Letter to a friend

Since dinner Saturday night I've been wanting to readdress the question you asked me; do I believe in Intelligent Design. I replied somewhat abruptly, No, I believe in Eternal Intent. I'm sure I went on to explain why I said that and what I meant by it, but I didn't come away with a good feeling about how I expressed myself on the subject.

It is a religious issue, and I think that when people see that my ideas don't fit into any organized religion they are uncomfortable  with me because the implication is that I don't believe in what they might consider the foundational values that they aspire to live by. That is a misconception.

Here is what I believe, staring with an old poem: 

If at first there was nothing, not even God, then nothing could ever be. But just look around at the many fine things, as far as the eye can see. I say with certainty one of two things, it seems to make sense to proclaim; God or the universe has always been here, and maybe they're one and the same.

That is a little poem that I wrote in the 60's, believe it or not. And I have always found time in my life over the years to contemplate the concept of a unity of all things, nature and God, without making a distinction between them but uniting them into "one and the same".

I am very happy that there are organized religions and they are good in so many ways that I don't need to recite. I have no desire to refute the view of God as Love and Good. However, I oppose the view of "my God is better than your God", and "my religion teaches our children that our version of God is the only true path in life and death", and I do desire to refute religious versions of God in those respects. Not all organized religions can be right, and my view is that Eternal Intent is the best common ground among all religions that convey a God concept. Eternal Intent can be right in spite of all the other views because no religious person, in fact no person is excluded from the realm of Eternal Intent.

So what is Eternal Intent? Let me explain it in contrast to Intelligent Design.

Intelligent Design has an eternal God that contemplated creating a universe fit for human beings, and that would give us everything we need to survive and prosper. It would gave us freewill combined with a conscience, and would give us the ability to contemplate God and to worship God to the degree we individually see fit. I add that perhaps the contemplations of God included the hope or the nudge toward faith without the demand for faith, and included the inevitable encounters with evil and the bad side of living and surviving in a less than perfect world, intentionally. So we live in an intended universe that started when God created it, according to my interpretation of Intelligent Design.

Eternal Intent, at least an overview of it, is based on the idea that the universe has always existed and is infinite. The principle is called the Perfect Cosmological Principle. It says that the universe is homogeneous and isotropic on a grand scale across space and time. That is a bit of scientific jargon that means that the universe looks about the same everywhere, and always has, at least on a scale large enough to encompass everything that we can see in the Hubble telescope and far beyond, to encompass our entire big bang expanding arena and even beyond that. And the beyond, in my view of cosmology, is an infinite landscape filled with similar big bang arenas where life is certain to be generated and evolve to intelligent, contemplative, conscience bearing life forms of which Humanity is just one version. In my universe life abounds, it is intended to abound, and it has always existed, and is always intended. Life is not an accident left to chance. So we live in an intended universe that had no beginning, and the proof of God in my universe is the Eternal Intent of the universe which each of us can see for ourselves, and by which we can invoke the power of acknowledgements from beyond the boundary of known scientific laws, and into the realm of the as yet unknown associated with consciousness and thought and Eternal Intent. Seeking acknowledgements from beyond the boundary is the equivalent of prayers to God invoked by most organized religions.

My philosophy includes the fine points of how to optimize the ability to seek and receive acknowledgements, and that is where the values and principles that I try to live by take shape.

I hope that is not "too much information" as they say these days, lol.

With best regards, 

Eternal Intent does not falsify religions; it finds the common ground of all religions and allows the focus to be on the unity of nature and God, and on your choice as to if you see such unity. If that is too religious for some, then they will not miss prayer or acknowledgement from beyond the boundary of known science since they don't invoke it as a normal part of their lives. If they are members of religions that invoke prayer, then Eternal Intent promotes that same aspect of their religions without the religious conflicts. If they have spiritual tendencies but are not affiliated with an established religion, then they may welcome Eternal Intent because it does promote personal communication in a mysterious realm beyond known science, but that is still in accord with natural laws that we just don't yet understand.

The premise is that anything that seems Supernatural has natural causes that we don't yet understand. The logic is that seeking and receiving acknowledgements from beyond the boundary may be based on the natural laws surrounding consciousness and thought. There may be equations that are activated by our individual values, self images, and personal rules for action and interaction. Eternal Intent suggests that self reflection on our individual motivations or spheres of action and reaction may be determinants of the degree to which we have success at applying Eternal Intent in our own lives.

Science and God are two different slices of the same big mysterious pie, but when discussing a persons view of God, it seems to boil down to faith. Faith is the personal element that is based on the sum of what you have learned in life and indicates a conscious effort to have chosen what you believe in. I give credit in terms of respect for that act of choosing, as long as your choice does not cause careless harm to others; you can exercise your free will any way you want as far as I'm concerned.

And the concept of Eternal Intent is derived from my layman views of physics and cosmology which have a starting point in the choice of one of three major explanations for the presence of the universe: God did it, something from nothing, or there was no beginning to an eternal universe. I have made a personal choice based on my own individual learning and contemplating, and of course my philosophy reflects my personal beliefs.