Here is one:
To the Editor:
Ross Douthat’s debunking of cuddly pantheism is well taken, since nature includes all that is abhorrent to us as well as what we value. But I disagree that “we stand half inside the natural world and half outside it,” since we are entirely natural creatures, products of unguided evolution.
I also disagree that without God our situation would be essentially tragic. That would be the case only if there were no natural sources of meaning, comfort, wonder and other reasons to find life worth living.
There’s both tragedy and triumph in life even when understood as a completely natural phenomenon, one that arises in a cosmos that exists for no discernable reason, but simply and mysteriously is.
Thomas W. Clark
Somerville, Mass., Dec. 21, 2009 (The writer is director of the Center for Naturalism).
What “natural sources of meaning, comfort, wonder and other reasons to find life worth living.”? You might find self delusion, but at the end of the day there is only death and personal extinction.
“I also disagree that without God our situation would be essentially tragic.”
A very good quote to ponder approaching the feast on the Incarnation.
How, scientifically speaking, does “unguided evolution” differ from “guided evolution”?
(Happy Christmas!)