How can we reconcile the argument of intelligent design with supposed design flaws?

[yppop]

As might be discerned from a closer reading of my post 206, I agree with much of what is being said especially with those of you that are defending God’s involvement both as a creator and a sustainer of reality. Unfortunately, I didn’t include the chart that I alluded to in my post. I contend that if we plot the complexity of matter against 13.7 billion years of earth’s history we get a gradually (not shown) increasing curve interrupted by several discontinuities in which complexity makes large quantum leaps in geologically short periods of time that can be interpreted as creation events. (see the attached chart).

I interpret the complexity curve to mean that God is directly involved during the creation events and indirectly during the stasis periods when God allowed His sustaining mechanism to proceed without direct interference - the results of which are manifested as the theory of evolution.

God sustains at the ground of reality with a single mechanism whereas science describes the result with a sequence of diverse mechanisms such as the big big bang, nuclear synthesis, the nebulous theory, accretion, abiogenesis, the theory of evolution, quantum mechanics, relativity, etc., etc., etc. etc…

The God mechanism is a form of cellular automaton into which contingency is built. Contingency results in a probabilistic mechanism that results in sporadic chaotic diversion from the norm in physical evil such as earth quakes, tornadoes, floods, etc.and in biological evil such as harmful bacteria, birth defects, etc.

There is only one reason that I can think of for God’s designing reality with a contingent mechanism and that is to ensure the existence of free will. A purely deterministic world would leave no choice on which we are to develop the purity of our souls by rejecting evil and opting for goodness.

And that is my answer tp the question raised in the OP.

Yppop

 

[tonyrey]

Well, no he hasn’t proved your point.

If simply NOT seeing things the same makes the truth behind them relative and “in the eye of the beholder,” then what has also been “proven” is that differing views on the origin and development of life on earth are likewise rendered NOT objective by the fact that evolutionists and ID people don’t agree on what to make of those.

There has to be a whole lot of presuming going on in your mind to make that kind of logically unwarranted leap of faith into the mental bog called Non Sequitur.

A delightful case of turning the tables while the opponent is shooting himself in the foot!

 

[tonyrey]

Even though scientific theories are provisional the principles on which it is based are objective. Total subjectivity would lead precisely nowhere and intelligent communication would be impossible!

Correction: Even though scientific theories are provisional the principles on which they are based are fundamental. If everything about science were provisional it wouldn’t be so successful (in its own restricted domain)…

 

[tonyrey]

As might be discerned from a closer reading of my post 206, I agree with much of what is being said especially with those of you that are defending God’s involvement both as a creator and a sustainer of reality. Unfortunately, I didn’t include the chart that I alluded to in my post. I contend that if we plot the complexity of matter against 13.7 billion years of earth’s history we get a gradually (not shown) increasing curve interrupted by several discontinuities in which complexity makes large quantum leaps in geologically short periods of time that can be interpreted as creation events. (see the attached chart).

I interpret the complexity curve to mean that God is directly involved during the creation events and indirectly during the stasis periods when God allowed His sustaining mechanism to proceed without direct interference - the results of which are manifested as the theory of evolution.

God sustains at the ground of reality with a single mechanism whereas science describes the result with a sequence of diverse mechanisms such as the big big bang, nuclear synthesis, the nebulous theory, accretion, abiogenesis, the theory of evolution, quantum mechanics, relativity, etc., etc., etc. etc…

The God mechanism is a form of cellular automaton into which contingency is built. Contingency results in a probabilistic mechanism that results in sporadic chaotic diversion from the norm in physical evil such as earth quakes, tornadoes, floods, etc.and in biological evil such as harmful bacteria, birth defects, etc.

There is only one reason that I can think of for God’s designing reality with a contingent mechanism and that is to ensure the existence of free will. A purely deterministic world would leave no choice on which we are to develop the purity of our souls by rejecting evil and opting for goodness.

And that is my answer tp the question raised in the OP.

Yppop

A superb response which transcends the false dilemma of Design and Chance which so often deceives both theists and atheists. The truth is rarely found by extremists…

 

[tonyrey]

The original question of this thread, regarding apparent imperfections in the created world, lies within the broader question of natural theology: does the natural world provide evidence for the existence of a creator, and even some basic information about the characteristics of the creator?

Within science, certainly, hypotheses invoking an actor or creator that might act supernaturally are problematic because they are untestable via science. But what about outside of science? “Natural evil” (apparent flaws or imperfections in nature) notwithstanding, does the harmony, beauty, and rationality of the world suggest the need for something or someone beyond nature? Do they raise worthwhile metaphysical questions that science cannot answer?

For a couple of thoughtful pieces on the more general question of whether nature “is enough,” i.e. whether the idea of a creator-god is really nothing more than Russell’s teapot, here are two thoughtful pieces.

Tom Clark answers that nature (naturalism, actually) is enough.

In the above essay, Tom Clark reviews (critically, of course) a book by John Haught that argues for the opposite view. Haught also published a shorter version of his argument in his essay "Is Nature Enough? No."

Alas, the above might not be available free of charge. Part 1 of a somewhat similar essay by another author was just published today.

If naturalism were enough it would be capable of explaining itself! How on earth could it possibly do that? It would surely lead to an infinite regress of explanations…

 

[tonyrey]

Yes, all science is provisional. For example, Natural Selection could give way to Intelligent Design. Then all those atheists-of-the-gaps will have to back peddle like crazy.

Many scientists including atheists already recognise the inadequacy of materialism. The power of the mind cannot be discarded so easily in a realistic appraisal of itself! It is so fundamental we have to take it for granted whether we like it or not. Otherwise we are committing intellectual suicide… That is the supreme dilemma for the opponents of Design. They can consign reason to the refuse bin of history but what are they left with? :ehh:

 

[tonyrey]

Gravity was created by God for a reason, and God is not blind.

“reason” is the keyword, Charlie. Where would we be without it? Utterly lost…

 

[yppop]

A superb response which transcends the false dilemma of Design and Chance which so often deceives both theists and atheists. The truth is rarely found by extremists…

Tony (and indirectly Charlemagne)
Thank you for your positive response and for your and Charlemagne’s rational discussion.

Your response pleases and intrigues me; it isn’t often that I get what appears to me to be understanding of what I write. So let me ask, are you referring to my disengagement of science and God by my separation of reality into an implicate level where God creates and sustains and an explicate level where we experience and science observes and describes (not explains) reality? Or, are you referring to the distinction in the path of actualization between the creation events where God is directly involved and the stasis periods where God is allowing scientists to describe what is manifested? Or perhaps both? Whichever, let me commend you for your perception.

Yppop

 

[tonyrey]

Tony (and indirectly Charlemagne)
Thank you for your positive response and for your and Charlemagne’s rational discussion.

Your response pleases and intrigues me; it isn’t often that I get what appears to me to be understanding of what I write. So let me ask, are you referring to my disengagement of science and God by my separation of reality into an implicate level where God creates and sustains and an explicate level where we experience and science observes and describes (not explains) reality? Or, are you referring to the distinction in the path of actualization between the creation events where God is directly involved and the stasis periods where God is allowing scientists to describe what is manifested? Or perhaps both? Whichever, let me commend you for your perception.

Yppop

I agree with both of your points. The false dilemma between Design and Chance is based on a simplistic interpretation of reality which implies that God is **directly **responsible for every event. Although he was a sceptic David Hume realised the laws of nature cannot cater for every contingency. What he didn’t explain was how the laws of nature originated…

 

[tonyrey]

I agree with both of your points. The false dilemma between Design and Chance is based on a simplistic interpretation of reality which implies that God is **directly **responsible for every event. Although he was a sceptic David Hume realised the laws of nature cannot cater for every contingency. What he didn’t explain was how the laws of nature originated…

He ruled out miracles, of course, but that is another topic - which needs reviving.

 

[inocente]

**Positive **aspects of reality like the beauty of a butterfly and the harmony in nature are designed.

**Negative **aspects like disease and disasters are caused by unfortunate coincidences like exposure to radiation or being in an earthquake zone.

The false dilemma between Design and Chance is based on a simplistic interpretation of reality which implies that God is **directly **responsible for every event.

Hold on, you invented the twin deities of design with a capital d and chance with a capital c, no one else speaks of them, then you say they’re a false dilemma. True, that’s why no one else talks of them.

There is no evidence that the laws of nature are the product of physical necessity. The onus is on the sceptic to explain why there is a framework of order rather than absolute chaos…

“The anthropic principle is the philosophical consideration that observations of the Universe must be compatible with the conscious and sapient life that observes it.” - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle

A delightful case of turning the tables while the opponent is shooting himself in the foot!

Tony, there are three intelligent design fans on this thread, and after asking each of you, it appears you each have a different theory, with no apparent agreement about what you mean by design, or what you think is and isn’t designed, or when you think it was designed. None of these theories are written down as rigorous logical arguments, none of them have been tested, it appears that none of them can be tested. None of you appear to work in the life sciences or have any formal training or experience, and one of you has told me firmly that Genesis 1 is not about salvation but is about 1980’s science.

Yet each of the three of you apparently looks down on mere mortals who are not fans of any of the above, and to give one example from each of you, I’m a “purported theist” who is really a “confused agnostic” and who is “shooting himself in the foot”.

What’s the point of all this? Taking your own personal theory of intelligent design, what do you think are its advantages over standard science and standard theology? It appears to have none of their rigor or explanatory power, so what am I missing, what does it bring to the party for an ordinary moderate Christian who has a relationship with Christ? Or is it intended to bring people to Christ, if so how? Or what?

 

[inocente]

As might be discerned from a closer reading of my post 206, I agree with much of what is being said especially with those of you that are defending God’s involvement both as a creator and a sustainer of reality. Unfortunately, I didn’t include the chart that I alluded to in my post. I contend that if we plot the complexity of matter against 13.7 billion years of earth’s history we get a gradually (not shown) increasing curve interrupted by several discontinuities in which complexity makes large quantum leaps in geologically short periods of time that can be interpreted as creation events. (see the attached chart).

I interpret the complexity curve to mean that God is directly involved during the creation events and indirectly during the stasis periods when God allowed His sustaining mechanism to proceed without direct interference - the results of which are manifested as the theory of evolution.

God sustains at the ground of reality with a single mechanism whereas science describes the result with a sequence of diverse mechanisms such as the big big bang, nuclear synthesis, the nebulous theory, accretion, abiogenesis, the theory of evolution, quantum mechanics, relativity, etc., etc., etc. etc…

The God mechanism is a form of cellular automaton into which contingency is built. Contingency results in a probabilistic mechanism that results in sporadic chaotic diversion from the norm in physical evil such as earth quakes, tornadoes, floods, etc.and in biological evil such as harmful bacteria, birth defects, etc.

There is only one reason that I can think of for God’s designing reality with a contingent mechanism and that is to ensure the existence of free will. A purely deterministic world would leave no choice on which we are to develop the purity of our souls by rejecting evil and opting for goodness.

And that is my answer tp the question raised in the OP.

Yppop

I like some of your labels but the X axis is not to any recognizable linear, logarithmic or exponential scale. The “consciousness” label shouldn’t be on the Y axis as it makes it look as though microbes have twice as much consciousness as rocks. The relative complexities appear to be arbitrary, and it’s not clear what type of complexity you refer to (disorganized/organized etc.) or how you measure it, and therefore whether the jumps actually exist and are the only such jumps. If I say your graph doesn’t stand up to scrutiny, what saith you?

Then, if God is directly involved at some points but not others, it would seem God must go through cycles, which is very Eastern of you, but that would mean God is constantly changing and therefore made of parts, contingent rather than necessary. Your phrase “the God mechanism is a form of cellular automaton” also implies parts in motion, along the lines of Conway’s Game of Life. Is that your intent? Also, how does that “God mechanism” have any room to be non-deterministic rather than be, as in Game of Life, a blind force? Seems a bit of a distance from God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

 

[Aloysium]

I like some of your labels but the X axis is not to any recognizable linear, logarithmic or exponential scale. The “consciousness” label shouldn’t be on the Y axis as it makes it look as though microbes have twice as much consciousness as rocks. The relative complexities appear to be arbitrary, and it’s not clear what type of complexity you refer to (disorganized/organized etc.) or how you measure it, and therefore whether the jumps actually exist and are the only such jumps. If I say your graph doesn’t stand up to scrutiny, what saith you?

Then, if God is directly involved at some points but not others, it would seem God must go through cycles, which is very Eastern of you, but that would mean God is constantly changing and therefore made of parts, contingent rather than necessary. Your phrase “the God mechanism is a form of cellular automaton” also implies parts in motion, along the lines of Conway’s Game of Life. Is that your intent? Also, how does that “God mechanism” have any room to be non-deterministic rather than be, as in Game of Life, a blind force? Seems a bit of a distance from God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

I understood it to be a pictoral representation of his concepts. Those are not x and y axes.
The “cycles” would be the “days” of creation.
There are qualitative developments, not previously seen in the unfolding of the universe that sees the creation of mankind on the sixth “day”.
His ideas do not contradict Genesis as far as I can see.
I’m not saying I share all Yppop’s views.

 

[yppop]

I agree with both of your points. The false dilemma between Design and Chance is based on a simplistic interpretation of reality which implies that God is **directly **responsible for every event. Although he was a sceptic David Hume realised the laws of nature cannot cater for every contingency. What he didn’t explain was how the laws of nature originated…

The laws of physics were created at the implicate level. Imagine the entire universe as a static 3-dimensional configuration of point particles, a NOW. Then write an algorithm that determines a new configuration, a NEXT. Then increment from the NOW to the NEXT repeatedly. Any sentient object within (and part of) the configuration would perceive: (1) the change as motion, (2) certain local configurations as matter, and (3) the change of local configurations organized as matter as kinetic energy. If the algorithm produces coherent motion, an astute observer might find an inherent relationship of the motion of matter and write an equation that describes the coherent motion, hence the laws of physics. And as anyone that has worked with physics knows that, with very few exceptions, the equations work only with the simplest of situations, solutions of more complex situations require algorithmic solutions, for example, a three body problems.

Cellular automaton consists of: (1) an initial configuration, (2) information produced by an algorithm, and (3) an impetus of incrementation. Each initial configuration produces a single outcome (unless some contingency is built in). To DESIGN a new outcome,for example a eukaryotic cell where none existed, one would simply have to insert a single NOW with an appropriately designed configuration that would result in the desired outcome. It would, of course, require a near omniscient intellect such as the Mind of God.

Incidentally, the impetus that increments the configuration from NOW to NEXT requires a near omnipotent cause, yes, the Mind of God. This plausible possibility means that every single motion in the universe, including the motion of my fingers typing this post is reality being sustained by God. God at times is creating and always sustaining.

So there are the doubters and surely many believers that will express disbelief in what I write and the thought “science fiction” enters their minds, but the same persons will accept multiverses, 11-dimensional branes, dark matter, the last common ancestor, and emergent properties, etc… as scientific facts.

Yppop

 

[tonyrey]

Hold on, you invented the twin deities of design with a capital d and chance with a capital c, no one else speaks of them, then you say they’re a false dilemma. True, that’s why no one else talks of them.

Having written a Ph.D. thesis on Design I assure you I wasn’t the first to use capital letters. The false dilemma between Design and Chance implies God is **directly **responsible for every event.

“The anthropic principle is the philosophical consideration that observations of the Universe must be compatible with the conscious and sapient life that observes it.” - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle

That is not evidence that the laws of nature are due to physical necessity.** W****hy** is there order rather than chaos?

Tony, there are three intelligent design fans on this thread, and after asking each of you, it appears you each have a different theory, with no apparent agreement about what you mean by design, or what you think is and isn’t designed, or when you think it was designed.

The fundamental theory is the same for everyone who believes the universe was created by God for the benefit of His creatures.

None of these theories are written down as rigorous logical arguments, none of them have been tested, it appears that none of them can be tested. None of you appear to work in the life sciences or have any formal training or experience, and one of you has told me firmly that Genesis 1 is not about salvation but is about 1980’s science.

The weakness of the Chance theory highlights the superiority of Design:

    (i) Adequacy:  Chance does not explain the origin of  persons with insight, free will and moral responsibility. 
       
     (ii) Simplicity: Chance presupposes a plurality of unrelated factors  – persons, values, physical energy and the laws of nature:

“The supreme being remains a mere ideal, it is yet an ideal without a flaw, a concept which completes and crowns the whole of human knowledge… This highest formal unity… is the purposive unity of things.” (Kant)

(iii) Intelligibility: It is incomprehensible how rational beings are produced by particles which lack hindsight, insight and foresight.

 (iv)  Consistency: It is impossible to reconcile indeterminism and  determinism with the power  of self-determination, moral responsibility and the right to life.

 (v)  Probability: The immense complexity of the human brain reveals the extreme improbability  of the Chance theory:

“Its chances were infinitely slender” - Monod
“A feat of fantastic difficulty” - Medawar
“A monster of improbability”- Dawkins

Yet each of the three of you apparently looks down on mere mortals who are not fans of any of the above, and to give one example from each of you, I’m a “purported theist” who is really a “confused agnostic” and who is “shooting himself in the foot”.

What’s the point of all this? Taking your own personal theory of intelligent design, what do you think are its advantages over standard science and standard theology?

It is not “my own personal theory of intelligent design”:

"The metaphysic

that recognizes a divine Reality substantial to the world of things and lives and minds; the psychology that finds in the soul something similar to, or even identical to, divine Reality; the ethic that places man’s final end in the knowledge of the immanent and transcendent Ground of all being;
the thing is immemorial and universal. Rudiments of the perennial philosophy may be found among the traditional lore of primitive peoples in every region of the world, and in its fully developed forms it has a place in every one of the higher religions." - *The perennial philosophy
*

It appears to have none of their rigor or explanatory power, so what am I missing, what does it bring to the party for an ordinary moderate Christian who has a relationship with Christ? Or is it intended to bring people to Christ, if so how? Or what?

Jesus Himself referred to the beauty of lilies as evidence of Design.

29Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father. 30And

even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. 31So do not be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.…Matthew 10:31

 

[Peter_Plato]

What’s the point of all this? Taking your own personal theory of intelligent design, what do you think are its advantages over standard science and standard theology? It appears to have none of their rigor or explanatory power, so what am I missing, what does it bring to the party for an ordinary moderate Christian who has a relationship with Christ? Or is it intended to bring people to Christ, if so how? Or what?

Let’s be honest and admit that even those who espouse “standard” science AND “standard” theology still have to account for the overlapping of the two, Sure, ID advocates claim the two are blended and try to account for that by attempting to fill in the details.

What you are doing is excusing yourself from having to explain how “standard” theology integrates with “standard” science. You can’t just arbitrarily declare non-overlapping magisteria as if one has absolutely nothing to do with the other. Nor can you claim God as Creator and then ignore all repercussions in terms of what “creating” means or what creating means with regard to the actual ordering and “management” of the created universe.

In other words, you and anyone else who believes in God still must account for God’s hand in creation, you can’t just pretend the issue doesn’t exist for you.

 

[inocente]

I understood it to be a pictoral representation of his concepts. Those are not x and y axes.
The “cycles” would be the “days” of creation.
There are qualitative developments, not previously seen in the unfolding of the universe that sees the creation of mankind on the sixth “day”.
His ideas do not contradict Genesis as far as I can see.
I’m not saying I share all Yppop’s views.

The diagram uses the Cartesian two-dimensional coordinate system, but if you don’t want to call them axes then by all means let’s call them “lines which function exactly like axes and look exactly like axes and are at right angles exactly like axes and are labelled like axes but aren’t actually axes for unspecified reasons” .

The problem remains of why pick out those particular jumps, if those jumps actually exist. And if it takes Genesis 1 literally then surely it must be saying the scripture is literally wrong, since the days don’t match the jumps, if Gen 1 is literally about jumps. But yppop hasn’t responded yet and may well correct me, he usually does.

 

[inocente]

Having written a Ph.D. thesis on Design I assure you I wasn’t the first to use capital letters. The false dilemma between Design and Chance implies God is **directly **responsible for every event.

You’re not answering my point, which was who else but you makes the division between Chance and Design? Which philosophers or theologians write about this division between chance with a capital c versus design with a capital d?

Btw can we see that thesis? It would be good to finally see one of these many varied theories written down in with academic rigor.

That is not evidence that the laws of nature are due to physical necessity.** W****hy** is there order rather than chaos?

For the sake of argument, suppose for a moment you believe in one of those multiverse notions, where there are many possible worlds.

You could not exist in any of the worlds where there is insufficient order. And, let’s not forget, you couldn’t have existed in our universe before stars manufactured carbon and oxygen, nor could you exist when the universe runs down into the speculated “heat death”.

You can only ask why you exist in a world where there’s sufficient order of a kind which is compatible with you existing. There’s no chance or design involved there, unless you believe that you preexisted all those possible worlds and either by luck or design ended up in this world in an epoch where your body could exist. But that would seem to be incompatible with the Church’s teaching, which (I think) is that you got your soul at the moment of conception, and so can only physically exist in a world where you can be physically conceived.

Now your design theory short-circuits that multiverse notion, avoiding its need for many worlds, but it doesn’t disprove it in any way. Surely every attempt to prove or disprove God will fail (for 'It is said: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’" Luke 4 [Deut. 6:16]).

The fundamental theory is the same for everyone who believes the universe was created by God for the benefit of His creatures.

Nope. There are plenty Christians who don’t believe in any version of intelligent design, including any of many varied theories on this thread.

The weakness of the Chance theory highlights the superiority of Design:

Again, you’re the only one who talks of chance with a capital C versus design with a capital D.

I got lost with your post after that as the formatting went awry, perhaps you could post that part again.

 

[inocente]

Let’s be honest and admit that even those who espouse “standard” science AND “standard” theology still have to account for the overlapping of the two, Sure, ID advocates claim the two are blended and try to account for that by attempting to fill in the details.

What you are doing is excusing yourself from having to explain how “standard” theology integrates with “standard” science. You can’t just arbitrarily declare non-overlapping magisteria as if one has absolutely nothing to do with the other. Nor can you claim God as Creator and then ignore all repercussions in terms of what “creating” means or what creating means with regard to the actual ordering and “management” of the created universe.

In other words, you and anyone else who believes in God still must account for God’s hand in creation, you can’t just pretend the issue doesn’t exist for you.

I don’t see any issue.

By standard science I mean the tested and unfalsified theories in text books, as opposed to ideas which have been disproved, or are untested (speculative) or are unscientific (i.e. cannot be tested).

By standard theology I mean, for you, what your Church teaches, as opposed to discarded or heretical ideas or things such as Cartesian substance dualism.

You appear to be saying that standard science and standard theology, as so defined, are incompatible, which then forces every Catholic to independently invent some bridge between them, or to live in permanent cognitive discord.

I doubt many Catholics would agree with that. Which aspects of the two do you think you have to account for “overlapping”?

 

[Aloysium]

The diagram uses the Cartesian two-dimensional coordinate system, but if you don’t want to call them axes then by all means let’s call them “lines which function exactly like axes and look exactly like axes and are at right angles exactly like axes and are labelled like axes but aren’t actually axes for unspecified reasons” .

The problem remains of why pick out those particular jumps, if those jumps actually exist. And if it takes Genesis 1 literally then surely it must be saying the scripture is literally wrong, since the days don’t match the jumps, if Gen 1 is literally about jumps. But yppop hasn’t responded yet and may well correct me, he usually does.

Ok. Let’s see if we can help the guy out.

I think I see what he was getting at. So, what is that?
Let’s say the y axis represent complexity of being.
Nothing is simpler than light, or whatever quality you would attribute to the first bit of creation. In eastern philosophies it is a sound - Aum. Sticking with this metaphor, we see with the creation of not-light, time coming into being, a change from the initial state.
“Light”, as time is pushed forward, is transformed into a wide variety of bosons, photons among them. At some point space with its gravitational forces is brought into existence, and everything subsequently explodes with the big expansion. We see a growing complexity, with the appearance of new forms in the universe.
When we get to life, we see a new sort of being which utilizes pre-existing components in the creation of a new whole. This being as does everything else, exists in relation to everything else, its physical manifestation is the result of a life principle which organizes matter into itself so that the creature exists in time and space, is maintained, can grow and reproduce.
I’m getting tired of writing so let’s jump to us.
The scale of complexity is logarithmic since in man we find a dramatic surge in capacities and an eternal nature.

I’m not a physicist and the state of our knowledge, imho, is primitive so I don’t think I can do this area justice.

You’re probably not happy with that.
I am.
I can’t say I’ve taken much time to comprehend his vision, but maybe this can contribute in some way to Yppop’s search.

Genesis is a truthful explanation that can be understood by those approaching it with open minds and hearts in any era. A kid gets it. There is a depth of meaning that it continues to act as a personal font of truth decade after decade.