Intelligent Design? Someone Out There is Watching You

Here's looking at ya!

The concept "Intelligent Design" is a mental gymnastic undergone by otherwise intelligent people when they are confronted with the absolute minisculity of human existence. If you look through the Hubble Telescope, out beyond where anyone has ever looked before, you see that the universe does not stop. Ever. While the age of the Universe is said to be about 13 billion years , we have still not seen to the end, nor will we ever. Ever. [I don't understand this but it has something to do with the fact that the Universe is like a blueberry muffin in the oven with the galaxies being the blueberries. The muffin keeps expanding so there is greater and greater distance between the galaxies (???) and, since the speed of light is constant, the light from the "end of the Universe" will never reach us. Or something like that.]

To those of us who were born and raised in a Christian environment, such information can pose a severe challenge to the lore that was drilled into us by our parents, teachers and preachers. Not so very long ago, and reinforced by the supposed mastery of Nature (demonstrated by the development of the Atomic Bomb), humans were riding quite high in the world's saddle. We seemed to be in control of everything, always a good feeling. This fit into the idea that Christians were recipients of the Word direct from old White Beard himself, via this enigmatic figure called Christ. The stars were in their heavens and all was right with the World. So said Pip, sorta.

There is also the Jewish concept of being the "Chosen People." Everyone wants to be the "Chosen." It makes for an inventive theology.

But human knowledge never stands still. It is always mutating just like the genes that make us up. And once something is known, the innocence of not knowing can never be regained. It is becoming harder and harder to accept statements from the Jewish Bible written 4,000 years ago. It is becoming almost impossible to conceive of Man as being in charge of the Universe, as is suggested in Genesis. It is becoming more and more obvious that we are but Pips in a tiny pod of a tiny plant in a tiny forest on a tiny world in an infinite universe (sorry, Pip).

Intelligent Design is saying that there is someone, not a human but a sorta-human-god, out there who designed It All. ID at this points does a lateral to Religion. Still on the same ball field, though. Not any religion, but Christian Religion. This claims that we have a personal relationship, sorta, to this sorta-human in an attempt to salvage a world that we should have abandoned many years ago. It is essential for the ID world that human existence has "meaning." The only way to have "meaning" is to be personally related to some kind of supreme being. In this way we are NOT tiny pips in an infinite universe, we are still the sorta boss.

This alleged special relationship to the gods has been around since the advent of humankind and accounts for 99.9% of the bloodshed between humans including our current misadventure in Iraq (don't forget that Georgie Boy "talks" to God.)

The cleverness is that ID says "we aren't related to religion. We are scientists." But the reality is inherent in their contentions. If you accept Intelligent Design, you have to accept this personal sorta-human god with all his accoutrements (notice I didn't say her accoutrements.)

Did you ever wonder why Christians but not Buddhists, Hindus and Muslims came up with this weird concept?