In this video presentation “Beyond Belief '06,”Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson makes excellent points about intelligent design. In the video he points out how we invoke God/intelligent design when we reach the limits of our knowledge. It is a presentation taken from his essay “The Perimeter of Ignorance
Philosopher George Jaidar: “The term spiritual must be seen and used analogously to the term education, both of which deal with the evolution of our consciousness. Kindergarten is an early stage of education but would never be used as equivalent to or synonymously with it. Similarly, religion can be used to describe an early, childish stage of the spiritual. Religions tend to keep people in the kindergarten stage of our spiritual evolution, which requires that we go on or transcend to Higher Consciousness, the analog here of higher education. As with higher education, our spiritual evolution requires going through and far beyond, not just continuing, the kindergarten of religion.”
Tyson and Jaidar assert that the pursuit of education, experience, experiment, and the engagement in the audacity of thought are the routes to the evolution of knowledge. It seems to me that this is not an arguable point. It is ignorance, a copout, and being just plain lazy to say that it is “God’s Way” when we do not have an explanation for certain phenomena, and therefore we should not question or pursue the knowledge of those things we do not understand. When we rely on “God’s Way,” we become harnessed by religion and the God mindset; when we pursue knowledge we evolve.
God is as good a symbol as any other for that of which we do not understand if our intention is to use the symbolic word God, as such. However, the symbolic word God used in the religious sense refers to a personal God: a being conceived as the perfect, omnipotent, omniscient originator and ruler of the universe, a being of supernatural powers.
We must transcend religion and not turn to the “God of the Gaps” when we don’t understand; but rather be cognizant of the fact that we simply lack the knowledge to understand. Those who rely on God or rely on their religious beliefs for the explanation of things they don’t understand, rather than understanding they are up against the limits of their knowledge, as George Jaider asserts, are in the kindergarten of evolution. They will remain there if they do not rise out of and above religion and their Gods, and pursue understanding through the pursuit of scientific knowledge.
Our evolution, in every aspect, is our purpose in life.
