Monday, September 01, 2008

Who orderest all things mightily...

An interesting piece in The Age about Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's belief in an ordered creation:
"As you know I'm a believer and I've never pretended not to be and I respect those who have no religious belief - it's a free country," Mr Rudd said.

"For me, it's ultimately the order of the cosmos or what I describe as the creation.

"You can't simply have, in my own judgment, creation simply being a random event because it is so inherently ordered, and the fact that the natural environment is being ordered where it can properly coexist over time.

"If you were simply reducing that to mathematically probabilities I've got to say it probably wouldn't have happened.

"So I think there is an intelligent mind at work."
He's not a silly boy, our PM.

On the science and religion question, have a listen to this podcast of Philip Jenkins. Two good quotes from this lecture are:

1) "There are three kinds of wash in the study history: eye-wash, white-wash and hog-wash" (by which he meant: ways in which the historian helps you see an issue more clearly and exactly, ways in which an historian might cover up or exclude facts that don't fit their version of "history", and stuff that is just plain nonsense.)

and:

2) "I wouldn't have seen it with my own two eyes, if I hadn't believed it first."

Perhaps faith in the Creator behind the order in the Cosmos is largely a matter of the latter.

3 Comments:

At Tuesday, September 02, 2008 1:48:00 am , Blogger John said...

2) "I wouldn't have seen it with my own two eyes, if I hadn't believed it first."

Really, this is true of almost everything. A person doesn't "see" or appreciate what an engineer or scientist does until they have been "converted" in some way. We tend not to notice this because we all grow up well catechized in the wonders of science and technology.

But if you read biographies of scientists or inventors there is usually a youthful moment of amazement and wonder that opens their eyes. It is only after that that they are inspired to do the hard work of understanding the equations, or whatever...

Or seeing people. First you are smitten or taken in some way by a person, and only then do you start to really "see" their qualities, and desire to make them a friend...

 
At Tuesday, September 02, 2008 9:36:00 am , Blogger Schütz said...

Your idea of "wonder", John, is even more strongly brought out in this podcast of John Polkinhorne, the English philosopher of science and Christian, which was given at the same event as the Jenkins lecture:

http://www.christianworldviewconference.org/audio/2007conference/26_Science_Polkinghorne_35m25s.mp3

 
At Wednesday, September 03, 2008 4:05:00 am , Blogger John said...

Thanks, that's good

 

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