If you can define the parameters of any argument, you have the advantage to winning the argument.
I remember when the Jerry Falwell Public Relations oily communication thing was all cranked up under the emperor god Reagan. Cranking out the evil of “secular humanism”.
I at the time heard the phrase and was too busy living my life to try and understand this new modern phrase for satanism or the like. Few if any were challenging the new word factory being pumped out of Fundamentism Central or to admit my ignorance, I was not aware of anybody fighting this abuse of language in the name of the Jebus cash cow.
In retrospect, it is two words. It is secular, a neutral thing. And it is about humanism, a good thing. How can two fine words be put together and be so misused.
How about Intelligent Design as an example?
I recently heard the term Intelligent Design.
From Wiktionary – Intelligent Design :
A conjecture claiming that biological life on Earth, or more broadly, the universe as a whole, was created by an unspecified intelligent agent rather than being the result of undirected natural processes.Intelligent Design grates on my ear. If Joe the Pope likes it, I know there must be something anti-free choice and pro-mind control about it.
Pope prepares to embrace theory of intelligent design
There have been growing signs the Pope is considering aligning his church more closely with the theory of "intelligent design" taught in some US states. Advocates of the theory argue that some features of the universe and nature are so complex that they must have been designed by a higher intelligence. Critics say it is a disguise for creationism…Intelligent design seems like half-assed science to me. It is two parts “H” without the “O”. It is Hydrogen without Oxygen. It is not the answer. It is not water – the basis of all carbon life forms as we think we understand them. It is an assumption. If you assume, you are likely to makes an “ass” of “U” and “me”.
The Pope also raised the issue in the inaugural sermon of his pontificate, saying: "We are not the accidental product, without meaning, of evolution."
We may not be an accident in the Universe. But who is to say how much randomness was programmed into the original design? Who is to say that that “design” was not the result of whole eons of universes coming and going from big bang to ultimate implosion over and over again? Maybe randomness is the ultimate program – and not the desired dead end stop – of us – as we would like it or temporarily Re-design it to be?
Maybe this dead end result of how great we are as a species is stalled – an idol of we who cannot manage the natural resources of this planet bestowed on us by “Nature”.
We stand on this sick and or dying planet proclaiming ourselves to be the greatest designed species in the history of the universe.
We, as a limited species, are more than likely little more than a Ford model Edsel, 1958-1960. – Just waiting for another species to absorb or destroy us before we get the chance to destroy ourselves looking blindly into the mirror of life and only seeing “man” and or the man made design of the latest great version of a personal god. Me. Me. Me. Me. I!
It is a continuation of the concept of the personal gods designed in separate ages by Abraham, Moses and Mohammed. The energy that each comes up with to make an intellectual choice and say this is what it is all about may be fine and good. But what did Abraham, Moses and or Mohammed really believe?
If the bible and other writings are any indication of anything, over time the three gods of three prophets merge into one god. We somehow along with cultural conformity must conform to this ancient hodge podge of thought by once living intelligent beings each in their own historic setting. They and their resulting hodge podge of things are valid? And we are not?
I have to agree with the argument in Urban Dictionary that this shit should be taught in schools along with creationism and Darwinism. I look forward to apocryphal stories of Jebus accidently killing his pet dinosaur “Spike” and resuscitating it too etc.
In a way, all of us, individually and collectively and even the disorganized religion types needs a better and or new definition of God. All the old definitions of God, I think, are obsolete.
Though you might not think it, I am searching for that other new definition of God.
I would not think of imposing my definition on others, should I find it, for the sake of an alpha-male “I am RIGHT and you are wrong!” kind of thing.
I respect those people with the gumption to say “I don’t honestly know”.
This grasping for a clich̩ Рsound bite - assumption called Intelligent Design sounds more like imitation science than true faith.
We must I think, agree with Voltaire’s character of Candide, and “cultivate our own gardens” because this is not “the best of all possible worlds”.
Good luck to us all, the human race, in Copenhagen.
