Spoiler Alert

If you haven’t yet seen the final episode of Battlestar Galactica and plan to do so, stop.

Immediately after establishing that the Galactica has found the real Earth, and showing us that the entire fleet has arrived, the show basically took a turn I never would have anticipated.  As I’ve mentioned earlier (check the “bsg” tags for other Galactica posts) I was a bit surprised, but not completely shocked, that the show overtly affirmed the existence of God.

What was completely unexpected is that the show essentially endorsed “intelligent design.”  Intelligent design is the idea that the universe, life and everything else including evolution, is guided by some intelligent force, usually understood to be God.  There is a bitter debate about whether this can be reconciled with science, which I am not especially interested in, because I think both sides are arguing about something else and doing so dishonestly.

When the Galactica humans and Cylons arrive on Earth, they find a race of primitive but intelligent people already there.  Doc Cottle announces that they bury their dead, that he found a grave while exploring, and that he compared their DNA to the Galactica Humans’ DNA, and they are compatible.  This causes Adama and Baltar to remark that the same species evolved separately on different planets, and that the odds of that happening are astronomical.

Which essentially leaves us with intelligent design as the alternative explanation.  Given that the series already established that God was directing the show’s characters to their end, the intelligent design explanation is the only reasonable conclusion.

I don’t know if Moore is aware of this.  He is pretty bright but this also seems pretty far from his belief system.  Maybe he’s just having a laugh.

Finally, while many fans were disappointed to find out that the Cylons never had a plan, the show made it clear that God did.  Go figure.