What exactly was Baltar’s speech?
I didn’t like it either, but what exactly did he say? Did he actually say it was “beyond good and evil”? That’s the title of a book by Friedrich Nietzsche. Perhaps that speech had more subtlety than I first noticed?
It makes me slightly depressed to see Kent Hovind’s speech writer chilling out on this forum ;\
Anywho:
Baltar: I see Angels. Angels in this very room. Now I may be mad, but that doesn’t mean that I’m not right. Because there’s another force at work here, there always has been. It’s undenaible. We’ve all experienced it . Everyone in this room has witnessed events that they cannot fathom let alone explain away by rational means. Puzzles, decyphered in prophecy. Dreams given to a chosen few. Our loved ones dead. Risen. Whether we want to call that God or Gods or some Sublime Inspiration or some Divine Force we cannot know or understand it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. It’s here. It exists. And our two destinies are entwined in its force.
Cavil: If that were true, and that’s a big IF - how do I know this force has our best interest in mind? How do you know that “God” is on your side, doctor?
Baltar: I don’t. God’s not on any one side. God’s a force of nature. Beyond Good and Evil. Good and Evil? We created those. You want to break the cycle? Break the cycle of birth, death, rebirth, destruction, escape, death… Well that’s in our hands, and our hands only. It requires a leap of faith. It requires that we live in hope, not fear.
Whenever I hear “Beyond Good and Evil” I think of the amazing PS2/XBOX/GC/PC game by the same title :]
Evolution by natural selection is a theory that has withstood 150 years (being the sesquicentennial of the publication of On the Origin of Species) of testing and new data, and yet has managed to remain largely unchanged in that time. In fact it has only been expanded to help explain new processes and phenomena (genetics for example) that were not known to Darwin at the time.
Thanks for pointing out the thing about science not being about “proving” things, but rather about disproving. (This is the point I was making earlier…I believe it was in this thread, when I said that science doesn’t traffic in proof…etc., but you said it much better.) Popper, I believe it was, called it “falsifying,” and insisted that, in order to be scientific, a theory must be “falsifiable.” In other words, it must be capable of being disproven. Lots of philosophers of science have since amended and contorted what Popper said, but this is one very important contribution that he made to the philosophy of science.
Anyway, regarding the bit I quoted above, I was just going to make a nitpicky point that evolution doesn’t explain genetics, so much as genetics helps to explain evolution–it gives us a mechanism to explain heredity, thereby to explain and investigate the process of mutation and selection.
(edited for punctuation)
Thanks,
I wanted that for my blog post.
I generally liked the show, but I still don’t agree with the underlying philosophy the writers expressed through Baltar in that god-soaked final episode speech. I called it a philosophy of ignorance:
http://normdoering.blogspot.com/2009/03/it-is-finished-battlestar-galactica.html
Unintentionally, I assure you. There are dogmas in everything. What I meant was the “this must not be questioned” attitude does not come from a belief in god/God/Gods/Starnuck. It comes from people trying to use other’s belief to gain power over them.
I will point out that the One True God of the Cylons is very much not the god of any form of monotheism I am familiar with. How many god or gods can people name that don’t like to be called “God”? But don’t mind being called “It”?
What can we say about this being?
[ul]
[li]It doesn’t like the name God.
[/li][li]It is an It.
[/li][li]It wants humans and cylons to live together.
[/li][/ul]
That’s very much in line with the Jewish belief, at least as far as the not-naming Him.
I do know that Christians, at least the major branches, think of god as being an ‘it’ but seldom describe It in that fashion, in part because of the implied impersonality.
Who would that be?
So many rational people… 
So many kindred spirits. (To coin a phrase.)
I was going to launch into a vehement defence of science and scientific theory in general, and then evolution and natural selection in particular, but it seems a small intelligent army has beaten me to it. And it seems, with more specific depth to some of their knowledge than I.
And then there’s that “god” whose name must not be spoken. Hmmm. I should have thought of that sooner.
Oh come now, it’s perfectly simple:
Unequivocal laws of the universe=stuff [i][u]I[/u][/i] [b][i][u]know[/u][/i][/b].
Dogma: Stuff [u][i]YOU[/i][/u] [b]believe[/b] that I don't. :D
(It’s not just science or religion. Happens in music too, at least within the academy. And it’s amazing how long you can go without noticing it, letting it poison you.)
As I understand it, Jewish thought about God is the most subtle and nuanced at admitting that such a being would be so far beyond our capability for understanding it, that language itself falls apart in its contemplation.
Actually there are dogma’s in science. The Central Dogma is fundamental to molecular biology, although Francis Crick subsequently thought dogma might have been a poor choice of words… 
Now I’m replying to my own replies. Swell.
Folks - ''It doesn’t like that name" and the god “whose name must not be said” or “cannot be said” or “say it and you will be in a world of hurt” are not inadvertent items. Not when it comes to this show.
So, our clever writers, we begin to learn, have answered (sort of) some of the questions that some of us hoped to have answered - especially re the days on Kobol.
We already have a pretty good idea that in the Cycle the Lords were akin to the “survivors” showing up on Earth 150,000 years ago. Not identical - just akin to.
Now we have IT. We know that the 5 priests (who may or not be the same as the FF) worshipped the unnamed god. It is doubtful that this god (IT) had corporeal form, because then we would have known his name - that is he would have been one of the Lords a/k/a gods.
So, where does this leave us? Well, the 13th may have been on their way to monotheism (IT). I guess the question is whether their Cents finished the move towards monotheism (do we know?) or whether the first monotheists were the Cents of the 12 Colonies? Whatever< the 5 priests, and presumably the 13 Tribe, appear to have been on to something when it came to the true nature of, well, whatever IT is - at least in the BSG universe.
Now, there remains the question of whether the jealous god was/is the no name god. That never was answered. If you go with the above logic, the answer probably is no - because it is pretty clear that the jealous god was one of the Lords and the no name god is/was not - it is/was IT.
Even as one who was disappointed in the injection of IT, if the above is what RDM was getting at in terms of story line, I must take off my hat to him.
Also, one has to wonder whether some of these issues may not be explored a bit more in Caprica (or The Plan) as the whole idea of humans “creating” life in their own image gets examined more closely.
By the way, for better or for worse, Lee succeeded in lengthening the Cycle from what it had become - about 2,000 years.
It’ll be interesting to see if they address in Caprica how the 12 tribes came to have monotheistic ideas/beliefs when they seemingly had poloytheistic belief structures when they left Kobal. It was mentioned in one the last few episodes on BSG that the idea of the one true god came from the centurions which we could guess at this point means that - monotheistic ideas develope on the colonies, they create the first cylons and pass this belief into them, and the cylons eventually develope centurions who carry on this belief. Unless they were referring to the latter centurions that the skinjobs made.
Actually, there’s plenty of evidence for evolution, it’s just that most people don’t know about it.
In fact there are very abysmal levels of scientific ignorance in the general population:
http://normdoering.blogspot.com/2008/08/dealing-with-abysmal-ignorance.html
I would say that evidence in and of itself is relative. Evidence separated from a theory, or ideology, or the belief system it is meant to lend credit to, is left simply as just an object or phenomena observed. The object or phenomena standing alone doesnt become evidence until it is subjected to or guided towards a proposed purpose. Even then the best it can do is to attempt to provide ground for a belief system. Adding multiples of these together could lead in many possible directions as it is with evolution. One could say that there is much evidence for the theory or that there is little or none. It all depends on what ground you stack your objects or phenomena. And that becomes your belief system.
So, whatever IT is, they can’t speak ITs name without pissing IT off.
I still think IT is Sean.
Shhh, he, it doesn’t want that made public.
By the way, I’m still waiting for you to respond to the examples of positive mutations that I presented. You know, whenever you get around to it.