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

[o_mlly]

Total knowledge of all design flaws, all future suffering of each individual, the fate of each individual. Why would a loving God create an individual only to have it be born with a terminal and hideous illness?
That is the burden of omniscience…if a deity possesses it and takes an active role among its creation, there has to come a great deal of responsibility. Add in all the other omnis ascribed to the Christian God, and it makes for a very difficult defense for much of the suffering we see in this world.
Remove omniscience and direct involvement, and it makes a great deal more logical sense…at least it does to me.

John

Then Job answered the LORD and said:
"I know that You can do all things,
And that no purpose of Yours can be hindered.
I have dealt with great things that I do not understand;
Things too wonderful for me, which I cannot know.
I had heard of You by word of mouth,
But now my eye has seen You.
Therefore I disown what I have said,
And repent in dust and ashes” (Job 42:1-6).

Job comes to see suffering as God’s instrument of intimacy; not of punishment. His prior experience of God expressed in verse five, “I had heard of You by word of mouth,” is indirect and wanting. In the time of his material prosperity, Job “heard” about God and responded liturgically using the proven formulas of his cult to maintain God’s goodwill. In a simplistic quid pro quo relationship, Job gives to God what is His—sacrifice—and, in return, God gives to Job—prosperity. But God so loves Job that He wishes to reveal Himself in a deeper, profounder way. To achieve this intimacy, God must first penetrate Job and strip away all his distractions, thereby capturing his complete attention.

 

[inocente]

Now would you mind explaining how God could create the universe without intelligently designing it or how science could pursue its enterprise on the assumption that not a whit of intelligence went into the laws that govern the universe even though complex mathematical equations seem fully compliant with its ordering?

I believe God is greater than we can conceive, not that God is made in the image of a high IQ human.

 

[inocente]

inocente;13881541:

Google couldn’t find any either, it found no philosopher or theologian who has written about chance with a capital c existing together with design with a capital d along the lines of your personal theory. Are you saying you don’t personally know of any but you were hoping google might? Or if you do know of some, why not cite them?

princeton.edu/~grosen/puc/phi203/design.html
plato.stanford.edu/entries/teleological-arguments/

Come on, they’re irrelevant. To repeat: you still have not cited any philosopher or any theologian who holds your theory that “Positive aspects of reality like the beauty of a butterfly and the harmony in nature are designed” while “Negative aspects like disease and disasters are caused by unfortunate coincidences”. Please cite any any philosopher or any theologian who agrees with your theory.

After stating that “It would be good to finally see one of these many varied theories written down in with academic rigor”!

If you’re got copyright than please quote the relevant part here, otherwise quote a fair-usage sample. I’m not about to spend money on it sight unseen!

*So time is irrelevant? *

To repeat: look back as I asked and you’ll see I never made that assumption.

“we”?

To repeat: I said there are “plenty Christians who don’t believe in any version of intelligent design, including any of many varied theories on this thread”. That obviously includes me. You said “In that case they reject the teaching of Jesus”, and I said “No we do not, we reject your personal theory.”

The words of Jesus about the beauty of the lilies are clear enough for a child to understand…

To repeat: first you claimed “Jesus Himself referred to the beauty of lilies as evidence of Design” then you changed your mind and said “Jesus pointed to the beauty of the lilies as unmistakable evidence that we have a loving Father in heaven.”

 

[Peter_Plato]

I believe God is greater than we can conceive, not that God is made in the image of a high IQ human.

I see. SO God did intelligently design the universe, but in a manner necessarily beyond our capacity to understand how and why.

And yet, science continues attempting to work out the details and you remain a staunch defender of the capacity of science to work out those details.

How do those seemingly conflicting positions resolve themselves?

And you wouldn’t suppose that when God gave “dominion” over nature to human beings in Genesis, THAT would necessarily entail that God gave the capacity to understand the workings of nature to the human intellect? In other words, wouldn’t we suppose that God would tailor human intelligence to nature or create nature so that it is comprehensible to human intelligence IF we were supposed to have “dominion” over it and were designed to do so?

I mean just because God is omniscient and omnibenevolent that does not necessarily entail that all of his power and knowledge went into creating the universe. Perhaps only a small measure – just enough to keep human beings challenged and busy figuring it out.

Ergo, there is no necessary entailment from God’s infinite capacities to, therefore, the universe being infinitely unknowable or beyond human capacity.

Just because God is far greater than we can conceive does NOT mean the universe and its workings necessarily are.

Do you see YOUR non sequitur, there?

That was a rhetorical question, by the way. I wouldn’t expect you to admit the commission of a logical faux pas. Just one of those mysterious things about the human condition that some of us have no control over. An effect of chance or random happenstance, I suppose.

 

[Peter_Plato]

Come on, they’re irrelevant. To repeat: you still have not cited any philosopher or any theologian who holds your theory that “Positive aspects of reality like the beauty of a butterfly and the harmony in nature are designed” while “Negative aspects like disease and disasters are caused by unfortunate coincidences”. Please cite any any philosopher or any theologian who agrees with your theory.

Thomas Aquinas for one of many.

The fifth way is taken from the governance of the world. We see that things which lack intelligence, such as natural bodies, act for an end, and this is evident from their acting always, or nearly always, in the same way, so as to obtain the best result. Hence it is plain that not fortuitously, but designedly, do they achieve their end. Now whatever lacks intelligence cannot move towards an end, unless it be directed by some being endowed with knowledge and intelligence; as the arrow is shot to its mark by the archer. Therefore some intelligent being exists by whom all natural things are directed to their end; and this being we call God.

 

[Peter_Plato]

Come on, they’re irrelevant. To repeat: you still have not cited any philosopher or any theologian who holds your theory that “Positive aspects of reality like the beauty of a butterfly and the harmony in nature are designed” while “Negative aspects like disease and disasters are caused by unfortunate coincidences”. Please cite any any philosopher or any theologian who agrees with your theory.

So let me get your position straight…

You think that not just the “negative aspects like disease and disasters are caused by unfortunate coincidences;” rather, you suppose that everything, including beauty, harmony, order, purpose and apparent design are ALL caused by unfortunate (or fortunate) coincidences. Things just came about as a series of fortunate (or unfortunate) events, and NOT by the providential hand of God?

Can YOU cite any philosopher or theologian who agrees with your theory who is not an atheist or eliminative materialist? I mean a bona fide theist who believes God has NO hand in ordering nature or the laws of physics.

Perhaps you need to write the first Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Nihilistic Theistic Universe in ORDER to reconcile the paradox of how and why an infinitely intelligent God would leave aside all his intellectual assets in order to create a completely random and unordered universe.

Perhaps he needed a challenge on those six days of creation? A little bored was he?

 

[inocente]

Innocente, and whoever else is interested.

To better understand where I am going (and I am pretty far along). Here is my opening statement of a synopsis I am writing.

1. The purpose of my thesis is to provide a plausible argument for those that believe in God with which to counter the secular materialists that use modern science as the main weapon in their argument that there is no God and that reality can be completely described based on nothing but matter, energy and the laws of physics.
2. The following synopsis presents the main ideas expressed in the full text of a book currently being written. The basic thesis is based on the premise that God exists and He creates and sustains the universe and everything in it at the ground of reality (the implicate view). That which God creates and sustains is manifested at an observable level that we experience and science describes (the explicate view). This approach avoids a conflict between science and religion.
3. A model that explains reality as having a hylomorphic nature—material and spiritual—is constructed by utilizing both modalities of space, continuous and discrete. The model describes a basic mechanism, called the holonomic mechanism, that operates at the implicate level, the results of which are manifested at the explicate level as matter, time, and energy. The holonomic mechanism not only explains the basic nature of objective reality, but also those phenomena that form subjective, rational, and transcendental reality, namely: life, mind, and soul.
4. If what I believe about the duality of space and the holonomic mechanism is at all realistic, then what I present is a plausible explanation of HOW God creates and sustains reality.

I realize that a plausible explanation does not meet the standards of a scientific description ( I have a master’s degree in physics so I do know science), but we are in a philosophical environment and in that regard an explanation trumps a description. Science does not explain, it merely describes. And if you doubt that, try explaining what energy is. Might take some deep thought, more than you applied to my chart, (not graph as you assumed).

This should be enough for now. When I get the urge I will deal with your questions on complexity and specific points in history when science believed the quantum jumps occurred. Incidentally, I do not include cycles in my thesis, reality is moving in a single direction.

There was another poster here who asked some of us to review his theory before he self-published it (the book was available on Amazon but the title escapes me). His theory was also an attempt to describe reality for believers, but it was a very dry technical reality, as if any explanation which included humans, with our problems and emotions and dreams, would spoil its grand elegance. Like a lot of such theories, it seemed that ultimately it couldn’t provide a base to be built on and struggled to have any relevance.

No doubt you will escape such traps and pitfalls. I wish you success. Personally, you know my view - less is more.

 

[inocente]

So let me get your position straight…

You think that not just the “negative aspects like disease and disasters are caused by unfortunate coincidences;” rather, you suppose that everything, including beauty, harmony, order, purpose and apparent design are ALL caused by unfortunate (or fortunate) coincidences. Things just came about as a series of fortunate (or unfortunate) events, and NOT by the providential hand of God?

You put words in my mouth and then expect me to argue about words I haven’t said. Very comedic.

Thomas Aquinas for one of many.

Come on, that’s irrelevant. Where does Thomas hold with Tony’s theory that “Positive aspects of reality like the beauty of a butterfly and the harmony in nature are designed” while “Negative aspects like disease and disasters are caused by unfortunate coincidences”?

 

[inocente]

I see. SO God did intelligently design the universe, but in a manner necessarily beyond our capacity to understand how and why.

And yet, science continues attempting to work out the details and you remain a staunch defender of the capacity of science to work out those details.

How do those seemingly conflicting positions resolve themselves?

And you wouldn’t suppose that when God gave “dominion” over nature to human beings in Genesis, THAT would necessarily entail that God gave the capacity to understand the workings of nature to the human intellect? In other words, wouldn’t we suppose that God would tailor human intelligence to nature or create nature so that it is comprehensible to human intelligence IF we were supposed to have “dominion” over it and were designed to do so?

I mean just because God is omniscient and omnibenevolent that does not necessarily entail that all of his power and knowledge went into creating the universe. Perhaps only a small measure – just enough to keep human beings challenged and busy figuring it out.

Ergo, there is no necessary entailment from God’s infinite capacities to, therefore, the universe being infinitely unknowable or beyond human capacity.

Just because God is far greater than we can conceive does NOT mean the universe and its workings necessarily are.

Do you see YOUR non sequitur, there?

That was a rhetorical question, by the way. I wouldn’t expect you to admit the commission of a logical faux pas. Just one of those mysterious things about the human condition that some of us have no control over. An effect of chance or random happenstance, I suppose.

Obviously it’s a non sequitur. Once again you put words in my mouth and then expect me to argue over words I haven’t said.

 

[Peter_Plato]

You put words in my mouth and then expect me to argue about words I haven’t said. Very comedic.

And then there is the little issue of keeping your position so obscure as to complain that others are “utting words in your mouth” no matter what critique is made. It becomes a kind of all-purpose, irrefutable rebuttal since your position is so mutable as to be invulnerable to all-critique.

:Come on, that’s irrelevant. Where does Thomas hold with Tony’s theory that “Positive aspects of reality like the beauty of a butterfly and the harmony in nature are designed” while “Negative aspects like disease and disasters are caused by unfortunate coincidences”?

You do understand that Aquinas held that truth, beauty, goodness and existence are fundamentally one and the same. Ergo, beauty is in the ordering and purpose inherent in the nature of things. These are not separable for Aquinas, even though you might insist that he was wrong and that you are correct. That would still be your position and not his.

 

[inocente]

And then there is the little issue of keeping your position so obscure as to complain that others are “utting words in your mouth” no matter what critique is made. It becomes a kind of all-purpose, irrefutable rebuttal since your position is so mutable as to be invulnerable to all-critique.

You’ve put words in my mouth again! I didn’t “complain that others are putting words in my mouth”, did I? I said to you and to you alone, you put words in my mouth. No one else is doing that, you alone are doing it. Stop it.

I won’t argue with you about words I haven’t said, but as you already seem to have forgotten what I said to you the other day, standard theology and standard science, no added personal pet theories, if you find that obscure then I can’t say it more plainly.

You do understand that Aquinas held that truth, beauty, goodness and existence are fundamentally one and the same. Ergo, beauty is in the ordering and purpose inherent in the nature of things. These are not separable for Aquinas, even though you might insist that he was wrong and that you are correct. That would still be your position and not his.

Yet again you put words in my mouth! I never said Thomas was wrong did I? What I asked you was where does Thomas hold with Tony’s theory that “Positive aspects of reality like the beauty of a butterfly and the harmony in nature are designed” while “Negative aspects like disease and disasters are caused by unfortunate coincidences”? There are 29 words there from “Positive…” to “…coincidences”, please don’t just keep ignoring them and answering questions I never asked.

There’s no point continuing to post to me unless you start reading what’s said to you and discussing what’s said to you rather than playing these games, it was funny the first time but now you’re just wasting pixels.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

Come on, that’s irrelevant. Where does Thomas hold with Tony’s theory that “Positive aspects of reality like the beauty of a butterfly and the harmony in nature are designed” while “Negative aspects like disease and disasters are caused by unfortunate coincidences”?

Eden was designed by God to be a place of beauty and harmony. This is Scriptural. If you believe Scripture, you must believe that God designed Eden to be a place of beauty and harmony. and that it didn’t just get that way by accident. .Again, if you believe Scripture,
you believe that as a result of sin God’s guarantee of beauty and harmony was removed when the first parents were expelled from Eden. Natural evils like "disease and disasters and the consequence of sin, because man was no longer protected from them and they became part of the new design of man’s existence, that he should be subjected to moral and natural evils; and that, even so, God would permit these evils (misfortunes) in order that good may come from them.

This is Aquinas’ view, but I will oblige you to read the whole of the Summa Theologica to find out where he says it.

 

[Bradski]

How would you justify your implicit assumption that a physical universe can be perfect in every respect without any defects, misfortunes or limitations?

It isn’t perfect! There are flaws. There are aspects of existence that simply don’t work very well. There are redundancies. The whole thing looks exactly as it would if it had simply evolved naturally with all the fault lines and make-do, patched up incongrancies that you would expect.

And you want to claim that if God put the whole shebang together, the omnipotent God who can do anything, a God who can create existence itself ex nihilo, would be expected to make it all with a few defects. A few misfortunes. A couple of limitations.

A we talking about the same God?

 

[Aloysium]

There are no limitations to our capacity to love one another, only challenges to do and be more.

Each apparent deficit reveals the miracles to be found in creation.
Let’s praise God for the gifts of sight and reason.

Tied to this world, one sees only what is important to this world.
What is transcendent and of eternal beauty, what is real is lost when we are transfixed by appearances.

 

[Peter_Plato]

It isn’t perfect! There are flaws. There are aspects of existence that simply don’t work very well. There are redundancies. The whole thing looks exactly as it would if it had simply evolved naturally with all the fault lines and make-do, patched up incongrancies that you would expect.

And you want to claim that if God put the whole shebang together, the omnipotent God who can do anything, a God who can create existence itself ex nihilo, would be expected to make it all with a few defects. A few misfortunes. A couple of limitations.

A we talking about the same God?

Well, that would depend entirely upon the ultimate intention that God has for the universe, would it not?

I mean it is one thing to impose your view of things on the universe and make claims about what you think is “perfect." It is another thing entirely to insist that omniscience and omnipotence cannot weave into the universe what appear to us as apparent incongruities while still having the knowledge and power to bring about whatever ends God chooses when God chooses. You do understand that omniscience and omnipotence mean there are no restrictions on what God can do? Meaning, I would suppose, that even what you call “defects” or “misfortunes” need not be limitations upon what he can do. A “goof-up” is only that if it wasn’t intended.

You aren’t claiming to possess the omniscience and omnipotence to know with certainty which “defects” are actually defects and which are only apparently so to those with limited foresight and intelligence, are you?

In order to make any claims about what constitute “defects” you would have to be fully aware of what the ultimate plan is that omniscience has for creation. Absent that you have no certainty whether the defects really are such or are possibly elements intended and designed to present dramatic or comedic effects.

The other aspect that you seem to have left untouched is that the Genesis story provides a reason why God might permit these little defects and misfortunes since the narrative is about Adam and Eve desiring first hand knowledge of good AND evil. I would think that implies the defects and misfortunes are a consequence of permitting free agents to experience first-hand the “natural” consequences of what they sought.

 

[Michael19682]

When God breathed life into Adam, it was a veiled gesture. No one knew that it was a holy spirit, but it was. Jesus for me represents a kind of second chance for humanity. An undeniable testimony to the power of God’s Holy Spirit to find peace amidst tragedy. Those who say that the human character is beaten down by life’s unfortunate scenarios are simply taking their ego’s too far too seriously, and hence the pain is the only reality they can see – their personal veto of the Messiah based on their refusal to accept him and not on His gentleness and love.
Jesus is the model for us all, and he says quite unequivocally that he has come down from Heaven by His Father’s will, which we now know is the will of Jesus.

Therefore why not assume reductio ad absurdum that we also came down from heaven in our baptism or at birth, either one, and that like Jesus we knew that the “flaws” would exist, and furthermore that by being baptized we consented like Jesus to our death beforehand. Therefore, the reconciliation of “flaws” with intelligence is that the “flaws” are intentional (though not overly burdensome) and that souls have been chosen to live out these flaws according to their own free choice and consent. Like Jesus, we now have the full revelation of the Father through their Spirit to give us an inner instruction as to the reason for our crosses, the so called flaws we knew about before we took incarnation.

If something similar isn’t true, then we are in effect tossed like stones into the ocean of life by a God who merely endows us with the tools to hopefully make sense of our cross in time to avoid hell.

 

[tonyrey]

How would you justify your implicit assumption that a physical universe can be perfect in every respect without any defects, misfortunes or limitations?

You haven’t answered the question. Appearances are very often deceptive…

And you want to claim that if God put the whole shebang together, the omnipotent God who can do anything, a God who can create existence itself ex nihilo, would be expected to make it all with a few defects. A few misfortunes. A couple of limitations.

You grossly underestimate the immense complexity of the universe with countless individuals and projects, events and coincidences occurring at every moment. It is very easy to criticise but to create is a far different proposition. How about a feasible blueprint?

 

[Bradski]

You haven’t answered the question. Appearances are very often deceptive…

You grossly underestimate the immense complexity of the universe with countless individuals and projects, events and coincidences occurring at every moment. It is very easy to criticise but to create is a far different proposition. How about a feasible blueprint?

Appearances are very often deceptive? Did you actually just write that down? Well, you must have. There it is at the top of this post.

Isn’t your argument, your complete and all encompassing argument, that things have the appearance of having been designed? Isn’t that it? ‘Look’, you shout, ‘isn’t it bloody obvious?’

And the rest of us patiently point out that, yes, it DOES have the appearance of being designed. And then you hit us all with the zinger and finish the sentence yourself: ‘…but Appaearance Are Very Often Decpeptive’.

Can you print that out in something like a thirty point font, Gothic would be good, in bright red, and stick it on the wall above your screen. Read it every time you log on. Commit it to memory.

And you and Peter keep me in giggles so often.

‘The universe is designed. It is God’s perfect creation!’
‘Well, actually, it’s full of things that look very badly designed indeed’
'Mmm. Well…that’s because all those problems are part of the design!

That ‘Who Can Know God’s Mind’ card needs replacing. Dog eared and worn. Barely legible. It’s used so often. You seem to think it trumps everything, when all it says it that you have no idea how to respond (quick, Pete, show him the card!).

 

[Michael19682]

Appearances are very often deceptive? Did you actually just write that down? Well, you must have. There it is at the top of this post.

Isn’t your argument, your complete and all encompassing argument, that things have the appearance of having been designed? Isn’t that it? ‘Look’, you shout, ‘isn’t it bloody obvious?’

And the rest of us patiently point out that, yes, it DOES have the appearance of being designed. And then you hit us all with the zinger and finish the sentence yourself: ‘…but Appaearance Are Very Often Decpeptive’.

Can you print that out in something like a thirty point font, Gothic would be good, in bright red, and stick it on the wall above your screen. Read it every time you log on. Commit it to memory.

And you and Peter keep me in giggles so often.

‘The universe is designed. It is God’s perfect creation!’
‘Well, actually, it’s full of things that look very badly designed indeed’
'Mmm. Well…that’s because all those problems are part of the design!

That ‘Who Can Know God’s Mind’ card needs replacing. Dog eared and worn. Barely legible. It’s used so often. You seem to think it trumps everything, when all it says it that you have no idea how to respond (quick, Pete, show him the card!).

In your universe, is the glass half-full or half-empty? A problem is relative to a perception. While one person considers himself very clever in pointing out flaws, the perpetual fault finder, another is just as much an optimist, failing to find even one fault.

After all is said and done, alleviation of human suffering is the goal of the humanistic atheist. Is his goal any different in matters where philosophy is the salve on the wound of the universe? Are we in search of the “one true salve”, or do we recognize that all this universe already is the salve?

 

[Bradski]

In your universe, is the glass half-full or half-empty? A problem is relative to a perception. While one person considers himself very clever in pointing out flaws, the perpetual fault finder, another is just as much an optimist, failing to find even one fault.

Clever in finding fault? Good Lord, you would have to be as dumb as a box of rocks not to realise the problems inherent in our existence.

But here we have the two sides of the same argument: there are no flaws v well, OK there are flaws but they are part of the design (versus the trite: ‘Come up with something better why doncha’).

If you think there are none, then go spend some time with Peter and Tony and come to some agreement between yourselves. Because this is impossible to debate on two fronts. Pick a position, stick to it, then we can talk.

And incidentally, what is with this trite ‘design something better’ call. There was something better at the beginning. Pre Adam and Eve. You don’t have to believe it actually happened. But I’ll go with that. If it was good enough for God then it’s good enough for me. And you have to accept that it was better than we have now, because if it wasn’t, there is no concept of a ‘fall’ where things get worse.

But then we slip in yet another argument. It was fine, God made is perfectly but…it was our fault that it turned out the way it did. God did all the work, set it up so there were no incongruencies, no faults, no rediculous design features, but then we screwed it all up.

So where are we now…

There are no faults, it’s designed perfectly.
There are faults but they are part of the design (quick, the card…the card).
There are faults but they are down to us (‘searching for knowledge’ apparently…how bizarre).

Any more we can add?