Tag Archives: God

ARE YOU INTELLIGENTLY DESIGNED?

I never came away from an autopsy without reflecting on the marvelous design of the human body.

anatomyThere are twelve major systems in your anatomy; all interlinked to ensure your survival. Remove any system (except maybe your reproductive one) and you’ll die. And these systems go about their business – day after day – year after year – without your having to consciously think about operating them.

All that’s required is a bit of maintenance and, when things go wrong, modern medical science usually knows how to patch you up. Today’s medical practitioners can replace your organs, your limbs, your hair, and your teeth. But what modern science doesn’t know is how all this came to be.

I’m going to do some edited plagiarism from William A. Dembski, of the Access Research Network, who wrote an excellent article on intelligent design. The idea has been around since the ancient Greeks, who did some pretty deep thinking about where they came from and where they were going. Some of it was explained by mythology, some by theology, and some by analogy. But the central question – did something intentionally design us – remains unanswered today.

William PaleyDesign theory—also called design or the design argument—is the view that nature shows tangible signs of having been designed by a preexisting intelligence. The most famous version of the design argument can be found in the work of theologian William Paley, who in 1802 proposed his “watchmaker” thesis. His reasoning went like this:

“In crossing a heath, suppose I pitched my foot against a stone, and were asked how the stone came to be there; I might possibly answer, that, for anything I knew to the contrary, it had lain there forever. … But suppose I had found a watch upon the ground, and it should be inquired how the watch happened to be in that place; I should hardly think the answer which I had before given would be sufficient.”

clockTo the contrary, the fine coordination of all the watch parts would force us to conclude that it must have had a maker – that there must have existed, at some time, and at some place or other, an artificer or artificers, who formed it for some purpose. We’d struggle to comprehended its construction and designed its use, just as we’ve struggled with ourselves.

Paley argued that we can draw the same conclusion about many natural objects, such as the eye. Just as a watch’s parts are all perfectly adapted for the purpose of telling time, the parts of an eye are all perfectly adapted for the purpose of seeing. In each case, Paley argued, we discern the marks of an intelligent designer.

Although Paley’s basic notion was sound and influenced thinkers for decades, Paley never provided a rigorous standard for detecting design in nature. Detecting design depended on such vague standards as being able to discern an object’s “purpose.” Moreover, Paley and other “natural theologians” tried to reason from the facts of nature to the existence of a wise and benevolent God.

All of these things made design an easy target for Charles Darwin when he proposed his theory of evolution.

DarwinWhereas Paley saw a finely-balanced world attesting to a kind and just God, Darwin pointed to nature’s imperfections and brutishness. Although Darwin had once been an admirer of Paley, Darwin’s own observations and experiences – especially the cruel, lingering death of his 9-year-old daughter Annie in 1850 – destroyed whatever belief he had in a just and moral universe.

Following Darwin’s triumph, design theory was all but banished from biology. Since the 1980s, however, advances in biology have convinced a new generation of scholars that Darwin’s theory was inadequate to account for the sheer complexity of living things. These scholars – chemists, biologists, mathematicians, and philosophers of science – began to reconsider design theory. They formulated a new view of design that avoids the pitfalls of previous versions.

Called intelligent design (ID), to distinguish it from earlier versions of design theory (as well as from the naturalistic use of the term design), this new approach is more modest than its predecessors. Rather than trying to infer God’s existence or character from the natural world, it simply claims “that intelligent causes are necessary to explain the complex, information-rich structures of biology and that these causes are empirically detectable.”

GodLike I said, I never came away from an autopsy without reflecting on the marvelous design of the human body.

What do you think?

Have you been intelligently designed?

WHAT’S BEHIND THE BLACK DOOR?

What’s going to happen to you in death?

DeathWhere do you go? What will you do? Is it truly the end of your life? Or the beginning of another? Are you just going to have one long sleep? Or a continuation of your eternal journey?

HeavenWill you meet past departed loved ones? Or connect with your maker? Will you go to heaven? Or to hell? Will you be alone? Consoled? In purgatory, peace, or in peril? Pain? Comfort? Agony? Bliss?

I’ve been asked these questions, and a lot more, by those close to the deceased that I’d examined as a Coroner – bereaved folks, struggling for what makes sense. I don’t have the answers, still don’t, so I did a lot of listening and let them tell me their thoughts.

AfterlifeI observed one consistent thing about human nature. With the exception of the occasional atheist, a basic human trait is a belief in an afterlife. The form varies, but it seems programmed that somehow you recognize that you live on in death. It’s something… you just know.

It’s obvious that your physical body changes form after death, whether that be through natural decomposition or through a mortician’s craft, but what’s fascinating is what happens to the non-physical part of you…

Consciousness.

In life, you’re a conscious being. Consciousness became part of your existence somewhere following your conception and will leave you somewhere around death. Where it came from… and where it goes? No one knows.

consciousnessThe study of consciousness is something that’s only beginning to be discovered in the human journey. Science knows much about what makes your body tick, but almost nothing about your mind.

And what’s your mind? It’s the facilitator of consciousness. The link between the terminal and the eternal; the body/mind duality that philosophers have struggled with since becoming aware of consciousness. So it makes sense that your mind is eternal, as is consciousness.

I think what’s behind the black door of death is exactly what was there before you came through it. You go back to the same state you were in before being born. Death just alters your state of consciousness and you continue to live on forever.

What do you think’s going to happen to you?

I’m dying to hear your words.

DO YOU BELIEVE JESUS IS SUPERNATURAL?

Whether you’re Christian or not, you have to behold the enormous impact Jesus of Nazareth continues to have on humanity.

JCTwenty-one centuries after his recorded birth, approximately 2.2 billion souls adhere to Christianity; a mainstay being their belief that Jesus possessed supernatural abilities. The religion asks you to accept the Articles of Faith – the Immaculate Conception, the Miracles, direct communication with the Divine, and the Resurrection. All of these require your acceptance that Jesus was, and continues to be, a supernatural entity. The payback of your faith is everlasting life for your soul.

So what, exactly, does supernatural mean? Without checking with Webster, I’d say it’s events for which there appears no natural, scientific explanation. Much of our understanding of science comes from operating in our timeline. 2,000 years ago the PC I’m writing this on, and the Internet connection you’re receiving it through, would be mind-blowing. We’d probably get stoned for Blogging.

3D1Over the past two years, I did a lot of investigation into the supernatural while writing No Witnesses To Nothing. The novel’s based on a true-crime story where many believe paranormal intervention occurred, as there’s no natural, scientific explanation for what went down during a police operation on a frozen Canadian Yukon lake, 27 years ago.

My research into the science and spirituality behind the human soul took me into the worlds of organized religion, First Nations mythology, Shamanism, consciousness, and quantum physics. I confirmed there’s a lot of really weird shit that goes down which science sucks at explaining, but there’s continual scientific progress being made into understanding all kinds of fascinating things.

Higgs BosonThis year, the Higgs Boson confirmation bust the quantum door wide-open in our understanding how the sub-atomic communicates – some call it the ‘God Particle’. Another little gem is in DNA research with single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) explaining how genetic code realignment at the quantum level accounts for how chameleons and cuttlefish camouflage – they think themselves into shifting shape.

Christ on CrossI believe that the human soul exists, and I made an attempt to scientifically & spiritually explain how the soul works. But I gotta admit that it comes down to faith, just as 1/3 of humanity accepts that Jesus Christ is supernatural and I respect that.

What do you think? Have I been drinking the Cool-Aid?

I’m dying to hear your words.