Tasty Revelations With Cheese

Last updated on: August 11, 2007 at 10:49 am by James F. McGrath

Tasty Revelations With Cheese 2007-08-11T10:49:00-04:00 James F. McGrath

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It was just after midnight when the Flying Spaghetti Monster (parmesan and heapings of sauce be upon him) appeared to me in a dream (or I dreamed he appeared to me – who can tell the difference?). He said that if I went quickly to the kitchen and boiled pasta for 7 minutes until it is al dente, he would prove to me that Intelligent Design is incompatible with theism. Who could resist such a revelation? I quickly boiled the pasta, strained it, and set it on the table. This is what he showed me:

ID premise 1: Life is irreducibly complex
ID premise 2: That which is irreducibly complex requires a designer
ID premise 3: Designers are intelligent (hence the name ‘intelligent
design’)

Intelligent beings are a form of life

If God is a designer, then God is intelligent

If God is intelligent, then God is alive4. If God is alive, then
according to ID, God must have been designed.

ergo either God has been designed, or God is not alive, or ID is based on
flawed premises.

This was remarkable – I was overwhelmed, and fainted. Then I was taken up to the third layer of lasagna (whether in the tomato sauce, or in the white sauce, I do not know). There the Flying Spaghetti Monster (garlic and sprinklings of fresh olive oil be upon him) appeared yet again, and promised to show me that quantum physics is incompatible with theism. This was too much for me, yet I was fascinated. This is what I was shown:

Quantum physics claims that an observer brings about the collapse of the
wave function.

Prior to human observation, there are uncollapse wave
functions.Therefore:

There is no supernatural being observing quantum events.

I was overwhelmed, not knowing what to make of all this. Then I was told that if I returned to my kitchen and covered the pasta I had boiled earlier with a four-cheese sauce, I would receive a proof that Pastafarianism is not affected by these arguments. I suddenly found myself lying on my kitchen floor. I took the four cheeses (I am forbidden to reveal which ones…it is a secret recipe) and made the sauce, and poured it over the pasta.

Then, I was told that whereas an undesigned designer undermines the arguments of Intelligent Design theory, this does not affect the Flying Spaghetti Monster (showers of fresh basil and oregano be upon him), since he arose from a vermicelli-like singularity. And he is unaffected by the second argument, since pasta, as everyone knows, is delicious when served al dente in a secret recipe four cheese sauce, but it doesn’t obseve quantum phenomena.

I was shaken by this experience, so I did what anyone else would do in the circumstances. I ate the pasta. It was delicious.

——————

The above post (which appeared on my old blog on April 1st and which I thought I’d share to bring some comic relief to those preparing for the imminent arrival of the start of the semester) is of course a bit of silliness (apart from the pasta in a four-cheese alfredo sauce – that is very real). But I used that opportunity to raise what I think are a couple of genuine issues relating to ways in which people try to interconnect religion and science.

Intelligent Design argues that life (being irreducibly complex) requires a designer. The problem is that any proposed designer (apart from a natural process of evolution through natural selection, of course) will be alive, and thus will be irreducibly complex, and will thus require a designer. One certainly can introduce the concept of an unmoved mover to start the whole process, but that is a philosophical concept. All that an intelligent design argument can lead one to is another life form that itself requires explanation. I’m not sure why it took me so long to realize this fundamental flaw (I certainly was aware of others sooner!). Again, this is not proof that there is no intelligent designer, but simply proof that intelligent design does not work as a scientific (or even satisfactory logical) explanation, since all it does is posit an explanation that, based on the presuppositions of intelligent design theory, itself cries out for explanation.

My second little point on the relevance of quantum mechanics is a response to Amit Goswami’s quantum argument for the existence of God, or more precisely, for a Hindu-style universal consciousness. Rather than proving a universal consciousness, his argument, if correct, would disprove it! My own suspicion, however, is that we are wrong to think that it is merely the presence of an observer that causes the collapse of the wave function.

At any rate, to attempt to use science to prove the existence of a designer or a universal consciousness is intrinsically problematic. As Paul Tillich famously asserted, discussion of God is not merely discussion of one being among others – such as a Flying Spaghetti Monster – but is a discussion of Being itself.

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