Although I'm an atheist myself, I'm not a big fan of atheist perspectives like those of the well-marinated Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins.
Not that the "Christian" side is any better.
Dinesh D'Souza argues in a column today that the famous biologist Richard Dawkins has been thoroughly tripped up by the complexity of cells.
Here's the gruesome details.
Dawkins argues that evolutionary theory refutes the intelligent design idea that there was a God creating either the universe 4.5 billion years ago or life on earth 3.5 billion years ago.
What makes Dawkins' argument reasonable is that the book of Genesis postulates that the world was created somewhere 6,000 and 10,000 years ago. If the universe is 4.5 billion years old and life on earth is 3.5 billion years old, then it is evident that Genesis is a fable and that the monotheistic religions have no authoritative account of the creation of life.
Evidently an "old earth" kind of guy himself, Dinesh D'Souza counters with the idea that there was an "intelligent designer" behind the formation of life on earth.
But that doesn't make sense religiously. Why makes the "intelligent design" idea better than the highly detailed six day creation plan of monotheism in the Book of Genesis? Perhaps D'Souza thinks that Genesis was a myth told to satisfy the curiosity of pre-literate peoples like the very ancient Hebrews. But if Genesis was all the feeble scientific minds of 10,000 years ago could handle, why haven't there been any prophecies of intelligent design. Joseph Smith came up with 600 pages of new revelations for Mormonism. Why hasn't there been an intelligent design version of the Book of Mormon?
In the final analysis, Dawkins and D'Souza end up in the same place. According to D'Souza, Dawkins thinks that single cells are too complex to be created spontaneously and postulates that some kind of "alien" brought the cells from another planet. That's also what God is for D'Souza, the alien presence that brings the fundamental biological unit of the cell into earth.
But why would cells have to be the fundamental biological unit?
It seems much more reasonable to postulate that cells themselves evolved from pre-cellular bits of matter that formed out of the primordial soup, flared briefly into life, and then died for lack of any kind of stable organization.
As a stable basis for organic development, cells themselves would have been the outcome of eons of evolutionary experiment.
Not unlike the Gods.
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9 comments:
Ric - I love reading about this sort of speculation. I was wondering when someone in the intelligent design camp was going to come around to believing that aliens created life on earth. Perhaps as part of some vast genetic experiment? H.P. Lovecraft told the tale much better, though, in his novella "At the Mountains of Madness". There was also a British movie from the late 60s, Six Million Years to Earth, which explored the same theme.
I've always thought people who can't accept evolution are unable to do so because they can't wrap their minds around the idea of billions of years of time passing without human consciousness in it.
I think it was James Ussher who came up with the idea that the world is only a few thousand years old. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bishop_Ussher
How do you "know" that the universe is 4.5 billion years old?
The earth is 4.5 billion years old, the universe is somewhere along the lines of 13 billion years old.
A quick google search can verify the methodology and accuracy of these figures.
None are precisely right or wrong. As a Mormon I must note that The Book of Mormon is another Testament of Jesus Christ intended to be used in tandem with the Bible. So there need be no disputations between Mormons and Protestants on some of these issues. As a matter of personal...let us say preference, I deny both creationism and "intelligent design." Both miss the mark according to our belief system. We believe that matter and intelligence always existed and that we were created spiritually by heavenly parents before our spirits were united with the bodies we currently inhabit. We also believe that matter cannot be created or designed. For us, the proper term is organized. We believe that matter was organized to form the Earth and all things on it. We believe that human kind were organized into coherent mortal bodies from elements that exist in enternity. This is not easy doctrine to accept but what we believe is that nothing had a beginning and nothing nor anyone has an end. Try to imagine something with no beginning and no end. That's what we believe.
Thanks for the information on Mormon beliefs.
Dr.Caric i have to say that this was pretty interesting to me. Its hard to find a nice break down.
BTW whats up with the random mormon?
Where did you get the information on Dawkins from? I've been reading his lately book "The God Delusion" and he hasn't made any reference to aliens yet. Admittedly I'm only a couple of hundred pages along.
I grew up in a fairly rural Christian Church, which preaches the theory that the Earth is about 6,000 years old. The people in my church are largely uneducated, and all three of us who have attended or currently attend college hold our tongue. During a youth camp sermon by a visiting preacher a few years ago, the preacher proposed an interesting idea. "Days" as mentioned in the creation story, are not on the 24-hour scale that we use today; they are "days" in God's realm of eternity. Human beings are selfish to assume that God exists in the same sort of "time" that we do. In the blink of an eye, a thousand years could pass. On the first "day" or say, 500,000 years, God created the Earth (and the rest of the planets through the big bang theory, since they are all about the same age). Over the next several hundred thousand years, "day" two, God formed the rest of the Earth, and so on. I think this was all too complex for the simple minds of the first humans to understand. I mean, come on; they couldn't even draw 3-d shapes. This theory also allows for the length of time between dinosaurs and man, as God placed animals on the Earth the "day" before humans.
In short, it is a fallacy to take the Old Testament too literally.
This preacher was not asked back to the youth conference in following years...wonder why.
Well, if cells cannot be spontaneously created, and we where in fact genetically generated by aliens from another world. What created the Aliens? Evolution? There's a hole in all these theories. It had to start somewhere. If life is too complex to be made from simple chemical reactions, naturally one would assume that there is in fact a God. The truth is, none of us really know anything. We just assume through flawed logic that we "know" how the universe functions or how life itself works. Science constantly disproves itself as old "laws" are constantly being addressed and new theories developed. I don't understand why people look to one possible theory, when you can combine and compare all of these at once, and still know nothing more than you already knew. Genesis, a work of fiction meant to explain the creation to feeble minded humans of ancient civilizations? That might explain a lot, but there is one problem. Humanity is still feeble minded, and stupid as a whole. Even subatomic particles, electrons for example, act differently when being observed. The universe is very mysterious, and to attempt to explain it's creation are impossible. Human beings cannot comprehend something that is and always will be, which is why science denies the existence of a God, let alone many of them. We are too blind to realize that there may be something out there higher than the physical universe which we "see" and "feel" and "smell" and "taste" and "hear." Our five senses tend to deceive us. Most of us live by the rule: If we can't see it, hear it, taste it, smell it, or feel it; then it isn't real. By whose decision? Who says that our five senses aren't deathly wrong. What do we know to being with? Our brains process over 400 billion bits of information from our surroundings, per second. Yet we are only aware of 2000 bits. I suppose the aliens put us here to be stupid then? Or did they put us here at all to being with? I will ask this again. If life can not be spontaneously generated through natural means, and we were in fact created by aliens, then who made the aliens? And why did they generate so many diseases and animals that can potentially harm or destroy their own creations? If you made something that you where proud of, would you attempt to destroy it to get rid of it? Likely not. This is my person opinion. Atheism is blind, and closed minded. Atheists totally disregard the possibility that there is something beyond the physical realm because they can't let their feeble minds believe in it. Science can't even explain conscientiousness, let alone the mysteries of the creation of life. I hope you understand where I am going with this. As my whole point is, you cannot take anything literally if you keep an open mind because nothing in this "universe" is what it seems. And there is no way to truly disprove the bible anyway. Men think they can disprove anything, when in truth: We cannot prove or disprove anything. We simply speculate and decide how things work based on what we think we know. So think about that next time you wish to challenge one of man's "literary works."
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