For this latest part of Melencolia I I'm releasing this paper. Below I publish the introduction as it appears in the paper.
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This paper is part of my “Melencolia I” series, a series where in the
first part I introduced a very speculative
essay called “The Great Plan”. This
essay was an impressionistic picture of God’s relation to our world and it was
followed by further blog posts where I tried to sharpen the focus. Viz:
This set of essays and blog posts
don’t come as a completed work or thesis but more as an unfolding exploration,
a journey rather than a destination; perhaps a journey to nowhere!
In this latest paper I continue the Melencolia I project, although as far as throwing light on
the generation of life is concerned I have to admit I’m still very much in the
uncritical and deliriously creative world of Melancholia I; as Durer’s Melencolia
I print shows the
tools that connect us with the world of experience are laid on one side whilst
the contemplator has a flight of the imagination, although rightly the products
of the imagination must ultimately submit themselves to criticism; but criticism first needs something to criticise
and only the imagination can provide that.
However, this particular paper is,
in fact, more about criticism than creativity. In it I look critically upon the
idea that ordinary parallel processing of the power we typically conceive has
the computational efficacy to generate life. Although I by no means have an
absolute proof, the evidence I present here suggests that this parallel
processing is unable to deliver the goods. This is not to say, however, that I
intend to promote the kind of “God
of the Gaps dualism” seen amongst the North American Intelligent
Design community; I propose, rather,
that we need to think again about just what natural processes are and just what they are capable of.
From the perspective of the theist
philosophical dualism is a ticking time bomb; it is a philosophy which takes it
as granted that “natural forces” and God are two distinct and conflicting paradigms
of creation. The logical kick-back of this philosophy is that if so-called
“natural forces” can be demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt to be able to
generate life then this will likely as not be read by Western dualists as
refuting the case for God as Creator.
Many Western Christians have
unconsciously committed themselves to the tinkering, eminent, quasi-deist God
(sometimes vaguely referred to as an “intelligent agent” distinct from “natural
forces”) who makes the occasional visitations to download a piece of his mind
into the cosmos thereby disambiguating his creative effort from profane “natural
processes”, processes which otherwise are thought to behave in a
quasi-autonomous if unintelligent way.
It is therefore no surprise that for some dualistically minded theists
evolution really does feel like evil-ution because it appears to them as a “naturalistic”
creator-pretender.
Although I loathe the implicit
dichotomy, if I had to make a choice within
the Western dualistic paradigm I would say that my money is, in fact, on
“naturalism”; that is, I believe our cosmos is sufficiently endowed by an
immanent, and sustaining providence to generate life. This is not necessarily
to say that I think current scientific concepts are sufficient to explain the
generation life; in fact my
gut feeling is that there is much more to
uncover on this subject.
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