"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs...In spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherance to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a divine foot in the door."-- Richard Lewontin (Harvard paleontologist)

"Natural selection, the blind, unconscious automatic process which Darwin discovered, and which we now know is the explanation for the existence and apparently purposeful form of all life, has no purpose at all."--Richard Dawkins

"Ka-BOOM!...The Big Bang Paradigm of Scientism"

There are some today who, operating under the authority and influential banner of “Science and Reason”, have told us that all we can see and touch and know and measure, all of Space and Time and Matter, and even Life itself...originated and developed out of really Nothing at all. We have been told that “The Process” by which this stunning event occurred was accidentally "kick-started" and set into motion when some sort of “Gravitational Fluctuation” happened billions and billions and billions of years ago. This Grand Cosmic Burp , this Pre-Gaseous Primal ("Big Bang") Event eventually, and some would say, inevitably.... resulted in everything we see around us, from the tiniest molecular and sub-atomic realms to the awesome vastness of the seemingly endless reaches of outer space.

Scientists have told us that the elements needed for all of our observable and quantifiable realities appeared and then gradually morphed and evolved through purposeless and un-directed forces, “Chance Episodes” in time. And that, somehow via the “natural magik” of this Gravitational inevitability, a vacuous and Meaningless Chaos...for some reason... gave birth to the orderly Laws of Nature and Math, then to life itself and then, eventually, to Man....Mozart, Beethoven and Rembrandt, Confucius, Buddha and Jesus.

And the rest, as they say, is "history”.

Well, quite frankly, I was skeptical about all that. But I'm also a reasonable person, and I believe in the tenets of solid scientific investigation. I determined to test this theory of Chance Creation on my own in the realm of my own vocation.

I decided to place several drawing pencils (7H, 3H, HB and 2B), an eraser and a pencil sharpener into a black, plastic trash bag. Then, I placed several 8” x 10” pieces of unused illustration board...clean and white....inside the bag as well. I closed the trash bag and sealed it quite securely with a “twisty-tie”. For the next month, at random intervals, day after day, I shook and rattled and jostled and swung the bag and its contents around and around. I did this in a deliberately mindless fashion in order to approximate the simple, undirected raw energy and power of Mother Nature. At the end of a month, I decided that it was time to see what Mother Nature had wrought. I removed the twisty-tie and reached inside the plastic bag (my “Black Hole Creation-Simulator”) and pulled out the illustration boards.

I was absolutely astounded by what I saw....

Somehow, the random and purposeless Power of Nature had created images on each of the three boards that seemed to me to be “intelligently designed”! But I knew that that was impossible. Science and Reason, of course, informed me that the images had, in fact, appeared by “Chance” through a process of random, “natural selection” and that the appearance of design was simply that...an appearance,..... an illusion.

The first drawing that I pulled from the bag is reproduced here:

"Soul Searching I (As Luck Would Have It) " (pencil on illustration board, 2009)

Quite honestly, I really had not expected this outcome. Before I had conducted my scientific experiment, I had been quite the skeptic. But, there it was. I could not argue with the “scientific” reality of what I had observed.. The images were obviously and undeniably there. Seeing is believing, and facts are facts!....... And that, as they say, is that.

There could be no question or debate about it.

I'm a True Believer now.

"Soul Searching II (As Luck Would Have It)" (pencil on illustration board, 2009)

....

"As Luck Would Have It"

(Just Idol Speculation)

 

There are some who like to tell us
Just how all this came to be:
'Twas a “Quantum Fluctuation”
Just a “burp” of Gravity!

Yes, we all came out of Nowhere...
From a mindless Fluke of Chance.
From a Big-Bang Gaseous Nothing
Via Empty Happenstance!

They can't say that it was “magik”,
(But it's mighty close to that...)
“Stuff” just popped into existence,
Like a rabbit from a hat!

Then by Random Accidentals
So much “Info” bumped along,
'Until... by 'n' by... it happened!
Man invented Right and Wrong!

Then by Natural Selection,
Further progress soon was made...
Evo-Man just deconstructed
That Foundation he had laid.

Right and Wrong?...How antiquated!
How bourgeois!...How gauche!...How crude!
What a travesty of Justice!
What a wretched attitude!

So..., Voila!... Friend, there you have it!
Scientific Truth be told!
Conjured up by Nature's Brightest...
The Consensus of the Polled.

....

I was once a Doubting Thomas,
But then Science proved me wrong!
Now I'm sure there is No Meaning...
And my Faith in that is strong!

I was once a die-hard Skeptic!
But it's all now crystal clear!
Yes! The evidence confirms it!
And so, that's The Word from here!

"Soul Searching III (As Luck Would Have It)" (pencil on illustration board, 2009)

....

"As an explanation of the world materialism has a sort of insane simplicity. It has the quality of a madman's arguments; we have at once the sense of it covering everything and the sense of it leaving everything out." --GK Chesterton

"....the logic of materialist reductionism implies that science itself is the product of unreasoning material causes. No wonder the Age of Reason ends with the Age of Postmodernist Relativism!...if unthinking matter causes the thoughts the materialists don't like, then what causes the the thoughts they do like?" --Phillip Johnson

....

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning." (John 1:1,2)