Monkey See

I don’t defend God.  Generally speaking, I am not on the payroll.    Still, people have expectations.  What I respond when asked about bad things and evolution is only what makes sense to me.

A friend in college said that some mathematician said that if you put enough monkeys in a room with typewriters, sooner or later they will come up with Shakespeare.  It turns out that it was Thomas Huxley who once stated in a debate that enough monkeys would produce Psalm 23. Huxley, after reading Darwin’s “Origin of the Species”, was so taken with the idea that he was Darwin’s staunchest ally against the anti-evolutionists.  Telling Darwin that he would “sharpen his claws” to flay the nonsensical advocates of religion, Huxley was dubbed “Darwin’s Bulldog.”

Mathematically, Huxley may have been correct.  Yet, somehow I doubt it.

Thomas Huxley made that remark to prove that life was random and that there was no Supreme Being.  I have seen coincidences in my life; life not being one of them.

Not long ago Plymouth University did a study of monkeys.  They placed six macaque monkeys in a room with a computer for four weeks.  What happened?  They pretty much ignored it.  Preferring to play with one another and generally frolic, one animal was noted to have hit the “s” key several times.  During the study the monkeys smashed the computer along with using it as a toilet. 

Frankly speaking, I see room for honest doubt.  In other words, agnosticism.  Yet, atheism seems as much a religion as Catholicism.  Or Hinduism.  Or Conservatism.  When I hear them speak of their absolute belief in nothing it sounds to me like dogma.

Professor Robert Jastrow, formerly head of NASA’s Goddard Space Center is an agnostic.  In his book “God and the Astronomers” Jastrow indicates that many of his colleagues refuse to accept the Big Bang theory of the universe.  Many of the fiercest opponents of the Big Bank oppose it because the theory implies a beginning.  A beginning implies a Prime Mover, something they cannot accept.  For some reason, many scientists –seemingly people who are shaped by empiricism, cannot bring themselves to confront the idea of God.  Who knows? Given enough scientists and a typewriter perhaps one of them would write a Psalm?  Naw.