ID standing not for identity but Intelligent Design. In its more developed form, the theory is largely confined to fundamentalist USA and argues that the complexity of some organisms is such that they could not possibly have evolved as Darwinism proposes but rather provides evidence for the intervention of a Creator. This Being is never specifically identified as the Christian God, but it is striking how many ID enthusiasts turn out to be Christians of a particular persuasion. Their ideas are often seen, I think rightly, as a Trojan horse for full-blown creationism in all its majestic craziness, and while I'm pretty knowledgeable on that subject it's not what I'm discussing here. Suffice to say it's balls, and while ID may appear to be on to something it too has been thoroughly discredited other than among those with an ideological and/or theological axe to grind.
I'm more concerned with the kind of "soft" intelligent design theology that IS widely held in this country, even at a superstitious level among many whose Christianity is of pretty sketchy kind. It goes: if there's a God, he must have a plan for people's lives. Things happen for a reason, because they are His will, or don't happen because they're not. There's a purpose in everything, an overall design.
"With God things don't just happen, everything by him is planned", goes one popular song; and "every fox and every hare/Must fit in a special place somewhere" burbles another. The second is for kids, maybe they both are, but that's no excuse. I don't know whether to be sad or angry at the level of deception, maybe self-deception, on display here.
God or no god, the world is a random place. Randomness is part of how we got here, as both Darwinism and, in a different way, quantum mechanics combine to tell us. Shit happens for a reason in the sense that events have causes - those two lumps of metal got seriously mangled because they were travelling towards each other at a combined speed of 150 mph - but not for any purpose (God clearly meant to kill the passengers in those cars, with the exception of one who suffered brain damage and will never speak another coherent word again? Bollocks). Some people miraculously survive earthquakes, right. Many other people miraculously don't. There is no helpful answer to the question "why should my child get cancer", only the distinctly unhelpful "because there's a one in 100,000 chance that any given child will and yours won the devil's jackpot". Only the devil has nothing to do with it either. Nor does the so-called "Fall", which creationists insist on as the moment when sin, suffering and death entered the world for the first time. As God's punishment for a single act of curiosity - hey darling, wonder what that apple tastes like - when He himself set up the temptation and issued the prohibition in full knowledge that Adam and Eve would break it? Oh come on. As I am forever telling people, Genesis 3 is about the dawning of human consciousness. Until that apple gets eaten, the divine plan is stuck in neutral. It has to be eaten, God makes sure it gets eaten by putting it within easy reach, drawing attention to it and even supplying a talking snake to persuade the all-too-innocent couple. And who, pray, endowed this snake with the gift of language in the first place, if not the Almighty himself?
I digress, but my point is clear. Among the shit that happens is dementia. Not all old people get it, some quite young people do, and it affects every sufferer in a different way. No God worthy of human worship could plan such indignities; a devil might, but Christianity declares that the devil has been bound, however one may interpret that metaphor. Dementia is part of is part of the price we pay for having learned how to extend our life expectancy. Why it exists at all is part of the larger problem - why pain, why disease, why the associated degradation? Can theology make sense of this? I think it can, but not in terms of a God who actively wills these things as some kind of revenge on us for doing our own thing (otherwise known as sinning).
An Intelligent Designer, to finish where we began, would surely have come up with a dementia-proof brain.
No comments:
Post a Comment