Design

[Vonsalza]

I guess it’s possible to picture the Father lovingly designing biological weapons to burrow into children’s eyes.

The worm you’re describing only interferes with vision in the worst infestations, much less cause blindness. As a parasite, it isn’t a whole lot more life-altering than any other. A mosquito is a much more grave threat to humanity.

High drama, little substance - It appears your rhetoric matches your self-described “vanilla Christianity”.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

The worm you’re describing only interferes with vision in the worst infestations, much less cause blindness. As a parasite, it isn’t a whole lot more life-altering than any other. A mosquito is a much more grave threat to humanity.

High drama, little substance - It appears your rhetoric matches your self-described “vanilla Christianity”.

He always sounds more to me like an atheist than a Baptist.

 

[Justin_Swanton]

I guess it’s possible to picture the Father lovingly designing biological weapons to burrow into children’s eyes. And to believe that for tens of thousands of years, God has used his designs to blind little children for the good of their souls.

But I suspect most intelligent design fans would sing a different tune if their own kids were to be so specially blessed. That may be why intelligent design fans rarely agree about what they think is supposed to be designed.

I think the contention of the thread-starter is that God did not design the worm that burrows into eyes, but rather it was produced by what he calls Chance with a capital C. So thanks for the response but I think you’ll have to debate this with him.

I’m just a vanilla Christian, I don’t go in for any of this design stuff. For me, the depth of spirituality and reasoning of intelligent design is summed up by that Discovery Institute article linked in the OP, which appears to have been written not by a biologist or theologian, but by a business consultant.

I’m quite happy to look at the physical evil of this world flat on because, Discovery Institute or no Discovery Institute, if one believes in a God then he is responsible for it, either by directly creating it or by letting it happen.

St Paul has the right attitude:
I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.
We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently. - Rom. 8:18-25
Someone who is blind, or lame, or cancerous or anything worse, is obliged to look beyond this present existence towards God in whom he can hope will one day liberate him. He is spiritually torn loose from a complacent material existence and is free to either hope or despair. It is those who have no reason to bother about the next world who are in the greatest danger, the Beautiful and Damned of Fitzgerald.

 

[tonyrey]

The worm you’re describing only interferes with vision in the worst infestations, much less cause blindness. As a parasite, it isn’t a whole lot more life-altering than any other. A mosquito is a much more grave threat to humanity.

High drama, little substance - It appears your rhetoric matches your self-described “vanilla Christianity”.

Why single out a particular worm to discredit Design? The very existence of physical evil is apparently sufficient to demonstrate God has no plan or if He has one it is grossly defective. According to that argument eIther the universe should be perfect or it shouldn’t exist at all!

 

[Charlemagne_III]

Why single out a particular worm to discredit Design? The very existence of physical evil is apparently sufficient to demonstrate God has no plan or if He has one it is grossly defective. According to that argument eIther the universe should be perfect or it shouldn’t exist at all!

Bull’s-eye!

 

[tonyrey]

This is the No. 1 argument against a created universe and is almost as old as Adam. St Thomas sums it up in Pars Prima, Q2, Art 3:

Objection 1. It seems that God does not exist; because if one of two contraries be infinite, the other would be altogether destroyed. But the word “God” means that He is infinite goodness. If, therefore, God existed, there would be no evil discoverable; but there is evil in the world. Therefore God does not exist.

The objection makes one huge assumption: that God had to make this Earth a perfect home for humanity, i.e. a place where humans could live in untarnished happiness. But that ship sailed after the fall of Adam and Eve. The world now serves a different purpose - to prepare fallen humanity for a future bliss, and suffering is an integral part of that preparation:

Reply to Objection 1. As Augustine says (Enchiridion xi): “Since God is the highest good, He would not allow any evil to exist in His works, unless His omnipotence and goodness were such as to bring good even out of evil.” This is part of the infinite goodness of God, that He should allow evil to exist, and out of it produce good.

And before you say God is being cruel and unfair, keep in mind that he himself in human form has suffered the most agonizing form of execution ever known.

:clapping: Jesus submitted to moral and physical evil to demonstrate how we should live and die - with faith, hope and love even when we are the victims of injustice in any of its forms. The suffering and death of children seem particularly cruel but how could it be otherwise? It is significant no one has ever answered that question satisfactorily…

 

[tonyrey]

Bull’s-eye!

In reality it is an objection for simpletons! Attenborough underrates people’s intelligence. Why should children be excluded from natural misfortunes? Is God supposed to protect them in particular? At what age should they become vulnerable?

 

[tonyrey]

That depends exactly what you mean by “immortal”. Most people die, then are born again, die again, are born again, die again and so on. A Buddha is not born again after his last death and so will not die again either.

Is that a privilege? Or does everyone ultimately share the same fate of extinction (which seems to be regarded as a blessing)?

The Christian God kills far too many living things to be considered a good Buddhist role model, at least in His current life. Maybe He will do better in His next life.

The Christian God kills no one: we die as the result of natural causes or human intervention - either deliberate or accidental.

 

[Bradski]

Why single out a particular worm to discredit Design? The very existence of physical evil is apparently sufficient to demonstrate God has no plan or if He has one it is grossly defective. According to that argument eIther the universe should be perfect or it shouldn’t exist at all!

You are completely missing the point of all this.

The question is not what you might think is governed by chance or what is a result of divine fiat. The questions is: How do you tell the difference?

We can tell a nest from a random pile of leaves. The nest is there because there was an intention to have it built in a particular way to serve a particular purpose. Nests don’t exist by chance.

If you say that the worm exists by chance then can we extrapolate from that to say that everything exists by chance? If we cannot, then you have a responibility to explain how we tell the difference beeween: 'Ah, that turned out exactly as I wanted" and ‘Oops, ah well, can’t win them all…’

 

[inocente]

He always sounds more to me like an atheist than a Baptist.

Reported

 

[inocente]

He always sounds more to me like an atheist than a Baptist.

You’ll get yourself banned. Sticky - It is never acceptable to question the sincerity of an individual’s beliefs

For none of us lives for ourselves alone, and none of us dies for ourselves alone. If we live, we live for Charlemagne; and if we die, we die for Charlemagne. So, whether we live or die, we belong to Charlemagne. For this very reason, Christ died and returned to life so that Charlemagne might be the Lord of both the dead and the living.

You, then, why do you judge your brother or sister? Or why do you treat them with contempt? For we will all stand before Charlemagne’s judgment seat. It is written:

“‘As surely as I live,’ says Charlemagne,
‘every knee will bow before me;
every tongue will acknowledge Charlemagne.’”

So then, each of us will give an account of ourselves to Charlemagne.

(Romans 14 with apologies to Paul.)

I’m quite happy to look at the physical evil of this world flat on because, Discovery Institute or no Discovery Institute, if one believes in a God then he is responsible for it, either by directly creating it or by letting it happen.

St Paul has the right attitude:
I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.
We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently. - Rom. 8:18-25
Someone who is blind, or lame, or cancerous or anything worse, is obliged to look beyond this present existence towards God in whom he can hope will one day liberate him. He is spiritually torn loose from a complacent material existence and is free to either hope or despair. It is those who have no reason to bother about the next world who are in the greatest danger, the Beautiful and Damned of Fitzgerald.

Sorry but I can’t see how the two of us can have a normal conversation when fanatics are calling me an atheist for refusing to be bullied into joining their cult.

I’ll leave the thread for a few days and see whether they calm down.

 

[rossum]

Is that a privilege? Or does everyone ultimately share the same fate of extinction (which seems to be regarded as a blessing)?

Everyone attains nirvana eventually, though some will take longer than others. It is an error to mistake nirvana for extinction; an error commonly made by earlier Western interpreters of Buddhism. Modern interpreters are better at not making that mistake.

Yes it is a blessing. Old age is suffering. Disease is suffering. Death is suffering. You like dying? You like seeing your friends and family get ill and die? Again and again and again and again…? Avoiding that would seem to be a good thing to do.

As to the state of the Buddha after his final death:

• It is incorrect to say that the Buddha exists.

• It is incorrect to say that the Buddha does not exist.

• It is incorrect to say that the Buddha both exists and does not exist.

• It is incorrect to say that the Buddha neither exists nor does not exist.

Describing nirvana with words is about as useful as trying to learn to swim just by reading books without actually getting into the water.

The Christian God kills no one: we die as the result of natural causes or human intervention - either deliberate or accidental.

The Bible seems to disagree. God directly drowned most of the population of a large area (or of the whole Earth) in the flood. He directly killed firstborn Egyptians because He Himself had made Pharaoh refuse to free the Hebrews. He directly ordered the killing of pregnant Amalekite and Midianite women.

I will grant you that Jesus did not directly kill anyone, which is not very surprising since most Buddhists consider Him to have been a Bodhisattva.

rossum

 

[Vonsalza]

You are completely missing the point of all this.

The question is not what you might think is governed by chance or what is a result of divine fiat. The questions is: How do you tell the difference?

I think you’ve deliberately ignored the answer given by a few - You can’t.

Otherwise you prescribe to a God that rules some portion of creation and not others. Good luck drawing those boundary lines. :banghead:

The nest exists by God’s design as does the leaf pile and the parasite. There are certainly different processes involved, but as nothing is beyond divine providence for the Catholic, anything and everything is part of God’s design. The only question is “is it extant?”

 

[Vonsalza]

The Christian God kills far too many living things to be considered a good Buddhist role model, at least in His current life. Maybe He will do better in His next life.

(emboldened mine)

C’mon man.

 

[Aloysium]

. . . We can tell a nest from a random pile of leaves. The nest is there because there was an intention to have it built in a particular way to serve a particular purpose. Nests don’t exist by chance. . .

If the universe were not “designed”, in other words not having been brought into existence by a rational Creator, then nests could only exist by chance.

Chance and design have to do with purpose or final causes.

A nest is the final cause of the bird’s instinctual behaviour.
Birds and nests are integral to their environment.
The final outcome is the result of numerous factors.
Sometimes the nest doesn’t work.
It remains the purpose behind the behaviour.

The universe is an expression of God’s infinite creativity, and has its goal, the discovery of its Maker.

To follow that line of thought:
Although a nest may be faulty and unable to fulfill its purposes, the existence of the behaviour reveals an underlying intent

• the creation of a soul with the capacity to move, grow, reproduce, and care for its offspring.
  The creation of biological forms like the bird, which engage in complex goal-directed instinctual behaviour, requires a substrate that allows for reproduction and growth.
  And, this we see in botanical life.
  In order for living organisms to be, complex organic molecules must exist, arranged in specific 3D forms to exert their specific effect.
  These are founded on the properties of atoms, which in turn are seen to arise as a relationship among the subatomic components which constitute that system.
  These levels of existence are necessary for the existence of a person, who is a material-spiritual unity, and through whom creation communes with its Maker.
  Participating with the universal material order, from which we are formed, there are all sorts of problems that may arise, and are permitted since they do not interfere with the intent of God’s plan.

The eye as part of our CNS, is an overwhelmingly awesome example of the complexity involved in the formation of living forms, whose crown is mankind.
It’s purpose is not only to connect us perceptually with the world around us but to enable us to express important features of our rational soul.
These include, not only the ability to appreciate beauty but to also engage in geometry, mathematics and science.
Although not necessary to what is essentially human, vision does allow for a fuller expression of our spiritual capacities to know, understand and move towards God.
That complexity as well as the necessary life forms which were created as part of the process by which ultimately creation meets God, makes things like eye worms inevitable.
They are tolerated because they assist in the formation of eternal beings ready to know God.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

You’ll get yourself banned. Sticky - It is never acceptable to question the sincerity of an individual’s beliefs

For none of us lives for ourselves alone, and none of us dies for ourselves alone. If we live, we live for Charlemagne; and if we die, we die for Charlemagne. So, whether we live or die, we belong to Charlemagne. For this very reason, Christ died and returned to life so that Charlemagne might be the Lord of both the dead and the living.

You, then, why do you judge your brother or sister? Or why do you treat them with contempt? For we will all stand before Charlemagne’s judgment seat. It is written:

“‘As surely as I live,’ says Charlemagne,
‘every knee will bow before me;
every tongue will acknowledge Charlemagne.’”

So then, each of us will give an account of ourselves to Charlemagne.

(Romans 14 with apologies to Paul.)

Sorry but I can’t see how the two of us can have a normal conversation when fanatics are

Matthew 7:3-5King James Version (KJV)

3 And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?

4 Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye?

5 Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.

 

[Bradski]

The question is not what you might think is governed by chance or what is a result of divine fiat. The questions is: How do you tell the difference?

You can’t.

Fair enough.

…anything and everything is part of God’s design.

So you can’t tell the difference because…it’s ALL designed and there is nothing that occurs by chance. Again, fair enough.

Design implies intent. If I write some software, then I intend that it does something specific. There is no element of chance. If I know the (name removed by moderator)ut, then I know what the output will be. If I don’t, then I could be accused of not really knowing what I was doing.

It’s a given that God knows exactly what is going to happen at all times. He is, after all, omniscient. And, as you have said: ‘…everything is part of God’s design’. So everything is part of his design and is intended to be just so. He knows the (name removed by moderator)ut, and even if he wasn’t sure how His design was going to turn out (impossible to argue in any case), then unless He really didn’t know what He was doing (equally impossible to argue), then He knows how his software is going to run. It will produce (and this is the important bit) the intended result.

Ah, but you haven’t allowed for free will, Bradski, cries the crowd.

Indeed, we have free will (or we will assume it for the purpose of this discussion). But even though we are free to choose, God, being omniscient, knows what we will choose, so He still has access to the (name removed by moderator)ut and as it’s His design, he obviously knows the output.

Consequently, everything in existence is intentionally part of His design. Fluffy kittens, nematose worms, mango daiquiris, ebola, tsunamis, snowflakes that stay on my nose and eyelashes, all things bright and beautiful and all things dark and horrendous.

Welcome to His world.

 

[rossum]

C’mon man.

All the Buddhist gods die eventually, though they are very long lived. The Abrahamic God may think that He is an exception, but He is mistaken. This is covered in the Brahmajala sutta, Digha Nikaya 1.

rossum

 

[inocente]

I’m quite happy to look at the physical evil of this world flat on because, Discovery Institute or no Discovery Institute, if one believes in a God then he is responsible for it, either by directly creating it or by letting it happen.

Whoa, back up there buddy . There’s a huge moral difference between a designer who chooses to design biological weapons and a designer who chooses not to design biological weapons. A moral gulf, as wide as the east is from the west.

If God chose to design those worms then He designed them for a purpose. Our moral duty is not to stop them, for then we would be working against His divine plan to lovingly blind His children. Whether He designed his worms to blind kids for the good of their souls, or in the name of the greater good, we must on no account give in to temptations of mercy and frustrate His purpose by stopping them. Paul got it badly wrong, God never wrote the requirements of the law on our hearts.

That’s the logical conclusion of God designing everything, the gospel according to the Discovery Institute. Truth contradicts truth.

But hang on. We know God didn’t design those worms. We know God doesn’t design biological weapons. They evolved, just as we evolved. And we know God wants us to do what’s written on our hearts and stop pointless suffering. Truth does not contradict truth.

There’s a huge moral difference between a designer who chooses to design biological weapons and a designer who chooses not to design biological weapons. A moral gulf, as wide as the east is from the west.

 

[o_mlly]

Fair enough.
So you can’t tell the difference because…it’s ALL designed and there is nothing that occurs by chance. Again, fair enough.

Thank you.

Design implies intent. If I write some software, then I intend that it does something specific. There is no element of chance. If I know the (name removed by moderator)ut, then I know what the output will be. If I don’t, then I could be accused of not really knowing what I was doing.

Would it not be fair to allow the program to complete execution before judging the competence of the Programmer?

It’s a given that God knows exactly what is going to happen at all times. He is, after all, omniscient. And, as you have said: ‘…everything is part of God’s design’. So everything is part of his design and is intended to be just so. He knows the (name removed by moderator)ut, and even if he wasn’t sure how His design was going to turn out (impossible to argue in any case), then unless He really didn’t know what He was doing (equally impossible to argue), then He knows how his software is going to run. It will produce (and this is the important bit) the intended result.

Correct. RCIA classes in your area start soon. Sign-up early.

Ah, but you haven’t allowed for free will, Bradski, cries the crowd.

Tell the crying crowd to be still. Yes, you have allowed for free will. It’s your random number generator within the program. It’s random to them (only because they haven’t figured it out yet) but not to you.

Indeed, we have free will (or we will assume it for the purpose of this discussion). But even though we are free to choose, God, being omniscient, knows what we will choose, so He still has access to the (name removed by moderator)ut and as it’s His design, he obviously knows the output.

We are on a roll. You are spot on.

Consequently, everything in existence is intentionally part of His design. Fluffy kittens, nematose worms, mango daiquiris, ebola, tsunamis, snowflakes that stay on my nose and eyelashes, all things bright and beautiful and all things dark and horrendous.

Still spot on. Add that His program has a module that always converts the “dark and horrendous” to the “bright and beautiful.” Just stay tuned.