A comment on Peter Michaelson's "Psychological Expose' of Creationism's Secret Genesis," which evolved into an article of its own.

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*according to me.

I began this piece as a comment to Peter Michaelson's article, A Psychological Expose' of Creationism's Secret Genesis.

But by the time I got done I realized it was more of an article than a comment. I had started with, "I could write a book or two here, I suppose, but I'll try to stick with a 'short list' of items for thought." I still think it's a short list, given the nature of the topic, and I offer these ideas as "mental seeds" that may or may not grow roots for you, while simultaneously noting that the final response to the title of the article is ultimately yours and yours alone.

My wife is an eighth grade science teacher, who as objectively as I can see it, is one of the best around. One of her countless hands-on experiments is to pass out "black boxes," which she spent hours putting together (I helped a little), in which there is a free-rolling marble and various cut-out shapes of foam glued randomly in each box. The plastic container is the size of about two cigarette boxes, with top and bottom hot-glued together. The task for the kids is to work in small groups and, by rolling the marble around amongst the oddly shaped and placed stops, try to draw a conclusion about what's inside the box. Needless to say, there is a wide range of opinions regarding what's in each box, into which none of the kids ever get to look. Very similar, I submit, to adults looking into the black box of the universe.

If you haven't read Francis Collin's recent interviews in both National Geographic and Discover Magazines, and you're interested in this topic, I strongly suggest you look these interviews up. Collins was in charge of the human genome project, but he is also a devout Christian. Whether you agree with him or not, you will find his thinking well worth reading.

Two examples from the National Geographic interview: Question: Physicist Steven Weinberg, who is an atheist, asks why six million Jews, including his relatives, had to die in the Holocaust, so that the Nazis could exercise their free will. Collins: If God had to intervene miraculously every time one of us chose to do something evil, it would be a very strange, chaotic, unpredictable world. Free will leads to people doing terrible things to each other. Innocent people die as a result. You can't blame anyone except the evildoers for that. So that's not God's fault. The harder question is when suffering seems to have come about through no human ill action. A child with cancer, a natural disaster, a tornado or tsunami. Why would Got not prevent those things from happening?

Question: What do you think about the field of neurotheology, which attempts to identify the neural basis of religious experiences? Collins: I think it's fascinating but not particularly surprising. We humans are flesh and blood. So it wouldn't trouble me-if I were to have some mystical experience myself-to discover that my temporal lobe was lit up. That doesn't mean that this doesn't have genuine spiritual significance. Those who come at this issue with the presumption that there is nothing outside the natural world will look at this data and say, "Ya see?" Whereas those who come with the presumption that we are spiritual creatures will say, "Cool! There is a natural correlate to this mystical experience! How about that!"

Also, check out the interview of a few months ago with Richard Dawkins in Discover Magazine. A devout atheist, Dawkins makes a solid case. But I particularly liked his last answer, which was something to the effect that, "If there is a God, he is infinitely greater and far more complex than anything any theologian has ever come close to proposing."

I'm almost done with a book now, one Rob Kall recommended about two weeks ago, Callings by Gregg Levoy. Levoy writes that when someone asked Einstein what was the most important question a person could ask, Einstein answered (I'm paraphrasing again), "Whether or not the universe is a good place." And the book itself, "Callings," is largely about synchronicity--the seemingly miraculous timing of events--and how you can observe it in your life; which at a minimum, strongly suggests that the universe is more than "random chance" (whatever that may ultimately mean).

If you haven't read Richard Dawkin's The Blind Watchmaker or a lot of the late Stephen Jay Gould, then it is unlikely you understand how evolution works through deep time, without any evident need for a Creator.

If you're wondering about the authenticity of the bible, I recommend you check out the article by my dear friend Deana Jensen, Godwho

Regarding the Koran, check the writings of Ibin Warreq.

Regarding God in general, read Mark Twain's
Letters From the Earth.

Of course, there are countless other books out there on the subject, which will come to you fairly quickly if you look for them.

When I'm inventing, which I spend a good part of my days doing, I marvel at how much like evolution the process of inventing is, except that I'm completely conscious of the process. One baby step forward, three steps back, two steps forward, dead end, back to go, pull in another material and a new system arises and changes everything, leap forward ten steps, etc. Ideas coming to me from out of the blue, relevant connections with other things suddenly leaping out at me, offhand suggestions from friends or strangers sparking new possibilities. On and on it goes, with no end, as much as a living process as any I can imagine. Same thing happens when teaching or writing. All this could certainly be viewed as forms of "random chance," but deep inside it feels like more than that-like the universe is working with me, when I'm making some effort to move forward in it. (FYI, here's thelatest embodiment of the particular invention that's taken over my life for the last decade.)

I try to remember that the human intellect is a small, most likely infinitesimal, subset of the universe, and that there are very likely other dimensions around us that we can't even perceive, according to virtually all physicists. The Big Bang is at least as difficult for me to believe in as the concept of a personal God-in fact, I can't decide intellectually which is harder to believe in. The whole universe blossoming forth from something smaller than an atom? C'mon, now! Or what, exactly, do we mean by either concept--What IS God?

Either phenomenon is supernatural in my book; and for all I know they may be one and the same-or for that matter, figments of our imagination (though I doubt it). I've come to think it's more important to try to draw conclusions about what we honestly think about the universe than whether or not we believe in some unspecifiable notion of God.

Most people haven't come close to contemplating our place in either time or space; but if one does, any parochial notion of God is difficult to sustain intellectually.

Pick up some magazines with a total of about 200 pages, say two typical Smithsonians. Imagine each page covered with text. Count the characters and you should get about 5,000 per page. So 200 of these imaginary pages contains a million characters. Let each character be one year. The earliest Homo sapiens, our species, are thought to be 160,000 or less years old-less than 1/6 of our 200 pages, in terms of characters representing a year! Do actually try this if you want to get a gut feel for what I'm saying.

Yet the age of the earth is 4.6 billion years old. Given that each 200 pages is about ¼ of an inch, we'd need a stack of magazines close to 100 feet high (ten stories) to represent the age of the earth! And the age of the universe is around 3 times that! To put it mildly, we ain't been around very long, and we clearly are just one tiny part of the organic wholeness of the universe, not necessarily something terribly special.

Regarding our place in space, just spend a little time poking around and contemplating these two sites, and the notion of a personal God is not that easy to hang onto:

Our place in space

Another view of our place in space

Read up on exobiology (or even marine biology) if you want to get some idea of other life forms that may be out there, "intelligent" or otherwise. Study a little about the octopus, if you want an example of serious "intelligence" in action.

Still, given all this, I cannot BUT believe in a personal God, when I look at the miracles of, for example, my two sons, my dog, or the cherry tree in my back yard-especially these days, when it's in full bloom. Is there an intelligence behind every quark and muon? How else could these things be?

Yet how can there be such human misery-for example our Iraq War, kids without food and water-and such frightening chaotic events in the universe-black holes, roaring nuclear furnaces thousands of times larger than our own terrifying sun, supernovas-at the same time?

Since I'm on my second life, with a 19 year old heart in a 59 year old body, and thus don't give a Flying Fig Newton what anyone thinks about me, I'll therefore tell you this (which like anything else in this article, feel free to take or leave): I've seen God while tripping on lysergic acid diethylamide 25, better known as LSD, and here's how it is: We are awareness, God is everything else (in a light that is golden yellow, and every bit as described in Life after Life by Raymond Moody and countless others), and possibly our own awareness as well. We can't know the final answers in this lifetime, and we may or may not know the final answers ever.

As Emma Wedgewood said to her husband, Charles (again paraphrasing due to my leaky memory), "There may be things in the universe we are just not meant to know through intellect alone." In fact, no one seems to know why Charles mentioned the word "God" in the first edition of his monumental book, "The Origin of Species," or why the word disappeared thereafter. But in my humble opinion, Emma's single sentence is more important than what her husband wrote, or the countless volumes anyone ever wrote or said about what he wrote.

(However, if you want a riviting synopsis of evolution, check out the seven part video or DVD series Evolution, by PBS, or the book about the series. In fact, if it were up to me, watching this series would be mandatory for the human race, as it shows how we got here and our interconnectedness to all life on earth.)

Last but not least, my answer to Albert is this: We certainly appear to be in good hands, and we damn well ought to be taking better care of the planet we're so privileged to be on. And likewise, to be respecting and helping our brothers and sisters around the world instead of blowing them to bits or screwing them in every way we can think of. Whether you believe in "God" or "Something Else," I think it's clear enough that we humans hold the keys to Heaven or Hell in our hands. So the question that matters most, in my estimation, is, "What do we really want?"

Answer here with your own "H" word: _______________

Then we damn well ought to start acting accordingly, because this journey IS for real, and the time to act accordingly is rapidly running out.

Authors Website: http://www.hyperblimp.com

Authors Bio:

In my run for U.S. Senate against Utah's Orrin Hatch, I posted many progressive ideas and principles that I internalized over the years. I'm leaving that site up indefinitely, since it describes what I believe most members of our species truly want: www.voteutah.us. I thank those who sent such wonderful comments, even though it forced me to go buy a few larger hats, which were among my top campaign expenses (just kidding).

My forever-to-write novel (now my favorite book for some unfathomable reason), A Summer with Freeman, finally got out the door, via Kindle and CreateSpace. Readers of this site, and anyone else with two or more brain cells who want some "serious humorous relief" may want to check it out: http://www.opednews.com/articles/A-Summer-with-Freeman-nov-by-Daniel-Geery-130528-385.html

My family and I lived off the grid in an earth-sheltered, solar powered underground house for 15 years, starting in the early '80s, proving, at least to myself, the feasibility of solar power. Such a feat would be much infinitely easier with off-the-shelf materials available now, though the bureaucracy holding us back is probably worse. http://www.opednews.com/articles/Living-on-Sunshine-Underg-by-Daniel-Geery-110318-547.html

I wrote a book on earth-sheltered solar greenhouses that has many good ideas, but should be condensed from 400 down to 50 pages, with new info from living off the grid. It's on my "to do" list, but you can find used copies kicking around online. Just don't get the one I see for $250, being hawked by some capitalist... well, some capitalist.

I'm 68 with what is now a 26 year old heart--literally, as it was transplanted in 2005 (a virus, they think). This is why I strongly encourage you and everyone else to be an organ donor--and get a heart transplant if you're over 50, unless your name is Dick Cheney.

I may be the only tenured teacher you'll meet who got fired with a perfect teaching record. I spent seven years in court fighting that, only to find out that little guys always lose (http://www.opednews.com/articles/Letter-to-NEA-Leadership--by-Daniel-Geery-101027-833.html; recommended reading if you happen to be a parent, teacher, or concerned citizen).

I managed to get another teaching job, working in a multi-cultural elementary school for ten years (we had well over 20 native tongues when I left, proving to me that we don't need war to get along--no one even got killed there!). http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_daniel_g_060716_alternatives_to_exti.htm

I spent a few thousand hours working on upward-gliding airships, after reading The Deltoid Pumpkin Seed by John McPhee. But I did my modelling in the water, so it took only two years and 5,000 models to get a shape that worked. You can Google "aquaglider" to learn more about these. As far as I know, this invention represents the first alteration of Archimedes'principle, spelled out 2,500 years ago.

"Airside," the water toys evolved into more of a cigar shape, as this was easier to engineer. Also, solar panels now come as thin as half a manila folder, making it possible for airships to be solar powered. You can see one of the four I made in action by Googling "hyperblimp"(along with many related, advanced versions).

Along with others, I was honored to receive a Charles Lindbergh Foundation Award, to use my airships to study right whales off Argentina. Now we just have to make it happen and are long overdue, for reasons that would probably not fit on the internet.

In 2010 I married a beautiful woman who is an excellent writer and editor, in addition to being a gourmet cook, gardener, kind, gentle, warm, funny, spiritual, and extremely loving. We met via "Plenty-of-Fish" and a number of seemingly cosmic connections. Christine wrote Heart Full of Hope, which many readers have raved about, as you may note on Amazon.

I get blitzed reading the news damn near every day, and wonder why I do it, especially when it's the same old shit recycled, just more of it. In spite of Barbara Ehrenreich and reality, I'm a sucker for positive thinking and have read many books on it. I find many many of them insane and the source of much negativity on my part. My favorites these days are by Alan Cohen, who seems to speak my language, and likewise thinks a bit like Albert Einstein did (as do I on this note). Albert: "Try and penetrate with our limited means the secrets of nature and you will find that, behind all the discernible laws and connections, there remains something subtle, intangible and inexplicable. Veneration for this force beyond anything that we can comprehend is my religion. To that extent, in fact, I am religious."

Though I rapidly note that I've kept alive my deceased and "devout atheist" friend's book, http://www.opednews.com/articles/The-Foundation-of-Religion-by-Daniel-Geery-110510-382.html

Lastly, kudos to Rob Kall and those who make OEN the site that it is: one of the last bastions of free speech.