Render Unto Darwin: Thoughts Inspired by Dr.

James Fetzer's Book

a black hole

A God can be beneficent yet unable, despite great powers, to change some factors: God cannot turn a
cube into a sphere and have it still be a cube. The limitations of a God abiding by such laws include
limited ability, therefore, to proceed with interventions: such might change the future in such a way
that greater harm would come than to allow the present evil. I consider God a timewalker in the
sense that we can access a DVD and see certain parts...if we edit the DVD in a very complex story, the
outcome may be affected.

The only way I can consider any kind of personal God would be from the timewalker viewpoint: a
God free of time constraints can enter and leave at any point an infinite number of times, and affect
certain outcomes thereby...interventions would of necessity be few in the present economy of
physics/energy systems/life systems...

Considering the extremely short lifespan of living things, versus endless billions of what we call
years, even what seem extreme sufferings of a life form on this planet would be so short, if the
lifeform survives in some other form afterwards (as a spirit. a soul, a ghost, an orb, whatever...)--
perhaps obtaining/attaining a status where sensory abilities --and perhaps thought and self-
awareness, depending on the creature's experience and status here---might be assembled for some
life forms that then progress into yet another phase, perhaps not even in this dimension.

To dare limit our experiences as confined only and forever to this mere 3-d world system when, of
course, theoretical physics suggests many dimensions exist, and probably parallel universes,and then
to proclaim that there is or is not God(s) is, to me, yet another symptom of our centric mentality: we
once thought the earth was the center of the universe, and our thinking on cosmic matters involving
Diety (if any) are similarly centrist and primitive.

Fetzer notes how numbers have (of course) no beginning and no end....(p. 9), which observations are
based, in fact, on rules upon which we agree must exist within that system: in that system, no
beginning and no end is assumed. What we must next consider is what can be done with numbers
themselves, which transforms the paradigm. Through numbers, incredible accomplishments are
made having nothing to do with numbers. Nor can creations due to numbers be linked back directly
to numbers without much trouble: the world of a car, for example, is the result of calculations
involving everything from the temperature at which its steel was created to fitting pistons in its
engine, its speedometers, its tire pressure, and its gas mileage ....we cannot trace all the ways
numbers were utilized to create cars on an assembly line.
The "numbers" example provides fodder for thought in that a tool of infinite variety can be used to
produce infinite outcomes. Numbers also provide evidence that infinite SOMETHINGS can exist that
can exist outside the physical world system. And the last time I looked, that means "God" can be in
that set.

The (primitive) argument used by so many scientists about the creation argument is that if we can
fully describe how the universe began, and what it is, that therefore it did not have to be created by
an entity. Fair enough, but we cannot eliminate the possibility that an entity was involved simply
because we can figure out how the cake was baked. Science tends to try to eliminate the 'why' and
just to describe the 'how.'

In cancer research, much emphasis had been placed on HOW cells became cancerous, to the extent
that WHY they became cancerous was, relatively speaking, ignored. A cell becomes cancerous when
various factors stimulate it to not agree to die, but instead to stubbornly refuse to do so (become
immortal), and in fact, to grow as it pleases. All the efforts go to kill the cancer cell, at the expense
and suffering of the entire organism. But only if we look deeper, to discern WHY the renegade cell
acts as it does can we get to the root problem: are the mitochondria being turned on, or being turned
off? Solve that problem, and immortality problems involving cells can be solved.

Just because we can describe HOW a car is made does not mean that we understand a thing about a
possible WHY.

We have pretty well traced everything back to the Big Bang, but just because we cannot get beyond
point zero does not mean that there was no point zero. There seems to be adequate evidence that we
have cyclic possibilities in at least parallel universes. Now that we know new stars can be born in the
observable heavens, how common black holes are, and how the universe seems to be in the process
of being gobbled up by them, with (only God knows, at present) how much energy is being spurted or
"spit out" on the other side, into some other system, perhaps we should dare to consider what
happens there to be similar to the "Big Bang" phenomenon we have logged on "this side." Perhaps
this universe was ejected from the maw of some black hole, exploding energy into our present
dimension and accounting for the mode of expansion, as being the product of what entered -- and
was ejected on its 'other side' --of a black hole.
I have had five children, and am fully aware that I had no power over the genes that made them as
they are. All I could do was to eat properly, and try to nourish the developing fetuses well. Did I
deliberately generate those fetuses? Yes. But could they have come about without my intention?
Definitely. Could I have slain them before they were born? Of course.

We cannot presume that because certain laws cannot be breached, or because we can describe an
outcome, that therefore no creator is involved. But why fuss over a creator, anyway, as we do?

It is evidence of intelligence that we do so.

Of self-awareness.
Of a realization that you are not alone, and neither am I.
Surrounded as we are by the evidence of one another, we have developed an understanding of the
importance of relationships with others.
Those who are not adequately socialized--I think of the very real instances such as a wolf child, or the
poor creatures kept underground by a brutal father in Austria---and how stunted their personalities
are -- do not develop a fully socialized persona.
Such concepts as parents, friends, and God may be absent.
A belief in God is not as primitive as it seems at first sight.
It is evidence that we, as creatures developing self-awareness, have acknowledged the existence not
only of others we can see, but the possible existence of one or more entitities that we cannot see.
As Bob Dylan said, "Ya gotta serve somebody."
 Temas:01. Gotta
Serve Somebody (Bob Dylan)

The universe is likely not limited to 'this' universe; to assume this is the 'only' universe is quite a
limited perception (Fetzer does not make such an assumption).
To assume there is no God simply because we can explain everything in existence without including
God is, in my opinion, just as dangerous as assuming that there is a God without considering other
possibilities.

I place my money on the existence of God due to a long, tedious and harrowing search for God which,
for me, has produced satisfactory answers.

Because I am limited by my sensory system, my brain's ability to interpret what I have experienced,
and a realization that I am mere flesh, subject to an array of stimuli, and to experiences which may
have defied the statistical odds to produce what I have experienced, all I can do is take Pascal's
stance in the gamble: better to assume the existence of the benevolent mastermind I seem to have
obtained enough information about to 'believe' in, and to act accordingly, on the basis of love (such a
dirty word in science), than to ignore and possibly offend that entity that has been, in my case at
least, gracious and apparently personal, to the extreme, in protecting me a number of times from
death and disaster, to say nothing of the deep comfort and peace I have attained in this quest.

Something's going on that defies mere chance.

But maybe I've just been lucky.
J