I can’t let on to be very well-read, but one time during a period of underemployment I was at the public library and got hold of Paul Davies’ *The 5th Miracle* and something or other by Stuart Kauffman, and I would cite these 2 fellows and urge those concerned about the true story of the origin of life to join me in checking out the ol’ Wikipedia on the very very valid things these men of science hold up to the light. If they must, creationists can find M. Behe’s review of the aforementioned Davies book.
Oh, and see *Black Holes and Baby Universes* or *A Brief History of Time* by Stephen Hawking, of course.
But anyway, greetings CARM evolutionists and creationists, old friends and new who think it matters a lot where we came from, and what really happened long ago to give rise to us.
I confess a zeal for this; why, since I was 9 years old and younger, I have been on the side of reason and reality. I have been a science believer all my life. Unashamed am I that this is a type of faith; hey, it’s robust faith indeed that bases on what *can* be known and is known, ‘stead of unseen and perhaps unlikely things we are expected to believe without a whiff of evidence.
An important thrust of religious evolutionism is that our physical existence is fabulously wondrous and meaningful, not *merely* a product of, but one with the sovereign absolute.
I don’t see why the word of science should be thought hostile to religious faith or even theism, but it is even more simpatico with Buddhism. I get all filled with the spirit and excited when I consider the corroboration and proof there is to be had between Buddhism and the honest philosophy of science.
One is changed, lifted up by the news: There is an awesome truth about the expansive beginning of all things, that so-called Big Bang, and there is the elegant, wondrous truth about the physics and chemistry of the emergence of life out of the properties and programming of the material universe.
It’s a strong humanistic message, and runs joyously contrary to the negatives of hard fundamentalist religion, you know, that we are worth nothing innately and can only go wrong on our own. Science, like the merciful Buddha, holds up hope and courage for us, and some wholesome confidence in ourselves. Like a parent who says “You can do it!”
Of all faith traditions, Buddhism invests least in the supernatural and evolved (if you will) a fastidious rationalism in the millennium through China toward Japan. My master, Nichiren, stood up and introduced the Mandala very much as theoretical physicists reveal equations on a chalkboard.
Now science such as the physics of Hawking and peers gestures to an ultimate profound primary principle, a formula for the universe. In the Buddhism of the Lotus Sutra, this is called Wonderful or Myoho.
Anyway, now I’ve rattled on. Creationists, do you reckon I have bought into old Satan's lie, and all that?
SGTex
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