God factor in the Big "R"

Whatever we could rationally think of, Plato suggested, God could think too17, so we may not be as unqualified to discern as we sometimes deem ourselves. I am not being na?ve in calling Plato to my witness neither am I unaware of the scientists’ restrained respect for philosophers but we obviously require no experiments to conclude that offspring must grow up to understand and probably speak the language of parents with whom the first decade of their life is spent.?Charles Darwin, the eminent naturalist who propounded the theory of evolution at some point in his carrier alluded to this. He had suggested an initial act of creation in his earlier publication, by which he said, a certain primordial organ differentiates and give rise to several organisms. His reasons, he stated in the concluding parts of On the origin of species, is because of the several analogous features he noticed in different life forms. Even though we tend to differ from Darwin at some point in our discussion, we still find his theory of organic evolution very useful. If evolution can be extrapolated to the time when there was this Darwinian evolutionary unity, we can only expect a degree of uniformity in all forms of life. We can expect that the amoeba can reproduce or have the sense of feeling because humans do. Thomas Huxely, the self-acclaimed Darwin’s bulldog knows this too well. He professes this organic uniformity because he had, according to Microsoft Encarta encyclopedia, noticed that the two germ layers of the jellyfish can also be found in even the early embryonic stage of higher animals.

?I wish to carry this line of thought a little further by stating that the relationship among organisms are not only organic or inorganic but also psychological. Would I be saying anything new by stating this? Absolutely not. The Russian psychologist, Pavlov Ivan had shown us as far back as the early 1900s how classical conditioning, a situation where animals associates one stimulus with another, can be found in the psychology of dogs as well as humans. The courtship behavior of chickens and other animals remind us of the zoological and psychological similarity of humans with other occupants of this planet. There are several instances where humans relate with their ‘eco-neighbors’ but this brings us to the question;

Is there any reason for the parasitic or symbiotic relationship found among organisms? Does it all make sense? Where are the joints of different subjects of science and can we synthesize any possible reason why there was something instead of nothing (as Stephen Hawking will like to ask)?

Having seen that there is always an initial point of unity from which divergence stems, we cannot but wonder what really is the contention between those who believe in intelligent design and people who do not. We know that somewhere there is a point of unity in both arguments, however remote. I do not seek to join the people who disrespect the atheist by saying there are no atheists in foxholes but I wish to say that there really is no room for atheism in unbiased science. If there is really atheism, such may exist only in times when there was no time, space and matter. You might have noticed the obvious grammatical infelicity of my immediate previous statement. Time does not exist where there is no time but time is our own human design, so we may logically conclude that it is not for science to decide if there is intelligent designer or not. The scope of science is therefore limited only to the works of this designer. The reader may wonder; why did the author decide to bring this God theory up, knowing that intended audiences are grossly religious anyway? The reader may also be unclear about my decision to assign to science the responsibility of knowing there is a God factor while also stating, as if to confuse, that such quest does not belong to science.

?May I address the latter of the two questions first. Science continues to be science only when it recognizes its borders and, as many would agree, we cannot extrapolate any event into a date that precedes the formation of the universe. To describe such a pre-big bang date is to move beyond the borders of science into metaphysics but Popper had admonished us to always strive to make distinction between real science and metaphysics. I do not wish to run into David Hume’s safe tower this early by echoing his opinion (the Scottish historian had stated that rationalism is insufficient in explaining science and that a certain non-rational aspect is acceptable). To adopt such opinion in this present context is to be two-faced. I will rather stick to my own rules which accept transcendence only as interdependent resource of our discussion and not as something to be used to explain science. It is the duty of science, therefore, to close business at the same point where the theist opens business.???

?To answer the former question, I’d say that I brought up the God issue because we need to be persuaded about the existence of the big R and we must first of all assert the G-factor before talking of the big R. The big R is dependent on the God factor because there cannot be any intelligence without a designer.

?As we have already mentioned, nations have every reason to probe the big R, knowing that they will be sighting great things, like Isaac Newton said of himself, from the arms of a giant. The big R may then give birth to a lot of small rs. Karl Popper appears to be in favor of the small r and wary of the big R for very noble reasons. He shares his sentiments in his book, The poverty of Historicism, where he advices against big, all-encompassing socio-political theories which he said, is capable of leading to repercussions of great magnitude. Popper is historically right in saying this because the world have seen how the big theory of a writer from Germany could lead to death camps and how the all-encompassing mathematical equation of the innocent Jew physicist could lead to the invention of nuclear bombs which may end hundred lives within a few seconds. I share in Popper’s sentiments because of the widely evident evils of fundamentalism.

17.???Plato said; “Perfection existed in the mind of God, a mind of such infinite power that all conceivable things must exist in it. If humans, then, with their less than perfect minds could think of something, then God could think of it too, and if God think of something, it must therefore exist.

Human Evolution; An introduction to Biological Anthropology, C. Loring Brace & Ashley Montagu, 1997, pg. 13