Loren Eiseley - Making a Difference – Quote – Intelligent Design

The following quote by author Loren Eiseley I ran on this blog on Wednesday June 6, 2012, I ran into it again and read it early this morning.

And as I finished reading it, I thought of the dogmatic idea of Intelligent Design about how IT all supposedly follows some plan.

That for Loren Eiseley to save a few starfish was against that magnificent master plan? Shame on you Loren. How dare you save life on a micro level when on a macro cosmic Wharton Spreadsheet level, it has already been written off as part of a prescribed “divine” plan.

Or people of faith will say that God gave man dominion over the creatures of the earth and Loren and his friend are merely exercising free will under the animal management clause of that so-called Intelligent Design Contract?

Loren Eiseley - Making a Difference - Quote

“While wandering a deserted beach at dawn, stagnant in my work, I saw a man in the distance bending and throwing as he walked the endless stretch toward me. As he came near, I could see that he was throwing starfish, abandoned on the sand by the tide, back into the sea. When he was close enough I asked him why he was working so hard at this strange task. He said that the sun would dry the starfish and they would die. I said to him that I thought he was foolish. there were thousands of starfish on miles and miles of beach. One man alone could never make a difference. He smiled as he picked up the next starfish. Hurling it far into the sea he said, "It makes a difference for this one." I abandoned my writing and spent the morning throwing starfish.”

― Loren Eiseley

A New Global Future Priced at $35

The idea is not new. It has industrial models to draw upon.

Potentially, the way the whole human race sees itself will have profound effects into the future. This modern adaption of the computer to put in every person on the planet’s hands triggers an immeasurable amount of possibilities.

Computers have freed us from useless labor and ripped the heart out of the West’s traditional middle classes. The ability to use some of the tasks listed below is a smell of the future. Why does this idea and concept happen in India and not China? Good question? I don’t know.

Certainly India’s new middle class will expand faster than China’s class system and its recent industrial progress? Friction or cooperation is on future political and economic menus?

Individuals will now have more opportunity to define themselves against a global norm of other peoples and cultures. Peoples and cultures in some areas will dissolve away into a Global category of all things human.

Is this part of Intelligent Design and or the chaos of evolution making new species?

India's $35 PC is the Future of Computing

The Indian prototype is impressive--especially at a $35 price point. The device runs on a variation of Linux. It has no internal storage, but it is capable of storing data on a memory card. It has a built in word processor, video conferencing capabilities, and--most importantly for a cloud-based workforce--a Web browser. Oh--it can also run on solar power.


At $35, the Indian tablet is virtually disposable--far exceeding the $100 laptop developed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and used in the non-profit One Laptop One Child program. In fact, in many ways the $35 tablet also makes the $500 iPad seem significantly over-priced.

Tyranny of Chance - opposite of Intelligent Design

Tyranny of Chance is the opposite of the half-assed concept called Intelligent Design.

Tyranny of Chance is my intelligent free will human response to ID.

The universe is either a controlled, managed stage set with scripts as in ID or it is the randomness and tyranny of possibilities.

Life is static or it is fluid. It is all a question of energy.

I am reminded of the story about how Charles and Diana, Prince and Princess of Wales, were onto the concept of reincarnation as a matter explaining their rank and good fortune. Like how could so wonderful a dual be blessed with so much wealth and power unless they deserved it from another life and it was just a formality to carry it all from one soul incarnation to another.

Sounds rather intelligent, Eaton, Oxford, and all that from their point of view. Don't you think? You don't think. That's the whole point. You are not Intelligently Designed or that well made on your level and as an offset of that, you are not sanctioned by God to rule over others? Yeah right.

The rest of us get the leftovers in life, this life. We have not tried hard enough to be as good or as lucky or as full of grace as Charles and Diana. Or so it goes.

Am I mixing apples and oranges mixing the odds of being born royal and throwing in ideas like reincarnation and the unfairness in life in general to the majority of us?  Perhaps.

This present top down culture where elites rule in politics or elites invent Intelligent Design to justify their ungodly paychecks and perks is a culture that needs some re-examination on a macro and micro level in this modern age.

Were Charles and Diana destined to have been born into such pomp and luxury or was it merely the tyranny of chance? Only one bum gets to sit on the royal throne so to speak. The rest of us I suppose are shit out of luck - sounds like tyranny to me.

The universe is pure chance. It is also a tyranny of chance by our intelligent evaluation of it. Any intelligence in any equation of the forms and energies of the universe is purely human and not “divine”. The Creator remains the creator and that creation is in motion to any, all and other points in history. Whether the Creator is intelligent, I cannot say, not having ever yet met that entity.

Otherwise, they, Charles and Diana, have had God’s imprimatur stamped in red ink on their shiny white heinies in this and every succeeding lifetime. The rest of us I guess just lose out in such a random equation of such things.

Just a thought.

Flying Spaghetti Monster in the Sky

And now for something completely different as the narrator used to say on Monty Python’s Flying Circus.

I read a lot of comments on the Cif (comment is free) Belief section of the British Newspaper online – Guardian UK. The most successful writer there would appear to be Andrew Brown, editor of Cif Belief. His interests are all over the religious universe but a lot of times it is basically religion touching the realms of science and evolution.

Well anyway, the comments are sometimes more enlightening to me that the article itself. But there was a phrase I kept hearing between the writer and some of the regular commenters and that was “Flying Spaghetti Monster”.

I am no dummy but these days I get tired of looking up all these texting abbreviations – IMHO – etc., so I just assumed or even imagined that FSM was a character on Sesame Street or the like. Fool is me.

I am behind on the curve on this one folks? You already had heard of this new deity and religion? Perhaps the Minister of Silly Walks told you before me.

But lo and behold, Flying Spaghetti Monster is a real deity and the basis of a new religion that challenges Creative Design for equal time in American redneck States' education curriculum.

Flying Spaghetti Monster

The Flying Spaghetti Monster (FSM) is the deity of the parody religion the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster or Pastafarianism. Created in 2005 by Bobby Henderson, it was originally intended as a satirical protest against the decision by the Kansas State Board of Education to require the teaching of intelligent design as an alternative to evolution in public schools.

In an open letter sent to the Kansas State Board of Education, Henderson parodied the concept of intelligent design by professing belief in a supernatural creator which closely resembles spaghetti and meatballs. Henderson further called for his "Pastafarian" theory of creation to be allotted equal time in science classrooms alongside intelligent design and evolution. He explained that since the intelligent design movement uses ambiguous references to an unspecified "Intelligent Designer", any conceivable entity may fulfill that role, even a Flying Spaghetti Monster.

After Henderson published the letter on his website, it rapidly became an internet phenomenon and a symbol for the case against intelligent design in public schools.

Whatever. Join up if you wish. These days everybody’s got their own religion or obsesssion with pasta and ramen noodles. In all fairness, I did start this out on a quote from Monty Python etc.

Of gods, Monsters and Intelligent Design?

I don’t know what to make of all the fake science that is trying to get endorsed or believed these days.

Intelligent Design is supposed to tell us that the universe is not a random chaotic thing, which it is. They would have you believe that there is an intelligent design (by God) to the whole mess. The Vatican and or its German speaking surrogates such as Cardinal Schoenborn of Vienna back Intelligent Design.

There is supposed to be some international meeting of minds or conference on Darwin sponsored by the Vatican on the calendar right about now. Don’t hold your breath expecting any intelligent outcome or pronouncements. One critic, the former head of the Vatican Observatory Father George V. Coyne, a real scientist, got fired over his views about real rational science, which is opposed to fake science or Intelligent Design. I don’t think he was invited to this Darwin Conference thing.

The whole folly comes within the realm of Voltaire from his book Candide and the philosophical falsity that this world is “le meilleur des mondes possibles” – the best of all possible worlds. Délusion. Délusion. Délusion.

If the earth is of an intelligent design then why did the Intelligent Designer waste hundreds of millions of years on the Dinosaur Project ???

The Creationist theory will tell you that the Bible, being the exact and perfect world of God, proves that science is wrong in determining the age of the earth. They will tell you that all physical evidence must fit into the five thousand year old timeframe of the Bible. That is why if you stop off at some GOP endorsed Creationist Museum, you will see our ancestors, as cave men and women, living in harmony with the dinosaur things.

The Bible is a flawed document. The bible is a human document. The New Testament is a committee written document. Jesus changes from a human being to a god in the time frame of three hundred years. Jesus’ words, wisdom, divine inspiration and divine mission have been subordinated to politics since his death almost two thousand years ago.

Did he rise from the dead ? Definitely. As a Christian I believe that. God can do anything including raise the dead. To believe in Jesus is to believe in the higher powers of an evolved, evolving species called man. I have faith in the non-tangible abilities and powers of God and his servant Jesus.

These religious screamers call faith, faith, faith. I do not think they believe or have faith. They need an exact user manual for life – a rule book. If anything, the day to day struggle of Jesus to get imperfect people to listen to his more perfect evolved message for the human race seems at times to have been wasted on many deaf human ears.

So too the flaws of the Old Testament are obvious. The Hebrew Testament does not get written or fully consolidated until after the Babylonian captivity. Along the way to consolidation several non-communicating committees manage to lose ten tribes and the Ark of the Covenant.

Tangible things such as fake relics like the Shroud of Turin or a Jesus Ossuary - speaks of non-faith in the original person and the true message of the teacher of Jesus.

What I have found or sensed along the way of this study of my own beliefs is the negatuve reception or reaction of others to the Gnostic concept of a divine spark within. Negative belief too in the possiblility of Jesus as a bearer or in his own recognition of that divinity. The role of bearer and of recognition connotes great responsibility to go forward in life as bearer of the light of God within and with that light to be given freely to others. Few of us now or in the generations past have come close to the ideal of Jesus as evolved enlightened being and creation of God.

There is hope - the human race continues and “Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?”…(W.B.Yeats)

The problem with the Gnostic belief approach is that 99.9% of humanity do not seem to want responsibility. They want to be sheep and they want to be led. As such, the P.T.Barnum types in the Vatican and the far right fundamentalists need road shows, conferences, freak shows, museums, literal interpretation of myths - tangible proof of their so-called faith – which is not faith but seems so much more like superstition.

The show goes on.

Popcorn! Peanuts! Cotton Candy!