Actually, this "understanding" is perfectly consistent with Darwinism. In an earlier post, I wrote that Darwin's ToE has been highly effective in affecting the way people think.
As early as the 1930s, Karl Ludwig von Bertalanffy (September 19, 1901 – June 12, 1972), an Austrian-born biologist widely regarded as founder of modern general systems theory, expressed worry about the implications of Darwinist thinking and its potential negative effects on society.
And Ms. Moore's statement is a perfect example of what Bertalanffy was worried about (me too).
Ms. Moore's basic premise seems to be that, at the very root of reality there is only chaos. Chaos which (by definition) can never by itself "organize" anything at all — not the universe, and clearly (to me anyway) not biological life. And so human beings are put in the position of having to "impose" some kind or "order" onto this chaos or lose their ability to negotiate the demands of real existence, and even their sanity. From which it follows that any man's projection is just as "good" as any other man's. For each and every man is, at bottom, just a part of the generally prevailing chaos.
Still, where does Ms. Moore's idea of "good" come from, if all we've got to work with is chaos? After all, she thinks human life is "good" (at least in its post-natal stages), such that it needs to be protected from citizen firearms ownership....
I think a lot of the trouble in society today goes straight to Ms. Moore's understanding of Reality — which is so widely shared. I see two major influences producing this sort of understanding: (1) Darwin's Theory of Evolution; and (2) quantum theory.
For openers, it seems to me the main difficulty is that, respecting these two main influences, your average citizen does not understand what the two theories actually say. Nowadays, a lot of what passes for science seems to be mainly a superficial gloss on what actual science has actually said, as promoted by various and sundry scientific entrepreneurs and gurus, persons usually well-ensconced in academe....
If I might invoke two statements of Richard Dawkins —the amazingly influential evolutionary biologist hunkered down at Oxford — to set the stage for consideration of Influence (1): Darwin's ToE:
"...[T]he Cambrian strata of rocks ... are the oldest in which we find most of the major invertebrate groups. And we find many of them already in an advanced state of evolution, the very first time they appear. It is as though they were just planted there, without any evolutionary history." [emphasis added.]When Dawkins speaks of "evolution," he is, of course, invoking Darwin's theory. This theory proposes the common descent of all biological species from a single Common Ancestor ("CA"). The different, and increasingly complex, biological species emerge via a gradual process of change over time, based on a process of random mutation and natural selection. Mutations are either successful or unsuccessful. If the latter, they have no effect. If the former, new "good traits" will have been introduced into the species such that offspring generated from this "good" — defined as beneficial to survival — mutation will continue to successfully propagate the species to which they belong. From which expectation a basis is laid for the next bunch of random mutations, to see which will not only stabilize the existing species, but over time achieve such a level of "complexity" that not only new species, but entirely novel phyla will eventually emerge. All purely by "random," "natural" processes! The fundamental chaos is overcome — by accident, by chance! Yay!!!
Unfortunately to this project, the Cambrian Explosion — which occurred around 540 million years ago — throws a money wrench into this machinery. Forget about "incremental biological change" here: This was a sudden, inexplicable "quantum jump" in biological evolution. To which Dawkins was referring in his above statement.
Now a "quantum jump" is hardly a "gradual process."
But Dawkins is undaunted by this, which he implicitly acknowledges in his second statement I want to cite here:
"Without gradualness ... we are back to a miracle."But Dawkins — an evangelical atheist — will have no miracles!!! At least, no miracles that are not of his own making. Which he then proceeds to make, with his famous "Climbing the Backside of Mount Improbable" analogy.
Dear Ms. Moore, please pay attention here: Dawkins admits that there is no way to "scale the mountain of biology" from a frontal attack. That is, there is no way to explain biology as a random process yielding what we see all around us as a product of pure Chance — Chaos becoming articulate somehow. He sees the futility of trying to scale the mountain "from the front." So he proposes we come at the problem from "behind," envisioned as an indeterminable series of very small, "gradualist" steps that, given an indeterminable duration of time, will somehow make Chance productive in terms of accounting for complex, living systems in Nature.
In short, Dawkins proposes that a "chancy universe" eventually generates "non-chancy" biology, in "X" time. [Question: What is the expected duration of "X?"] To me, I find this idea virtually unintelligible.
For one thing, never mind what happened in the Cambrian here. If one insists on a universe premised in Chaos, I need to retort: What is "chancy" about proteins??? — which are absolutely foundational to biological processes, and bases of genes?
There are thousands of proteins; yet every single one of them is composed of amino acids, of which there are only 20. You can put together whatever of these 20 amino acids you want to, in any combination; but the only functional proteins that can emerge from such a random combination of amino acids will be those that "fold" properly.
It turns out that functional proteins are rare because their constituting amino acids must be structured in the "correct" sequence. If we are speaking of "correct," instantly we know we are NOT speaking of something which is "random." Yet absent the correct sequence, the "folding" necessary to make a protein functional does not occur.
And without functional proteins, Life does not exist.
Ergo, biology at its very foundations cannot be random, or "chaotic." Even to speak of a "code" — be it WRT protein fabrication or DNA itself — is to entail the necessity of there having been an intelligent agent to have constructed the "code" in the first place.
Any "code" necessarily is targeted towards, or entails, the implementation of a future state — that is to say a state of affairs that does not currently exist.... Now we are in "final cause" territory — which reductionist scientists such as Richard Dawkins — and Darwin himself — utterly reject as a matter of principle.
RE: Influence (2), quantum theory: To the layman, the quantum world is totally unintelligible. To such folk I would say: It is unintelligible, on Newtonian grounds.
Yet Newton's astonishingly brilliant and successful physico/mechanical description of Nature did not have the benefit of the insights produced in more recent times by the great quantum theorists. It turns out that Newtonian science is something like 99.9% "correct" WRT its predictions of the basic operations of our world; but it did not have the benefit of newer insights from both relativity and quantum science.
Newton's world "works" only within a regime that does not have to deal with speeds that approach the superluminal or physical entities so small they cannot be detected by means of direct observation.
Quantum theory proposes to explain the latter.
The quantum theory seems to have been extraordinarily "scary" to some people. (People who are intellectually sensitive enough to see the problems it poses to our normal human schemes of thought).
The quantum world IS a world of "chaos." It also happens to be the very ground and seat of pure, natural potentiality. Everything that exists has its material foundation in the quantum world. Yet by itself, the quantum world cannot produce "form"; it is pure potentiality, waiting for "instructions," in order to translate its potentiality into actual existent beings in the natural world.
So I would ask Ms. Julianne Moore: What mind do you think is capable of generating information/instructions by which such pure potentiality is translated into the actuating forms of the phenomena — natural and social — that you encounter every day of your life???
I daresay, Ms Moore has so far been unable to follow such matters in any intelligent — or intelligible — way. Indeed, such questions very likely have marginal interest to her anyway; that is to say, very likely not of any real interest to her at all, when you boil it all down. Still, she takes it upon herself to "hold forth" on such questions — because as a celebrity, she is "empowered" to "speak." It doesn't seem to matter that she doesn't have a clue about what she's talking about....
So here we are; this is the world we live in, dear brother in Christ, as "governed" by such "minds."
To all of which, all I can say is: Atheists are seriously barking up the wrong tree. And likely will pay the penalty for that, in due course.
Not that I wish atheists any ill. I only hope they can get better, to be healed from their self-imposed afflictions, from which the only hope of recovery is in the God they reject.
God bless, dear brother in Christ — thank you so much for writing!
It was from you and Alamo_Girl that I first saw the following two fundamental axiomatic expressions ... and I was inspired by them because I had reached an impasse in my TOE. Those two axioms lifted my mind over the obstruction.
Without dimension Time, events do not occur
Without dimension Space things do not exist.
These axioms do not apply to God The Creator since His being preceded Creation. I might be ready to add that 'without dimension Life, living things do not happen' for it is the information coding that allows living things to order their environment in order to stave off thermodynamic equilibrium for a time while in the spacetime of our sensing.
But humankind have an added feature to their soul of life; God breathed a spirit into Adams soul of life and Adam became a living soul, a soul with a complexity/reality of life beyond the coding of all life before his advent.
Without the coder, no codes would exist to order the non-living Universe of our current perceptions ... and we would not be perceiving. I happen to believe that all that has been Created, so far, exists in some coordinate system DESIGNED to manifest what The Creator designed the coordinate system for.
And I believe there are concomitant coordinate systems we cannot sense which are just as real and have aspects of space and time influenced by forces designed to function in those coordinate systems. After all, the being to whom the hand was attached, seen in Daniel chapter five, was standing somewhere that those in palace party central could not sense. The hand had to reach 'down' into Belshazzar's spacetime in order for the party guests to be interacted with.
For another hint, Jesus left the tomb and went to some where/when, from which he stepped to enter the Upper Room.
I agree, Sister, an excellent bit of writing.
I would add that even quantum theory depends on quantizing or selecting distinct points to look at...because the whole is not observable, I imagine. And sometimes what's looked at, the very same distinct point, is a particle and others a wave, but to me anyway, this suggests that when looking at chaos that chaos must be pinned down, even if just a point, so humans can look at it and comment on it!
And if a human can pin down a distinct point, then what can a God do? He can pin down ALL distinct points, so that in the realm of the Creator, there is NO chaos. "And the earth was without form and void..."
And it might well mean that the chaos we perceive isn't really chaos at all. It certainly isn't to God, but maybe it isn't to us, and we just don't know it yet.
For Ms Moore, this would mean that her perceived chaos wouldn't be so, if she placed her faith in the God who over-rules all our perceived chaoses.
But Dawkins — an evangelical atheist — will have no miracles!!! At least, no miracles that are not of his own making. Which he then proceeds to make, with his famous “Climbing the Backside of Mount Improbable” analogy.
True.. The ASS of Mt. Improbable is really hanging out there..
All hairy, voluptuous, a bit stinky, and roundish..
Long ago I determined not to be mooned by this streaker(Dawkins)....
So if you slow a miracle down, it is not a miracle? I wonder what the time factor is that determines what is a miracle and what isn't?
If a miracle happens over a period of minutes, or months, or lifetimes, it is still a miracle. Some miracles we are privileged to witness. Some unfold over time and we may not live to see the end of it.
As for randomness, if the randomness is obedient to the laws of physics, it isn't that random. And if at the end of it it takes an intelligible form, then the principles governing it were themselves intelligent.