Author: Ophelia Benson

Karl Giberson is a honcho at BioLogos. BioLogos is about “Science and Faith in Dialogue,” about Science & the Sacred. Francis Collins is a scientist, Karl Giberson is a scientist. Karl Giberson explains why he has reservations about Intelligent Design.

BioLogos enthusiastically endorses the idea that the universe is intelligently designed and we certainly believe that the creator of the universe is intelligent. We consider the evidence regarding the fine-tuning of the universe to be provocative and compelling. Our reservations about ID certainly do not derive from any rejection of the rationality of the universe.

The rationality of the universe? What’s rational about the universe? It’s too big, for one thing. It’s too cold for another, too full of surprises for another, too hard to breathe in for one more. What’s so rational? And…rational according to what criteria? Ours? Obviously not. God’s? But that just begs the question.

Anyway. What I really wonder is what he means by saying “we certainly believe that the creator of the universe is intelligent.” What can any human mean by that? What do we mean by “intelligent”?

We mean “intelligent according to us,” of course. We’re human beings, saying human things, seeing things from a human perspective. “Intelligence” is something we attribute to ourselves and perhaps in small amounts to some other animals. It’s something we name as existing in some of the evolved animals in the organic top layer of this one planet. Does it seem at all likely that the same quality could exist in an entity that “designed” and “created” the universe? Not to me it doesn’t. We recognize something we call “intelligence” in entities of a certain size with a certain amount of brain tissue. The universe doesn’t seem to be the kind of thing that could be “designed” and “created” by a similar entity magnified enough times to be bigger than the universe (you have to be bigger to be outside it, because you have to be outside it before you can design and create it). It’s not enough to be bigger than Texas, or bigger than the earth, or bigger than Jupiter – bigger than the universe is a whole different order of bigger. Does it make sense to think we can make educated guesses about what kind of personal qualities – intelligence, courage, politeness – an entity of that size might have?

I don’t think it does. I think it’s just a packet of words that people mouth, without really thinking about them properly. If they actually thought about them, the oddities would slow them down. It’s very easy to say we certainly believe that the creator of the universe is intelligent, but making sense of it is another matter.

Rand Paul, Kentucky’s “Tea Party” nominee for the Senate, is opposed to the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo says why that’s not just a principled libertarian view:

To a degree the argument Paul is making is something like saying that I don’t like rape or murder, I just don’t believe in a police force to prevent it or a judiciary to punish the offenders. The reason we, albeit imperfectly, have equality before the law and in the society at large (in terms of public accommodations and so forth) on racial grounds in the whole of the United States is because of federal legislation that forced that to be the case. The reason we don’t have white and colored drinking fountains or pools for whites only

is because of federal legislation that forced that to be the case.

And we know all that because that’s how it played out during the 1950s and 60s. There was activism, there were protests and marches and freedom rides, and they got things going, but they weren’t enough. They faced overwhelming state force, and they would have lost if the federal government hadn’t – slowly and reluctantly under Eisenhower and Kennedy, with more commitment under Johnson – joined in. Libertarianism wouldn’t have worked, at least not nearly as fast.

Sean Brady says no no no no no he won’t go. He doesn’t want to. It’s not fair. All the others. He was only. They didn’t use to. Back then it was all. You just don’t. We all thought that.

The cardinal, the head of the Catholic Church in Ireland, is under pressure to stand down after it emerged that he took part in a secret canonical tribunal in 1975 at which two minors were made to swear oaths of silence about their allegations against the paedophile priest Father Brendan Smyth.

Smyth went on to rape hundreds more children across Ireland, the UK and the United States before he died in prison in 1997.

Well, yes, but that’s nothing out of the ordinary. Look here – suppose you’re an executive of BP, or General Motors, or Enron, or Lehman Brothers, or any other fine upstanding capitalist institution. Suppose a couple of children credibly report being raped by one of your subordinates. What do you do? You force them to swear secrecy, of course! And you transfer that subordinate from London to Salford, or Galveston to New York, or whatever it may be; you move the subordinate to a city different from the city where the two raped children live, thus insuring that that subordinate will not be raping those two children again. Simple! Problem solved! The children have been made to shut up, and the rapist has been moved, so it’s a win-win. Everybody is protected, everybody is safe, everybody is happy.

So what possible reason could there be for Sean Brady to quit his excellent high-status job?

Marie Collins, a campaigner who was abused by a priest as a child, said that she was not surprised. “I met with him six weeks ago and he gave no indicaton whatsoever that he felt any remorse or regret or even grasped that he’d done anything wrong in the Brendan Smyth case, that he’d left an abuser free for 18 years to continue abusing.”…

“He [Cardinal Brady] was well aware for the following 18 years that Brendan Smyth was free to continue abusing and he did nothing about it,” she said.

“In his statement he has not even referred to the past, so I think it’s an indication that nothing is changing in the Church, the attitudes are still the same for all the words that we are getting.”

Forgive and forget, Marie Collins. Cast not the first stone. That was then, this is now. Move on. Spilt milk. Get over it. Get a life.