once you believe that God ought to bend over backwards to save you from your unbelief, you are in effect mandating that God not save those who don't think like you. In your quote from Paul you missed the part about God choosing the "things that are not, to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast." God's not interested in the intellect so much as he seeks out the heart of the matter. This is the kind of God I would expect in a world that shows evidence of things beyond the material - a God who is interested in the human heart, because that's the way he designed humans to be - passionate. God is not simply an infinitely intellectual Creator, but a passionate lover of human beings and indeed of all His creation. We should expect more from Him than simply intellectual evidences for His existence. In fact, I would say that to seek only intellectual evidences is an example of worshiping the creature rather than the Creator. The creature requires only the passion of the intellect, while the Creator requires the passion of the innermost expressions of the heart. When Jesus states that the Father seeks worshipers who worship Him in spirit and in truth, I sense that this is perhaps what he means. So in summation, once we decide that religion is only a matter of having our intellectual questions answered, and demand that religion answer them prior to a faith commitment, then it is easy to miss the fine points of the gospel - that we are more than simply the outward expressions of our thinking abilities, but we have passions, and God is passionate. The world shows evidence of passion. We could live in the dull world that C.S Lewis depicted in one of his short stories, or we could acknowledge that we live in a world, which, if created, was indeed created out of immense passion, the nature of which we may never know. But in the whole scheme of things, the Creator saw fit to reveal certain truths of this matter not only to those who could intellectualy process them, but to true babes, who were not endowed with any intellectual abilities whatsoever. But why did God do this? I suspect it is so that no one may boast.CannuckianYankee_{February 19, 2010
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BTW (and I hope this is obvious) the Way of Liberation is not "made", it is.Allen_MacNeill_{February 19, 2010
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And I was a "naive theist" as a child, became a "rabid" atheist as a young man, but became a Huxleian agnostic Friend/Quaker/Zen Buddhist as an adult. Personally, I think that "God" (which I prefer to refer to as "That Which Is") is quite literally unknowable. We are finite beings with limited perceptions and even more limited cognitive abilities, and therefore cannot "know" That Which Is. Here's the way it came to me once upon a time:
The Way of Liberation is not limited The Way of Liberation has no boundaries Everyone and everything everywhere Resonate within it endlessly The Way of Liberation cannot be named The Way of Liberation cannot even be described It is always eternally ever-present But it cannot be taken by deception or force The only entrance to the Way of Liberation Is through That Which Is Surrender to That Which Is And you shall be set free
Allen_MacNeill_{February 19, 2010
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I have always considered it a kind of backhand evidence for God, and more specifically the Christian God, that through scientific endeavor, people do not come to believe in God. ( ...the world through wisdom knew not God ). Think about this for a moment. Everyone knows that some people do well in science, and some people don't. I don't hold it as something to take pride in that I do well in science ( ...for what do you have that you did not receive ), but it must be acknowledged that we all have different aptitudes for different pursuits. IF God was knowable through scientific endeavor - that would give an unfair advantage to scientists in getting to salvation. But I believe that God is just. So he does not allow a path of scientific study to become the path to salvation. ( Faith cometh by hearing ). Anyone can believe.JDH_{February 19, 2010
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