SGTex on a September Saturday...

This is what SGTex had to say in response to a creationist's post on MTDaily Religion Board, our "I'net home away from home." I am so impressed and proud, I just had to share it with you all here.
Shawn

Evolution & a rational spirituality:

"In the evolution thread below, avmar remarks: “If evolution is true, then...we are nothing, made for no reason at all. There would be no purpose in life since, after all, the only purpose we have after we die is to fertilize the dirt.”

I joyfully disagree with with this assessment of the implications of evolution theory and the scientific account.

It seems to be very important to creationists to assert that they have a monopoly on all meaning and value and purpose, and in advancing that arrogant claim they have to paint evolutionist thought as being starkly vain and nihilistic, ugly and wrong and hopeless. You can see this in their little comic books, where the one little Christian in the classroom stands up and makes a fool out of the mean old evolutionist professor in all his bombast and bluster.

Very important to villainize and misrepresent us evolutionists as *wanting* to believe there is no God, no meaning or purpose or moral value in existence. But this is a false and rather unfair “strawman” device of the creationists, to keep the flock believing the other side must be insane and bent on sin. I have never met an evolutionist, even an atheistic one, who believes we are nothing or that there is no purpose in life except to rot in the ground after we croak.

Rather, those who embrace science and reason and the beautiful evidence that permeates all of nature tend to be inspired, spiritually inclined intellectuals with lofty philosophy and a wish to do good in the world. This is because science and reason along with a vision of the display of the living universe can only lift us up to the glory and dignity we are heir to.
All things are wondrous, and the workings of the universe are unutterably splendid and good. It is not necessary that an outside entity endow us (or a star, or an atom) with purpose. We contain/are contained by the highest and only meaning, that which is its own cause and purpose, eternal and constant. That's a Buddhist tenet, but is eminently compatible with evolution theory and variations on the “Big Bang” theoretical physics.

In my sect we worship that sovereign absolute by chanting the perfect equation for it, Nam Myoho Renge Kyo. But of course there are other ways of appreciating the wonderful law of the universe, foundation and basis of everything, pure meaning, pure goodness and all that is purposeful and real.

Universe is from the Latin universum, “entire, complete.” One = the All = All Things That Actually Exist. It's a matter of whether one respects that straightforward definition of “universe.” If strict creationists posit a creator God outside of the universe, I think ironically they are excluding Him from the set of things that exist!

What if the universe and God were not two? What if the profound reality turned out to be eternally self-caused or uncaused?"

SGTex
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Photo: Das Weltall (The Universe) from the Scivias Codex