How can we reconcile the argument of intelligent design with supposed design flaws?

[inocente]

How convenient for you.

The moderator has instructed us not to discuss evolution. There are plenty of Catholics who know the theory and use it in their work who can explain your mistake. It won’t take them long to put you right.

I suppose you haven’t heard of Aristotle’s final cause or final causality either, then.

It was you who confused cause with effect.

Ah, proposing a “gaps” argument of your own, then: If we don’t understand it – a gap exists in our knowledge – whatever is proposed to explain the gap is declared an “illusion” and dismissed. What fun!

I don’t know what it is you think we don’t understand, but putting forward untested and untestable notions without firm evidence is what’s generally called speculation. Like geocentrism or claiming the existence of fairies. Illusions. Unless you want to put forward a detailed, rigorous, falsifiable hypothesis for intelligent design, which hasn’t already been disproved.

 

[inocente]

I have never said that God is a scientific hypothesis. That would be the point of view of the atheist who believes that the only valid hypothesis must be a scientific hypothesis.

Curiously, though, it was Georges Lemaître who opened our eyes to the possibility that time began with the Big Bang, and that therefore God must exist outside time because God is eternal. That is why, as Lemaître puts it, God is essentially everywhere hidden, both in the context of abiogenesis and evolution. Nothing happens without God’s providential design behind the happening.

I’m pleased you now agree that time starting at the big bang is a possibility, not proven. And you appear to accept the science while another intelligent design fan on this thread doesn’t, so you’re helpfully confirming the absence of any agreed intelligent design argument.

You are confused here. If we followed your analysis, we could not have any knowledge of how the mind of God works. All revelation from scripture would be false because, according to you, it tells us things we cannot logically believe to be true. You think like an agnostic. You just refuse to put that word after your name.

The forum guidelines say “It is never acceptable to question the sincerity of an individual’s beliefs”. Never acceptable.

Either you speak of a living God or by definition you’re not a theist. Either you speak of an unchanging God or you must believe God is composed of parts and therefore must be created not creator.

See, I can just argue the logic, while your case appears so weak that you have to resort to personal remarks for which you could be reported. Calm down, you’ll do yourself a mishief.

*Genesis, 1000 B.C. : "Then God said, ‘Let there be light.’”

Carl Sagan in Cosmos*, 1980 A.D.

What Genesis says is not a scientific hypothesis. But it’s still true. Light illuminated the early universe. And it’s the atheist Carl Sagan who admits it.

The fact that Genesis said something 3000 years ago that was just discovered by modern science in the last century (thanks largely to Lemaitre) remains a marvel of the first order.

Get over it.

Did it ever occur to you that scripture, as it is scripture, might be speaking of spiritual light as opposed to photons with wavelengths between 390 and 700 nm?

You said you don’t accept the literal days of Genesis, but here you say you do take another verse literally. You pick which bits you think are literally true and which bits you think are not, and then try to lecture others on reading scripture? Did you ever take that bible study course?

inocente

Have you read John Farrell’s The Day Without Yesterday?

It is an account of Einstein and Lemairtre and the history of the Big Bang theory.

If not, the chapter titled “Cathedrals in Space” would interest you as it explains why Lemaitre was so upset with Pius XII. It was clearly not that the Big Bang theory was consistent with Genesis, but really that Lemaitre was upset that the scientific community would attack the Big Bang with greater gusto once they suspected that the Vatican was promoting it. Lemaitre was clearly conscious that atheist Catholic haters like George Gamow and Fred Hoyle ready to pounce, they would gleefully do so once they got any signal from the Vatican.

No, not read it, thanks for the reference. I heard the story from other sources, which took a different view: that as a priest, Lemaître was more concerned that the Pope would say something which could not be supported by his “hypothesis of the primeval atom” as it was then called.

 

[Peter_Plato]

It’s a key point. Intelligent design fans who speak of creation as a past event rather than something ongoing, have to agree an explanation for new stars and new diseases etc. Did God design the Zika virus before the big bang but only just release it, or did it evolve instead of God designing it, etc.

The reason this is a silly objection is because as a purported theist what you are ignoring completely is the mechanism by which God creates the universe. The “design” has to be integral to the manner in which God creates or you are simply making God into a magician who either moment by moment or at some past time snapped his fingers and things simply came to be unbeknown to him how they would turn out totally divorced from his intended purposes.

Intelligent design fans don’t agree on what that explanation should be: did God design in the past but not anymore, or did God design raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens but not creepy-crawlies and diseases, etc.

Whichever explanation you guys choose must be compatible with a living God, since otherwise you’re a deist, and with an unchanging God who didn’t go through a design phase then a creation phase, etc.

It isn’t just “intelligent design fans” who must answer these objections, it is every theist who must, including you if you continue to be a Christian. This is no biggie, really, since it was considered by Christian philosophers and theologians from the beginning. This is why there are two theories of time – A-Theory and B-Theory.

What you are trying to do is saddle ID “fans” with a problem that exists as a basic one in metaphysics as if theories of evolution have escaped it completely. They haven’t. The perennial question, which ID “fans” have continued to bring up to the chagrin of evolution “fans” is, "How did the rich store of information in the DNA molecule assemble itself in the first place? There has been NO adequate answer to that question, unless you are willing to sacrifice reason to the faith of standard evolutionary theory.

There is **no single intelligent design hypothesis written with anything like the rigor, detail and testability as the standard scientific theory, and a major reason appears to be that intelligent design fans can’t agree on this question of time. **And if you can’t even agree on the argument then that would seem to be a flaw greater than which cannot be conceived.

There are hypotheses being written in rigorous detail with testability built into them. The problem is not disagreement, per se, since disagreements exist about all questions of science. The problem is that those who control funding, peer review and academia have taken a particularly one-sided view on the issue on the pretext that the science is “settled,” or, at least, that only those who pursue a particular angle on the question will be permitted to make any contributions on the matter.

This shows up even in your posts where you claim ID is not science and then when the question is raised concerning why it isn’t, the standard response is to punt to a judge’s decision years back as if what a judge had to say on the matter of what is or isn’t science is the binding determinant for all time.

What I find particularly humorous is that I am not an ID advocate nor do I necessarily deny that evolution in some form or other could have been an aspect of the mechanism for bringing about the plethora of life forms on Earth. The problem is that “standard theory” with regard to evolution does not deal with many of the questions which remain. My concern is to be thorough and to resolve all theoretical issues completely – denial and obfuscation doesn’t get us there.

If any particular form of evolutionary theory is correct it should be robust enough to answer all issues surrounding what it purports to explain. It shouldn’t seek to silence critics. Yet, that approach is all too common in modern science, which is, I think, an indicator that science has become far too agenda driven and has gotten away from its basic mandate of explaining, in a complete and satisfying way, how the observable universe works.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

The forum guidelines say “It is never acceptable to question the sincerity of an individual’s beliefs”. Never acceptable.

Either you speak of a living God or by definition you’re not a theist. Either you speak of an unchanging God or you must believe God is composed of parts and therefore must be created not creator.

See, I can just argue the logic, while your case appears so weak that you have to resort to personal remarks for which you could be reported. Calm down, you’ll do yourself a mishief.

Again, as you did in a recent post, you are guilty of having me say things I did not say. Where is this post where I accused you of not being sincere? What I did accuse you of was being confused because you often reason like an agnostic rather than a Baptist. That is a point I have made with you often enough. You never seem to find anything useful in scripture when it is brought to your attention that it is useful. Just the example given above, where you say that God was talking about creating a spiritual light when he is clearly not talking about a spiritual light shows the lengths to which you will go to deny something that is so obvious as that light is light.

But I guess your next interpretation of Lux fiat will be that it was just a shot in the dark!"

Show me the religious text of another religion that keys in on God creating light at the start of Creation.

 

[Aloysium]

. . . The only people who want to bring it up want to discredit it and they know so little about it (otherwise they would realise they would be wasting their time) that it becomes embarrassing.

So let’s talk about creation.

The basic template is Genesis, which describes everything starting with light and progressing in step-wise fashion as what had been created, is used as the substrate of the new.

At the foundations of the universe, temporally and structurally, we find electromagnetic radiation. As far as we go, it is in the form of a wavicle, having properties of both a particle and a wave.

One view would have it that all 25 elementary particles and their capacity to form composite partilces, atoms, molecules as complex in its structure and functioning as DNA, plants, animals and human beings with our ability to understand these words and the reality they refer to, that all this in addition to the fundamental forces, the constants and other forms of relationship found in matter, all of it was present within the cosmic seed of the singularity from which our universe arose.

This universe as it now is, was either present as the potential that would play itself out, or present as a final cause involving an evolutionary process in which new creation was added to, utilizing the old. The former would seem to require an initial cause, the latter, ongoing involvement in the process.

It could be that the cooling down that happened about a half a million years after the big bang, had been “preprogrammed” within the structure of the universe at the beginning. The cooling resulted in the slowing of the subatomic particles that constituted the early universe, which then led to the formation of protons, neutrons and electrons that went on to create atoms.
Another way to understand it is that the formation of atoms involved the bringing into being of their constituent parts, and slowing them down. The effect was a change in the light from which matter was and is brought into being.

If we look at things from the latter perspective, we see an involved God bringing all this into existence. The basic structure of the universe comes into being, “day” after “day”.
With respect to cosmic creation, He now rests; energy and matter are no longer created. He remains involved as Father to all, but what He set in place in time, exists as such.

Something like that.

There’s a whole lot in scripture that tells of what happened subsequently.

 

[yppop]

This argument can only be reconciled by realizing that God creates and sustains reality at the implicate level (the ground of reality) and we experience and science observes and describes reality at the explicate level.

The key word in that statement is the verb that explains what science does, namely describes. You see, science explains very little. Anyone that disagrees can take a shot at explaining abstractions such as “gravity”, or “mass”, or “energy”, without using another abstraction such as “force”, and without ending up with a concrete word such as “cause” the can only be God…

What I am implying is that how God creates and sustains at the implicate level is not the same as creating with gravity, mass and energy directly; they are manifested at the explicate level as scientific abstractions. God’s scheme does not include energy, it only looks that way. The question then that arises is, “How does God create and sustain reality”? Some of you may know that I have presented a thesis in this forum that purports to answer that question but any rehash is beyond my desire to engage that discussion.

However, I contend that if we plot the complexity of matter against history we get a gradually increasing curve interrupted by several discontinuities in which complexity makes large quantum leaps in geologically short periods of time that can be interpreted as creation events. In addition to cosmogenesis (the big bang) there are four other major creation events in which new and more complex forms of matter are created, they are: geogenesis (the earth); abiogenesis (life); somagenesis (multicellular organisms); and psychogenesis (the mind). Following each creation event there are long stasis periods (relatively small change in complexity) during which there are probably a number of smaller creation events such as the creation of: the moon, eukaryotic cells, vertebrates, plants, and mammals. There may also have been abrupt decreases associated with the several extinction events when God may have rid the planet of some unwanted results such as the dinosaurs.

I interpret this complexity curve to mean that during the stasis period God allowed His mechanism to proceed without interference - the results of which are manifested as the theory of evolution - and intervened only where we find the creation events.

And that gets me back to the OP: Why did God design reality to be filled with such contingencies as extinctions, earthquakes, harmful bacteria and viruses, etc? I have an answer that satisfies my curiosity, but I have just run out of energy for the night.

Yppop

 

[inocente]

The reason this is a silly objection is because as a purported theist what you are ignoring completely is the mechanism by which God creates the universe. The “design” has to be integral to the manner in which God creates or you are simply making God into a magician who either moment by moment or at some past time snapped his fingers and things simply came to be unbeknown to him how they would turn out totally divorced from his intended purposes.

The reason this is a silly objection is because as a purported theist you should know that God is not confined in space or time.

*It isn’t just “intelligent design fans” who must answer these objections, it is every theist who must, including you if you continue to be a Christian. This is no biggie, really, since it was considered by Christian philosophers and theologians from the beginning. This is why there are two theories of time – A-Theory and B-Theory.

What you are trying to do is saddle ID “fans” with a problem that exists as a basic one in metaphysics as if theories of evolution have escaped it completely. They haven’t. The perennial question, which ID “fans” have continued to bring up to the chagrin of evolution “fans” is, "How did the rich store of information in the DNA molecule assemble itself in the first place? There has been NO adequate answer to that question, unless you are willing to sacrifice reason to the faith of standard evolutionary theory.*

Never before seen the question of how DNA assembled described as a basic problem in metaphysics. Sounds very mystical New Age.

The usual approach when we don’t know something is to do research. At high school we were told the hypothesis that DNA probably developed from RNA, and a quick google got me up to date.

Can’t see this is any kind of big issue.

There are hypotheses being written in rigorous detail with testability built into them.

And the check is in the mail.

*The problem is not disagreement, per se, since disagreements exist about all questions of science. The problem is that those who control funding, peer review and academia have taken a particularly one-sided view on the issue on the pretext that the science is “settled,” or, at least, that only those who pursue a particular angle on the question will be permitted to make any contributions on the matter. *

UFO-logists and 9/11 conspiracy theorists, etc., say the same - that there’s a secret conspiracy to hide The Truth[sup]™[/sup]. Perhaps the World Government is using mind control to prevent intelligent design fans finding and funding scientists to write and test this mythical hypothesis.

Or not.

This shows up even in your posts where you claim ID is not science and then when the question is raised concerning why it isn’t, the standard response is to punt to a judge’s decision years back as if what a judge had to say on the matter of what is or isn’t science is the binding determinant for all time.

So now judges have joined the scientists’ conspiracy? Don’t think any one has mentioned that case and it might have been better to keep quiet about it, as the transcript is especially hilarious. Please link it for all those who enjoy dry courtroom humor.

*What I find particularly humorous is that I am not an ID advocate nor do I necessarily deny that evolution in some form or other could have been an aspect of the mechanism for bringing about the plethora of life forms on Earth. The problem is that “standard theory” with regard to evolution does not deal with many of the questions which remain. My concern is to be thorough and to resolve all theoretical issues completely – denial and obfuscation doesn’t get us there.

If any particular form of evolutionary theory is correct it should be robust enough to answer all issues surrounding what it purports to explain. It shouldn’t seek to silence critics. Yet, that approach is all too common in modern science, which is, I think, an indicator that science has become far too agenda driven and has gotten away from its basic mandate of explaining, in a complete and satisfying way, how the observable universe works.*

The moderator has instructed us not to discuss evolution. And the usual approach when we don’t know something is to do research, not sit on the sidelines and snipe at those who do research.

 

[inocente]

Again, as you did in a recent post, you are guilty of having me say things I did not say. Where is this post where I accused you of not being sincere? What I did accuse you of was being confused because you often reason like an agnostic rather than a Baptist. That is a point I have made with you often enough.

Don’t know about Catholics but if you said that to anyone in my church then the entire church would put you very firmly in your place.

“Therefore let us stop passing judgment on one another. Instead, make up your mind not to put any stumbling block or obstacle in the way of a brother or sister.” - Romans 14

My faith is strong but you can bring harm to those who’re not so convinced when you tell them they’re not good enough. You’re not the Shepherd, we each belong to Christ, not to you. “It is never acceptable to question the sincerity of an individual’s beliefs”.

Enough, leave it there.

• You never seem to find anything useful in scripture when it is brought to your attention that it is useful. Just the example given above, where you say that God was talking about creating a spiritual light when he is clearly not talking about a spiritual light shows the lengths to which you will go to deny something that is so obvious as that light is light.

But I guess your next interpretation of Lux fiat* will be that it was just a shot in the dark!"

*"Darkness and light are evocative words in Hebrew. Darkness evokes everything that is anti-God: the wicked ( Prov 2:13 ), judgment ( Exod 10:21 ), death ( Psalm 88:12 ). Light is the first of the Creator’s works, manifesting the divine operation in a world that is darkness and chaos without it. While light is not itself divine, it is often used metaphorically for life ( Psalm 56:13 ), salvation ( Isa 9:2 ), the commandments ( Prov 6:23 ), and the divine presence of God ( Exod 10:23 ). In the first creative act, “God saw that the light was good” ( Gen 1:3 ).

God Is Light. If light represents goodness in antithesis to the evil associated with darkness, it is a natural step for the biblical authors to understand God, the ultimate good, as light." - biblestudytools.com/dictionary/light/*

Also, have a look at various interpretations of Gen 1:3 on this thread along with many other sources

Now a basic principle in any Baptist bible study class it to let scripture talk to us rather than us imposing our own meaning on scripture. Perhaps then, Genesis 1 was not written in Texan English as a superficial gloss on modern cosmology. Perhaps it speaks to every age with other, deeper meanings. Perhaps those who don’t see those meanings tell those of us who do that we’re confused and reason like agnostics. Perhaps.

A badly remembered poem on spiritual darkness:

Light
shines around them,
so bright!
they do not see.

 

[inocente]

If we look at things from the latter perspective, we see an involved God bringing all this into existence. The basic structure of the universe comes into being, “day” after “day”.
With respect to cosmic creation, He now rests; energy and matter are no longer created. He remains involved as Father to all, but what He set in place in time, exists as such.

Although of course, matter is created and destroyed all the time via E = mc[sup]2[/sup].

Conservation of energy says the sum total energy in the universe, call it X, never changes. It’s hypothesized that it is and also has been exactly zero, since otherwise it would be hard to explain where that physical energy came from and why it sums to X. - livescience.com/33129-total-energy-universe-zero.html

Would Thomists agree with you that God now rests? I’m thinking of the unmoved mover argument, which I’m told requires the unmoved mover to continually sustain all motion, although why the unmoved mover never thought to put it on autopilot is something I could never grasp.

 

[Peter_Plato]

The reason this is a silly objection is because as a purported theist you should know that God is not confined in space or time.

Actually, the claim is that God is not confined BY space and time. The fact that God is both transcendent and immanent seems to have evaded you. This does not preclude God acting in or upon space, time, energy and matter without being changed in any way.

Never before seen the question of how DNA assembled described as a basic problem in metaphysics. Sounds very mystical New Age.

Do not judge by mere appearances – “sounds very mystical…” is not an argument

You don’t seem to understand that metaphysics is a discipline within philosophy.

The usual approach when we don’t know something is to do research. At high school we were told the hypothesis that DNA probably developed from RNA, and a quick google got me up to date.

Can’t see this is any kind of big issue.

RNA World had been shown to be wholly inadequate. Yes, it is a big issue since any theory about how living organisms “evolved” has to have some inkling into what those organisms evolved FROM.

You rely on what you learned in high school and you want I should be the the one to bone up on the subject?

And the check is in the mail.

Funny how you are quite willing to permit the scientists you are willing to indulge the ability to liberally write promissory notes but not extend the same privilege to those with whom you disagree, ideologically speaking.

UFO-logists and 9/11 conspiracy theorists, etc., say the same - that there’s a secret conspiracy to hide The Truth[sup]™[/sup]. Perhaps the World Government is using mind control to prevent intelligent design fans finding and funding scientists to write and test this mythical hypothesis.

Or not.

No reasonable response to be had so we must resort to deriding and defaming by association.

So now judges have joined the scientists’ conspiracy? Don’t think any one has mentioned that case and it might have been better to keep quiet about it, as the transcript is especially hilarious. Please link it for all those who enjoy dry courtroom humor.

Actually, you already had “mentioned the case” in several of our previous exchanges. It appears I have pre-empted you, which has compelled you to resort to your dismissive brand of humour.

What were those words of St. Paul, again, about not putting any stumbling block in the way of your brother or sister? It is rather amusing that you can put so much effort into promoting what appears to be atheistic materialism, and yet accuse others of creating stumbling blocks to your faith when they ask you to explain your position in a coherent way.

It seems to me that faith that cannot 'fess up and justify itself in the face of inquiry will not remain in the face of active persecution. Perhaps treating your faith with kid gloves is what has placed you in such a vulnerable position to begin with. Cf. “refiner’s fire” in the Bible.

The moderator has instructed us not to discuss evolution. And the usual approach when we don’t know something is to do research, not sit on the sidelines and snipe at those who do research.

Actually, there are a number of biologists and biochemists doing just that. If I recall, the last time I cited the work of some of those, I heard a great deal of “sniping” from the sidelines concerning how ID is NOT science even though these scientists were, in fact, doing scientific research on protein synthesis and what is genetically required for the acquisition of new adaptive traits.

 

[Peter_Plato]

Would Thomists agree with you that God now rests? I’m thinking of the unmoved mover argument, which I’m told requires the unmoved mover to continually sustain all motion, although why the unmoved mover never thought to put it on autopilot is something I could never grasp.

I suspect there is a misconception of the concept of “Unmoved Mover” at play here. The idea is not that God is a passive recluse who does nothing because he is constrained by the logic of “unmoved” to not lift a finger or move in any way.

The Thomistic terms “fullness of being,” Actus Purus or “the pure act of Being itself” are better. The idea is that God is complete in every possible aspect of being so there is nothing that remains purely potential – all is actualized in God. There is nothing that can come about, nowhere to “move to” and nothing left to be actualized.

He is not “unmoved” in any passive sense of remaining inactive by some inherency of his nature. He is Unchanging because in God there is no potential which is not actualized – the fullness of all possible existence is active and present in God.

 

[Aloysium]

Although of course, matter is created and destroyed all the time via E = mc[sup]2[/sup]. Conservation of energy says the sum total energy in the universe, call it X, never changes. It’s hypothesized that it is and also has been exactly zero, since otherwise it would be hard to explain where that physical energy came from and why it sums to X. - livescience.com/33129-total-energy-universe-zero.html Would Thomists agree with you that God now rests? I’m thinking of the unmoved mover argument, which I’m told requires the unmoved mover to continually sustain all motion, although why the unmoved mover never thought to put it on autopilot is something I could never grasp.

I’m not sure what you are talking about. Not an unusual situation in this ultrapostmodern Tower of Babel, the Internet.

I am interested in how you figured out how to write: E = mc[sup]2[/sup]. [sup], eh? Go figure.

Here are some random thoughts, for what they are worth:

God resting may have something to do with why X never changes.

That the sum of all energies is zero sounds rather Zen and I’m sure Lao-Tzu
(Laozi if you want to nit-pick - there’s a bad pun in that btw. I have to explain my attempts at a joke, more than i do my posts)
would approve.

Existence is necessary to be. We then have to understand the nature of being - clue: it is relational.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

My faith is strong but you can bring harm to those who’re not so convinced when you tell them they’re not good enough. You’re not the Shepherd, we each belong to Christ, not to you. “It is never acceptable to question the sincerity of an individual’s beliefs”.

We do not question a person’s sincerity when we allege that they are confused. You continue to refuse to cite the post in which you say I called you insincere. This continues to be a word you put in my mouth. Why do you do this when you cannot find the post in which I spoke it?

But as to the remark you made above, you cannot be a Baptist judging a Catholic and then accuse the Catholic of judging you. More confusion, I’m sorry to say.

John 7:24 ►
“Stop judging by mere appearances, but instead judge correctly.”

 

[Charlemagne_III]

No, not read it, thanks for the reference. I heard the story from other sources, which took a different view: that as a priest, Lemaître was more concerned that the Pope would say something which could not be supported by his “hypothesis of the primeval atom” as it was then called.

This is right, so far as it goes. The Big Bang was still being vigorously challenged by the likes of George Gamow and Fred Hoyle, both adamant atheists. The last thing Lemaître needed was to hear them howling something like, “Aha, the pope is the final authority on all things astronomical!.”

What Pius was merely saying is that the Big Bang was consistent with a biblical creation moment. He had every right to say that. And Lemaître had every right to be upset that he said it.

Politics as usual, but not relevant to anything astronomical.

These are the precise words to which Lemaître objected: paragraph 44 of the Pope’s address to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, November 22, 1951.

“44. It is undeniable that when a mind enlightened and enriched with modern scientific knowledge weighs this problem calmly, it feels drawn to break through the circle of completely independent or autochthonous matter, whether uncreated or self-created, and to ascend to a creating Spirit. With the same clear and critical look with which it examines and passes judgment on facts, it perceives and recognizes the work of creative omnipotence, whose power, set in motion by the mighty “Fiat” pronounced billions of years ago by the Creating Spirit, spread out over the universe, calling into existence with a gesture of generous love matter busting with energy. In fact, it would seem that present-day science, with one sweeping step back across millions of centuries, has succeeded in bearing witness to that primordial “Fiat lux” uttered at the moment when, along with matter, there burst forth from nothing a sea of light and radiation, while the particles of chemical elements split and formed into millions of galaxies.”

 

[Aloysium]

. . . that primordial “Fiat lux” uttered at the moment when, along with matter, there burst forth from nothing a sea of light and radiation. . .

Wonderfully stated, but yeah, he did have the science wrong.

The earliest universe was “infinitely” hot and material particles were not, or at least were only very, very fleetingly present.

Everything that exists today was unified in one force - light.
All of this here and now may have been there as part of the whole, not yet having forged itself into existence.
Or, it did not yet exist; but the eventuality was one step closer with the creation of “not-light”.

Now and then, it is always the hand of God that we see.

 

[tonyrey]

…Questions three and four: Einstein thought God doesn’t play dice but was proved wrong in QM. Perhaps Tony is right and God doesn’t micro-manage everything. Or, there was a regular poster here who thought the opposite, he was certain that God has to constantly change the direction of every planet in orbit, of every electron.

Who knows. “For freedom did Christ set us free: stand fast therefore, and be not entangled again in a yoke of bondage [Gal 5]”. Well, obviously that doesn’t include the absolutely essential bondage of assigning purposes to everything, keep up the good work

There are at least two compelling reasons to believe the Creator doesn’t micro-manage everything - as opposed to Calvin’s view that not a drop of rain falls without the express command of God. He would be directly responsible for all the hideous aspects of life on earth and also for all the atrocities planned and implemented by human beings.

 

[IWantGod]

There are at least two compelling reasons to believe the Creator doesn’t micro-manage everything - as opposed to Calvin’s view that not a drop of rain falls without the express command of God. He would be directly responsible for all the hideous aspects of life on earth and also for all the atrocities planned and implemented by human beings.

 

[tonyrey]

…Re the Zika virus, I already said I go with the science, while you still appear to be sitting on the fence, talking only of “permission” and “overall design”. It’s still unclear whether you and Tony even agree on what is and isn’t intelligently designed. Just doesn’t seem to be thought through. There’s a book by a certain Mr Darwin, possibly the most boring book ever written, but it is extremely well thought through, no intelligent design argument on this thread comes even remotely close to being as well thought through.

There is no conflict whatsoever between Design and evolution. Chance alone is a hopelessly inadequate explanation of the development of rational beings from mindless molecules - nor will physical Necessity suffice…

 

[IWantGod]

There is no conflict whatsoever between Design and evolution. Chance alone is a hopelessly inadequate explanation of the development of rational beings from mindless molecules - nor will physical Necessity suffice…

Chance cannot happen without order.

 

[tonyrey]

You’re not making any objective claim: if you like something then “**Positive **aspects of reality like the beauty of a butterfly and the harmony in nature are designed”, if you don’t like something then “**Negative **aspects like disease and disasters are caused by unfortunate coincidences like exposure to radiation or being in an earthquake zone”.

To equate negativity with dislike is unreasonable. It amounts to rejecting beauty and harmony as figments of the imagination. Likewise there is no objective reason for distinguishing disease from good health and disasters from the normal course of events.

You’re saying it’s designed unless it’s not designed and it’s not designed unless it’s designed, which tells us nothing.

A very curious deduction! Please explain how you reached that conclusion.

It’s no competition at all for 157 years of rigorous science which has allowed progress in curing diseases and protecting the planet.

The view that there is necessarily conflict between science and religion is obsolete.