Intelligent Design

[Al_Moritz]

Did you catch Pope Benedict’s comment on this?

“What this professor wants to afflict on us is far more unbelievable than what we poor Christians were ever expected to believe.” Monod does not dispute this. His thesis is that the entire ensemble of nature has arisen out of errors and dissonances. He cannot help but say himself that such a conception is in fact absurd. But, according to him, the scientific method demands that a question not be permitted to which the answer would have to be God. One can only say that a method of this sort is pathetic. God himself shines through the reasonableness of his creation. Physics and biology, and the natural sciences in general, have given us a new and unheard-of creation account with vast new images, which let us recognize the face of the Creator and which make us realize once again that at the very beginning and foundation of all being there is a creating Intelligence…" Pope Benedict XVI

Sure, the Pope speaks against Monod’s worldview, but he has nothing against the scientific idea of chance in the process. Here again from Communion and Stewardship, a 2004 document approved by him as then Prefect of the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, basically the watchdog over Catholic doctrine:

1. The current scientific debate about the mechanisms at work in evolution requires theological comment insofar as it sometimes implies a misunderstanding of the nature of divine causality. Many neo-Darwinian scientists, as well as some of their critics, have concluded that, if evolution is a radically contingent materialistic process driven by natural selection and random genetic variation, then there can be no place in it for divine providential causality. A growing body of scientific critics of neo-Darwinism point to evidence of design (e.g., biological structures that exhibit specified complexity) that, in their view, cannot be explained in terms of a purely contingent process and that neo-Darwinians have ignored or misinterpreted. The nub of this currently lively disagreement involves scientific observation and generalization concerning whether the available data support inferences of design or chance, and cannot be settled by theology. But it is important to note that, according to the Catholic understanding of divine causality, true contingency in the created order is not incompatible with a purposeful divine providence. Divine causality and created causality radically differ in kind and not only in degree. Thus, even the outcome of a truly contingent natural process can nonetheless fall within God’s providential plan for creation. According to St. Thomas Aquinas: “The effect of divine providence is not only that things should happen somehow, but that they should happen either by necessity or by contingency. Therefore, whatsoever divine providence ordains to happen infallibly and of necessity happens infallibly and of necessity; and that happens from contingency, which the divine providence conceives to happen from contingency” (Summa theologiae, I, 22,4 ad 1). In the Catholic perspective, neo-Darwinians who adduce random genetic variation and natural selection as evidence that the process of evolution is absolutely unguided are straying beyond what can be demonstrated by science. Divine causality can be active in a process that is both contingent and guided. Any evolutionary mechanism that is contingent can only be contingent because God made it so. 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).

 

[Al_Moritz]

This link, written by a Catholic theologian who also quotes the same document, is quite illuminating:

biologos.org/blog/evolution-chance-and-god

He speaks about Dawkins on one hand and Intelligent Design on the other, and then writes a key paragraph with (emphasis added):

What I think is going on here is a fusing of Christian belief in an efficacious divine providence, with a scientific determinism that arose out of the success of the Newtonian worldview. The ghost of Deism, linking God’s action with the “necessary” and deterministic laws of nature resulting in a clock-work universe, haunts the debate. Indeed the logic is compelling: What God wills, necessarily happens; and this necessity is conveyed through the scientific determinism of Newtonian mechanics. There is no chance because God operates through necessary scientific laws. If there is chance, on the other hand, God cannot be involved.

He then goes on to refute that notion.

 

[tonyrey]

I have said before that what, for example, Behe is doing is scientific. No problem with that. His work doesn’t involve goat entrails or searching for coded messages in scripture. He’s a smart man and quite qualified to do what he does. His papers are full of science. The paper you linked to earlier is full of sciency stuff (yes, I did read through it as much as my limited knowledge as a layman would allow). But here’s a quote from someone your side of the argument brings forth as a witness for the defence:

Le Fannu: Essentially, Intelligent Design is Creationism…

Let me ask you a simple question. Irrespective of whether you think that ID is associated with creationism, there is no doubt that it is (just see the quote above from one of your supporters). Would you prefer that it wasn’t?

NB:

According to a review of his book by the New Scientist, Le Fanu argues for the existence of an immaterial “life force”.[8] Le Fanu is not a creationist and does not argue for God, instead he argues for a non-physical cosmic force which he claims could explain where consciousness originates from; he also claims it may explain many of the other mysteries unexplained by material science.[9][10]

wiki

 

[tonyrey]

Okay, I acknowledge that. But not every one else feels the same way and this might not be sufficient to motivate the considerations of others that are not already Christian. If one hasn’t already been raised or convinced that an instance of self sacrifice isn’t an important attribute for a god-concept then pointing it out as an attribute of a specific god-concept may come across as arbitrary.

It seems like there would need to be some other arguments or statements leading up to self sacrifice.

Is self-sacrificial love an insignificant feature of reality? If so what is significant?

 

[tonyrey]

This link, written by a Catholic theologian who also quotes the same document, is quite illuminating:

biologos.org/blog/evolution-chance-and-god

He speaks about Dawkins on one hand and Intelligent Design on the other, and then writes a key paragraph with (emphasis added):
What I think is going on here is a fusing of Christian belief in an efficacious divine providence, with a scientific determinism that arose out of the success of the Newtonian worldview. The ghost of Deism, linking God’s action with the “necessary” and deterministic laws of nature resulting in a clock-work universe, haunts the debate. Indeed the logic is compelling: What God wills, necessarily happens; and this necessity is conveyed through the scientific determinism of Newtonian mechanics. There is no chance because God operates through necessary scientific laws. If there is chance, on the other hand, God cannot be involved.He then goes on to refute that notion.

There is no reason whatsoever to believe Design entails any form of determinism. The assumption that God never intervenes is certainly haunted by “the ghost of Deism”.

 

[Bradski]

NB:
wiki

So you think that what you find in wiki about what somebody thinks about what somebody else wrote about what they think about what Le Fanu wrote trumps what the guy actually said himself.

 

[tonyrey]

So basically ID is the view that God created everything but intervened here and there to ensure that it evolved properly?

While Theistic Evolution is that there was no intervention since, God the creator of all, would have developed a perfect evolutionary process?

I feel like there very similar but ID has some theological holes in it because why would God create an evolutionary process that was full of error and needed intervention?

There is no such thing as “a perfect evolutionary process”. The fact that life on this planet has almost become extinct several times demonstrates that the laws of nature cannot possibly cater for every contingency. It is absurd to think there is** never **any need for God to intervene. It reduces the Creator to an Observer - the antithesis of the Loving Father who cares for all His children.

Divine intervention is not restricted by human notions of evolution. The teaching of Jesus implies that God prevents misfortunes whenever possible without defeating the purpose of creating an orderly universe. Miracles are not rare events but everyday responses to urgent needs. Answers to prayer are the rule without exception although the answers are not always what we want or expect.

We tend to take it for granted that the vast majority of living beings are not maimed or killed by earthquakes or other cataclysms. Yet there could be far more disasters than there are. It is a miracle life has survived for almost four billion years in a largely hostile environment. No one could have predicted such an incredible achievement, let alone the development of immensely complex mammals far more vulnerable than monocellular organisms. Why have amoeba outlasted mammoths? Because of their simplicity. Survival value is a hopelessly inadequate explanation of biological complexity, let alone intellectual development.

The simplest explanation is divine intervention. We exist because we are intended to exist and are protected from misfortune far more than we realise. It is not the devil but God who is in the details. Providence is not unscientific, wishful thinking but the only rational explanation of our extraordinary existence. There is an element of chance in life but it is within the context of benevolent Design. God is in constant, direct control of events and frequently suspends the laws of nature for the benefit of His creatures.

 

[Gary_Sheldrake]

This training to see laws is an integral part of the natural instinct for survival and thus it is inherent in human nature.

Good Morning Granny: This is an interesting idea that could be discussed at length, because I wonder if seeing laws in the world around us is simply a matter of projection. Social codes are certainly useful in maintaining societies and cultural cohesion. The question in my mind is whether or not societies or culture for that matter have been all that useful. We have certainly used them to make things rather comfortable for ourselves in some ways, but we have also made ourselves very uncomfortable with them in many ways as well. The social structure we operate within seems to have given us a strong sense of being separate from other animals and from the world around us. In the process we seem to have given ourselves the idea that it’s a worthy distinction of some sort to have a specialization that allows us to think in the abstract and fret over things is in some way superior to a chimney swift’s ability to fly and live untroubled by worry.

I noticed “things” as a designation of what is being discussed. I can expand “things” to highly sentient beings such as apes and border collies. However, apparently gravity is a physical action which has always existed in situations involving vertical distance.

Well, it certainly has existed for a very long time, but it is plain that we have assigned laws to many things such as gravity that we really don’t understand. Most scientists will be honest enough to admit that there’s a lot we don’t know about gravity or time, and all we can really say is that they behave in certain ways. We cannot say that they the ways in which they behave are caused by laws that govern their behavior. What we are observing are interactions, and these are more likely in my thinking to develop as one form of matter meets another form of matter, and they develop patterns of behavior that can be very consistent, but never one hundred percent consistent. The speed of light is often measured with variations from the normal 186,000 miles per second.

As for highly sentient beings, I am very glad to be one of them, however, I have to admit that I have always had a very strange intuition that we confuse consciousness with sentience. As sentient beings I have always felt that we are simply the sensory arm of a much larger organism that we are part of (earth, solar system, galaxy and so on). And this very large organism is simply the temporal manifestation of a consciousness that is just as large, and is the core of what we are. What I am suggesting here is that we are all one thing - one organism and one consciousness, and through sentience we experience each other as separate components when in fact we are one. I think this is probably what Jesus meant when he said that he was the vine and we were the branches. A vine and it’s branches are not separate things. The are one thing. I think this is the unique thing that he saw, and the core of his message.

On the other hand, bacteria certainly “learns” or acquires dominance behavior, thereby setting new rules or laws which scientists in the medical arena are constantly looking for.

I agree, but these are behavior patterns, and my point is that they need not be governed by laws. Once some part of the universe learns a way of doing something, it just becomes a learned habit. And the habit of one thing affect sthe way in which new things establish their own patterns of behavior, because of their interaction with one another.

This fits in especially with human’s inherent sense of the super-natural dating back to ancient myths.

I love this topic and would like to discuss it with you one day.

This demonstrates the need for the true scientific (inductive) method. It is my understanding that Intelligent Design claims that there is a higher power, a greater independent power, which can devise physical/material “laws” that actually work.

Personally, I don’t know if I agree with the standard idea that intelligent design requires a “higher” being. Let me explain what I mean. My Mom used to embroider things, and as a Catholic child, I always thought about the things I was taught on the subject of religion in relation to what I saw. When I would look at the things she would embroider, I had intimations that God might be a lot like the fabric into which she was threading scenes, objects and events into. It was the idea that God was something like the fabric into which individual experience is threaded. And when we stand back and look at an embroidered coverlet, the fabric, the threads and the images they create are not separate things. They are one thing that simply has components. I have the feeling that our lives, our experiences, our fears and joys and so on are an endless thread that weaves a story into the fabric that we call God. And the whole thing is certainly intelligent, but rather than intelligence being conferred upon or possessed by any single part of the whole, I think the whole is simply infused with it. And being alive, the whole reaches out, grows, stretches, and revels in experience of itself. If it had a plan or a design, I just simply think it would take all the novelty and joy out of it. What intelligent thing would decline novelty and joy, I wonder.

You had mentioned that you left references to God out of the discussion, and my apologies for putting it back in there. It was just important with regard to what I had to say and I hope you’ll understand.

All the best,
Gary

 

[PRmerger]

But choose we must, for not to choose is still a choice.

Egg-zactly.

 

[grannymh]

Sure, the Pope speaks against Monod’s worldview, but he has nothing against the scientific idea of chance in the process. Here again from Communion and Stewardship, a 2004 document approved by him as then Prefect of the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, basically the watchdog over Catholic doctrine:

While Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger was Prefect of the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the actual status of Communion and Stewardship is that of its source which is not the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

Communion and Stewardship is a valuable report/document which contains information about the then current scientific debate about the mechanisms at work in evolution. (paragraph 69)

From paragraph 64
64. Pope John Paul II stated some years ago that “new knowledge leads to the recognition of the theory of evolution as more than a hypothesis. It is indeed remarkable that this theory has been progressively accepted by researchers following a series of discoveries in various fields of knowledge”(“Message to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences on Evolution”1996). In continuity with previous twentieth century papal teaching on evolution (especially Pope Pius XII’s encyclical Humani Generis ), the Holy Father’s message acknowledges that there are “several theories of evolution” that are “materialist, reductionist and spiritualist” and thus incompatible with the Catholic faith. It follows that the message of Pope John Paul II cannot be read as a blanket approbationof all theories of evolution, including those of a neo-Darwinian provenance which explicitly deny to divine providence any truly causal role in the development of life in the universe. Mainly concerned with evolution as it “involves the question of man,” however, Pope John Paul’s message is specifically critical of materialistic theories of human origins and insists on the relevance of philosophy and theology for an adequate understanding of the “ontological leap” to the human which cannot be explained in purely scientific terms.

Catholic doctrines oppose one of the main theories of human origins which is not mentioned in Communion and Stewardship. This is the theory that the hominin lineage following the Homo/Pan divergence consists of effective populations in the
thousands–certainly more than a population of two, Adam and his spouse Eve. A visual description is the cladogram.

Communion and Stewardship is by the International Theological Commission of which Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger was President and therefore he gave his permission for its publication. The members of the Submission who prepared the initial draft are listed in the * *Preliminary Note. *

Please scroll down to the bottom for complete information, that is, text development.
vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/cti_documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20040723_communion-stewardship_en.html

 

[grannymh]

Good Morning Granny: This is an interesting idea that could be discussed at length, because I wonder if seeing laws in the world around us is simply a matter of projection. Social codes are certainly useful in maintaining societies and cultural cohesion. The question in my mind is whether or not societies or culture for that matter have been all that useful. We have certainly used them to make things rather comfortable for ourselves in some ways, but we have also made ourselves very uncomfortable with them in many ways as well. The social structure we operate within seems to have given us a strong sense of being separate from other animals and from the world around us. In the process we seem to have given ourselves the idea that it’s a worthy distinction of some sort to have a specialization that allows us to think in the abstract and fret over things is in some way superior to a chimney swift’s ability to fly and live untroubled by worry.

Well, it certainly has existed for a very long time, but it is plain that we have assigned laws to many things such as gravity that we really don’t understand. Most scientists will be honest enough to admit that there’s a lot we don’t know about gravity or time, and all we can really say is that they behave in certain ways. We cannot say that they the ways in which they behave are caused by laws that govern their behavior. What we are observing are interactions, and these are more likely in my thinking to develop as one form of matter meets another form of matter, and they develop patterns of behavior that can be very consistent, but never one hundred percent consistent. The speed of light is often measured with variations from the normal 186,000 miles per second.

As for highly sentient beings, I am very glad to be one of them, however, I have to admit that I have always had a very strange intuition that we confuse consciousness with sentience. As sentient beings I have always felt that we are simply the sensory arm of a much larger organism that we are part of (earth, solar system, galaxy and so on). And this very large organism is simply the temporal manifestation of a consciousness that is just as large, and is the core of what we are. What I am suggesting here is that we are all one thing - one organism and one consciousness, and through sentience we experience each other as separate components when in fact we are one. I think this is probably what Jesus meant when he said that he was the vine and we were the branches. A vine and it’s branches are not separate things. The are one thing. I think this is the unique thing that he saw, and the core of his message.

I agree, but these are behavior patterns, and my point is that they need not be governed by laws. Once some part of the universe learns a way of doing something, it just becomes a learned habit. And the habit of one thing affect sthe way in which new things establish their own patterns of behavior, because of their interaction with one another.

I love this topic and would like to discuss it with you one day.

Personally, I don’t know if I agree with the standard idea that intelligent design requires a “higher” being. Let me explain what I mean. My Mom used to embroider things, and as a Catholic child, I always thought about the things I was taught on the subject of religion in relation to what I saw. When I would look at the things she would embroider, I had intimations that God might be a lot like the fabric into which she was threading scenes, objects and events into. It was the idea that God was something like the fabric into which individual experience is threaded. And when we stand back and look at an embroidered coverlet, the fabric, the threads and the images they create are not separate things. They are one thing that simply has components. I have the feeling that our lives, our experiences, our fears and joys and so on are an endless thread that weaves a story into the fabric that we call God. And the whole thing is certainly intelligent, but rather than intelligence being conferred upon or possessed by any single part of the whole, I think the whole is simply infused with it. And being alive, the whole reaches out, grows, stretches, and revels in experience of itself. If it had a plan or a design, I just simply think it would take all the novelty and joy out of it. What intelligent thing would decline novelty and joy, I wonder.

You had mentioned that you left references to God out of the discussion, and my apologies for putting it back in there. It was just important with regard to what I had to say and I hope you’ll understand.

All the best,
Gary

Briefly, the American Heritage College Dictionary, Fourth Edition, defines sentience as “1. The quality or state of being sentient; consciousness.” I wish that the rest of your intriguing post were as easy to reply to.

When I refer to highly sentient beings, it is usually in connection with animals. However, since we humans are often classified as belonging to the animal kingdom, we are highly sentient with the addition of our unique rational spiritual soul.

Since there is a ton of definitions for law, we should share some kind of a common definition. I do not live in an either-or world. Law could be a both-and situation depending on…whatever. Please let me know your definitions or descriptions of “law.”

As the discussion broadens, we can bring God back in at any time. I wanted to say that God can be useful, but that sounds a tad irreverent.:blushing:

From my point of view, the opening of post 881 contains a lot of possibilities and we need to divide and conquer.

And I am now wondering about the “standard” of Intelligent Design.

 

[Al_Moritz]

There is no reason whatsoever to believe Design entails any form of determinism. The assumption that God never intervenes is certainly haunted by “the ghost of Deism”.

On the contrary, the theology of the Intelligent design movement is haunted by the “ghost of Deism”, as it disregards God constant and active participation in creation as He sustains the regular working of the laws of nature that He created, and instead falsely searches for an active God only in moments of 'intervention’. God the sustainer of evolution is just a ‘passive bystander’, and we can’t have that, can we? Of course, that is a false concept of God.

Matthew 10:29-30:
“Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and not one of them shall fall on the ground without your Father. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered.”

But obviously God does not intervene when someone becomes bald with age. And yes, during both the full-hair phase and the balding process “the very hairs of your head are all numbered” as Jesus says. Clearly Jesus does not claim that God intervenes with every hair, but that God knows everything and cares about us and sustains us – even when He lets natural processes such as balding occur without ‘intervention’. God is not a ‘passive bystander’ as in Deism even when He lets natural processes that He created go their natural course. He is active at all times in creation, sustaining its processes.

So if God lets natural processes occur like balding or growing of hair without ‘intervention’, why should He not let evolution, another natural process that He created, run its course without ‘intervention’?

 

[Gary_Sheldrake]

Briefly, the American Heritage College Dictionary, Fourth Edition, defines sentience as “1. The quality or state of being sentient; consciousness.” I wish that the rest of your intriguing post were as easy to reply to.

When I refer to highly sentient beings, it is usually in connection with animals. However, since we humans are often classified as belonging to the animal kingdom, we are highly sentient with the addition of our unique rational spiritual soul.

Since there is a ton of definitions for law, we should share some kind of a common definition. I do not live in an either-or world. Law could be a both-and situation depending on…whatever. Please let me know your definitions or descriptions of “law.”

As the discussion broadens, we can bring God back in at any time. I wanted to say that God can be useful, but that sounds a tad irreverent.:blushing:

From my point of view, the opening of post 881 contains a lot of possibilities and we need to divide and conquer.

And I am now wondering about the “standard” of Intelligent Design.

Good Morning again Granny: The American College Dictionary is useful in defining linguistic tiles and syntax. Consciousness is not something we have a very good grasp of in my opinion, and coming at it with words or a dictionary is probably a premature and overly ambitious endeavor just yet.

PS - thank you for having this discussion with me. I’m glad that you entertain ideas without being judgmental.

All the best,
Gary

 

[Gary_Sheldrake]

Egg-zactly.

http://media.tumblr.com/f77d23bbd311effbcc369280c6e154e6/tumblr_inline_nbp59um73z1r79k32.gif

Hi PR Merger!

 

[PRmerger]

Hi PR Merger!

 

[buffalo]

Sure, the Pope speaks against Monod’s worldview, but he has nothing against the scientific idea of chance in the process. Here again from Communion and Stewardship, a 2004 document approved by him as then Prefect of the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, basically the watchdog over Catholic doctrine:69. The current scientific debate about the mechanisms at work in evolution requires theological comment insofar as it sometimes implies a misunderstanding of the nature of divine causality. Many neo-Darwinian scientists, as well as some of their critics, have concluded that, if evolution is a radically contingent materialistic process driven by natural selection and random genetic variation, then there can be no place in it for divine providential causality. A growing body of scientific critics of neo-Darwinism point to evidence of design (e.g., biological structures that exhibit specified complexity) that, in their view, cannot be explained in terms of a purely contingent process and that neo-Darwinians have ignored or misinterpreted. The nub of this currently lively disagreement involves scientific observation and generalization concerning whether the available data support inferences of design or chance, and cannot be settled by theology. But it is important to note that, according to the Catholic understanding of divine causality, true contingency in the created order is not incompatible with a purposeful divine providence. Divine causality and created causality radically differ in kind and not only in degree. Thus, even the outcome of a truly contingent natural process can nonetheless fall within God’s providential plan for creation. According to St. Thomas Aquinas: “The effect of divine providence is not only that things should happen somehow, but that they should happen either by necessity or by contingency. Therefore, whatsoever divine providence ordains to happen infallibly and of necessity happens infallibly and of necessity; and that happens from contingency, which the divine providence conceives to happen from contingency” (Summa theologiae, I, 22,4 ad 1). In the Catholic perspective, neo-Darwinians who adduce random genetic variation and natural selection as evidence that the process of evolution is absolutely unguided are straying beyond what can be demonstrated by science. Divine causality can be active in a process that is both contingent and guided. Any evolutionary mechanism that is contingent can only be contingent because God made it so. 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).

Key - “In the Catholic perspective, neo-Darwinians who adduce random genetic variation and natural selection as evidence that the process of evolution is absolutely unguided are straying beyond what can be demonstrated by science.”

So, our Holy Father is saying unguided evolution strays beyond what can be demonstrated, leaving guided evolution. Guided evolution, has purpose and plan and therefore would fall in the ID camp.

So:

God knew what Adam would look like

-and-

Adam looked as God has planned.

 

[grannymh]

Good Morning again Granny: The American College Dictionary is useful in defining linguistic tiles and syntax. Consciousness is not something we have a very good grasp of in my opinion, and coming at it with words or a dictionary is probably a premature and overly ambitious endeavor just yet.

All the best,
Gary

Of course.

However, my three main sources of initial information are the dictionary (including Google); The Catechism of the Catholic Church, Second Edition; and the older version of the New American Bible. Science research is conducted wherever I can find it.

My apology, but I am not sure when I can get back to your post because of several prior commitments. — I still would like to know more about how you initially define laws.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

But obviously God does not intervene when someone becomes bald with age. And yes, during both the full-hair phase and the balding process “the very hairs of your head are all numbered” as Jesus says. Clearly Jesus does not claim that God intervenes with every hair, but that God knows everything and cares about us and sustains us – even when He lets natural processes such as balding occur without ‘intervention’. God is not a ‘passive bystander’ as in Deism even when He lets natural processes that He created go their natural course. He is active at all times in creation, sustaining its processes.

So if God lets natural processes occur like balding or growing of hair without ‘intervention’, why should He not let evolution, another natural process that He created, run its course without ‘intervention’?

God does not merely sustain the processes of the universe. He also intelligently directs them. To say otherwise is to say that the universe could have been sustained in such a way as not to produce human beings. The creation of the first human soul is a miraculous event, was not inevitable given the laws of nature, and is in no way comparable to the balding of a head. If God swooped down to create a soul, how much easier it would have been to swoop down and create the first living microbe?

If all of Creation was not a miracle, how did Creation get here? And if the first Creation was a miracle, why not another miracle, and another, and another, ad infinitum?

You can only be ignored for so long if you are going to keep up with that “swooping down” business.

 

[Al_Moritz]

Key - “In the Catholic perspective, neo-Darwinians who adduce random genetic variation and natural selection as evidence that the process of evolution is absolutely unguided are straying beyond what can be demonstrated by science.”

So, our Holy Father is saying unguided evolution strays beyond what can be demonstrated, leaving guided evolution. Guided evolution, has purpose and plan and therefore would fall in the ID camp.

Not ID in the typical “biological ID” sense if “irreducible complexity” and the like. In the sense that God is the origin of all creation, all creation is of course intelligently designed. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that constant interfering tinkering in the “biological ID” sense is required. After all, “biological ID” proponents have no problem whatsoever with straight physical evolution of the universe (formation of stars, galaxies, planets etc.). So why the selective resistance in being against straight biological evolution?

So:

God knew what Adam would look like

-and-

Adam looked as God has planned.

Of course, in classical theism God has perfect foreknowledge.

 

[Al_Moritz]

The creation of the first human soul is a miraculous event, was not inevitable given the laws of nature, and is in no way comparable to the balding of a head. If God swooped down to create a soul, how much easier it would have been to swoop down and create the first living microbe?

Aah, but don’t confuse immaterial entities (souls) with material processes. Of course they are in no way comparable.