Intelligent Design

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Peter_Plato said:
No more insulting than reducing or equating a distinctive philosophical perspective - one that allows a range of possible nuances and one having a respected philosophical pedigree long predating Kitzmiller - with Creationism merely because a naive district court judge presumed to himself the unwarranted authority to decide abiding philosophical questions by legal fiat.
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The general idea of design – the gods made the world – goes back a very long way. The specific DI form of ID, call it DI-ID, goes back to Edwards v Aguillard, when “Scientific Creationism” was excluded from US public schools. The classic piece of evidence from the Kitzmiller trial was “cdesign proponentsists”, ironically an almost perfect example of a transitional fossil.

DI-ID is primarily for political purposes. Hence is does not minimal scientific work needed to give it a plausible veneer of scienciness. Over the years since Kitzmiller, I have noticed that they are doing even less science and even more theology and politics.

When was the last time Dr. Dembski published anything about CSI? He seems to have moved on to “the search for a search”, which removes DI-ID from biology entirely and puts it more in the realm of cosmology: “why is the universe set up in such a way that evolution works?”

Implicitly, that concedes that evolution does work, and the entire field of biology is ceded to standard science.

$0.02

rossum
 
tonyrey said:
👍 So the power of intelligence is not an illusion! The question is how it originated…
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Intelligence originates when the necessary conditions are present. A worm and a human zygote do not have the necessary conditions for intelligence. A grown human (normally) has the necessary conditions.

rossum
 
Hans_W said:
Argumentum ad hominem - and a breach of the forum conduct rule of courtesy - for which an apology is required. In addition to which a false equation of belief in Design with Creationism - as if God had no plan
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No matter how you take it, it is a fact when you deny that God had a plan… or at least imply that He didn’t know what He was doing…
No, ID is still Creationism in new clothes. This became apparent during the 2005 Kitzmiller trial and has been discussed earlier on this thread.
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Were Plato, Aristotle and Aquinas Creationists?
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rossum said:
When was the last time Dr. Dembski published anything about CSI? He seems to have moved on to “the search for a search”, which removes DI-ID from biology entirely and puts it more in the realm of cosmology: “why is the universe set up in such a way that evolution works?”

Implicitly, that concedes that evolution does work, and the entire field of biology is ceded to standard science.
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Well that’s better all around. 👍
 
rossum said:
]So the power of intelligence is not an illusion! The question is how it originated…
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Were the **necessary **conditions fortuitous? If so intelligence is insignificant. An accident is not only purposeless but valueless and meaningless. In other words life is absurd in an irrational universe, as Sartre and Camus rightly pointed out…

Moreover physical necessity is an inadequate explanation of mental reality.
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Al_Moritz said:
Huh? :confused:
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“Huh?” is hardly a rational response. It remains a fact when you deny that God had a plan… or at least imply that He didn’t know what He was doing…

To exceed their brief is an occupational hazard of scientists.

BTW Were Plato, Aristotle and Aquinas Creationists?
 
Al_Moritz said:
…An unguided evolutionary process – one that falls outside the bounds of divine providence – simply cannot exist because “the causality of God, Who is the first agent, extends to all being, not only as to constituent principles of species, but also as to the individualizing principles…It necessarily follows that all things, inasmuch as they participate in existence, must likewise be subject to divine providence” (Summa theologiae I, 22, 2)."
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And what is this but Design? :confused:
 
tonyrey said:
The value and significance of** life** is not restricted to man…
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We were talking about extinction Tony. Not the end of life itself.

Life is pretty bulletproof. Been reasonably successful. But the design of the component parts has not been what you might describe as a roaring success. Unless, of course, that God has determined that constituent parts should fail.

Is that part of the Design? That it should not succeed?
 
tonyrey said:
Moreover physical necessity is an inadequate explanation of mental reality.
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That is one of the things I like about Buddhism. It makes a very clear distinction between internal realities and external realities. When we see a mirage, we see water. Inside our minds, that water is real. Externally, the water is not real.

It is important to clearly understand what things are mere constructs inside our heads, and what things exist externally as well. Mistaking one for the other results in suffering.

rossum
 
tonyrey said:
And what is this but Design? :confused:
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Precisely! What we have beeen saying all along, and what you would have realized if you had paid attention. It’s just that it does not need constant intervening by bypassing the simple working of natural causes to achieve complexity. No, God just lets things unfold according to the natural causes that He created and sustains at every moment.

Why would God go through the trouble of creating natural causes if He does not let them run their natural course by constantly intervening and superseding them??

Evolution is design – we don’t need the extra tinkering of so-called biological Intelligent Design for that.
 
Bradski said:
We were talking about extinction Tony. Not the end of life itself.

Life is pretty bulletproof. Been reasonably successful. But the design of the component parts has not been what you might describe as a roaring success. Unless, of course, that God has determined that constituent parts should fail.

Is that part of the Design? That it should not succeed?
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God designs the process, not individual species which come and go as environmental circumstances change. The infusion of the human soul is a different thing, but that is an immaterial entity that has nothing to do with evolution, which is a physical, material process.
 
Hans_W said:
Gary, I am not a theologian. I can only repeat what I hear theologian say about the whole creation/ID/evolution business. I am happy to supply you with list of Christian philosophers since this is part of the research going into my thesis.

In short, God is seen of having created the universe
“with no functional deficiencies, no gaps in its economy of the sort that would require God to act immediately, temporarily assuming the role of a creature (in the physical universe) to perform functions within the economy of the creation that other creatures have not been equipped to perform.
When the Creator says, ‘Let the land produce vegetation,’ or ‘Let the water teem with living creatures,’ or ‘Let the land produce living creatures,’ a world created with functional integrity will, by the enabling power and directing governance of God, be able to respond obediently and employ its capacities to carry out the intentions of the Creator.” (quoted from Howard Van Till).
Ernan McMullin, a philosopher of religion and Catholic priest, has also written extensively on the topic of evolution. I can highly recommend three books by (Catholic) John Haught who is Senior Fellow in Science and Religion at the Woodstock Theological Center and professor of theology at Georgetown university, titled: “Science and Faith”, “Making sense of evolution” and “God and the new atheism”.
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Good Morning Hans: I’m not a theologian either, but I enjoy discussing these things.
 
Al_Moritz said:
God designs the process, not individual species which come and go as environmental circumstances change. The infusion of the human soul is a different thing, but that is an immaterial entity that has nothing to do with evolution, which is a physical, material process.
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Let’s go back to the music analogy for creation. Suppose the natural environment is like the music track and life akin to the vocal track. It would make sense that God uses laws of physics (music theory) front loaded at the Big Bang to “design” or lay down the music track. Once in play, the vocal track could be given full rein.

Clearly the voice, as instrument, and the musical instruments, themselves, must “play nicely” together in the sense required by theistic evolution. Nature must be properly sequenced and functional in order for “selection” of the type required for evolution to fully operate as a workable culling mechanism for living things. This is very much in the same sense that the vocals and music must play off of each other for a complete and successful musical score to be performed.

I see no inherent lack in the power of God being portrayed nor it being a deficient account of creation if the universe and life within it are taken to be, like vocals and music, two aspects of creation and “performed” as distinct tracks playing off of each other.

Am I claiming this is the necessary way that it must be seen? No. On the other hand, theistic evolutionists seem to be insisting that a one track view is the way it must be. I see no reason to accept that except that it, in turn, “plays well” with the atheistic or Darwinian account that insists only the sound track IS required, with NO musician nor musicianship.

Even if we concede that music theory (the scientific method) can extrapolate from the music - as it is being performed - a proper depiction of the score (theory of evolution), it is not clear to me that the lyrics or lyrical performance MUST be understood to have derived from the instruments (secondary causes) merely because the music is.
 
Hans_W said:
I recommend you do some reading on that case. It was a conservative, Bush-appointed, Bible-believing judge who didn’t muddle his verdict in philosophical jargon.

Wikipedia gives you a short overview: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitzmiller_v._Dover_Area_School_District

Go down to “Verdict” and “Conclusion”.
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Conservative, Bush appointed judges could be just as clueless as liberal Democrat-appointed judges. What is your point?

Is it that judges are just as biased as anyone else and, therefore, their judgements should all be taken with a metric tonne of salt? Sure, I would agree, but that doesn’t bolster your insistence that the judge made a correct ruling when he determined that Creationism and intelligent design are necessarily and essentially the same thing.

I’ve read the verdict. It only holds, logically speaking, if “Creationism” is defined, trivially, as being the set of beliefs held then and forever by the perpetrators of “cdesign proponentsists” and with the assumiption that those beliefs themselves could not EVOLVE and change in the minds of those individuals over time. Secondly, the judge had to presume intelligent design, is and CAN ONLY BE identical to the set of explicit beliefs those individuals held at the time they published the Pandas texts and could be held by anyone else ONLY for the same motives.

By that folly, the judge took to himself to determine what has been “understood” by many (including Bradski and Hans W) to be a philosophically binding judgement from a legal ruling that every flavor of “intelligent design” had to be, from that time on, identical to and nothing but the misconceived notion in the minds of those Creationist individuals on trial at the time they perpetrated the cdesign proponentsists error.
 
Al_Moritz said:
God designs the process, not individual species which come and go as environmental circumstances change. The infusion of the human soul is a different thing, but that is an immaterial entity that has nothing to do with evolution, which is a physical, material process.
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God created the meta creatures with superb adaptation capabilities.
 
oldcelt said:
There’s that “could have” statement…and what quantum effects of prayer? I imagine you have some sort of tangible evidence for such a phenomenon.
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Our Lady exhorts us to pray. Paul Davies said the universe is porous and perhaps that is where God operates. (paraphrasing)

Since we know the observer has an effect on quantum events, perhaps prayer by the observer can influence the outcome. It is worth thinking about.
 
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