A Wasted Life

            An old friend recently mentioned proudly after dinner that he weighs the same today as he did in high school.  It seemed a little less than gracious considering that I am a top-heavy seventy-five pounds more these fifty some-odd years later, but I put aside the insensitive if not insulting comment in favor of a few oohs and aahs to show how impressed I was by his weight.  I would not be as rude to him as he’d been to me.

            What I wanted to say to him, however, was that he had very little to brag about.  I know his metabolism is wired against weight gain and that the only thing he’s done with fifty years of free time is aerobic exercising—road work of one sort or another.  His work life was magnificent, and I am first in line to praise his accomplishments in that area, but for some reason that perhaps only phys ed teachers can follow, he thinks his lifetime of compulsive exercising and fitness is worthy of universal admiration.  It seems to me, however, it is the biggest waste of a life imaginable.

            He has squandered his precious time on earth by stunting  his personal growth in favor of fitness and weight control.  What is he fit for?  As far as I can see, it is merely to insure longevity (a dubious bet at best), but what is the great benefit of a long life unless it is accompanied by intellectual growth?  Fifty years of getting to the gym is an empty life by my reckoning.  He could have done any number of worthwhile things--written books,  studied the great minds of the past, learned what art and history and science can teach us, mastered new fields of research.  But no, his goal was to work out every day.  And brag about his weight.  What a waste.

Teleology vs. Peleology

        

          One chapter of the Believer’s Handbook seeks to prove God’s existence by examining design in the universe, the study known as “teleology.”  According to this argument, order implies the existence of God, but this old argument buckles, perhaps collapses, under the weight of modern science’s Uncertainty Principle (Werner Heisenberg, 1927), which has shown that order, symmetry, and design are more apparent than real.  Much as we all want an orderly universe, one which confirms God’s existence and reaffirms our desperate need to believe we are put on earth for a reason, the universe itself seems to be of another mind.  So to speak.

           Further arguing against a God-implied teleology is the God-denying study of peleology, which posits that no Creator in His right mind would design and build an organism (in his own image) that has to pee out between one and two liters every single day.  It’s a hopeless mess.  Bathrooms have to be everywhere.  Surely the Designer could have come up with a urinary tract system better than the one He settled on.  So why didn’t He?

Of course, the Almighty may have further changes in mind and may decide to implement them at any time.  But that brings up another problem.  Why would God go back every few eons to alter complicated operating systems (like turning fish fins into arms and legs or swim bladders into lungs)?  Why wouldn’t He have just gotten it right the first time? 

No, an under-attack teleology is not as persuasive as the common-sense study of peleology.  God's got some explaining to do.