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Peter_Plato
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Do you know yourself so fully as to know that God is not you? Maybe he is more you than you are, perhaps?
How would you know until you fully know yourself?
Who are you, anyway?
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How would you know until you fully know yourself?
Who are you, anyway?
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CatholicSoxFan
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It’s also important to note that science hasn’t actually been eroding away theories with supernatural implications to the extent that atheists would like us to believe. Just take the Big Bang Theory. Theory after theory was presented to try to avoid the philosophical implications of the beginning of the universe, and they have been refuted. Now, inferring from that that future alternate explanations from the Big Bang will be refuted is a much better inference than saying that since natural explanations have been formulated to explain stuff that it’ll happen to everything else, because it’s related to a specific theory, namely the Big Bang. When arguing from an example, it’s best to have examples that directly relate to the subject at hand as possible. Take the Yankees-Red Sox 2004 example. Now, I’m sure many in Red Sox Nation said that Bucky and Babe, therefore we lose. But those were occurrences that had happened with completely different teams, even if they wore the same unis. Now, using Boone and 0-3 deficit, therefore we lose, was a better inference, because they were more specific to our situation.
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Peter_Plato
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It isn’t so much that God needs to tinker with the universe as that all his ordering and sustaining of the universe must end up with a “tinkerer” that is capable of “tinkering” as the end result.
From an engineering standpoint God had to design an intelligible universe and incorporate within that design the biological process (evolution) that would end up with a being that is capable of the intelligence required to comprehend the process.
In other words, evolution has as its “final cause” the biological entity capable of interfacing with the spiritual “soul” or form that God would - at least according to Catholic teaching - finally “infuse” into it. That does appear to incorporate final causation, in the Aristotelian sense, into Intelligent Design.
Life was designed for a final end: the intelligent capacity by which life could consciously and autonomously accept, understand and fulfill the end for which it was designed, having begun with the compiling of the DNA code sufficient to bring about, through geological time, the “carrying capacity” for the intelligence required to decipher its own genetic code in order to understand its own origins.
Life making sense of itself as a final end, so to speak.
Looks like a “set up” to me.
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tonyrey
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“sustaining” does not explain innumerable miracles, answering our prayers, minimising suffering and preventing disasters, notably the extinction of all life on this planet.
God is not surprised because He knows the blind laws of nature cannot cater for every contingency in an immensely complex process lasting billions of years which affects countless individuals. A universe that can produce perfect results **by itself **is a fantasy.
The disparaging term “tinker” begs the question because it implies that the universe is a machine which can function successfully with any need for intervention at any stage of development from start to finish in spite of all the evidence to the contrary in the form of natural disasters, diseases and deformities.
God set up the basic framework of order when He created the universe with its natural laws but there is an element of chance within that framework which often disrupts and interferes with the development of individuals:
An earthly paradise is another fantasy.
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tonyrey
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I think the word “tinker” is being used sarcastically:
- Free Dictionary
- Oxford Dictionary
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cfauster
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Here is a convenient compilation of official and other statements from Church officials re. evolution:
conservation.catholic.org/magisterium_is_concerned_with_qu.htm
conservation.catholic.org/magisterium_is_concerned_with_qu.htm
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balto
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I would agree with this. It’s just that the way intelligent design is presented seems to suppose that the universe functions according to blind laws and God interacts with it every now and then. At least that has been my experience. This is fine as long as you know it’s not the ending point on your journey to understanding God.
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Charlemagne_III
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I still don’t like the word “tinker” though you persist in using it. I don’t think Behe would like the word either. That God has intelligently designed the universe is implicit in Aquinas’ fifth proof, so Behe agrees with Aquinas. All Behe is doing is showing an instance to the dominantly atheistic scientific community of how final causality works in the scientific sense. If they refuse to see that, I don’t see how the argument from Aquinas’ metaphysical proof is going to be stronger than Behe’s argument. The mousetrap effect of Abiogenesis is still irrefutable from a scientific point of view. Evolution does not explain Abiogenesis. Nor does physics explain Abiogenesis as an event that happened by random circumstances, by trial-and-error if you will.
In your mind why are you not holding Dawkins’ foot to the same flame you hold Behe’s foot? I think Dawkins has not and cannot show scientifically how Abiogenesis happened according to the laws of physics without being intelligently designed. It is a good deal more believable that it happened by intelligent design than that the elements of the mousetrap just came together all at once without having evolved (since as yet there was no evolutionary process at work).
Well, I guess we are just going to have to agree to disagree.
I’m sorry you think the Thomists have the only good dog in this fight.
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Charlemagne_III
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Again, I don’t think Behe says the universe functions according to blind laws. I think he is probably a traditional Christian thinker who believes with Aquinas that the entire universe of laws was intelligently designed, as Aquinas argues in his fifth proof for the existence of God. I also don’t think the journey to God requires that we not see intelligent design in Abiogenesis as well as everything else in Creation.
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balto
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Yes it does. See below.
I don’t acknowledge that there are such things as “blind laws” as you say. The laws of physics are abstractions on the way that matter tends to behave. The law of gravity is not what causes something to fall to the ground anymore than the Pythagorean theorem is what causes right triangles to behave according to c^2 = a^2 + b^2. The form of mass entails that it is attracted to other forms of mass in a process known by humans as “gravity”. What would unify all these laws of physics, because there are distinctions between them? Ultimately you get to God who is the first source and final end of everything. Miracles are phenomena that do not fit into our limited understanding of the universe, but nothing is “miraculous” from God’s perspective.
I’m not sure what else I am supposed to say. I’m not allowed to use the word “machine” or “tinker” but then the replies to my posts suggest that the world operates according to blind laws and God fine tunes the universe. That’s not the classical God of Aquinas (which was the whole point of starting this string of posts). I’m not going to say that understanding God in that way is useless, as long as it isn’t the stopping point. Aquinas’ understanding of God is probably about as far as one can get with unaided reason. Any further understanding would need to be given by a private revelation. The final stopping point is the Beatific Vision.
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balto
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Okay, if he understands it that way then that’s good. I have a lot of respect for Behe, Dembski, and the others. I just think that their case could be stronger is all.
Charlemagne III:
I hear what you’re saying, and I do hold Dawkins to the same standard. The problem with him is that he is kind of a clown when it comes to philosophy. I seriously think his understanding of God may be that of a wizened old man that sits on a throne in the clouds and throws lightning bolts at people. Behe et al. are honest people that I think can benefit from understanding Aquinas’ teaching in its fullness.
Charlemagne III:
I appreciate the work that Behe and the others are doing. I know it is not easy and probably makes their lives a nightmare in contemporary academia (I have a few personal experiences of this, but nothing like what they experience). But I think that their position can be made stronger. I hope I am not coming across as a jerk because I really do appreciate your comments.Well, I guess we are just going to have to agree to disagree.
I’m sorry you think the Thomists have the only good dog in this fight.
It’s forcing me to understand all of this better.
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Peter_Plato
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I think this is a misunderstanding of what intelligent design advocates like Stephen Meyer are proposing. Their view, loosely speaking, is that the genetic code that has given rise to all life on Earth was “front loaded” in the same way that the fine tuning of the laws of physics “front loaded” the design of the universe at the Big Bang.
It isn’t that God “tinkers” with every mutation in order to reset the direction of evolution, it is a more accurate representation of Meyer’s view to say that at the creation of life the genetic code comprising DNA was “front-loaded” with “information” that had to be sufficiently robust and tuned to the natural world to allow natural selection to trigger the myriad of pre-existing functionality options embedded within the code itself.
The point, I think, that he is promoting is that random mutation does not have the creative resources necessary to originate the plethora of body morphology options, behaviours and functionality attributes that essentially “run” life. Alternatively, Meyer claims that we have warrant for proposing the existence of an intelligent agent of sufficient capacity to originate all of these in addition to having the wherewithal to embed the code (necessary to causally enable them) into the physical medium of DNA that carries forward the requisite “information” processing through time allowing evolutionary change to occur.
It isn’t that genetic information could have arisen from the laws of physics at the Big Bang, but that we are speaking of two essentially different enterprises that require two essentially different tuning procedures - physical and biological - by design.
If it is, in principle, acceptable for the Thomist to subscribe to cosmic fine tuning as the ordering “process” by which God informed physical matter, it would seem just as plausible and acceptable to the Thomist to propose that life as a distinct process from physical causation also required a separate creative “informing” act by which God set into place the ordering principles for the generation of life. I don’t see this as tinkering, but as creation by design in two distinct acts.
The work of Dembski and Behe essentially bolsters this thesis on the basis of scientific evidence.
Dembski by showing that chance does not have the probability resources to create neither the required genetic code nor functional proteins and Behe by showing that the potential for genetic change is to be found within the essential nature of the code itself and not imposed on it by external “random” factors like mutation.
Natural selection could still function as the mechanism which triggers and selects the most appropriate adaptations, but “random” mutation is to be dismissed as insufficient to explain the origin of novel features and functions.
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Peter_Plato
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An interesting article on Edward Feser’s blog regarding teleology and design is well worth the read.
edwardfeser.blogspot.ca/2014/01/the-pointlessness-of-jerry-coyne.html#more
edwardfeser.blogspot.ca/2014/01/the-pointlessness-of-jerry-coyne.html#more
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Charlemagne_III
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I think that throughout this discussion you have been a real gentleman and I appreciate your contributions. As Aquinas says, we learn from those whose opinions we reject. I hope (or rather think) we have learned through each other.But I think that their position can be made stronger. I hope I am not coming across as a jerk because I really do appreciate your comments.
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balto
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I think what you said makes a lot of sense. If I have misrepresented anybody’s position then I apologize. I confess that I have not read Meyer’s book, though it is sitting on my bookshelf. Someday I’ll get around to that.
I would like to point out that I don’t think it is necessary to suppose that the Big Bang front-loading and the genetic front-loading need to be two separate creation events. If anything, I think that is what the Thomist would take issue with, and maybe terminology such as “fine tuning” although I think that may be a bit pedantic at this point. Information and semantic content can be found in any physical thing, not necessarily DNA, although it is an obvious example of this. I just want to make this point because I know the materialist response is to talk about the primordial soup and the “RNA world” as giving rise to DNA but the interesting thing is that the information for life can be found in RNA, proteins, environmental patterns, atomic events, etc. So I think if anything this bolsters the teleological viewpoint.
Peter Plato:
It’s interesting that you linked to Feser’s blog, just given his critiques of ID. I’m curious as to what your take would be on his comments on ID in articles such as these: edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2010/05/id-versus-t-roundup.html
I think he can come off a little strong against the ID advocates sometimes, especially if what you’re saying is true, but I think he brings up a number of good points about some of the underlying metaphysics of some ID advocates not lining up with that of Aquinas. The teleology article you linked to, among others that he has, I think provide a good example of what ID can leave to be desired as far as teleology is concerned.
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balto
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Thank you for your kind words, and it has been a pleasure conversing with you as well.I think that throughout this discussion you have been a real gentleman and I appreciate your contributions. As Aquinas says, we learn from those whose opinions we reject. I hope (or rather think) we have learned through each other.
I agree that dialogue between opposing viewpoints is fruitful for everyone. Now if only we could get Dawkins et al. to at least attempt to understand their opposition instead of throwing red herrings everywhere…
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tonyrey
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Charlemagne_III
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The overwhelming odds against Abiogenesis also suggest very strongly that the process was designed to succeed, rather than be the result of fortuitous chance so far as the future of evolution is concerned.
Notice that the evolutionists cannot even escape this language. They speak of “natural selection” as if that was possible. Selection can only done by an intelligent agent that is free to select animate matter rather than inanimate matter as a course of matter’s future development.
When Dawkins speaks of evolution he sees it as the escape hatch from any and all implication of Providence at work. He has said so in exactly those words, claiming that his own atheism is vindicated by the theory of evolution. He has as much as said, “We don’t need any God to explain anything. And evolution is the reason.” But Intelligent Design as a hard nut he is not able to crack. It is Abiogenesis that doesn’t fit with evolution and never will, even though Abiogenesis contained within itself the seed of evolution, among other things…
“Just you wait,” the evolutionist replies. “Science someday will Intelligently Design an experiment to show that random abiogenesis is not only possible but the only possible explanation.”
Well, I guess we all know how that will play out with students of Logic 101.
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Charlemagne_III
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This article, “Has Science Discovered God?” is for the layman the best brief summation of the case for Intelligent Design, and strongly suggests an ongoing turnaround of scientific opinion on the God of the Gaps.
y-jesus.com/more/science-christianity-compatible?gclid=CNjx2YjeqbwCFUpk7AodJQUAuA
y-jesus.com/more/science-christianity-compatible?gclid=CNjx2YjeqbwCFUpk7AodJQUAuA
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Peter_Plato
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I found Edward Feser’s recent blog dismantling Jerry Coyne’s materialist assumptions quite entertaining.
edwardfeser.blogspot.ca/2014/01/jerry-built-atheism.html#more
Then, by sheer stroke of chance, this article on Jerry Coyne not abiding by his own mantra appeared on the web.
evolutionnews.org/2014/01/hypocrisy_watch081121.html
So much for objectivity and methodological neutrality in the way science ought to be taught.
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