1. Senator calls for answer on creation of universe

Comment #23932 by LeoVII on March 3, 2007 at 3:31 pm

I'm new to this site, and in error I initially sent my following comments directly to pauliej, whose words prompted my writing. I post them here now because I think they merit a wider distribution:

RE: If I was (sic) the Education Commissioner

You state: "Whether those processes of evolution were initiated by a supreme being is a question which science is not equipped to answer. Therefore, any theory or hypothesis which postulates the existence of a supreme being is inherently non-scientific, and so has no place in a science curriculum."

Your notions of science and what it can and cannot do are entirely nonsensical. Science is nothing more than the gathering of knowledge on the basis of a few rickety rules, and of frequent and occasionally embarrassing revisions to said knowledge.

Science handily embraces the notion of "the big bang," a dimensionless singularity in a time of no time and a space of no space, from which sprang time and space and all existence. So what's your problem with science tackling the question of what was there in the instant before? Tackling the question of an intelligent causative agent?

Science is the acquisition of knowledge, no matter how tentative, not a cordon of silly-ass policemen stomping around the ED issue, barking at all and sundry, "Nothing to see here! Move along now!"

Your problem is that you're stuck in the anthropomorphic, clinging to — while rejecting — the notion of a supreme "being." Only religious hicks on the side of intelligent design espouse the simplistic and primitive idea of a supreme, all-knowing anything. Those with any intelligence stick to the issue of whether our physical universe bespeaks unmistakably of intelligent design.

And it does. No question. Some Hindu sage or other, of perhaps 5,000 years ago, said it best of, essentially, ID (though he used another term, and I paraphrase inadequately): "It is beyond all knowing. No mind can comprehend it, no thought can conceive it, no word can express it."

At least you can be generous enough to let science have a try.