Monthly Archive for January, 2010

No doubt, one can put together and ask quite a lot of questions that can’t be answered with the science that’s now available. Science doesn’t explain everything. Whether science will ever be able to reply to the inquiries that we collectively consider supreme: that’s another wonder entirely. Perhaps love as we appreciate it will be one day completely lined up with fMRI or other brain scan maps; maybe the “origin of life” will be explained in a way that we can consider likely thus satisfactory; maybe the beginning event that we call the ‘Big Bang’ will be defined in terms of a neat and unifying equation or algorithm. Whatever. The point is, candidly again, science as it stands now doesn’t explain everything we can come up with. And in lieu of any actual answer, we often try to obtain some kind of completion by plugging in a supernatural placeholder: “God did it!” You’ve heard or said this in your own life more than a few times. Why is there something instead of nothing? “God did it.” The theory of evolution by natural selection accounts for the diversity of life, but how did life itself get started? “God did it.” And so forth. You know what I’m talking about. What I wonder is, why is the notion of God doing it maintained and distributed with the connotation that it actually explains anything?

Think about this.

You answer questions that science currently cannot with “God did it!” But then in the next breath you go on to describe God Herself as being “beyond human understanding,” or anything akin. Can you really not readily realize this confidence trick? Having installed God in the middle of everything, you arrive at exactly the same place you would’ve without Her help: “I’m not sure,” or, “I don’t know,” or “It’s beyond human understanding.” You’ve simply personified the unknown, and then made friends with it. Nothing has been gained. Further, matter of factly, “God did it” throws away any potential for advancement. In science, “I don’t know” is the only answer actually available in quite a lot of domains. Still, this sort of uncertainty maintains room for the ending echo “…yet.” How did DNA coding come to be? “I don’t know…yet.” By what process does the clump of cells that result from a sperm and egg hanging out for a minute come alive and obtain perspective, what we sometimes call a ‘spirit’ or ‘ego’? “I don’t know…yet.” And so forth. Essentially what’s said in all such cases of science is, “We aren’t sure, but we’re working on it.” In the case of God, however, you offer a heavenly rewording of “I don’t know,” and then stamp the situation, case closed. Why have the physical constants that facilitate our kind of life assumed the values that they have? “God did it. Done. Next question.” This variety of nonsense leaves no room for progress. Not only have you absolutely failed to provide any functional demonstration or explanation of anything; you’ve called your bullshit the final word. On what grounds does this work for you? I sincerely motion that scientifically conceding, “I’m not sure yet,” in the first place is of much more intellectual honesty and use than boasting, “God did it.” Because in either case nothing has been actually moved forward, and in the latter you’ve imagined quite a lot more to be explained, quite a lot that by definition can never be explained, and then told everybody else to stop worrying about it.

What about it?