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buffalo
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I don’t like the word play, but how about an artist completing his painting?
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buffalo
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Catholics understand God to be almighty. That is He does what He sets out to do. There are things God cannot do:
He cannot lie
He cannot deceive
He cannot be unjust
etc.
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prodigalson2011
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It sounds as though this is an argument for the special creation of both DNA and the different “kinds” of animals. So unless I’m mistaken in this interpretation, no, this would not fit the framework of my question.
My question is whether you think that the Big Bang could have been so finely tuned that the resulting chain of causality would have been sufficient to eventually give rise, without any special intervention, to DNA, the first single celled organism and every subsequent biological development.
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Peter_Plato
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Perhaps the Big Bang event could have been so designed, but I think the implication you are falling prey to is that if it wasn’t that must have been due to a shortcoming of the designer, the design or both. I am not clear that that is necessarily the case. It may be due to the inherent limitations or structure of the materials themselves. We would not fault a bridge engineer for being unable to construct a suspension bridge out of glass or water. Chemicals may have certain inherent limitations in terms of self-organization. I don’t think enough is known to conclude the Big Bang could have been tuned to the creation of life. Science hasn’t been able to make that determination.
Second, there is the problem of the nucleotide bases arranging themselves as code in the DNA strands. There does not seem to be any physical or chemical reason or cause for the bases to be ordered in the way they are. Yet, this is crucially important for life to begin. No physical or chemical cause implies that the “tuning” of the universe did not physically or chemically lead to abiogenesis.
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prodigalson2011
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I’m not saying that at all. What I’m pointing out is that a certain strand of thought in the ID community is affirming the opposite: that it couldn’t have been. Yet no less a Catholic thinker than Aquinas himself rejected the idea of episodic creation and even Scripture uses language that is highly suggestive of abiogenesis: “Let the earth bring forth….” But I digress: I am only trying here to convey that it’s an insult to God to say He couldn’t have done it, regardless of whether He did or didn’t.
As to abiogenesis, though the science isn’t quite there yet, the mounting evidence weighs thus far in its favor, and I simply can not understand why some are so adamantly opposed to the idea.
The way I look at it is this: to make a crude analogy (which you may have heard me make before on these forums), imagine God is playing billiards. Having infinite knowledge and power, he sinks every last ball on the break. Analogously, every physical event is foreseen and the “angle” and “force” of the shot adjusted accordingly before God strikes the universal cue ball. In other words, God so arranges the minute details of the Big Bang in such a way that every chemical reaction that would lead to the creation of life is inevitable. This is very much in line with the philosophy of both Sts. Thomas and Augustine. Obviously, the number of angles to be considered in the case of the universe is orders of magnitude greater than the number of billiard balls on a table, but this is God we’re talking about here.
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nmgauss
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Yahweh deceived Abraham into thinking that he was a good guy when he arrived at Abraham’s tent with two angels and had something to eat and drink. But he then lied when he told Abraham that the son, Isaac, had to be sacrificed.
Yahweh was unjust when he sponsored Joshua slaughtering the Canaanites for the sake of the Israelites. Is this justice?
If God doesn’t do these things today, then He is a different God than the one portrayed in the first few books of the Bible.
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Peter_Plato
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I don’t disagree with you. It is possible for that to have been the case. I just don’t think God’s omnipotence and omniscience means that it must have been the case. I think I read somewhere that Scripture uses the Hebrew word for “create” {bara (בָּרָא, to create)} instead of form or make {asah (עָשָׂה, to make or do)} to describe God’s activity in only three instances: the creation of the universe, the creation of life and the creation of human beings. If that is true (and I am not categorically saying it is) then there is room for the idea of the creative intervention of God after the Big Bang. I just don’t think such intervention necessarily implies a lack on God’s part, just as miracles do not imply that God was short-sighted or missed the boat the first time and needed to rectify a goof-up that should have been worked out at the Big Bang Event.
I think we have to be careful about what we logically allow or assume to be true when there is no warrant for doing so.
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Jotto
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Me thinks the whole “intervention” notion of God’s creativity should be summarily dismissed. If God can be said to create at all, then reflecting the current understanding of quantum physics, it is a continuous process in which each bundle of matter is created from moment to moment again and again the only limit being that what has been determines to some extent what can become a la Whitehead. Unfortunately the orthodoxy of Darwinian biology still requires any notion of teleology to be dismissed as rank heresy. On wonders when biologists will be as open and tolerant as the community of physicists, which, though the majority may not be sympathetic to the notion that the ground of reality is conscious, do not drum out any and every physicist who chooses to interpret the data in that manner.
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prodigalson2011
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Neither do I.
That’s correct. My understanding is that those three instances refer to the creation of a) all matter, b) the nefesh (the animal soul), and c) the neshama (man’s intellectual/spiritual soul). In this case, the physical elements of life (i.e. those available to scientific scrutiny) would all fall under the first instance.
I am not saying that there is no room in Catholic theology for God’s intervention. Such an assertion would be decidedly UN-Catholic. I fully believe that God does intervene in his creation. But as far as the study of the everyday world goes, I agree with St. Augustine: “It is our business here to inquire how God has constituted the natures of His creatures, not how far it may have pleased Him to work on them by way of miracle.”
I don’t think that it necessarily implies a lack, but I think for one to assert that an intervention was necessary is completely unjustifiable. For mortal man to positively delimit God’s omnipotence is the height of presumption!
Scientifically, there is warrant for believing in the occurence of abiogenesis. Theologically, there is license for accepting it. However, I have made no positive assertions about abiogenesis. I have merely been asking our friend buffalo if he accepts abiogenesis as a possibility. As I’ve stated before, I have no dogmatic belief one way or the other, though I obviously lean quite heavily towards the theory I have propounded here.
What I take issue with is that element of ID theory that sets a priori limits on science within nature. Physical science is an a posteriori game. At this point, the positive assertion that abiogenesis could not have happened is scientifically unsound and theologically unwarranted. Just as much would be the positive assertion that abiogenesis must have happened; but that’s not what I’m saying here. I’m simply saying that there’s a very good chance, from the purview of science, that it did happen and, furthermore, such a possibility is perfectly consistent with Catholic theology. That’s all.
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rossum
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The Bible disagrees with you:
1 Kings 22:23 Now, therefore, behold, the Lord hath put a lying spirit in the mouth of these thy prophets, and the Lord hath spoken evil concerning thee.
2 Chronicles 18:22 Now therefore, behold, the Lord hath put a lying spirit in the mouth of these thy prophets.
Jeremiah 20:7 O Lord, thou hast deceived me, and I was deceived.
Ezekiel 14:9 And if a prophet be deceived when he hath spoken a thing, I the Lord have deceived that prophet.
2 Thessalonians 2:11 For this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie.
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rossum
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That is one of the big problems with design as science. Notice the phrase, “It could be…”
With any omnimax designer, then the limits of “It could be…” are very wide indeed and so it is almost impossible to show evidence against that hypothesis.
We need to know what the designer could not do.
We know that evolution could not have produced a rabbit during the Cambrian period. Finding such a rabbit would destroy common descent and much of evolution. With design, a Cambrian rabbit just gets, “It could be…”
That is a strong indicator that omnimax design is outside science – it cannot be falsified because there isn’t anything that the designer could not do.
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tonyrey
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buffalo
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The big bang would be a subset of God’s big thought.
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buffalo
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The odds seem to be overwhelmingly against it. It looks designed right from the get go.
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buffalo
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Fossils are rare in themselves. Resting your argument on rabbits is an issue.
He cannot make a rock He cannot lift. He cannot make a square triangle. So we know there are logical limits. God is almighty.
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buffalo
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These have already been dealt with over and over.
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rossum
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Odds are numbers. Where are your calculations showing us those odds, together with the assumptions and data you used as (name removed by moderator)ut to those calculations?
So far,all you have is “it sure looks designed to me”, which is fine as a personal opinion, but which doesn’t cut it as biology.
rossum
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buffalo
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We have been over this.
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rossum
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prodigalson2011
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I’m not sure what you mean by that. Could you expound upon it?
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