There are at least two schools for intelligent design.

The one you’re probably most familiar with is Scripturism.

Schripturism is based on the idea that every word of the Holy Bible is literally true and cannot be questioned. To the Scripturist a through reading of Genesis is all a person needs to know to fully understand how the world came to be. To a Scripturist, if you’ve read the Bible there are no remaining questions.

Another major school of thought on Intelligent Design is Deism.

Deism holds that the Universe was designed as a unified whole before the instant of its creation with all of its physical laws and constants precisely tuned to allow for the eventual formation of energy, matter, galaxies, stars, planets, and life.

Another central tenant of Diesm is; the Creator hasn’t fiddled much with his creation ever since he kick started it about 15 billion years ago with the Big Bang.

To the Diest the Universe is pretty much like a very very large Terrarium that an omnipotent omniscient God made to wile away the odd boring eternity.

Oddly scientific research since Einstein has tended to lead toward a Diest theory of Creation.

Here’s a good article:
http://allans-perspective.blogspot.com/2009/04/science-one-steop-closer-to-proving.html

Money quote:

“We have been discussing my book, “The Plain Truth About God” these past few days and in it I state that although there is a God, this “Being,” or “First Cause,” or “Divine Intelligence,” or “Mother Nature,” or whatever you want to call it is not, and could not, be anything like what is described in the Bible, the Koran or any other human holy book.”

Just remember, not everybody who believes in something that they call God is a Bible thumping evangelist or a jihadist.

jbouler

I strongly agree with your comments that those who claim not to be homophobic but voted to ban game marriage are hypocritical scum. I said in a post on another forum that they are voting for laws similar to the Jim Crow laws which legalized the discrimination towards blacks. I was talking to a friend who was going to campaign for prop 8, but I think I reached out and got him to realize just how wrong prop 8 was.

Thank you for the blog. It’s always refreshing to see someone make sense.

Beware the light at the end of the tunnel might be the head light of my speeding truck.

So if someone who did not overcome the childhood pop culture is religious there ia no doubt what the right religion is.

Regarding the books, maybe every godhood started this way, as mortal and earned godhood?
Orion?
Certainly more than popping into beeing all powerfull.
Who knows.

I imagine religions as a facette of a gem breaking the divine light.

Each religion represents a ray of light colored by the culture and landscape of the people seeing it.

Or i am wrong and there is nothing.

For me there is as much reason to believe in divinity as not, but in the end i do not think it should matter, a god who does not accept a “nonbeliever” who tried anyways to life the golden rule is not worth the dirt under the lousiest villain ever walking the earth, such a beeing would be immature at best.

I consider it one of the shortcomings of the educational systhem in the US that philosophie does not the respect it deserves (and in many other countries too), it should not be left at the mercy of parents to be teached certainly.

Having “reasons” to believe is in my eyes already the most foolish thing at all, religion is based on emotions and feelings, you can not put it down into numbers or research it in science, science can research religions but i doubt anything will ever come out of the question “why believe into religion X”

Regarding christians… in my opinion they lost it as soon they deitified the Jesus figure, the whole story makes only sense as long he was a human fittet with supernatural powers and the test was not to use them for his own good.

Otherwise nothing sacrified (himself) and no test (tempting in the desert anyone?)

So in a way i think how a religion started is not of importance, it is what is in the religion what matters, the “storyline” is the vessel carrying the essence, nothing else.

As for Christians, they’ve been a mixed bag from the very beginning. Should the other cheek be turned, or should the Monophysites be destroyed for being fans of the wrong backstory? You may be interested to know that our silly diplomacy game, OMG! There’s an Axe in My Head has been picked up by the same guys that helped publish the Blasphemy boardgame. In Blasphemy, you play one of four Jesuses, each trying to prove they’re the real Messiah. The creator of Blasphemy told me at Origins Game Fair that his intent was to explore the gospels as literature… much as you’re doing above. The reactions from Christians apparently have been generally positive, with the exception, of course, of fundamentalists.

It is not a mistake to say that fundamentalists’ defense of their canon is no different than any trufan’s defense of their favorite story’s canon… except they are invested in it so deeply, they can’t think of anything else. And because of this willful ignorance, and the conflicts in the pages of history, they feel justified to become violent about it.

Having one’s core belief trivialized is a brutal feeling, and fighting these fights with dignity is a muscle I’d guess your patrons/esses want you to exercise. If it’s any help, imagine what place the Aesir have among Shinto practitioners today, or what relation they have to the native Australian Dreamtime. It’s not just monotheists, Buddhists and Hindu out there, y’know. Where does your heathen path lay in relation to all these others? There are good people along those as well.

My own belief–as guided by my patron and Barbara and her patron, since it is relevant to know where I’m coming from–is that we are in preparation in life (even as we enjoy and suffer it), and after death our existence continues, but without the training wheels of a body to manage and a brain to do the basic computing. It is familiar in that it is not a place of simple rest or torment, but a place of challenges, not certainties. Like life, but with a scope that will doubtless surprise us in many ways. The gods, by and large, are beings who have already been through this.

Back at the literary level, one reason we tease C.S. Lewis so strongly is that he plays light with matters of belief, even when he insists he isn’t. Tolkien is on record for saying he didn’t feel worthy to write a story about the Incarnation of God, and so leaves it aside in Middle-Earth; when he first heard the Narnia stories read at the Inkling meetings, he was aghast at their flippancy. As a self-designated “sub-creator”, Tolkien thought the consequences of creation out, and so I tend to think he was on to something with his Valar.

As a final observation, I also believe that there is a One God, but with the proviso that this being is Infinite– as much a Buddhist concept as anything else– and so any philosophy regarding this oneness has to be worked backward from infinity… not upward from which wind god has the most followers or immortal parts… Either it’s infinite or it isn’t. All the limited, fallible beings are either facets or fans of what they hope to approach.

Chris Adams

BTW, I’m quite familiar with the feel of -35C, I used to live in Fairbanks, Alaska. When I was there, in the early 70′s, that would have been a fairly nice day in mid-winter. It’s warmer these days. The coldest temp I ever saw was -88F, or -67C. THAT is cold. It was measured on a calibrated thermometer, so I know it was accurate.

Nicolai