Intelligent Design, Edward Feser's views

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buffalo said:
Ever hear how evolution makes atheists intellectually fulfilled?

You cannot be so out of the loop to not hear top atheists use evolution arguments to disprove God.

The God Delusion? The Selfish Gene? Scientists who were religious until they studied evolution and then became irreligious. Hitchens? C’mon…
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Some people use needles to harm with their bodies with cocaine and other drugs. Other people use needs for insulin and otuer medicines. Needles are neutral.

So it goes with evolution. I accept evolution. I’m not an atheist. Wesrock, Gorgia, Angel1, Catholic1seeks are also Catholics that believe in God an accept evolution. I can other point out that there are many men in the ranks of priests that accept evolution. I don’t think they’re atheists.

You’re arguing we shouldn’t make needles because some people do wrong with them. And in doing so you ignore the many who do good.
 
mVitus said:
Some people use needles to harm with their bodies with cocaine and other drugs. Other people use needs for insulin and otuer medicines. Needles are neutral.

So it goes with evolution. I accept evolution. I’m not an atheist. Wesrock, Gorgia, Angel1, Catholic1seeks are also Catholics that believe in God an accept evolution. I can other point out that there are many men in the ranks of priests that accept evolution. I don’t think they’re atheists.

You’re arguing we shouldn’t make needles because some people do wrong with them. And in doing so you ignore the many who do good.
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I never claimed everyone uses evolution to disprove God.

My claim is theistic evolution is an issue with the inevitable result of doing violence to Scripture.
 
I forgot to mention - how many times have you heard or read that religion is just a crutch?
 
mVitus said:
I accept evolution. I’m not an atheist. Wesrock, Gorgia, Angel1, Catholic1seeks are also Catholics that believe in God an accept evolution.
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Me too. I accept micro-evolution and I have no compelling reason or evidence to take it the many small steps to macro. It doesn’t happen and there isn’t enough time.

Design is a much better explanation.

Why can’t you accept design? Are you afraid of ridicule?
 
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An interesting read - The Scientific Atheism Fallacy: How Science Declares that God Is Dead, But Can’t Prove It

A scientist has to be an atheist; that seems to be the pervading popular wisdom these days. Yahoos, snake handlers and Bible freaks are “true believers,” but sober men and women of science can’t possibly believe in such fairy tales.

The thinking goes that if a person is smart and educated, then obviously they get that God is a convenient psychological crutch and religion nothing more than a social mechanism designed to reign in our baser tendencies-tendencies that, if uncontrolled by the do’s and don’ts of religion, would lead to societal anarchy.

This idea that atheism is the ideology of choice for the more educated and enlightened and can be the only mind-set of the rational and scientifically minded is certainly in literary vogue as evidenced by best sellers such as Christopher Hitchens’s God Is Not Great (2007) and Richard Dawkins’s The God Delusion (2006).

www.psychologytoday.com

The Scientific Atheism Fallacy: How Science Declares that God Is Dead, But Can't Prove It

A scientist has to be an atheist; that seems to be the pervading popular wisdom these days. Yahoos, snake handlers and Bible freaks are "true believers," but sober men and women of science can't possibly believe in such fairy tales.
www.psychologytoday.com www.psychologytoday.com
 
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buffalo said:
Design is a much better explanation.

Why can’t you accept design? Are you afraid of ridicule?
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Well 1, evolution is a better explanation. And the reason I don’t accept the intellgient design ideology is because evidence shiws it to be wrong.
 
Science doesn’t seek to prove anything doesn’t exist it just doesn’t insert unnecessary elements where they aren’t needed. We can explain the motion of the planets without invoking god but that doesn’t mean god didn’t make the planets or set them in motion. We can explain lightning and illness and many other things without needing to invoke the supernatural but that doesn’t mean a higher power isn’t ultimately behind it all.

Making science and theism incompatible is a great idea if you’d like to see your religion die slowly as it becomes incompatible with ever increasing understanding of the world around us. Seems prudent not to inject incompatibility where none exists.
 
buffalo said:
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Bradskii:
Do you have any examples of anyone on this forum using evolution as a means to disprove God?
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I have been posting for many years. Yes, there have been. No I am not going to try to search through the vast database.
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Then we’ll take that as a definite no. I am one who has been one of the more vociferous proponents of evolution and there aren’t many people on this forum who are more convinced that there is no God. And you can’t even point to me.

And you must have ‘strawman builder’ down as your occupation. Because tbe God Delusion mentions nothing about evolution and The Selfish Gene, which is all about evolution, doesn’t concern itself with God. Not that you have read either one.

If dissing evolution is the means by which you can hold on to your faith, then buddy, you are seriously up the creek without a paddle. Is your faith so delicate a thing that it needs lies to bolster it?

Your faith is built on sand. You can deny that all you want but every post you make confirms it: ‘If this is true then I have nothing left’.

I’m pretty certain that you had nothing to start with.
 
lisaandlena said:
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Aloysium:
The evidence points me in a different direction. That is so because the idea of random chemical activity and natural selection, while clearly at the foundations of a fallen world, do not explain creation.
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But ID simply attempts to explain why creation looks the way that it does, it doesn’t do anything to explain why there’s something rather than nothing. If one was so inclined, one could use ID to argue that reality is simply a computer simulation. In and of itself, ID isn’t an argument for the existence of God. It has simply been misappropriated as such.

So neither natural selection nor intelligent design, point to the necessity of a divine creator.
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They both reveal some aspect of how life has come to be as it is.

Obviously, all organisms are material beings and although individual creations, are participants in the their environment, a section of the greater cosmos, which contains the physical universe. If they cannot participate, they will die. That does not add much to explain the diversity we see. It’s obvious in the Galapagos, that life flourishes and each kind will diversify in keeping with its habitat. The trouble there is the introduction of foreign plants, insects and animals which threaten that diversity, which is an expression of infinite creativity.

Equally obvious is that the complexity, the beauty and the magnitude of different forms of being in the universe requires some organizing prinicple.

In neither case do they prove the necessity of a Divine Creator, let alone God. But, having faith, we see Him everywhere.

Science is a vehicle for some, as can be theology, philosophy, good works and beauty, to come to at least recognize the possibility of God, which may then lead on to a deeper relationship with Him. Through the grace of the Holy Spirit, our deepest yearning to meet God face to face can be satisfied. All this wonder reveals who He is, but if the focus is not on God, these discussions are reduced to merely an argument about theories, ideas, points of view, intellectual hubris over illusions.
 
Dawkins writes that The God Delusion contains four “consciousness-raising” messages:
Atheists can be happy, balanced, moral, and intellectually fulfilled.
Natural selection and similar scientific theories are superior to a “God hypothesis”—the illusion of intelligent design—in explaining the living world and the cosmos.
Children should not be labelled by their parents’ religion. Terms like “Catholic child” or “Muslim child” should make people cringe.
Atheists should be proud, not apologetic, because atheism is evidence of a healthy, independent mind.[4] The God Delusion - Wikipedia

The last one fits you to a tee. Quick to point out your superiority to us.
 
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Bradskii said:
If dissing evolution is the means by which you can hold on to your faith, then buddy, you are seriously up the creek without a paddle. Is your faith so delicate a thing that it needs lies to bolster it?
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I diss evolution because there is no empirical evidence for this pagan creation myth.

Design is a much better explanation.
 
Bradskii said:
‘If this is true then I have nothing left’.
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Yes, theistic evolution is dismantling Catholicism. What will remain of Catholicism is a social justice organization.

At this point evolution and the long standing teachings of the Church protected by the Holy Spirit are not reconcilable without violence to Scripture.
 
buffalo said:
Yes, theistic evolution is dismantling Catholicism. What will remain of Catholicism is a social justice organization.

At this point evolution and the long standing teachings of the Church protected by the Holy Spirit are not reconcilable without violence to Scripture.
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No. Theistic evolution is reconciling Catholicism with Science. Without such reconciliation, Christianity will become no more than an outdated belief-system.
 
Hugh_Farey said:
No. Theistic evolution is reconciling Catholicism with Science. Without such reconciliation, Christianity will become no more than an outdated belief-system.
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This is our consistent disagreement.

Scientism is alive and well as we can see.
 
“It is not the case that in the expanding universe, at a late stage, in some tiny corner of the cosmos, there evolved randomly some species of living being capable of reasoning and of trying to find rationality within creation, or to bring rationality into it. If man were merely a random product of evolution in some place on the margins of the universe, then his life would make no sense or might even be a chance of nature. But no, Reason is there at the beginning: creative, divine Reason.” Pope Benedict XVI
 
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