Is intelligent design a plausible theory? (part 2)

[Charlemagne_II]

itinerant

I thought you were going to have more to offer than this. With due respect to his Eminence, the Cardinal is not the Catholic Church that I think you mentioned earlier.

Here is what I take to be the key sentences you wanted to cite.Correct me if you differ:

“I am convinced that an origin and an end, and thus something that one could call “intelligent design” may be recognized in creation. For me it is a sensible, reasonable point of view to conclude to a creator. But it is not a scientific point of view. I do not expect scientific research to prove God to me.”

I’m not sure whether the Cardinal labors under a misconception of science. Anything that is observable in nature comes under the inquiry of science. If it appears that something in nature is likely to be designed, and that the chances of it not being designed are so remote as to be absurd, it is a logical inference that design exists. Without going into the question of showing God in the process of designing, which I agree would not be a task science can demonstrate, it is still a result of inferences drawn from observation of the physical world that some force called Designer is at work. This need not be the Catholic God. That much cannot be inferred, but the existence of a reasoning power can be inferred as the designer of all that is.

By the same token, the Big Bang does not show us God at work because we cannot observe the event at the time it happened and know nothing of the process that led to it. Yet we can reasonably infer that Something of great and awesome power brorught the universe into being. Again, this Something is not necessarily proven to be the Catholic God, if that is what the Cardinal means to say. But it is Something quite other than all the causes we see in the universe since the beginning of time. Moreover, the flash of light identified with the Big Bang suggests, but does not prove absolutely, that science has found Something approximating the God off Genesis who said : “Let there be light!”

The Cardinal says:

I do not expect scientific research to prove God to me.

If he is talking about the Catholic God, I agree. But I do not agree with him if he is talking about the God of Newton, Darwin, and Einstein. If through their science they were able to articulate belief in a superior reasoning power, why does the Cardinal not agree?

The passage you cited above does not satisfy my curiosity.

 

[Namesake]

I’m not sure whether the Cardinal labors under a misconception of science. Anything that is observable in nature comes under the inquiry of science. If it appears that something in nature is likely to be designed, and that the chances of it not being designed are so remote as to be absurd, it is a logical inference that design exists. Without going into the question of showing God in the process of designing, which I agree would not be a task science can demonstrate, it is still a result of inferences drawn from observation of the physical world that some force called Designer is at work.

You are just being dodgy and the real crux of your intent seems to be that God is the designer. Why not just fess up and make that clear? Put another way, just who would the designer be if not God? And I didn’t know there is a Catholic god, do you know?

 

[liquidpele]

"No, the idea of the creation of completed individual beings or species is absurd. It is as just as unsustainable as the creationist theses of a creation of the world in six 24-hour days, as the pseudo-scientific speculations about a “young” earth, about a historical interpretation of the Flood, etc…

"…At this point a look back in the field of humanities is necessary. Since the late middle ages, the stream of nominalism brought about an ever clearer mechanization of the world-view. Ever more all causality was reduced to material causality. The classic teaching on the four causes was lost, especially final causality and formal causality. As Werner Heisenberg established, the concept of the four causes became limited to the material and efficient cause, to “the rule of cause and effect”; this limitation reduction ever more the perception of truth to the material.

"In this reductionistic understanding of reality there are only extrinsic causes working “from without.” It is striking that in Darwin’s criticism of individual acts of creation these causes are understood entirely as material causes (and thus rightfully rejected). God appears as one cause among other material causes that are “within the world.” But that can not be the meaning of “creation.” If the concept of creation is to have meaning, it cannot be as one cause among others in the chain of efficient causes.

"As I see it, the mistake of the “Intelligent Design” school of thought (with which people always wrongly associate me): The attempt of this school to assess high complexity in nature as evidence or proof of “intelligent design” suffers from the fundamental failure in thought, that “design,” plan, directedness to an end cannot be found on the level of causality with which the scientific method (in natural science) is concerned.

“I am convinced that an origin and an end, and thus something that one could call “intelligent design” may be recognized in creation. For me it is a sensible, reasonable point of view to conclude to a creator. But it is not a scientific point of view. I do not expect scientific research to prove God to me. It can do that just as little as it can prove the opposite. Neither lays within the horizon of its method. But the scientist as a man, who thinks about nature, who asks himself the questions of the “from where,” “to where,” and “what for” of the world and of his life, can indeed come to the conclusion that the acceptance of a creator is a more sensible and reasonable point of view than the radical nihilism of Friedrich Nietzsche.”

Very applicable and interesting thoughts, I would say I very much agree with that point of view regarding ID. Thanks for sharing!