Monday, July 10, 2006
---The Plan
Matthew 22
37Jesus replied: " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' 38This is the first and greatest commandment. 39And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' 40All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments."
New Scientist SPACE - Premium- Was our universe made for us or not? - News [subscription-based article]
There finally seems to be a sort of hesitant acknowledgement among a few physicists that the fundamentals of our Universe don’t really make sense as a purely stochastic process---meaning that someone must have made it. Of course, people who have been approaching the problem from other directions have been saying that for centuries.
There also seems to be a requirement in science---going back at least to Einstein----that when a scientist is compelled to speak seriously about the possibility of an intelligent Creator, he must also conclude that the Creator must have lost interest and moved on immediately after the act of Creation and will have no further personal involvement in the outcome. It’s the most important scientific discovery that we could possibly make, but it is apparently necessary to reach a completely unfounded assumption about the character and purpose of the Creator in order to---what? Avoid ostracism? Avoid personal involvement in the most personally involving fact about the Universe that there could possibly be? Avoid losing control? Avoid copyright infringement?
So, if we conclude otherwise (as some of the rest of us are compelled to do: Romans 5:8)---that the Creator really cares what happens to His Creation---what sort of plans would we expect Him to make for a Universe evidently designed to contain not only life, but intelligent life?
Intelligence, as we are all learning at great personal cost, is a very dangerous thing. It obviously cannot be controlled by pre-written instructions---intelligent, “self-aware” beings defy “programming” for the very reason that they are independently intelligent. Look at the state of our national legal systems. The legal system of the U.S. has deteriorated into an anarchy, albeit limited to privileged group who simply “interprets” the useless written codes, constitutions, and laws, to mean whatever whim or perhaps current socially trendy fads dictate at the time. How many human governments have come and gone in similar ways? Actually, the ingenuity invested by the human species in circumventing every conceivable system designed to maintain order and prevent its self-destructive behaviors is one of its most consistent achievements.
B.F. Skinner was wrong; we are not social automata, or we wouldn’t be having all these problems. We would just implement a big behavioral programming environment, maybe something like Asimov’s Foundation, and everybody would settle into mindless, “scientificized”, psychologically-automated prosperity.
No, intelligent, “self-aware” beings must conclude independently that the fundamental requirements for the maintenance of their Universe are necessary, and actually desirable for their own comfort and well-being. So, what would this Plan look like, in its simplest possible form?
Where have you people been looking?
Labels: Bible and Religious Commentary
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