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rossum
Guest
I see you are a fan of “The Hunting of the Snark” - “What I tell you three times is true.”
Did you really need to post this in two other threads as well as starting a new one?
rossum
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shannyk
Guest
Are we supposed to believe in intelligent design?
Of the notable Catholic opinions on ID I’ve read, none have been favorable.
Of the notable Catholic opinions on ID I’ve read, none have been favorable.
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Fran65
Guest
No, it is not expected. It is left to each Catholic’s conscience. A Catholic can believe in creationism, ID, theistic evolution or evolution - it depends on your own judgement and convictions - for the time being. Clearly as scientific evidence accumulates the CC may choose to state it’s position unequivocally. True faith does not contradict science and reason.
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shannyk
Guest
That is pretty much my take on it Fran.
As far as I know, and correct me if I’m wrong, we are required as a matter of faith to believe the account of Creation in scripture, not exclusive of any scientific explanations when and if they come along, since it’s not a dogmatically defined topic.
Ont he flip side of that, just because there is latitude for discussion on the topic doesn’t in itself prove the Biblical account of Creation to be wrong.
As far as I know, and correct me if I’m wrong, we are required as a matter of faith to believe the account of Creation in scripture, not exclusive of any scientific explanations when and if they come along, since it’s not a dogmatically defined topic.
Ont he flip side of that, just because there is latitude for discussion on the topic doesn’t in itself prove the Biblical account of Creation to be wrong.
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James_S_Saint
Guest
Although difficult to sit through, I very much agree with Durston’s proclamation that Science has the responsibility to settle on a measurement method before making any claims concerning ID.
I felt that he could have presented his case much more clearly in that through all of the distractive explanation, I couldn’t quite see if he was really attending to all of the facts concerned with his formulas.
He presenting the case such as to indicate that ID is unquestionably more scientific than natural process, but in the midst of confusion, such appearance can be aimed in any direction.
I certainly applaud his foundation concern of making it measurable. If Science would do that for the subject of “Joy”, the entire world would suddenly become a lot happier.
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fhansen
Guest
But the concept behind the notion of ID is simply that intelligence must ultimately be the cause behind the design of all things. I’m don’t see why a Catholic would believe otherwise, whether or not we think it should be promoted as science at this point.
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edwest2
Guest
Yet some on this forum would argue that we’re just accidents. The randomly mutated and naturally selected that just happened to show up after millions of years of mutating and selecting. We’re no more special than any other animal. In fact, we are just another animal. The Church views science and faith as complementary, both parts making up a whole. Yet here, science is closed to all supernatural and God-like ideas, and some say only science can describe all of reality. Only by science can you know the truth about the world around you. All Catholics should know that is not true.
Peace,
Ed
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buffalo
Guest
Always seemed obvious to me.
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reggieM
Guest
That is a good point. I don’t know how a Catholic could deny the basic concept of ID. The Church uses this same concept when investigating miracles. If an event could be explained by a natural process alone – then the Church will not consider it to be miraculous. But if the event cannot be explained by natural laws – then it indicates that God’s power was at work.
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MindOverMatter
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There is a big difference in believing in a transcendent being whom makes direct changes to the natural direction of creation, and believing in a perfect unchanging creator. Such a being is a changing entity who makes designs out of matter once it is created.
I don’t believe in that God, since i feel it is unnecessary.
The unchanging God of St. Thomas is one eternal and perfect act forever, and so it seems to me more reasonable for such a being to create a “seed” that unravels according to particular principles such as natural selection, while at the same time being sustained in being by the ultimate reality that is God. This is more reasonable to me, rather then a changing God whom interferes with the natural course of things every time nature is not going in the direction that God wants it to.
And then there is the problem of making God the object of science. How can God be an object of empiricism?
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MindOverMatter
Guest
They are not using empiricism as a standard of truth. They are merely employing empiricism in order to determine whether or not the events in qeustion is a product natural events. If it is not a product of natural events, they seek knowledge from their religious beliefs to see if the event has a meaningful intrinsic connection to the catholic faith. If it does, then they make the claim on that basis that a divine miracle has occurred.
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JDaniel
Guest
When I was a teenager I asked my father about evolution and the creationist view. He gave me a good answer by asking a few questions of his own.
What is a day to God?
How long would it last?
Since our perception of time changes in relation to what one is doing, hence a watched pot never boils. Perception of what could have been billions of years to us scientifically, could have been a mere day to God. Only God knows for sure. God gave us a brain, even warned us about the tree of knowledge, but in the end we as a species chose to eat the apple. We may have been tricked, enter serpent here, but we were not forced.
What is a day to God?
How long would it last?
Since our perception of time changes in relation to what one is doing, hence a watched pot never boils. Perception of what could have been billions of years to us scientifically, could have been a mere day to God. Only God knows for sure. God gave us a brain, even warned us about the tree of knowledge, but in the end we as a species chose to eat the apple. We may have been tricked, enter serpent here, but we were not forced.
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reggieM
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I’ll offer this as an alternative point of view.
First of all, we already know and believe that our transcendent God makes direct changes in creation. That is what miracles are. So to follow from that and say that if God works miracles, then he is a changing-god, is not reasonable. Why are miracles necessary? For that matter, if everything has been determined by a perfect God in the beginning, why should we bother to pray? Wouldn’t we merely do God’s will no matter what?
The answer is that we have a universe where creation is contingent on the powers of its Creator. Jesus taught us to ask God for “our daily bread” – why? It is so we can recognize that God does intervene in our lives. He does change nature. He actually changes human nature itself – moving a person from the natural to the supernatural life. We rise above nature --through the power of God.
This is all simple and obvious from Catholic teaching, as I see it.
To argue that God does not intervene in nature is to posit a radically different God than what I’ve ever heard of in Catholic thought. But I know that there are some who make that argument. I just don’t see it as being consistent.
Sure – that is one way to view it. But I don’t think this aligns well with your first argument which was that God’s intervention in nature would mean that He is “changeable”. Here, you posit that God creates a seed – but that is an intervention in nature and thus a change. Certainly, St. Thomas recognized evidence of intelligent design in nature also.
Beyond that, there is no reason to believe that God’s design is not evident in nature. One can be free to look for that, since even in your case, God created the seed. But it’s been classic Catholic teaching from the apostolic age until now that human beings can perceive “structural order” in nature, and this order is an indication of God’s presence.
Additionally, God desires to show his existence through signs in nature. This is why we can understand the difference in the terms “randomness” and “purpose”. Randomness creates certain outcomes whereas intelligent-purpose creates other outcomes which are very different.
That is understandable – but keep in mind, ID does not propose that God interferes with the natural course of things every time nature is not going where God wants.
But in the Catholic Faith – we pray to God every day to intervene in nature to preserve us from what nature might cause if we didn’t pray. Floods, tornadoes, epidemics and many other dangers can come upon us from nature. Why bother praying if God will not interfere in the “natural course of things”?
Again, in human terms – we might rise above nature. That is the essential meaning of Catholicism. That is the resurrection. That is the Power – which is what Catholicism is about. This transcends philosophies. Catholicism is not a philosophical view that is good because it can win the most arguments. It’s a divine presence on earth – characterized by the power of the resurrection, through the sacraments. Without that, its just a theological system like many others.
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Of couse, God cannot be the direct object of empiricism. So it’s good to know what ID proposes. Can God’s effects in the world be the object of empiricism?
Yes – the Church looks at God’s miraculous effects and uses empirical science to rule out the possiblity that those events happened by natural laws. Thus, miracles are evaluated.
Again, this is not only consistent with Catholicism but is a necessary part of it. God’s existence can be recognized through the effects of God’s work in nature. This again is not directly analyzing God through empiricism, but it is using empirical science to evaluate effects in nature.
The same is true with the human soul. We can’t evaluate the soul with laboratory methods, but we can observe effects of the soul and recognize the immaterial and spiritual nature of human beings.
So, it’s not enough to say that natural laws alone are responsible for all of the developments of nature. Certainly, human beings cannot be reduced to being simply biological organisms - or merely the products of matter, physical laws and evolution.
That reduces humanity to the level of a modified animal – distinguished merely by physical components.
Did you check out the video posted here?
That’s probably a better topic than merely another Creation-vs-Evolution debate with no context.
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fhansen
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But that God would still be the designer behind the “particular principles”, no? He would, of necessity, understand and be responsible for the way the seed unraveled, including all the various complex systems that resulted, rather than be surprised by the outcome.
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reggieM
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I will add this quote also from St. Thomas’ Summa Theologica (On the Government of Things in General (q 103, article 1):
Certain ancient philosophers denied the government of the world, saying that all things happened by chance. But such an opinion can be refuted as impossible in two ways.
First, by observation of things themselves: for we observe that in nature things happen always or nearly always for the best; which would not be the case unless some sort of providence directed nature towards good as an end; which is to govern. Wherefore the unfailing order we observe in things is a sign of their being governed; for instance, if we enter a well-ordered house we gather therefrom the intention of him that put it in order, as Tullius says (De Nat. Deorum ii), quoting Aristotle [Cleanthes].
Secondly, this is clear from a consideration of Divine goodness, which, as we have said above (44, 4; 65, 2), was the cause of the production of things in existence. For as “it belongs to the best to produce the best,” it is not fitting that the supreme goodness of God should produce things without giving them their perfection. Now a thing’s ultimate perfection consists in the attainment of its end. Therefore it belongs to the Divine goodness, as it brought things into existence, so to lead them to their end: and this is to govern.
With this response we can see the two kinds of Argument from Design. The first, is the Argument from Structured Order. We can see that there are aspects in nature that are like a well-ordered house – irreducible complexity, mathematical symmetry of the universe, biological structures that could not be the product of evolution, etc. Actually, evolution itself is driven by chance, so the argument applies there.
The second argument is the more classic teleological view regarding the laws of nature and the metaphysical structure of things reaching perfection and attaining ends.
The second argument could propose that evolution is merely one of the natural processes that God used. The problem is that since evolution occurs by chance (reliance on a random variable), then this would be what St. Thomas is arguing against here.
Certain ancient philosophers denied the government of the world, saying that all things happened by chance. But such an opinion can be refuted as impossible in two ways.
First, by observation of things themselves: for we observe that in nature things happen always or nearly always for the best; which would not be the case unless some sort of providence directed nature towards good as an end; which is to govern. Wherefore the unfailing order we observe in things is a sign of their being governed; for instance, if we enter a well-ordered house we gather therefrom the intention of him that put it in order, as Tullius says (De Nat. Deorum ii), quoting Aristotle [Cleanthes].
Secondly, this is clear from a consideration of Divine goodness, which, as we have said above (44, 4; 65, 2), was the cause of the production of things in existence. For as “it belongs to the best to produce the best,” it is not fitting that the supreme goodness of God should produce things without giving them their perfection. Now a thing’s ultimate perfection consists in the attainment of its end. Therefore it belongs to the Divine goodness, as it brought things into existence, so to lead them to their end: and this is to govern.
With this response we can see the two kinds of Argument from Design. The first, is the Argument from Structured Order. We can see that there are aspects in nature that are like a well-ordered house – irreducible complexity, mathematical symmetry of the universe, biological structures that could not be the product of evolution, etc. Actually, evolution itself is driven by chance, so the argument applies there.
The second argument is the more classic teleological view regarding the laws of nature and the metaphysical structure of things reaching perfection and attaining ends.
The second argument could propose that evolution is merely one of the natural processes that God used. The problem is that since evolution occurs by chance (reliance on a random variable), then this would be what St. Thomas is arguing against here.
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NowAgnostic
Guest
I watched the entire thing. The video is well-made, the speaker is clear and articulate, and the speaker’s points are basically correct. There is one point which a Catholic should (strongly) object to, and one point which I, as a scientist, am going to object to, and which supports those Catholics who object to ID on other grounds.
A Catholic cannot accept that there is any such thing as “mindless natural processes”. Nothing can happen apart from the will of God, and hence the mind of God, in Catholicism. The only room for “chance” in Catholicism is the contingent things God happens to will, which remain a matter of unexplained brute fact. The default hypothesis (no “design”) would need a little more explication. I don’t see how a Catholic could be completely satisfied with this portrayal of intelligent design.
As a scientist, I am going to object to the conclusion that because the probability of, say, a functional protein arising by “chance” is very low that this makes the probability of design by intelligence very high. This is simply stated in the video and it is a fallacy. Yes, no doubt the probability that a sufficiently intelligent agent could design the protein is 1. But the relevant factor is a probability or a reason to think that a sufficiently intelligent agent actually would do so. Let D = designer who designed the protein, and P be the protein. From Bayes’ Theorem
P(D|P) = P(D)*P(P|D)/P(P) = P(D)*P(P|D)/(P(D)*P(P|D)+P(~D)*P(P|~D))
I’ll grant that P(P|D) = 1, and that P(P|~D) is very small. Even so we need P(D), a prior belief or probability that such a designer would exist and design the protein. Now in the case of archaeological digs and artifacts, etc., we know that designers lived then and had a motivation to design spears, etc. But here, in the case of a finite designer, we’re just flying blind. Is it more “improbable” that life arose by “chance” then that a finite designer just happened to be around in the right place at the right time. And where did **his **intelligence come from, and where did that life get started from, if it took billions of years for human intelligence to evolve (assuming standard evolutionary theory is correct).
So you say, postulate an infinite designer (God). Here it becomes impossible to get anywhere at all. What is the prior probability God would design a functional protein? Who knows? If He wanted life on earth there are many other ways He could have done so without bothering with proteins. The notion of probability is simply unusable with an infinite, omnipotent being. This “Argument from Design” (completely different from Aquinas’ Fifth Way) is a non-starter. Catholics are right to reject it.
A Catholic cannot accept that there is any such thing as “mindless natural processes”. Nothing can happen apart from the will of God, and hence the mind of God, in Catholicism. The only room for “chance” in Catholicism is the contingent things God happens to will, which remain a matter of unexplained brute fact. The default hypothesis (no “design”) would need a little more explication. I don’t see how a Catholic could be completely satisfied with this portrayal of intelligent design.
As a scientist, I am going to object to the conclusion that because the probability of, say, a functional protein arising by “chance” is very low that this makes the probability of design by intelligence very high. This is simply stated in the video and it is a fallacy. Yes, no doubt the probability that a sufficiently intelligent agent could design the protein is 1. But the relevant factor is a probability or a reason to think that a sufficiently intelligent agent actually would do so. Let D = designer who designed the protein, and P be the protein. From Bayes’ Theorem
P(D|P) = P(D)*P(P|D)/P(P) = P(D)*P(P|D)/(P(D)*P(P|D)+P(~D)*P(P|~D))
I’ll grant that P(P|D) = 1, and that P(P|~D) is very small. Even so we need P(D), a prior belief or probability that such a designer would exist and design the protein. Now in the case of archaeological digs and artifacts, etc., we know that designers lived then and had a motivation to design spears, etc. But here, in the case of a finite designer, we’re just flying blind. Is it more “improbable” that life arose by “chance” then that a finite designer just happened to be around in the right place at the right time. And where did **his **intelligence come from, and where did that life get started from, if it took billions of years for human intelligence to evolve (assuming standard evolutionary theory is correct).
So you say, postulate an infinite designer (God). Here it becomes impossible to get anywhere at all. What is the prior probability God would design a functional protein? Who knows? If He wanted life on earth there are many other ways He could have done so without bothering with proteins. The notion of probability is simply unusable with an infinite, omnipotent being. This “Argument from Design” (completely different from Aquinas’ Fifth Way) is a non-starter. Catholics are right to reject it.
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buffalo
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Aww darn -I thought your name was going to be formeragnostic after this.
As the video showed the clear demarcation point of science and philosophy. Science should be committed to good science without bias. I do not see any conflict with Catholic teaching here.
Let’s assume that everyone agrees with the formula and we can objectively agree that the probability of design is high (almost certain). So be it. Now we have to interpret this philosophically. However it is not really a problem at all for Catholics for we understand the universe is intelligible and comes from a mind already.
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fhansen
Guest
But it’s not a matter of whether or not God would’ve chosen to design it a particular way-who could know?-it’s simply a matter of whether or not intelligence was required to design it. It’s also a question of, does it make more sense-is it more or less probable- that, given all that exists, intelligence should precede design?
In the SETI experiments we postulate, that, without knowing beforehand if any rational beings exist outside of earth, such beings would be capable of producing, depending on their level of technological advancement, radio signals that could only result if their own intelligence were utilized to design them. We’d have no qualms with simply recognizing the need for a designer in this area, why would we in any other area where we observe the evidence of apparent design?
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