Intelligent design (Introduction)

by dhw, Thursday, November 03, 2011, 15:21 (4770 days ago) @ Abel

Abel, I’m struggling to find any coherence in your history of Planets X and Earth. May I impose on your patience and ask you to give me direct answers to the following questions, some of which I’ve asked before but which you have not answered:

1) You believe that Planet X bacteria spontaneously (= without design) formed themselves and evolved into mortal predators and prey and ultimately into gods. Why, briefly, is this believable whereas the spontaneous birth and evolution of Planet Earth bacteria into mortal predators and prey and ultimately into humans is not?
2) You said that the gods have/had a “measure” of immortality. Please explain as briefly as possible what this expression means.
3) You say that in the beginning the universe was perfect but fell from “grace”. Your gods evolved from corruptible, material creatures (predators and prey), so even Planet X isn’t/wasn’t perfect, and self-interest as the key to physical survival – and as the root of moral corruption – was therefore also rife. Are/were your gods nevertheless “perfect” (whatever that means), despite their origins?
4) You then leap to the future of humanity, which you blame for its own corruption and self-destructiveness. (So do I, but from a different angle.) Clearly your version of the fall from grace had nothing to do with humans, who weren’t even around when imperfect matter as we know it was formed, and our “random nature of brain (personality) construction” can only be blamed on those who created us. You say the gods placed living agents on this world, who were corrupted by conditions which the gods themselves created, then they placed a second lot of agents or soldiers here, and then a third, and all of them have also become corrupted. Eventually our “friends from the stars” (the gods, I presume) will replace them and us. And so to three questions:
A) Briefly, how do you know all this?
B) Are all these generations of aliens with us now in human form?
C) Did/do the gods not realize that if they make living creatures out of corruptible material, that material will be corrupted?
5) You say that you and the aliens share two common interests: 1) “Saving the world from humanity’s ongoing stupidity and 2) killing each other." Who is interested in killing whom? You say that the aliens are already corrupted, and so doesn’t this mean, Mr Bond, that only you can save the world?
6) “Beyond this we [you and the aliens] can’t agree on anything.” Please give us examples, briefly, of what you and the aliens disagree about.

Finally, I would like to echo all the sentiments in your paragraph beginning “The world once had a need for religion”. I too deplore people who “kill each other as they vie to decide who is the most loving and peaceful” (nicely put), and such beliefs do not sound strange to me at all. However, you seem to have a rather one-sided view of humanity. All your emphasis lies on its “ongoing stupidity”, and you make no mention of its ongoing quest for beauty and truth, its ongoing ingenuity and inventiveness, its ongoing capacity for sympathy, empathy, charity and love. Why must you have a “preference” for animals over humans – can’t you love both? I too love animals, but I have a confession to make: I actually love my wife, grown-up children, grandson and extended family and friends MORE than I love an unknown camel in the Sahara desert. And I believe that among the other 7 billion humans there are vast numbers who are equally loving and worthy of love. Admirable though it is to “practice the tenets of honesty, tolerance and peace”, I would admire you even more if your tenets included love for your fellow humans rather than a general condemnation of humanity because of its “ongoing stupidity”. Why this misanthropy? Are you perhaps a lapsed Catholic? But let me swiftly add a qualification to these observations: you’ve described yourself as an altruist and a gifted scientist (though actually a craftsman), whose name is “well-regarded by hundreds if not thousands”. This is indeed admirable, and what I’ve written above should not be taken as a criticism of your person (which would be highly presumptuous) but of your philosophy as you’ve expressed it, and of its implications.