Evidence for Design?

[atheistgirl]

Predictions of ID vs Descent

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

What irreducibly complex structures are currently troubling scientists?

Sarah x

 

[reggieM]

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!

True. The Church could never accept such a destructive and anti-human theory anyway.

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

there are “several theories of evolution” that are “materialist, reductionist and spiritualist” and thus incompatible with the Catholic faith. It follows that the message of Pope John Paul II cannot be read as a blanket approbation of all theories of evolution, including those of a neo-Darwinian provenance which explicitly deny to divine providence any truly causal role in the development of life in the universe.

But let’s keep this thread alive and not continue the debate on a banned-topic.

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

Exactly. It would be the triumph of irrationality and chaos.

 

[atheistgirl]

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 the definition of why we were created, namely to love and worship God, is correct, then making creatures God already knows will not love Him or will reject Him, for which He will punish them eternally, does not seem like an act of love to me. An act of love in such case would be to simply not create such a creature.

Why does God make people to love and worship Him. I don’t understand that. God is God. Why does He need to make people to love and worship Him?

Sarah x

 

[reggieM]

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.

Here’s a comment from Dr. Peter Kreeft, a Catholic Thomist philosopher. In a footnote on page 69 of his book: A summa of the Summa: the essential philosophical passages of St. Thomas Aquinas’ Summa theologica, regarding St. Thomas’ Design Argument, we read:

29 This is often called the “argument from design”. It is probably the most popular and instinctively obvious of all arguments for the existence of God. As Paley said, if we find a watch, it is reasonable to conclude there is a watchmaker.

A Catholic summary of St. Thomas Aquinas’ writings – written in 1990.

So, it doesn’t look like the Design Argument or Paley have gone away after all.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

**atheistgirl

What irreducibly complex structures are currently troubling scientists?**

The first living cell. How did it come to be since there was no other life to evolve from?

In other words, abiogenesis.

 

[grannymh]

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

I beg your pardon. But God is not dependent on design. He is the one Who created the universe.

 

[reggieM]

i just don’t understand the use of believing in purposeful design. would you be living your life differently if you didn’t believe?

It may be more difficult to try to imagine not believing in purposeful design. For example, if you could somehow believe that, you would find it completely absurd to be exploring that kind of question itself. Why would you?

So, you’re making very good, practical use of purpose, meaning, intention, goal-orientation and design in this very process itself.

what’s wrong with just believing we woke up in history.

Every action proceeds from reason. If you were to try to live without reason, then you could not even ask “what is wrong?” with anything. There could not be any right or wrong, good or bad. Those judgements are made in reference to an End – that is, purposeful design.

i’m man enough to receive whatever happens after this, whether that be heaven, hell or nothing. to live in society, it is beneficial to get along with everyone… which requires new emotions.

That is certainly good as a starting point. But it’s also important to fulfill the potential for good that you have within. What happens after this is a function of that effort – a reward, if you will. When you recognize something as beneficial – the question is – “beneficial for what?” That’s where purpose is essential.

i’m failing to see any purpose.

I’m just suggesting to start at the lower level and then ask the philosophical questions.

“I want to eat”. Why?
“I want to survive”. Why?
"Because … ? "

all we can agree on is that there is something in the first place.

That something has to be personal – so, therefore, you are the result of a personal choice (beyond your parents and ancestors).

The question: “What is my purpose?” is essential. Since you did not create yourself, you can only truly find the answer with reference to the someone who was in the first place.

 

[reggieM]

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.

True. He also wants the search for Him to help perfect His creatures. So, He does make Himself known – but as the scripture teaches, in the “still, quiet voice” – in insight, or conscience.

Science is based on what is “outside of nature”.

 

[grannymh]

If the definition of why we were created, namely to love and worship God, is correct, then making creatures God already knows will not love Him or will reject Him, for which He will punish them eternally, does not seem like an act of love to me. An act of love in such case would be to simply not create such a creature.

Why does God make people to love and worship Him. I don’t understand that. God is God. Why does He need to make people to love and worship Him?

Sarah x

It is semantics…

God *invites *people to love and worship Him. That is so different than make people do this or that.

 

[danserr]

If the definition of why we were created, namely to love and worship God, is correct, then making creatures God already knows will not love Him or will reject Him, for which He will punish them eternally, does not seem like an act of love to me. An act of love in such case would be to simply not create such a creature.

Why does God make people to love and worship Him. I don’t understand that. God is God. Why does He need to make people to love and worship Him?

Sarah x

God does not need people to love and worship Him. By way of example consider this. A little girl picks a bouquet of flowers for her mother and brings them to her mother. Her mother thanks her and has to go get a vase to display them. Now did the mother need the flowers? No, the mother didn’t need them. Did the child need to give them? Of course! The child has been raised, loved, taken care of and given many good things. For her not to give the flowers would mean that she would be lacking in gratitude and affection. Likewise, with us and worship of God. We have been loved into existence, had God die for us, and have been offered eternal happiness. For us not to worship God would mean that we would be lacking in love and gratitude. So God does not need our worship, we do!

Another way to think about our worship of God is this. Sometimes, even in this world, you see something that you just recognize is worthy of praise. A piece of artwork, a sunset, a beautiful woman etc. You look at it and praise it and remark how wonderful it is because you recognize that it is just that kind of thing that is worthy of praise. God is like this. As we come to know him better, we recognize more and more that he is just that kind of being that is worthy of praise.

As to why does God create people who he know will reject him, think about what you are really asking. You are asking why God does not create a world in which everyone will be saved. But maybe to do this, God could not create this world at all. Maybe the only way to do this will be to create a world with a very small number of people, maybe in a world with more people (like this world), some people will chose to reject God. But then many people in this world who would have chosen God won’t be created either! Is this fair? Why should those who freely reject God get to have a veto on the happiness of those who would accept God? Why should hell be able to veto heaven?!

God gives everyone enough grace to be saved and he wants everyone to be. But he also gives people the freedom to reject him. That is why Fulton Sheen says that “hell is the final guarantee of human freedom. The guarantee that a damned soul can forever raise his clenched fist as God and say non serviam (I will not serve).”

 

[reggieM]

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.

The issue is whether there exist at least some cases where CSI – complex specified information can be detected – not whether all cases can be. In many cases of large strings, it can be very difficult to find the CSI. e.g. the NSA spends billions of dollars to try to decipher strings.

You can certainly hold that all things have been designed while at the same time asserting that some things give more of the appearance of design than others do.

 

[grannymh]

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!

Emphasis mine.

Please do not misrepresent the Catholic Church which knows the difference between animals and human beings and acts accordingly.

 

[grannymh]

True. He also wants the search for Him to help perfect His creatures. So, He does make Himself known – but as the scripture teaches, in the “still, quiet voice” – in insight, or conscience.

**Science is based on what is “outside of nature”./**quote]

Emphasis mine.

Please, what do you consider “outside of natue.” Or is that a typo?

 

[Al_Moritz]

True. The Church could never accept such a destructive and anti-human theory anyway.

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

there are “several theories of evolution” that are “materialist, reductionist and spiritualist” and thus incompatible with the Catholic faith. It follows that the message of Pope John Paul II cannot be read as a blanket approbation of all theories of evolution, including those of a neo-Darwinian provenance which explicitly deny to divine providence any truly causal role in the development of life in the universe.

You guys are again, like always, confusing the science of evolution with unwarranted metaphysical statements of scientists. Of course the Church is against the latter, but it is not against the strict science of Neo-Darwinism. See paragraph 69 of the document you cited, Communion and Stewardship (the above quote is from paragraph 64).

 

[reggieM]

Furthermore, most scientists and secular humanists do not view human existence or evolution as accidental… just ultimately impersonal, undirected.

That view does sound accidental. If it’s undirected, then it’s the product of chance. Therefore, it wasn’t planned, designed or intended – thus, accidental.

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 developement. This just exist because they survived and passed on their genes, not because of a loving being that willed their happiness

Natural selection cannot explain why anything wanted to (or wants to) survive.

(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).

You might be interested in this:

There is now extensive research suggesting that religious people are happier and less stressed. There are a number of mechanisms through which religion may make a person happier, including social contact and support that result from religious pursuits, the mental activity that comes with optimism and volunteering, learned coping strategies that enhance one’s ability to deal with stress, and psychological factors such as “reason for being.”

Currently, approximately 8% of the U.S. population claim no religious affiliation (Kosmin & Lachman, 1993). People with no affiliation appear to be at greater risk for depressive symptoms than those affiliated with a religion. In a sample of 850 medically ill men, Koenig, Cohen, Blazer, Pieper, et al. (1992) examined whether religious affiliation predicted depression after demographics, medical status, and a measure of religious coping were controlled. They found that, when relevant covariates were controlled, men who indicated that they had “no religious affiliation” had higher scores on the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (an observer-administered rating scale) than did men who identified themselves as moderate Protestants, Catholics, or nontraditional Christians.

inally, a recent systematic review of 850 research papers on the topic concluded that “the majority of well-conducted studies found that higher levels of religious involvement are positively associated with indicators of psychological well-being (life satisfaction, happiness, positive affect, and higher morale) and with less depression, suicidal thoughts and behavior, drug/alcohol use/abuse.”
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_and_happiness

If original design is corrupted, God must have willed that to be so, assuming he is omnipotent. He’s still not off the hook.

It’s important to note your own moral outrage in these comments about God. Can you justly establish yourself as an arbiter of moral value? What standard would you use to judge such things? Where does that standard come from? Could I have reference to the same moral standard that you’re using?

You don’t have to answer those things for me, but use them to question yourself. See if you’re being consistent with your world-view.

Either way, it takes alot of faith or arrogance for you to assume you are somehow more consmicly significant than the caterpillar.

There’s the key word: “significant”. There’s our design argument at work once again.

In order to judge something as being more or less significant, you’re referring to a “scale of values”. One thing is more significant and another thing less. Ok, but significant for what? And if something is “more significant” – then what is the “most significant thing” you can think of? Why is it significant at all?

Again – those are the philosophical questions that sometimes get overlooked.

How do you know God isn’t using you to hatch some alien maggots? Couldn’t an omniscient, omnipotent designer produce some less detestable organism that would better show love than some kind of freakish creature that belongs only in science fiction horror?

The fact that you “detest” something is also interesting. Why would you detest anything at all? But you do. See? That does not align with the idea that “we just exist” at all. When there are value judgements, then that cannot be explained by natural selection.

 

[atheistgirl]

It is semantics…

God *invites *people to love and worship Him. That is so different than make people do this or that.

Ok, that sounds good so far. But why eternal punishment if the invite is rejected?

This is what I am seeing: A person, let’s call her Sally, is created. Sally is given a soul at the moment of creation by God. Sally’s only reason to exist is to love and worship God. This is an invitation from an all Loving God. Sally, for whatever reason, rejects the invite. Sally dies, and is punished for all eternity in the agonies of hell

Sally did not ask to be created. Sally had no say in her creation. Sally chose not to accept something that was nothing more than an invitation. Sally is now damned.



Sarah x

 

[reggieM]

True. He also wants the search for Him to help perfect His creatures. So, He does make Himself known – but as the scripture teaches, in the “still, quiet voice” – in insight, or conscience.

**Science is based on what is “outside of nature”./**quote]

Emphasis mine.

Please, what do you consider “outside of natue.” Or is that a typo?

No, not a typo. I’m using the ordinary definition of the term nature – as used within the field of science. It’s part of the term “methodological naturalism”.

 

[buffalo]

What irreducibly complex structures are currently troubling scientists?

Sarah x

ATP synthase motor

 

[danserr]

Ok, that sounds good so far. But why eternal punishment if the invite is rejected?

This is what I am seeing: A person, let’s call her Sally, is created. Sally is given a soul at the moment of creation by God. Sally’s only reason to exist is to love and worship God. This is an invitation from an all Loving God. Sally, for whatever reason, rejects the invite. Sally dies, and is punished for all eternity in the agonies of hell

Sally did not ask to be created. Sally had no say in her creation. Sally chose not to accept something that was nothing more than an invitation. Sally is now damned.



Sarah x

Hopefully I answered this in post 608. The invitation is to enjoy eternal happiness with God (the source of all goodness and joy). By rejecting that invitation, Sally rejects that eternal happiness, goodness, and joy. The result of this is hell. How could it not be? but surely she is responsible for her choice?

If it helps, you can think of hell less as punishment and more like a diver cutting his own breathing tube. In this case, hell is just the natural consequences of a person cutting himself off from the source of all goodness and joy. Of course, the result is misery. So, you are really sort of asking: how can a person who chooses to reject the eternal happiness annd joy offered by a loving God be eternally miserable? But surely, when I put it like that, the answer is more understandable.

 

[buffalo]

Ok, that sounds good so far. But why eternal punishment if the invite is rejected?

This is what I am seeing: A person, let’s call her Sally, is created. Sally is given a soul at the moment of creation by God. Sally’s only reason to exist is to love and worship God. This is an invitation from an all Loving God. Sally, for whatever reason, rejects the invite. Sally dies, and is punished for all eternity in the agonies of hell

Sally did not ask to be created. Sally had no say in her creation. Sally chose not to accept something that was nothing more than an invitation. Sally is now damned.



Sarah x

I assume you are married. You love your husband and he loves you. Now suppose your husband suddenly turns his back on you. You continue to love and invite him back into your life. He rejects the invitation everytime. Yet as long as you live you hope he will turn back to you right until the very end. But he doesn’t. He dies still with his back to you.