Intelligent Design

[Bradski]

You are welcomed to deal with God’s design for animals. I prefer to deal with God’s design for humans.

Your preference is noted.

However, I am sure you have an opinion which includes the totality of God’s design. If not, thanks anyway.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

However, I am sure you have an opinion which includes the totality of God’s design. If not, thanks anyway.

I do not believe the Church teaches that we can know the totality of God’s design for Creation.

We can know what reason and revelation tell us, but not more.

There are unsolved mysteries, some of which you have touched upon. But the solving of these mysteries is not within human grasp. You insist that Catholics must be able to make sense out of everything. Not so. Catholics make sense out of many things, but not everything. God is entitled to his secrets. We are not entitled to know everything. We are not to conclude that because this is so, God must be irrational or God must not exist. Either implication is not warranted, though apparently you would like that to be so. It is hubris on the grandest scale to think we can have a Theory of Everything. That is succumbing to the serpent’s temptation that if we just eat that apple, we can be as smart as God.

 

[Peter_Plato]

Are you KIDDING me?

What did you expect? The Laws of Physics rule and God’s hands are tied by necessary cosmological constants?

No argument there.

You didn’t ask for an argument. You asked for an opinion. I even qualified that.

Now you complain.:ehh:

I gather you take the little knowledge you have to be definitive and constraining on all reality.

 

[Peter_Plato]

However, I am sure you have an opinion which includes the totality of God’s design. If not, thanks anyway.

It’s a trap granny! Plead the fifth.

 

[tonyrey]

Hopefully, you don’t mind if I burst the popular bubble that other living animal creatures, pre-Adam, had some kind of immunity to guts and blood events. Animals are hungry material/physical beings which have always been nasty to the lower food chain.

As for human disease, death, terror, pain and rain on a picnic, that is in a different category because humans, even though they are vertebrates, have an immortal soul created by God. If people do not wish to believe that a Creator God exists, that is o.k. with me. I am just the messenger.

As the poorly paid messenger, I can tell you what the Catholic Church teaches about the first human and his really bad Original Sin. When Adam told God to take a hike, Adam and his descendants lost the perks that came with the friendship relationship between humanity and Divinity. It is that simple.

:clapping:Your humility doesn’t alter the fact that your statements are true - although predators are not nasty. It is merciful to kill swiftly rather than torture to death deliberately - like some of our own species.

 

[grannymh]

However, I am sure you have an opinion which includes the totality of God’s design. If not, thanks anyway.

It’s a trap granny! Plead the fifth.

Saved again! My hero!

Would it be all right to plead post 1013?

 

[grannymh]

I do not believe the Church teaches that we can know the totality of God’s design for Creation.

We can know what reason and revelation tell us, but not more.

There are unsolved mysteries, some of which you have touched upon. But the solving of these mysteries is not within human grasp. You insist that Catholics must be able to make sense out of everything. Not so. Catholics make sense out of many things, but not everything. God is entitled to his secrets. We are not entitled to know everything. We are not to conclude that because this is so, God must be irrational or God must not exist. Either implication is not warranted, though apparently you would like that to be so. It is hubris on the grandest scale to think we can have a Theory of Everything. That is succumbing to the serpent’s temptation that if we just eat that apple, we can be as smart as God.

This post deserves both thumbs and a few toes.

Through Divine Revelation, God has made known the ultimate goal of human life which is to be with Him in heavenly glory. No one needs a Ph.D. in the Theory of Everything in order to qualify for God’s love.

 

[tonyrey]

It is only scientists who reject Design in nature as incompatible with Catholic belief who defend their thesis tooth and nail because they have everything to lose and nothing to gain. They prefer to believe science explains every aspect of life on earth

Of course evolution is God’s Design but is it a once-for-all scheme in which He takes no further part and simply observes the outcome of events?

There are two extremes, that of Calvinists who believe not a drop of rain falls without the express command of God and that of atheists who claim nothing is designed because there is no God. Then there are the deists who regard God as a First Cause who takes no further part in the proceedings. Close on their heels are Christians who believe God designed the universe so perfectly there is never any need to intervene because the laws of nature are quite sufficient to ensure that His plan is fulfilled. Then there are the Christians who take Jesus at His word, trust in Providence and believe in the Communion of Saints, i.e. that our prayers are answered not only in heaven but here and now. If God really is a loving Father then miracles are not a rare occurrence but an integral part of everyday life. Being sustained in existence is a miracle but divine love goes far beyond that:

For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, 39nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Romans 8:38

His love is not restricted to our spiritual needs but extends to our needs in every aspect of life. There is nothing to prevent Him from intervening unless He knows it would create more problems than it solves. The only limits to divine love are in our minds…

 

[Peter_Plato]

Saved again! My hero!

shaw:

Would it be all right to plead post 1013?

Works for me!

 

[tonyrey]

No attempt has ever been made to describe a** feasible**

Genesis is an allegorical account of Creation with remarkable insight into the nature of reality.

You can’t have your cake and eat it, Tony. The whole thread is post after post by those supporting those who say - look, God’s hand in the most minute detail! How could it happen without being designed! Including your posts.

A false dilemma! The limitations of natural laws do not totally exclude divine intervention.

Yet when it pointed out that this hands on approach, this design of life includes disease and death, terror and pain, you throw your hands up and claim that, well, not everything has been designed.

Another false dilemma! Within the framework of Design there is an element of Chance. It is simplistic to think they are mutually exclusive.

So I guess God said that we’re going to have a large portion of the planet’s life form who are specifically designed to eat other living creatures (and remember it wasn’t always thus) and either wasn’t aware of the consequences or didn’t really spend a lot of time worrying about it.

The interdependence of life is a fundamental necessity. The onus is on you to explain how it could be otherwise. If you reject it on moral grounds you should stop eating forthwith, considering fruit and vegetables are also living organisms - and justify your decision on rational grounds. If you’re not prepared to do so you are being inconsistent. You could say “I’m forced to eat although I don’t want to and I know it’s wrong” but I’m sure most people would look at you and laugh!

The unanswered question is whether you could design a superior world or cite an authority who has already done so. Otherwise your objection is worthless. Do you value being alive - or not? If you do you imply that the advantages of life outweigh its disadvantages. It is remotely possible, Brad, that you could be eaten one day by a predator or cannibal but does that thought spoil your enjoyment of life? You could regard it as a privilege that you’re tasty enough to be one of the select few.

 

[Peter_Plato]

You could regard it as a privilege that you’re tasty enough to be one of the select few?

A Bradski and cheese

 

[Charlemagne_III]

Of course evolution is God’s Design but is it a once-for-all scheme in which He takes no further part and simply observes the outcome of events?

There must be some kind of intervention in the natural order. The creation of human souls for the most sophisticated of apes must have been accompanied by the assurance that those apes would have evolved brains just right enough to work with the soul. Let’s think about the possibility that the bodies evolved thousands of years ago, the bodies our souls wear today, might not have come to exist at all if God had not been managing evolution all along. The atheist has to admit that possibility, but the theist does not have to admit it. The theist knows that **the emergence of our human bodies by way of evolution was intelligently designed by the Creator to happen from the start of Creation. **

“There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved." Charles Darwin, * Origin of the Species*, 1872 (last edition before Darwin’s death).

 

[grannymh]

Here is where some pertinent information can be found.

Chapter One, “Darwinian Evolution versus Scientific Creationism” in the new Expanded Third Edition of the book
*Origin of the Human Species *by Catholic philosopher Dr. Dennis Bonnette.

The Myth of the “Myth” of Adam and Eve" is the book’s new Appendix One.
The Philosophical Impossibility of Darwinian Naturalistic Evolution" is the book’s new Appendix Two.

amazon.com/Origin-Human-Species-Third-Edition/dp/1932589686/ref=sr_1_cc_1?s=aps&ie=UTF8&qid=1412467670&sr=1-1-catcorr&keywords=Origin+of+the+human+species++Bonnette

Link to new Catholic article published in Crisis Magazine online:
crisismagazine.com/2014/did-adam-and-eve-really-exist

Informative website:
drbonnette.com/

 

[Bradski]

You didn’t ask for an argument. You asked for an opinion. I even qualified that.

Now you complain.

If I say: no argument there, that’s me agreeing with you. It’s not a complaint.

 

[edwest2]

I do not believe the Church teaches that we can know the totality of God’s design for Creation.

We can know what reason and revelation tell us, but not more.

There are unsolved mysteries, some of which you have touched upon. But the solving of these mysteries is not within human grasp. You insist that Catholics must be able to make sense out of everything. Not so. Catholics make sense out of many things, but not everything. God is entitled to his secrets. We are not entitled to know everything. We are not to conclude that because this is so, God must be irrational or God must not exist. Either implication is not warranted, though apparently you would like that to be so. It is hubris on the grandest scale to think we can have a Theory of Everything. That is succumbing to the serpent’s temptation that if we just eat that apple, we can be as smart as God.

Jesus Christ is the example of what God can do. Raise the dead, restore sight to the blind, cleanse the lepers, raise His human body from the dead, all without scientific instruments or devices. He tried to remind people how things should be and He quoted the prophets who spoke what God gave them to say.

biblehub.com/2_peter/1-21.htm

I honestly don’t think a ‘theory of everything’ is the goal but dismissing God by human endeavors in science and believing that mere human beings are as God. Just like the serpent told Eve.

The unwarranted fear of the coming of a theocracy is promoted. What is desired is a Technocracy. Give credit where credit is due: to God.

Peace,
Ed

 

[edwest2]

What did you expect? The Laws of Physics rule and God’s hands are tied by necessary cosmological constants?

You didn’t ask for an argument. You asked for an opinion. I even qualified that.

Now you complain.:ehh:

I gather you take the little knowledge you have to be definitive and constraining on all reality.

That would follow. Only one worldview can dominate. God/gods are just fiction, or, at best, something humans invented to get by at some point in our history. However, the constant repetitions will be ceaseless.

Best,
Ed

 

[edwest2]

To Peter Plato:

Don’t tell anyone, but the Secret Overthrow of the Public School Science Classroom is being organized by two guys in New Jersey, right now.

Ed

 

[tonyrey]

A Bradski and cheese

Don’t forget it’s Christmas!

I’d prefer Crab Cakes and Baby Greens with Lemon Vinaigrette, Champagne, Crown Roast of Peter Plato with Apple and Pork Stuffing and Cider Gravy, Butternut Squash and Rutabaga Puree, Sweet-and-Sour Red Cabbage, hard Cider or Pinot Noir, Chocolate-Orange Buche de Noel…:bighanky:

I’m sorry, Peter, but de gustibus non est disputandum.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

Don’t forget it’s Christmas!

I’d prefer Crab Cakes and Baby Greens with Lemon Vinaigrette, Champagne, Crown Roast of Peter Plato with Apple and Pork Stuffing and Cider Gravy, Butternut Squash and Rutabaga Puree, Sweet-and-Sour Red Cabbage, hard Cider or Pinot Noir, Chocolate-Orange Buche de Noel…:bighanky:

I’m sorry, Peter, but de gustibus non est disputandum.

Ah Tony, you will appreciate these closing paragraphs from a short story I once wrote with Chesterton as the leading character.

*Famished, the enormous poet availed himself of the varied and spicy Italian cuisine he preferred to the British. For antipasti he took spinach with bacon vinaigrette, fried shallots and shaved goat cheese along with focaccia bread. For the main course he chose pan-roasted baby chicken almandine with sweet onions and braised red peppers. The meal was topped off with a slice each of creamy black-and- white cheesecake and walnut fudge pie with maple ice cream. All of this he washed down with an absurdly expensive bottle of 1925 Marques de Riscal. During an after-dinner glass of Butterscotch Schnapps, he penned a brief verse on his linen napkin:

Dining Gilbert Chesterton
spilled sauce and ale his big vest on.
He carved his Kant,
mashed his Marx
and buttered his Bertrand Russell.
Then he shouted down the corridor
for some oyster and some mussel.

But last of all, with sweating brow
he opened wide his jaw,
and for dessert he gulped a slice
of good old Bernard Shaw.*

 

[Charlemagne_III]

This post deserves both thumbs and a few toes.

If you can spare them! Thanks.