The Tools of God

Understanding the Tools of God
… And thus moving towards a higher Spirituality and a greater sense of Humanity through an Understanding of Science

By Peyton Quinn

Preface

My Introduction to the Scientific Method

When I was about eight years old I was given a microscope for my birthday.

I looked at the prepared slides, a leaf, a bug, etc, and they all seemed interesting enough to me.

But, when I went into the back yard and dipped an eyedropper into our small pond and viewed it under the microscope I discovered a true epiphany!

Looking at that single drop of water under my new microscope I discovered an amazing but previously totally invisible world!

In that single drop of pond water was contained an entire universe of life! There were hundreds of living creatures swimming all about in various shapes and sizes and all in just that one small drop of water!

Despite their microscopic size some of these creatures appeared to me as being like gliding monsters. Their names I would later learn were, Hydra, Paramecium, Amoeba and others with Ancient Greek and Latin roots.

I watched some of these creatures devour others while sometimes the faster swimming individuals escaped this fate. Some of the smaller creatures seemed to feed on some kind of green plant life in that one drop of water.

My mind was filled with a child’s wonder. What was the nature of these tiny creatures? Did they ‘think’? Did they ‘feel’?

But most of all I wondered, what was their purpose on this Earth?

Why did they exist and how did they get here? In so wondering I wondered too, what was my purpose? … And why did I exist? How did I get here?

Even at that young age I asked myself, was I really so different from those tiny invisible creatures that I was now observing? Did I have a higher purpose than these “lower” life forms in this vast galaxy?

Could there perhaps exist beings out there in our Universe that would see me as being on the same evolutionary level and consciousness as the microbial life forms that I had discovered in that drop of pond water?

From this childhood experience began my development and understanding and later my devotion to rational thought and to the scientific method. I saw science as being our best road to understanding both the nature of our universe and our own fundamental natures as human beings.

Later in life I continued my search for a truer and deeper understanding of that scientific method, both in Universities and other institutions of higher learning.

In time, I came to have a much more profound understanding not only of the power of the scientific methodology, but also of it’s limitations as well.

There was so much that science apparently could not yet explain!

Even so, it seemed that the scientific method itself was still our first and best tool for understanding the world, the Cosmos, the people around us and ultimately our own species.

Indeed, science and rational thought was the first tool given to us by God to begin to grasp our existence and the great mystery of life.

“The human mind is not capable of grasping the Universe. We are like a little child entering a huge library. The walls are covered to the ceilings with books in many different tongues. The child knows that someone must have written these books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. But the child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books - a mysterious order which it does not comprehend, but only dimly suspects”

Albert Einstein

Intelligent Design and Evolution

Today there seem to be two basic camps of thought as to the origins of our species, and the origin of life itself in all its various forms on this planet.

There are the “creationist” who are often called the advocates of “Intelligent design”, and on the other hand, we have the Darwinists or Evolutionists.

But, should it not be clear to the rational, impartial, and educated mind that the process of evolution is itself an intelligent design?

Yet, it is not a “perfect intelligence” that designed even our own Human bodies is it?

If it were then how would we explain the male urinary tract passing through the center of the prostate gland? How would we explain replicate failure that eventually causes us all to age and die?

We could only explain these “imperfections” in our own biology and in other creatures if these “errors” themselves were part of that Grand “intelligent design” by some ‘God Being’.

After all, if we all lived forever the planet would catastrophically overpopulate itself real quick.

But the term “intelligent design” suggests an intelligent designer. For the theist this intelligent designer is called God.

Yet, what would be the nature of this “God” being? Would it be a being, or can God be seen as a Divine process? Even if that Divine process is one of ‘trail an error’ but expressing and manifesting itself under the laws of the Universe.

Is it possible for a “God being” to be imperfect or to create and imperfect universe or an imperfect humanity?

The Concept of Free Will

In any case, it is certainly clear that we are not a ‘perfect humanity’.

Deists (those believing in a deity, God or Gods) explain this through the concept that the “God being” imparted us with “free will”.

Hence, we are the ones making the imperfect choices and thus we have made ourselves imperfect beings. Likewise we have thus made this an imperfect world, and not God.

The hidden assumption here is that we have “free will” of course. But the fact is that there can’t possibly exist any experimental design, or any other means to prove scientifically that “free will” actually exists.

I am personally not an enemy of religious thought at all. I am just an advocate of rationalism and the scientific method.

However, if you are a deist and believe in a God Being then why do you imagine that this deity gave us a brain superior to any other creature on the planet?

Surely it must be because he, she, or it, intended for us to use that brain and to its utmost potential.

If there is a God Being, then I am sure he wants us to think!