He said he was "comfortable" with the idea of alien life and asked if he would baptise an alien, he replied "Only if they asked"...That's interesting re the history of "intelligent design," and makes sense re what was intended originally.
He said the characteristics synonymous with having a soul - intelligence, free will, freedom to love and freedom to make decisions may not be unique to humans. “Any entity – no matter how many tentacles it has has a soul,’ he said.
He said "intelligent design" had been... "hijacked by a narrow group of Creationist fundamentalists in America to mean something it did not originally mean at all. It’s bad theology in that it turns God once again into the pagan god of thunder and lightning.’ The phrase 'Intelligent Design' was centuries old and described the idea that God could be discovered in the laws of space and time and the existence of human reason..
Photo: AP Photo/Plinio Lepri
"Bad theology" is redundant. Or at the very least, it's nonsense since there's no objective standard for good or bad theology. Religious believers decry relativism, but they're the ones who follow and define arbitrary rules that can't be validated or falsified.
ReplyDeleteHistorically, many of the world's greatest scientists and artists have been very religious and were often sponsored by the church. People secure in their beliefs have always welcomed inquiry and discovery, because they are confidant that they will be proven correct. Anyone who pits Faith against Reality is an idiot who clearly feels their beliefs threatened.
ReplyDeleteI don't agree with the church. But I actually do occasionally have respect for it. This is one of those cases.
BJN: Much the same could be said about Economics, and Art, and Literature, and...
I got into big trouble in an online discussion once when I tried to stand up for the original concept of Intelligent Design as a sophisticated way to think about the nature of God. I was denounced as a stealth fundamentalist deceptively trying to portray ID-aka-Creationism as respectable. Nobody believed me that the term had ever meant anything else. Like Anonymous, I'm not a believer, but I can respect the original ID approach.
ReplyDeletePaul Davies, a British physicist, has written several books about the philosophical aspect of physics for the general reader that incorporate the historical ID concept (e.g., Mind of God, God and the New Physics). I've found them challenging and entertaining.
--Swift Loris