11. Natural Religion
11. Natural religion.
Gods jumping around redesigning the world every hour
Any rough observation of nature - even that classical one
that we are born, we live, and we die - and thus when
we fully realize that we die, we have to realize that
our living is part of a process, not primarily a part of
a judgement of some abstract principals -
so any observation of nature has to involve some crude
notion of evolution and selection. This is not a commitment
to any very specific theory about genes and evolution, or
the relation of chance and adaptation in evolution, but simply
an awareness that the patterns of speicies that we see
are far too complex to be the product of a personal god.
The popular, if not the theological, Christian notion of God
and its relatives in other religions involves some sense of
an individual making specific individual decisions about
the world. As we see the way species radiate and flourish
or die out, we would have to have a weird image of such
a God rushing and jumping about redesigning the world of species
repainting the picture every day and hour, with no time left
for anything else. Only some simple local but relatively
automatic mechanism could spare this God of such a
comic image. And in some sense such a process of selection
if not self-evident is somehow intuitive.
This has widespread implications.
When I see a tree twisted out of shape by the winds on an
exposed rocky hillside, and compare it to a tree in a sheltered
grove rising straight up, I am not moved to see that comparison
in ethical terms. One tree does not seem to me better that the
other, more good or in a moral sense more successful, than the
other.
Similarly when I look at other species, lizards and ants and wild
mamals. or any of the other oddities of which nature abounds with
their design changing every minute - what a challenge this represents
to a deity. Is the more complex 'better' than that which is simple.
Is there one way to measure complexity?
Is a monkey better than a lizard?
Is a canary better than a snake?
