George Rebane

[This little contribution was motivated by the ongoing debate to nowhere on the various Origin Theories – spot creation, intelligent design, evolution, alien intelligence, … – between atheists of the secular humanist persuasion, and Christian organizations of various stripe – e.g. Discovery Institute, BioLogos Foundation, … .]

I am a Christian, although the pastors of our church may take issue with that claim – perhaps with some success.  Over the last fifty years or so I have been privileged to witness the debate between secular humanists – firmly wrapped in the mantle of pre-bounded science – and Christians of diverse leanings and backgrounds, each putting forth arguments that range from the sublime to the ridiculous.  It has been quite a show, a show that may soon be coming to an end and leave both sides muttering in their adult beverage of choice.  Perhaps, resolution lies elsewhere.

Let’s first lay down that well-known observation by the late Arthur C. Clarke –

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

The astute reader will immediately expand the truth of the above by substituting ‘religion’ for ‘magic’ – both being notions that can be developed without the bounds of reason.  To subsume the above, I offer –

Once you make the reasonable case that we can (soon) create universes with sentient and sapient life, the proposition that we also exist in a created and evolved cosmos becomes our most compelling Origin Theory.

Today the secular humanist is wedded beyond divorce to the theology that this is a purposeless (non- or extra-teleological) cosmos, and our Sisyphusian fate is to keep peeling back layer after layer of the causal cosmic onion, ad nauseam.  A more modern and proximal anecdote has the punchline, ‘Oh no you don’t sonny, it’s turtles ALL the way down!’  (The final rejoinder from an old-timer explaining his cosmology to a smart-aleck TV reporter trying to best him with the repeated questions of how the world is supported on the backs of turtles upon turtles as claimed by the old-timer.)

To deny my proposition would put one in a situation of maximum and unfounded hubris.  In that state we would go forward with the full support of science and apparent reason, setting in motion the creation of an hierarchy of intelligent universes, while continuing to hold that only we are the progenitor gods able to do this.  More specifically, we would be forced to argue/believe that somehow the technological hierarchy that we created below us, could not, for some unexplicable reason, also have been hierarchically applied to us from above.

In light of this, and if we survive Singularity, I believe that we and our post-human progeny will have the most compelling basis for adopting a position of utter humility and awe on the existence of our own Source.