Evidence for Design?

[tonyrey]

StAnastasia;8902979:

God planned that organisms should freely evolve because the nature of Love is as such that it does not discriminate over what entity should exist and what should not. Thus evolution as a method of creation is a necessary product of Gods nature because love does not discriminate over the value of things and therefore does not determine their existence based on some degree of value that God has not given. If God were the kind of being that discriminated over the value of things like we do, nothing would exist except for God himself, for he is objective value itself, and is therefore the greatest kind of value, and does not require the existence of other creatures before having that objective value, and as such does not need creatures to be fulfilled in his nature. Nothing lesser in value than God has a right to exist. We have no right to exist.

We exist out of Gods love. God loves all creation and allows it to freely express itself.

I agree with you but it does not follow that God remains completely aloof and leaveseverything to its own devices. Otherwise He wouldn’t be a loving Father who cares for all His creatures…

 

[tonyrey]

StAnastasia;8902979:

God planned that organisms should freely evolve because the nature of Love is as such that it does not discriminate over what entity should exist and what should not. Thus evolution as a method of creation is a necessary product of God’s nature because love does not discriminate over the value of things and therefore does not determine their existence based on some degree of value that God has not given. If God were the kind of being that discriminated over the value of things like we do, nothing would exist except for God himself, for he is objective value itself, and is therefore the greatest kind of value, and does not require the existence of other creatures before having that objective value, and as such does not need creatures to be fulfilled in his nature. Nothing lesser in value than God has a right to exist. We have no right to exist.

We exist out of God’s love. God loves all creation and allows it to freely express itself.

I entirely agree with you but it doesn’t follow that God remains completely aloof and leaves everything to its own devices. Otherwise He wouldn’t be a loving Father who cares for all His creatures…

 

[tonyrey]

God planned that organisms should freely evolve because the nature of Love is as such that it does not discriminate over what entity should exist and what should not. Thus evolution as a method of creation is a necessary product of God’s nature because love does not discriminate over the value of things and therefore does not determine their existence based on some degree of value that God has not given. If God were the kind of being that discriminated over the value of things like we do, nothing would exist except for God himself, for he is objective value itself, and is therefore the greatest kind of value, and does not require the existence of other creatures before having that objective value, and as such does not need creatures to be fulfilled in his nature. Nothing lesser in value than God has a right to exist. We have no right to exist. We exist out of God’s love. God loves all creation and allows it to freely express itself.

I agree with you but it does not follow that God remains completely aloof and leaves everything to its own devices. Otherwise He wouldn’t be a loving Father who cares for all His creatures…

 

[Julia_Mae]

No!

1. Moral and physical evil do not exist due to the Intent of the Creator.

.

I was speaking about “things” - everything. As in matter/energy and whatever the afterlife is made up of. Have some personal discussion of theoretical whatever with someone else.

If this was your topic all along, then you were less than straightforward in your choice of topic name and op. Next time, just make a thesis statement.

Thanks for responding.

:tiphat:

 

[tonyrey]

Al

I will take it that you misunderstood, or I misled, or a little of both. No time to go back and look.

See, but this is the problem with your view point right there. Chance or random events are part of (the laws of) nature, they are part of the evolutionary process, and they can still fall under Divine Providence. Read paragraph 69 of Communion and Stewardship:

Exactly what distinction would you make between Intelligent Design and Divine Providence?

If God divinely ordained that chance evolution would produce humans, how can you say Man was not Intelligently Designed to appear in the evolutionary process? After all, pure unalloyed chance (with no God to direct it) might have produced a universe without humans.

Precisely! It’s not a case of all or nothing! God is not forbidden to care for His creatures…

 

[tonyrey]

I was speaking about “things” - everything. As in matter/energy and whatever the afterlife is made up of. Have some personal discussion of theoretical whatever with someone else.

If this was your topic all along, then you were less than straightforward in your choice of topic name and op. Next time, just make a thesis statement.

Thanks for responding.

I regret that simple answers are not possible with regard to Design… How else would you have phrased the question?

 

[grannymh]

Interesting topic but I’m having trouble seeing the relevance, can you explain?

I mean it doesn’t matter at all whether we fully know and understand the laws of nature, what science says is irrelevant. The laws are still there and they apply just as much to bandy legs as straight legs, they apply just as much to a river that has flooded its banks as to one that hasn’t, just as much to a cold virus as everything else. It’s seem like pure superstition to think that a disease, deformity or disaster are some kind of magic that somehow break the laws of nature.

In order to have a natural law, what is necessary? What prompts the law? One does not need a law of nature regarding apples flying from the ground back up to the tree because there is no objective evidence that this happens. However, there is a law of nature regarding gravity because an apple did plop on someone’s head – so the story goes.

A cold virus is objective. What is the compelling evidence that it actually exists?

If someone came to you and said that there are mountains of evidence that the common cold does not exist in Spain. Would you ask any questions about the evidence? Would you accept an answer that there was a doctor passenger in a flight over Spain and when he looked out the window, he did not see any virus?

As I re-read your post, we are on two different tracks of thought. I am not addressing if a law of nature can be broken… or some of the other silly stuff on this thread. I am simply curious about “evidence” as in the thread’s title.

There is plenty of objective evidence in the natural world to positively say that “design” exists. However, can one say that there is plenty of objective evidence that design exists in Mexico but mountains of objective evidence show that design does not exist in Spain?

You know what? The only thing this is relevant to is when someone is interested in figuring out where the “design” for the human person originated and was this “design” unique to two people.

 

[grannymh]

Buffalo, what do you mean by “kinds”? Are you using it in the sense that Young Earth Creationists and Flood Geologists use it when they defend a literal Noachian Flood?

I do not know how “kind” is used in regard to floods or geology–it may refer to a category.

The word kind is an older biology term for the category of species. The term is still in use as in the human person is different in kind from a monkey. This indicates that the human person not only has a material anatomy, she and he also have a spiritual soul with its spiritual faculties that do not rise out of the material anatomy.

Some very interesting information about the “design” of human nature is found in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Second Edition. paragraphs 355-421. What I like about the last paragraphs is that the first human being Adam had immense value in the eyes of His Creator.

 

[buffalo]

I have been playing up until now. But It is now time to end this discussion

God planed that organisms should freely evolve because the nature of Love is as such that it does not discriminate over what entity should exist and what should not. Thus evolution as a method of creation is a necessary product of Gods nature because love does not discriminate over the value of things and therefore does not determine their existence based on some degree of value that God has not given. If God were the kind of being that discriminated over the value of things like we do, nothing would exist except for God himself, for he is objective value itself, and is therefore the greatest kind of value, and does not require the existence of other creatures before having that objective value, and as such does not need creatures to be fulfilled in his nature. Nothing lesser in value than God has a right to exist. We have no right to exist. We exist out of Gods love. God loves all creation and allows it to freely express itself.

There is a kind of organism or form that is best suited for ensoulment. When the organism Homosapien came into being as the result of millions of years of evolution, God ensouled two of their kind after they had reached the age of maturity. These two were called Adam and Eve.

This is the truth. This discussion is now over.

ID science is heresy.

Your claim is God had no vision of Adam? Catholicism understands man to be the pinnacle of creation, Adam being the prototypical man.

Now this means that God’s son conformed Himself to a human body that did not look like He had planned, by a blind unguided process?

I am not buying it. :nope:

Please list your Catholic dogmatic and doctrinal sources for the above claims.

 

[StAnastasia]

I do not know how “kind” is used in regard to floods or geology–it may refer to a category.

“Flood geologists” – those who interpret the Noah myth literally – believe that Noah took on board his ark two pair of every kind, where “kind” is shorthand for animal archetype. That is, Noah did not need two pair each of African and Indian elephants and wooly mammoths; he only need two pair of the “elephant kind,” who then evolved into other types of elephants after the flood.

There is a whole pseudo-science of “baraminology” – en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baraminology. Amusingly, Flood Geologists have to factor in a whole lot of evtion after the mythical flood, operating at a much faster rate than ev****ary biologists claim it happened in reality.

StAnastasia

 

[grannymh]

If from the beginning God wanted a moral and spiritual response from the universe, I imagine She conceived the plan by which the quarks from the Big Bang would organize themselves into mater and energy, and into biochemically rich planets surrounding enduring second-generation stars, and eventually into organic beings. Whether God pre-specifed that this moral and spiritual response take the form of a primate of the order Chordata is not clear, but that is what He got. On other biochemically rich planets in the universe, perhaps the moral and spiritual response has taken or will take the form of a bipedal, large-brained marsupial, or of a bipedal, warmblooded reptile. The morphological platform may matter less than the openness of the response, as hinted by the great Neo-Thomist Eric Mascall in The Openness of Being."

StAnastasia

I do not mean any disrespect. And I do not intend to twist your words. In fact, your own words are perfect. They could be one of the top explanations out there. They certainly set my own thoughts in motion.

According to CAF policy, I can express my own opinion about a moral and spiritual response from the universe. And of course, this being a public message board, others can also offer their own opinions. And if you so wish, you certainly can object to my thoughts regarding human design.

When it comes to God, the Creator and His plan for His universe, my imagination turns toward the logic of Catholicism. I like to imagine the Creator’s relationship with His human creatures as something very special and very unique. I see Catholicism as having the best answers to the “why” of human persons.

Blessings,
the nitty-gritty granny

The design of the human person is worthy of profound respect.

 

[buffalo]

“Flood geologists” – those who interpret the Noah myth literally – believe that Noah took on board his ark two pair of every kind, where “kind” is shorthand for animal archetype. That is, Noah did not need two pair each of African and Indian elephants and wooly mammoths; he only need two pair of the “elephant kind,” who then evolved into other types of elephants after the flood.

There is a whole pseudo-science of “baraminology” – en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baraminology. Amusingly, Flood Geologists have to factor in a whole lot of evtion after the mythical flood, operating at a much faster rate than ev****ary biologists claim it happened in reality.

StAnastasia

Let’s try to stick to the Evidence for Design before you bring this thread to a halt as before.

 

[StAnastasia]

MindOverMatter2;8902984:

I entirely agree with you but it doesn’t follow that God remains completely aloof and leaves everything to its own devices. Otherwise He wouldn’t be a loving Father who cares for all His creatures…

Tony, of course it doesn’t. Since (to my mind) the only coherent metaphysic of the universe is one in which everything exists within the divine reality, God is intimately present to the unfolding of life in the universe at every stage.

 

[StAnastasia]

Let’s try to stick to the Evidence for Design before you bring this thread to a halt as before.

I never brought no thread to a halt before.

 

[tonyrey]

Your claim is God had no vision of Adam? Catholicism understands man to be the pinnacle of creation, Adam being the prototypical man.

Now this means that God’s son conformed Himself to a human body that did not look like He had planned, by a blind unguided process?

I am not buying it. :nope:

Please list your Catholic dogmatic and doctrinal sources for the above claims.

It is not a question of having to choose between two extremes anyway! As Pascal remarked, “Cleopatra’s nose, had it been shorter, the whole face of the world would have been changed”. The precise details of Adam’s body were not specified by God but neither are the grace and beauty of a human being determined** solely** by the laws of nature. As so often Shakespeare expressed the truth magnificently:

“******What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how
infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and
admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like
a god! the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals…”

 

[StAnastasia]

There seems no obvious reason why God should not direct the course of development and put the finishing touches to a masterpiece **inspired by love **rather than remain aloof and leave everything to unguided processes. The universe is certainly independent to some extent but not entirely out of control…

Tony, naturally. But observing or measuring God’s direction of Her masterpiece would like outside the scope of science. The universe is God’s creation, and we can believe we see His “fingerprints” on it, but we cannot see proof of that. Otherwise, what is the purpose of faith?

 

[tonyrey]

Tony, of course it doesn’t. Since (to my mind) the only coherent metaphysic of the universe is one in which everything exists within the divine reality, God is intimately present to the unfolding of life in the universe at every stage.

I agree with you and I think it is presumptuous for anyone to attempt to determine the precise manner in - and the extent to - which God is intimately present. We should be far more concerned about upholding and justifying our faith in Design than discussing the details…

 

[buffalo]

Tony, naturally. But observing or measuring God’s direction of Her masterpiece would like outside the scope of science. The universe is God’s creation, and we can believe we see His “fingerprints” on it, but we cannot see proof of that. Otherwise, what is the purpose of faith?

Any “fingerprints of purpose or design” can we see?

 

[vz71]

Evidently you didn’t read the article in the link.

You mean the one from 1928?

 

[vz71]

Evidently you didn’t read the article in the link.

Would that be the provided literature dating to 1928 or the quotes provided from Isaac Newton?