Jun 4, 2009

Theologians from Space

From this story about the flight of a group of objects that are unidentified is an insightful tidbit of how alike are those who believe in the sci-fi paranormal with those who believe in God:

The eerie extra-terrestrial crafts were hovering in the night sky over the town moving in different directions before eventually shooting straight up into the atmosphere.
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Phil Hoyle, from UK-based UFO Investigation Unit, said the way the UFOs had moved indicated a form of intelligence.
He said: "If these objects were circling one another you would have to rule out that they were fireworks.
"If they were dodging and darting around each other it would indicate intelligent movement."


So not only does the "intelligent design" argument work to offer proof of God's existence, it offers proof of... space aliens! How scientific! (Nevermind that objects darting around each other could be caused by non-intelligent movement.)

Actually, a 'space alien' use of the I.D. argument would be a pretty good reductio ad absurdum of the Christian position - problem is, the "UFOlogists" applied it to their "field"!

Then again, this should not be surprising. That a religious believer can look at the universe and take the identity and cause-effect that inheres in it as proof that it is a "design" which implies an "intelligent designer" of a supernatural nature, and that someone like Mr. Hoyle can see unidentified lights moving in the night sky and can assert their movement is "intelligent," eloquently demonstrates how similar these two mentalities are. Neither has independent proof of their various "intelligent designers." Both argue for their "intelligent designers" from ignorance - they do not know how to explain the phenomena they are concerned with so they posit other-worldly "intelligent designers" as the answer. Both concoct untestable but impressive-sounding rationalizations to believe what they want to believe.

If Mr. Hoyle was alive before men developed knowledge to build fuel-propelled, electronically-lighted aircraft and saw objects in the night sky (like some natural phenomena appears in our day and then gets reported as "UFO's") would he say, "They are angels, proof of God!"?

Most probably.