Two Seas in a Pod

A real thinker, a figure such as Jan Cox in the 20th century, finds scientists and creationists alike, similar to the way the two halves of a walnut in a shell are the same. The religionists for all their talk about god creating things, they still rely on a cause and effect narrative. So-and-so created the earth on a particular day....If there is some guy with a Santa Claus beard, out beyond the universe, winking at particular people, then, what can it mean to treat narrative order as of significance?? Why not create animals before you create the planets? It is because a standard narrative of cause and effect undergirds their thinking, regardless of what they say about the powers of a deity.

About scientists, I should point out first, Jan Cox and his students treated their work as the closest you could come to real facts, in a physical and verbalizable world.  His analysis of scientists themselves are included in his talk about intellectuals, and that is not my point now.  A real thinker though will empirically and rigorously pursue an analysis of the world without preconceptions. The scientists for instance, cling to a religious structure of the world. If you doubt this, pray point out a molecule of free will.  Yet most would faint before letting that illusion go, and all forget the significance of scientific data on the subject of man's free will, just as soon as the flashbulbs stop popping in their minds. The faith of scientists in free will is touching, and very instructive. A real thinker follows the evidence regardless of its cost.

About the similarity of scientists and creationists, in a way it's an easy shot, they are both unsuspecting believers in the power of words. And they put their faith in the possibility of periods. Their hissing at each other is is the mechanical whirring of machines, who have no idea what is really going on. 

Some will find strength in their quest to figure out what is really going on, by recalling that such men as those I label now, 'real thinkers' did persevere.