Off Topic — HabitableZone

Off Topic » in reply to Now you've got me wondering,

maybe religion should learn from Spock and 'go beyond logic'
Daniel — (archived)

- After all, looking for actual evidence of ID always seems to backfire, as you point out:

Until the discovery of continental drift and plate tectonics, creationists used as evidence the geographical distribution of diverse living species and fossils as proof that they had to be independently created.

That's very interesting .. I didn't know that. Maybe the religious viewpoint would be wiser keeping to the psychological angle, meaning that instead of looking for evidence of ID in the world, it's possible to 'get religion' in a kind of amazement that anything exists at all in the first place. Sort of an existential astonishment, which is what I meant by the psychological angle. That could be the best domain for religion, rather than searching for spurious evidence within the gaps of scientific knowledge. I get this sort of existential suprise sometimes when thinking about lifeforms which independently move about: with animals, but especially with humans, where the will and purpose to go here or there is so much more pronounced. In that frame of mind, one can ask: How likely is that to occur by chance in any universe? - As opposed to the existence of inert matter, or even vegetation, which may be splendid and remarkable, but not as amazing as the notion of independently mobile lifeforms with their own purposes and directions. Now, this question can be answered logically by evolution and stochastic processes - but I'm trying to point out that logic, analysis, and intuitive awareness are, in the end, human experiences rather pointers to ultimate disembodied truths. So religion's valid domain may well belong to intuition and appreciation of existence itself.

I believe that Darwin was right, but I also believe he didn't get the whole story. And I suspect that when we do figure it out both the creationists and the evolutionists are going to be blown away.

Well, I hope so, it would make for some great cleansing of Blake's 'Doors of perception', for sure ..

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