11.19.08
God enough
God enough
by Steve Paulson, Salon
Reposted from: Dawkins site
http://www.salon.com/env/atoms_eden/2008/11/19/stuart_kauffman/
We should see the ceaseless creativity of nature as sacred, argues biologist Stuart Kauffman, despite what Richard Dawkins might say.
Nov. 19, 2008 | Biologist Stuart Kauffman has plenty of experience tilting at windmills. For years he’s questioned the Darwinian orthodoxy that natural selection is the sole principle of evolutionary biology. As he put it in his first book, “The Origins of Order,” “It is not that Darwin is wrong but that he got hold of only part of the truth.” In Kauffman’s view, there is another biological principle at work — what he calls “self-organization” — that “co-mingles” with natural selection in the evolutionary process.
A physician by training, Kaufmann is a widely admired biologist; in 1987, he was a recipient of a MacArthur “genius” award. He’s also one of the gurus of complexity theory, and for years was a fixture at the Santa Fe Institute, the renowned scientific research community. A few years ago, he moved to the University of Calgary to set up the Biocomplexity and Informatics Institute.
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http://www.salon.com/env/atoms_eden/2008/11/19/stuart_kauffman/
James said,
November 19, 2008 at 5:38 pm
“We are organisms with meaning in our lives, and the way the biosphere will evolve is ceaselessly creative. The way the economy evolves is ceaselessly creative in ways that cannot be predicted ahead of time.”
“”God” carries with it a sense of awe, reverence and wonder that no other symbol carries. It’s a choice. Can we give up the creator God — the all-powerful, omnipotent, all-loving God who confronts us with the problem of evil — and instead find reverence for a ceaseless creativity in the unfolding of nature?”
After watching my portfolio get wiped out in the stock market crash, I don’t find anything “awe-inspiring” or “wonderful” in this “creativity.” Maybe he should get together with Karen Armstrong so he can find somebody else to spew this romantic New Agey cliched sugary feel good horsesh*t with. We need practical solutions, not some pseudo-profundities that we can get from the average idiot who has dropped acid.