Creation Science III - The Mind of God

When asked what Creation showed about the Mind of God, J.B.S. Haldane reportedly replied, "An inordinate fondness for beetles."

How resonant! Repeat the general problem with deducing a consciousness of (by definition) infinite subtlety and depth, but then add in more commonsplace observations. Unless one starts with benevolence (as understood by us) and omnipotence as given, then bends the all the evidence in that direction, one simply could not come to a deduction of this standard model. Would Voltaire's Candide become part of a Creationist unit, learning across the curriculum? And does it make sense to teach design without considering the nature, the final, telelogical cause of such a design? Do we really want to give, say, the Manichaens and Gnostics a new lease on life, because, after all, they would certainly have a more superficially persuasive cause than orthodox Christian Pangloss. Perhaps we could use Robert Frost:

I found a dimpled spider, fat and white,
On a white heal-all, holding up a moth
Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth --
Assorted characters of death and blight
Mixed ready to begin the morning right,
Like the ingredients of a witches' broth --
A snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth,
And dead wings carried like a paper kite.

What had that flower to do with being white,
The wayside blue and innocent heal-all?
What brought the kindred spider to that height,
Then steered the white moth thither in the night?
What but design of darkness to appall?--
If design govern in a thing so small.

Because: if God is the eschatological ground, then asserting that God is Good is not a statement, it a a performative utterance, of allegiance, a comment on oneself, aligning the speaker with underlying order of the universe - it cannot be a moral limitation on the Absolute. Of course it may also be a whistling past a very literal graveyard, also a rather forlorn performance.