Latter Day Sinner

My sense of the supernatural is a personal one. I think that to have a testimony of anything at all one must rely on a sort of private gnosis. Even people who aim to be hyper logical have to base their logic on some axioms that seem fitting. That choice of axioms goes back to a private sense of what is true and what is not. Now certainly there are axioms which are more useful. If a person starts from the premises that a spherical earth, the gradual warming of the planet, and common descent are hoaxes they are likely to reach conclusions that I would find equal false as they would find mine. If it comes from a position of biblical inerrancy I will have a hard time suspending my disbelief for the sake of argument. But I am just as resistant to the notion that human beings are entirely rational creatures. I think there is more to intelligence than brain chemistry, and I think there are higher orders of intelligence than the minds of mortal men and women. It is fairly easy to conceive of intelligence greater than mine, and I pity the person who can’t conceive of a more truth knowing being than we are.

The argument goes that if you are walking on a beach and discover a watch you are almost certainly correct that the watch was designed. It is intuitive that there is a Watchmaker. This is not I will admit hard and fast proof that there must be a designer, but it seems to me to be a reasonable conclusion. I sense that the argument is correct. It’s that private gnosis that leads me there. I know that there are perfectly rational people that conclude otherwise, but I still think they do so at the base of the same kind of personal preference.

The watchmaker argument is to me the most compelling example of an indication of a universal designer. And as far as it goes it’s much harder to prove that negation of such a nebulous intelligence. It’s a fall back position for me. If someone argues convincingly to that the LDS version of God is flawed or more often that the traditional Christian version of God presents contradictions, I am comfortable retreating to what is sometimes called the philosophers God. This conception of a watchmaker or a supreme designer and intelligence seems much more unassailable in my mind.

BUT, I will admit that even an argument for supreme universal designer has flaws that go undiscussed. The biggest of those is a basis for comparison. It is rational to believe the watch is designed. It is less rational to believe that the watch ended up on the beach on purpose. And it is in my opinion very silly to conclude that since the watch is designed that the sand is also designed. We rightly intuit design in the watch because we have a basis for comparison. The sand provides that basis. The sand is random and chaotic. The sand is in stark contrast to the design of the watch. So if we want to discover a universal designer we must have something undesigned to compare.

This sort of designer could not be an all powerful one. If there is chaos in the system which I intuit and argue that there is, then the designer is not sovereign over it. If we are designers ourselves which I think we are, then we are tapping into those gaps that a universal designer leaves open. Chaos and randomness are preconditions of independent will. It’s argued that everything is fixed down to the last quark and that we couldn’t be anything other than what the universe determines we are. I think that is mistaken and that our minds and wills move through those gaps. I call that private gnosis and I think you can experience it and move through those gaps too.