Evidence for Design?

[homesower]

There are those who have said that there can never be scientific evidence for creation as science deals with natural explanations for natural events. I suggest that this defines science too narrowly and only defines away the possibility of scientific evidence.

If I do an experiment I try to control all of the factors. I want no outside influence on this experiment. Yet, if my experiment goes awry I must at least consider the possibility that there was some outside factor I did not control that effected the results. It doesn’t mean that was the cause, merely that I must consider that some corruption could have caused this. That is why scientists value repeatability. An experiment done by different people should yield the same results.

In the case of design, scientists are ignoring the possibility of outside factors. They are defining away the possibility of an outside factor, but merely defining it away doesn’t make it go away.

There is a large elephant in the room, but they refuse to see it. They have creative explanations for the footprints in the butter, but having explained away the elephant they refuse to give creedance to the rumors that an elephant created the footprints.

There is indeed scientific evidence for intelligent design. Yes, God is outside of nature, but he has left ample clues. He is not hiding. He wants to be found.

Of course by they I mean some scientists, not all. Unfortunately that group is ascendant right now. Well, there certainly will be a time when the evidence is before their eyes, but they will no longer have the privilege of judging the evidence. The evidence will be judging them.

 

[ricmat]

If God loves everyone, and He knows some people, for whatever reason, will die in mortal sin and/or unrepentant, and thus will be condemned by God to eternal punishment, wouldn’t it be better, and more loving, to simply not create that person in the first place?

The “punishment” consists of not having God. Those who go through their lives insisting that they not have God are rewarded by God in the afterlife. They get what they want. They probably think they’re in Heaven. The door to hell is locked from the inside by those who continued to reject God’s love right up to the end.

If our only purpose is to know, love and serve God, and that is the only reason we were created, are people who can not do this, being short-changed, both in this life, and in the next because they will be punished forever for their inability to know love and serve God?

Sarah x

On the contrary, everybody CAN do it. It is written in our hearts. Those who follow their hearts (consciences) actually know, love, and serve God whether or not they know that they are doing it.

 

[Sair]

There are those who have said that there can never be scientific evidence for creation as science deals with natural explanations for natural events. I suggest that this defines science too narrowly and only defines away the possibility of scientific evidence.

If I do an experiment I try to control all of the factors. I want no outside influence on this experiment. Yet, if my experiment goes awry I must at least consider the possibility that there was some outside factor I did not control that effected the results. It doesn’t mean that was the cause, merely that I must consider that some corruption could have caused this. That is why scientists value repeatability. An experiment done by different people should yield the same results.

In the case of design, scientists are ignoring the possibility of outside factors. They are defining away the possibility of an outside factor, but merely defining it away doesn’t make it go away.

There is a large elephant in the room, but they refuse to see it. They have creative explanations for the footprints in the butter, but having explained away the elephant they refuse to give creedance to the rumors that an elephant created the footprints.

There is indeed scientific evidence for intelligent design. Yes, God is outside of nature, but he has left ample clues. He is not hiding. He wants to be found.

Of course by they I mean some scientists, not all. Unfortunately that group is ascendant right now. Well, there certainly will be a time when the evidence is before their eyes, but they will no longer have the privilege of judging the evidence. The evidence will be judging them.

If the designer really wanted to be found, in an unequivocal way, he/she/it would find some direct way to make us know of it. The fact is, we can recognise things made by human designers,* because we know human designers make certain things*. We don’t know that there is anyone who makes snowflakes, for example, or anyone who designs trees. Without evidence of a supernatural designer creating these things - the kind of evidence we have for writers, builders, engineers, sculptors and any artisan you can imagine actually creating their products - there has to be another possible explanation. Science does not simply default to intelligent design because the real explanation is elusive.

 

[inocente]

No shell trick. What we are seeing is reverse engineering design and then coming up with the probabilities of a natural cause. Take a computer which we know is designed. Reverse engineer it and then calculate the odds of a natural cause. Take a rock, reverse engineer it and then calculate the odds. There is an immense difference and one can start to draw conclusions. The more sophisticated the object (FSCI) and IC the item is the greater the odds of design.

The UPB is a shell trick. We must predict ahead of time, not reverse engineer the past. Every writer in the OT knew - they speak of prophets, not reverse engineers.

Leaving aside the dreadfully faulty logic behind these scientific sounding acronyms, the UPB, FSCI and IC, are you saying there’s no evidence of God in a rock because it’s not sufficiently complicated? By the same token there’s then no evidence of God in 99.9999999999% of the universe, which sounds as though ID is only 0.0000000001% different from atheism.

Would you mind terribly if I stuck to traditional Christianity which sees God everywhere?

 

[tonyrey]

You need to research Buddhism more… Buddhist posits “creation” via karma, but karma is a process not a person.

No need whatsoever! I know Buddhist posits “creation” via karma without giving any explanation whatsoever of that process! It relies on a sheer act of faith…

Furthermore, most scientists and secular humanists do not view human existence or evolution as accidental… just ultimately impersonal, undirected. Once you really understand natural selection you see the simplicity and the cold, amoral calculus behind it… you realize God is completely pointless as an explanation for life’s development.

The scientific view of life is inconsistent with the Buddhist view of life. The resulting synthesis is incoherent because there is no relation between the physical and spiritual aspects of reality.

This just exist because they survived and passed on their genes, not because of a loving being that willed their happiness (in fact, people that breed are actually less happy than the child-free, but this goes against what most parents would tell you.
Natural selection at work, people that are happier don’t breed, but people that are less happy breed).

These statements reveals the **negativity **of your interpretation of life - reminiscent of Schopenhauer’s pessimism.

 

[ChristandSophia]

Hi everyone!

I’ve been a lurker for a while, but just wanted to chip in my thoughts on this one. I’m a Religious Studies teacher, and I’ve been teaching the Design Argument to my students today.
As far as I can see didn’t the Catholic Church distance itself from the classic versions of this one after Darwinism came along and showed a viable alternative? Even Aquinas hardly spends much time on it, and seems to argue his fifth way only half-heartedly.

I agree with much of what has been said along the lines of more recent version of this argument however, especially the fine-tuning argument. A great book that really looks at the strengths and weaknesses of it is ‘The Goldilocks Enigma’ by Paul Davies.

Recently, an article in the New Scientist on the multiverse theory seemed to be saying that scientists have now almost entirely accepted that the multiverse must be correct, but Davies book really brings out the illogical and unscientific consequences that follow from accepting the multiverse theory.

 

[buffalo]

If God loves everyone, and He knows some people, for whatever reason, will die in mortal sin and/or unrepentant, and thus will be condemned by God to eternal punishment, wouldn’t it be better, and more loving, to simply not create that person in the first place?

If our only purpose is to know, love and serve God, and that is the only reason we were created, are people who can not do this, being short-changed, both in this life, and in the next because they will be punished forever for their inability to know love and serve God?

Sarah x

God could create robots without free will for His own pleasure, much like a dictator. He could choose only to create those that will always love Him. That is pretty much the same thing.

He loves us so much that He gives us the free will choice to turn and face Him or turn our back to Him.

God knows everyone’s heart. People can be invincibly ignorant or vincibly ignorant. The Church believes that those who through no fault of their own have not heard the word can see the beatific vision. We truth those to God’s judgement.

Then we have those that do know but still reject God. Many times this is through the human weakness of pride and arrogance.

In any case, if one finds themselves in heaven they will be Catholic and it will have come through the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church Jesus set up for that very reason. (So why not join now ) Catholics have some culpability in our failure to insure everyone has heard the good news.

MORAL CONSCIENCE
1776 "Deep within his conscience man discovers a law which he has not laid upon himself but which he must obey. Its voice, ever calling him to love and to do what is good and to avoid evil, sounds in his heart at the right moment. . . . For man has in his heart a law inscribed by God. . . . His conscience is man’s most secret core and his sanctuary. There he is alone with God whose voice echoes in his depths."47

 

[buffalo]

The UPB is a shell trick. We must predict ahead of time, not reverse engineer the past. Every writer in the OT knew - they speak of prophets, not reverse engineers.

Leaving aside the dreadfully faulty logic behind these scientific sounding acronyms, the UPB, FSCI and IC, are you saying there’s no evidence of God in a rock because it’s not sufficiently complicated? By the same token there’s then no evidence of God in 99.9999999999% of the universe, which sounds as though ID is only 0.0000000001% different from atheism.

Would you mind terribly if I stuck to traditional Christianity which sees God everywhere?

We do see God everywhere - the universe if intelligible and Catholics knowing that got science rolling along. So we agree God is everywhere and everpresent. If so His intelligent actions should leave some traces for us to marvel.

The Positive Case for Design

Table 1. Ways Designers Act When Designing (1) Take many parts and arrange them in highly specified and complex patterns which perform a specific function.9, 31
(2) Rapidly infuse any amounts of genetic information into the biosphere, including large amounts, such that at times rapid morphological or genetic changes could occur in populations.10
(3) ‘Re-use parts’ over-and-over in different types of organisms (design upon a common blueprint).
(4) Be said to typically NOT create completely functionless objects or parts (although we may sometimes think something is functionless, but not realize its true function).

Table 2. Predictions of Intelligent Design (1) High information content machine-like irreducibly complex structures will be found.9
(2) Forms will be found in the fossil record that appear suddenly and without any precursors.10
(3) Genes and functional parts will be re-used in different unrelated organisms.29
(4) The genetic code will NOT contain much discarded genetic baggage code or functionless “junk DNA”.30

 

[buffalo]

Hi everyone!

I’ve been a lurker for a while, but just wanted to chip in my thoughts on this one. I’m a Religious Studies teacher, and I’ve been teaching the Design Argument to my students today.
As far as I can see didn’t the Catholic Church distance itself from the classic versions of this one after Darwinism came along and showed a viable alternative? Even Aquinas hardly spends much time on it, and seems to argue his fifth way only half-heartedly.

I agree with much of what has been said along the lines of more recent version of this argument however, especially the fine-tuning argument. A great book that really looks at the strengths and weaknesses of it is ‘The Goldilocks Enigma’ by Paul Davies.

Recently, an article in the New Scientist on the multiverse theory seemed to be saying that scientists have now almost entirely accepted that the multiverse must be correct, but Davies book really brings out the illogical and unscientific consequences that follow from accepting the multiverse theory.

Yes, two big ones - there must be a universe with a God, and there are fake universes.

In addition it only pushes back the problem, who created the multi-verses and why?

 

[Al_Moritz]

Hi everyone!

I’ve been a lurker for a while, but just wanted to chip in my thoughts on this one.

Welcome to the Forum!

As far as I can see didn’t the Catholic Church distance itself from the classic versions of this one after Darwinism came along and showed a viable alternative?

Pretty much so.

The great Cardinal Newman – recently beatified by the Catholic Church – dismissed Paley’s “proof of God” already several years before Darwin’s The Origin of Species appeared. And in an 1863 entry in his Philosophical Notebooks, four years after the publication of The Origin of Species, he endorses Darwin’s views as plausible and suggests he might “go the whole hog with Darwin”. Newman believed that God let His work develop through secondary causes, and in 1868 he wrote “Mr. Darwin’s theory need not be atheistical, be it true or not; on the contrary, it may simply be suggesting a larger idea of Divine Prescience and Skill.”

The Vatican does not officially support biological ID. It held a conference in 2010 on ID, yet it only discussed the cultural and historical roots of the biological ID movement. It did not discuss it as “science”, as which it does not take it seriously. The Vatican Newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, published a scathing article about biological ID in 2006:

catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/0600273.htm

Reprinted in full here:

chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it/articolo/77264?eng=y

While an article in L’Osservatore Romano does not amount to an official endorsement by the Church, the Vatican would never allow it to publish opinions that are clearly opposed to the teachings of the Church.

What about Pope Benedict’s statement:
“We are not some casual and meaningless product of evolution. Each of us is a thought of God”?

While ID proponents, like our own Buffalo here, interpret this to imply that the Pope embraces biological ID, this is twisting things. The only things that the Pope’s statement implies are two old truths of the Catholic Faith:

a) no creative process, even if like evolution it includes chance elements, can fall outside God’s providential plan, see also paragraph 69 of Communion and Stewardship:

vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/cti_documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20040723_communion-stewardship_en.html

b) the human soul, immaterial as it is, cannot be the product of evolutionary processes, but is created immediately by God. This is firm doctrine, repeated by the magisterium many times.

Even Aquinas hardly spends much time on it, and seems to argue his fifth way only half-heartedly.

The fifth way has been mistaken to be a “watchmaker” design argument, but it really is an argument from final causes, see:

telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/8998627/Gods-more-than-a-watchmaker.html

I agree with much of what has been said along the lines of more recent version of this argument however, especially the fine-tuning argument. A great book that really looks at the strengths and weaknesses of it is ‘The Goldilocks Enigma’ by Paul Davies.

Recently, an article in the New Scientist on the multiverse theory seemed to be saying that scientists have now almost entirely accepted that the multiverse must be correct,

No, the scientific status of the multiverse is hotly debated.

but Davies book really brings out the illogical and unscientific consequences that follow from accepting the multiverse theory.

If you like the fine-tuning argument, you might also like my article:

home.earthlink.net/~almoritz/cosmological-arguments-god.htm

I’m a Religious Studies teacher, and I’ve been teaching the Design Argument to my students today.

I am glad you are teaching your students well about the design argument!

 

[Charlemagne_II]

The multiverse concept is not science. It is not even theory. It is science fiction. There is not, and never will be, one shred of scientific evidence to prove it. It is a cherished notion of atheists who are looking for a logical escape hatch from the Big Bang other than God.

 

[Al_Moritz]

The multiverse concept is not science. It is not even theory. It is science fiction. There is not, and never will be, one shred of scientific evidence to prove it.

I discuss extensively in my article (chapter 1.3.4.) the issue of multiverse vs. scientific evidence, and yes, I agree with you.

 

[tonyrey]

If the designer really wanted to be found, in an unequivocal way, he/she/it would find some direct way to make us know of it.

 

[tonyrey]

I’ve been a lurker for a while, but just wanted to chip in my thoughts on this one. I’m a Religious Studies teacher, and I’ve been teaching the Design Argument to my students today.
As far as I can see didn’t the Catholic Church distance itself from the classic versions of this one after Darwinism came along and showed a viable alternative? Even Aquinas hardly spends much time on it, and seems to argue his fifth way only half-heartedly.

The Church has never distanced itself from the classic versions of Design which date back to Plato and Aristotle - and has rejected Darwinism point blank!

I agree with much of what has been said along the lines of more recent version of this argument however, especially the fine-tuning argument. A great book that really looks at the strengths and weaknesses of it is ‘The Goldilocks Enigma’ by Paul Davies.

To reject Design is to regard the universe as a God-forsaken machine…

 

[Charlemagne_II]

I have not been able to find any passage in John Henry Newman that repudiates William Paley’s watch argument. What I have found is this:

"If I am asked to use Paley’s argument for my own conversion, I say plainly I do not want to be converted by a smart syllogism; if I am asked to convert others by it, I say plainly I do not care to overcome their reason without touching their hearts."‎

This is not exactly a repudiation of Paley. Rather, it is the assertion that conversion must be mainly in the heart, not in the head. Newman is only saying what Pascal said before him. However, when the conversion of the heart is achieved, there is no reason to believe we should be so suspect of Paley’s argument, unless we want to say there is no design whatever in creation, which goes altogether against the creation account in Genesis.

 

[ernie977]

God always was, is, and always will be. The universe always was, is, and always will be. The unexplained facts are beyond our brain power. We can only have faith and wonder at this amazing experience. To have faith is to believe what seems impossible is possible. I am the life, he who believes in me will never die.
Ernie

 

[Charlemagne_II]

ernie

The universe always was, is, and always will be.

Where does it say that in the Bible or in the teachings of the Church?

 

[ernie977]

As a catholic we were taught that God always was , is, and always will be. and that he is everywhere. The universe or the cosmos we are told by science began with a bang. I strain my weak brain to establish what was there before this event, hardcore? You are right the bible makes no mention of the cosmos as we know it, but this does not stir me too much and my faith is not moved by those who try to explain the unexplainable. I myself find peace in the the unexplained . No beginning and No end. The planet will change its form as will the sun and will the universe but it will still exist. Death will change our bodies and it will return to the environment but our spirit moves on. That is my faith and I am at peace with my faith. Other people may not have this I must accept this.
God bless from Ernie

 

[vz71]

If God loves everyone, and He knows some people, for whatever reason, will die in mortal sin and/or unrepentant, and thus will be condemned by God to eternal punishment, wouldn’t it be better, and more loving, to simply not create that person in the first place?

No.
God loves us enough to allow us the choice of being with him forever or being away from him forever.
It is a greater act of love to stand back and let us choose then it is to deny us the choice or even to deny us existence.

If our only purpose is to know, love and serve God, and that is the only reason we were created, are people who can not do this, being short-changed, both in this life, and in the next because they will be punished forever for their inability to know love and serve God?

Sarah x

God provides the grace to make that decision.
There is no one that is not provided the capacity to know and love God.

 

[buffalo]

Predictions of ID vs Descent

http://forums.catholic-questions.org/picture.php?albumid=639&pictureid=11701