Comment on Intelligent Design – Science or Religion? by Wesley Kime.
I’ve wanted to insert a certain notion of mine about Intelligent Design that is far from the famous flagellum, the coagulation cascade, the irreducibility of DNA.
Now’s a good time to do it, while, as on an Alaskan cruise with all the passengers jostled together on one side of the ship ogling a gaggle of orcas, all the passengers of our good ship EduTru have roared over to another deck to like or dislike the Smartphone Four and bevy of hammerhead barristers thrashing and spouting out there in the treacherous Straits of Ethics.
What I wanted to say, if only to myself –- it’s lonely over here! — is that, as homage to the consoling convenience and virtual reality of statistics complete with computer-generated T values or flip like-dislikes, it is to be granted that the odds, though pretty astronomical even by eonic terms, could allow a fluky random conflation of molecular apparatuses for the cascade of keratin extrusions to form a blue heron’s lacy tail feathers. But there is no formula, no possible odds, odds just don’t apply, reducible or irreducible, whipped, spun, scrambled or marinated in Châteauneuf-du-Pape, that those feathers by random could turn out so simply — beautiful.
Erv’s Odds could authorize the kinetics of the sundry atmospheric moieties to materialize as vapor of a certain pressure and instant formal configuration, with the sun happening to be at just the angle, focus, and intensity to fasciculate photoelecromagnetic wave forms of a predominance of frequencies from 400-550 THz. But I’m seeing backlit clouds, a rim of pure glow shouting against contentedly submissive violet velvet. I’m seeing translucent velvet violet vapor as homogenous as amber, that you can’t feel but only see, merge indistinguishably into violet, vaporously translucent mountains that would kill you if they were an avalanche. Odds? Beyond odd.
So I agree: Intelligent Design should never be taught only in science class. It belongs also in Aesthetics 101.
Wesley Kime Also Commented
Intelligent Design – Science or Religion?
@Emeritus: It sounds profound but what you’re trying to say isn’t obvious. Can you reword that? Please try again. Thanks
Recent Comments by Wesley Kime
Beyond the Creation Story – Why the Controversy Matters
@Ken: Ken, re. yours of May 31, 15 12:42 pm: … those standing up for FB28 have every right to do so…until they [presumably the FBs, not the communicants, although either could be changed in a twinkling of any eye] are democratically changed.”
FB28? What’s that? You probably know better than I. Genesis 1 I can quote; FB28 I can’t. And won’t bother to check. I couldn’t even tell you where to find those FBs. I read what you say more assiduously than the FBs. (What’s FB? FaceBook?)
In the first place I think you’ve got Adventism wrong, or at least Adventism as I know it. Well, maybe you haven’t, the postmodernist kind anyway. I’m pre-catechistic, ergo prehistoric, alas. I’m that old.
FB28 or whatever it is, if it WERE changed, democratically or otherwise, dramatically or creepingly, by evolution or edict, even if expunged and expurgated in the interest of big-tent accord, which seemed on the verge of happening pre-T. Wilson, and may yet, I wouldn’t even know it until I saw it here. You’d know before I would.
With or without and despite FB28 or whatever, or EduTruth, I’d still honor Genesis 1. I’d honor it, A, by faith, because the Bible, i.e. God, says so. A validated faith validated by B, The evidence, good scientific falsifiable evidence. And C, the consummate cosmic multi-vectored syllogism. Everything fits.
Seriously, though, discussion has to start somewhere and be referenced by something, for convenience if not citizenship. But I’d prefer to start, if granted “every right,” with Genesis 1, at the beginning.
Dr. Ariel Roth’s Creation Lectures for Teachers
@Ken: “something Dr. Kime said struck a very strange chord in me: that a Chair in ID at Harvard would be a quantum leap (forward – my edit) while such a Chair would be a step backward at LSU. I’ m very sorry Wes, but for me to honestly investigate reality, such double standard is not acceptable. …[therefore] I think I’m coming to the end of my Adventist journey.”
I can, of course, dear friend, understand why, and respect that, you would see the two directions of leaping, forward and backward, by Harvard and LSU, as a double standard.
But might it also be seen as simple Einsteinian Relativity? It all depends on from whence you’re starting or observing. Two venues, Harvard vs. LSU, two vectors, not two standards. At any rate, a parting of our ways. The Chair did it. A very unlucky ill-omened Chair, from the start.
Parting — that indeed is sad, especially this parting. I grieve too. In sadness we are agreed. That’s not double speak; only you could I say that to.
For these several years you, and your courteous ways, even your questions, have been most fascinating, even endearing, inspiring to both poetic and, I now regret, rasping response. I’ve so much enjoyed your postings, always looked for them first, and appreciated your uncommon patience and politeness, and our camaraderie in the bomb shelter and on the grandstand. Too bad the Chair, our double bed, didn’t work out.
As benediction, maybe we can all get together again, somewhere. Meanwhile, the Mizpah, which I think I should be the one to deliver, seeing it was, you say, my one-liner that was the last straw, for which I’ll get heck all around, and rightly so: “The Lord watch between me and thee, when we are absent one from another.” Genesis 31:49.
What the heck, have some popcorn for the road. And don’t forget your cyber plaque. You will be remembered, appreciated, thought about, prayed for. Do come back soon.
Until then, your jousting friend, W
Strumming the Attached Strings
@Phillip Brantley: Excellent! I shall quote you: “learn something from Sean Pitman.” Indeed, indeed — there’s so much to learn from that man.
Changing the Wording of Adventist Fundamental Belief #6 on Creation
@Bill Sorensen: “I don’t know if anyone has really been able to follow your thinking…”
A tad, a smidgeon, just slightly overstated maybe? Just a tad, just a smidgeon, at the cost of not a few dislikes? Well, I for one do follow it. And with great admiration. Great.
What does it take to be a true Seventh-day Adventist?
@Ervin Taylor: Out of purely poetic symmetry of rhetoric, Ervin, your trademark whimsical “…I guess someone who rejects…” is asking for — I was waiting for it! — a Pitman’s “I guess someone who accepts…” Lovely diptych, ping and pong.
