People Are Afraid Of Being

The Traditional View Of Purpose Says It Comes From On High, From God, From The Creator. Darwin's Idea Of Natural Selection Makes People Uncomfortable Because It Reverses The Direction Of Tradition. Whereas People Used To Think Of Meaning Coming From On High And Being Ordained From The Top Down, Now We Have Darwin Saying, "no, All Of This Design Can Happen, All Of This Purpose Can Emerge From The Bottom Up Without Any Direction At All."

The Theoretical Fruits Of Deliberate Oversimplification Through Idealization Are Not To Be Denied... Reality In All Its Messy Particularity Is Too Complicated To Theorize About, Taken Straight. The Issue Is, Rather (since Every Idealization Is A Strategic Choice), Which Idealizations Might Really Shed Some Light... Which Will Just Land Us... Diverting Fairy Tales.

How Good Are The Best Musical Imaginations? Can A Trained Musician, Swiftly Reading A Score Tell Just How That Voicing Of Dissonant Oboes And Flutes Over The Massed Strings Will Sound?

I Think That There Are No Forces On This Planet More Dangerous To Us All Than The Fanaticisms Of Fundamentalism, Of All The Species: Protestantism, Catholicism, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, And Buddhism, As Well As Countless Smaller Infections. Is There A Conflict Between Science And Religion Here? There Most Certainly Is.

After Darwin, God's Role Changes From Being The Designer Of All Creatures Great And Small To Being The Designer Of The Laws Of Nature, From Which Natural Selection Can Unfold, To Being Perhaps Just The Chooser Of The Laws. By The Time God's Role Has Been So Diminished, He Becomes A Bit Like A Constitutional Monarch, Presiding Ceremonially But Not Having Any More Work To Do. That's A Place For God If It Makes People Comfortable To Keep God As The Presider Over The Universe. I Suppose That Is Satisfying For Many.