I was recently directed to an online interview with Morgan Freeman. Freeman hosts a program on the Science Channel called Through the Wormhole.
The secular science world has been a little stirred up by the fact the show mentions intelligence in the universe. The media obviously has to try and clear this up and get a pro-evolution confession out of Freeman’s mouth, or at least something ambiguous enough to render any conclusions mere conjecture.
His answers were that intelligence is what we see – that all life is intelligent – but that that doesn’t mean there is a Creator. Yet when challenged on extra-terrestrial life he said that with the size of the universe it would be ridiculous to say that there aren’t little green men zipping around in flying saucers.
This is, of course, illogical. To say that a universe we only observe to be barren and dead, harbours anymore life, doesn’t stand up to the clear observations of earth’s uniqueness – not only in our galaxy but the whole observable universe. A great DVD to watch regarding this is Privileged Planet. Yet to say that a greater intelligence was the source of the intelligence we see is simple logic. We can observe our own creative abilities as human beings and see that we can create design that displays thought, reason and intelligence. We are also greater than anything we create – we are one step back in the chain.
The standard evolutionary model puts forward time and random chance (cloaked in names such as ‘natural selection’) as the producers of the design and laws we see in nature and the universe. Unfortunately time and chance can only work with the materials it has, and two of those are not forethought and intention. The very origin of a matter is completely inexplicable in naturalistic thought, let alone the means by which things built up and came together to make systems functioning in harmony with one another. They see intelligence, but ultimately call it unintelligent.
To say that there is a supreme, super-intelligent, transcendent Creator responsible for us, every other living being, the laws of physics and chemistry etc is not only completely reasonable but almost universally accepted amongst the great thinkers of history. People would do good to realise that Atheism is not the natural and original stand-point of man, but a reactionary argument that was birthed in the debating halls of ancient Greece. Atheism goes to show that if you have too much time on your hands, someone is inevitably going to come up with a dumb idea (like a group of teenagers sitting around bored).
Removing a supreme and transcendent intelligence precludes any intelligence being found. Its like going to Andy Murray’s house and seeing the Wimbledon trophy, then saying that Andy Murray doesn’t exist. Well, if Andy Murray doesn’t exist then the trophy wouldn’t be there, as it took Andy Murray to win it and put it there. This of course led to the ridiculous theory of pan-spermia and the idea that aliens created life on this planet, which even Richard Dawkins has admitted could be the case in the face of all the intelligence we see.
Unfortunately, as I once told a biologist, that is simply postponing the problem – for who made the aliens? An infinite number of aliens? I think a sign of the times is when you have a scientific program being presented by someone without a scientific background. We live in a time when ideas espoused by a celebrity have more weight than ideas espoused with reason. Unfortunately, I think Morgan Freeman’s reasoning has gone down the wormhole.
