Ch 16, A mad world (A mad world)

by hyjyljyj , Friday, December 07, 2012, 22:30 (4157 days ago)

"Let me, however, conclude with our starting-point of agnosticism, and offer you two alternative forms of madness: 1) countless numbers of people, sums of money, buildings, institutions, wars, miseries, joys, works of art have been devoted to or have sprung from human worship of something that never existed; 2) the designer's creations are just beginning to understand, after centuries of conscious endeavour, how life functions, but they are still unable to design an organism like themselves that can spring from inanimate matter into living existence, reproduce itself, adapt to a changing environment, invent new mechanisms, and pass on its adaptations and innovations to the organisms it engenders. They believe, however, that if they ever can consciously and deliberately design such an organism, it will prove that they themselves were not designed. -Take your pick."-This is just absolutely brilliant, especially the italicized part.-BTW, is one still agnostic who has made a firm decision to side with the design camp over the random-chance camp? I'm more in favor of design also, but only because everything "appears" to me to have been designed. Things bear the hallmark of intentionality rather than haphazardness when, for example, a tiny animal is capable of constructing a perfectly symmetrical web of a material five times stronger than steel from inside its abdomen, then knows to sit and WAIT for a meal to fly into it rather than go hunt like most other animals. -Calmly not eating as a survival strategy? Amazing! Crocodiles may calmly wait a year between meals, all right, but they're slowly digesting and metabolizing, not merely waiting for the next wildebeest or tourist to jump into their jaws. Even Venus flytraps photosynthesize--the appetizer before their entreé. -So comforting knowing we'll never know the truth until after we're dead...if at all. Mystery makes life more interesting than Catholic cannibalism does, in my opinion.