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Cheiron
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Exactly. Thank you!
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cfauster
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The argument from complexity falters, but not necessarily all design arguments.
Intelligent Design theory, and some other recent design arguments, are not sound but there are more fundamental kinds of teleological/design arguments.
Those interested in the philosophical details might want to read an essay published in The Heythrop Journal by James Dominic Rooney of the Aquinas Institute of Theology, St. Louis, Missouri.
Here is the abstract:
“Much has been made of how Darwinian thinking destroyed proofs for the existence of God from ‘design’ in the universe. I challenge that prevailing view by looking closely at classical ‘teleological’ arguments for the existence of God. One version championed by Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas stems from how chance is not a sufficient kind of ultimate explanation of the universe. In the course of constructing this argument, I argue that the classical understanding of teleology is no less necessary in modern Darwinian biology than it was in Aristotle’s time. In fact, modern biology strengthens the claims that teleological arguments make by vindicating many of their key features. As a consequence, I show how Aristotle and Aquinas’ teleological argument for an intelligent First Cause remains valid.”
Intelligent Design theory, and some other recent design arguments, are not sound but there are more fundamental kinds of teleological/design arguments.
Those interested in the philosophical details might want to read an essay published in The Heythrop Journal by James Dominic Rooney of the Aquinas Institute of Theology, St. Louis, Missouri.
Here is the abstract:
“Much has been made of how Darwinian thinking destroyed proofs for the existence of God from ‘design’ in the universe. I challenge that prevailing view by looking closely at classical ‘teleological’ arguments for the existence of God. One version championed by Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas stems from how chance is not a sufficient kind of ultimate explanation of the universe. In the course of constructing this argument, I argue that the classical understanding of teleology is no less necessary in modern Darwinian biology than it was in Aristotle’s time. In fact, modern biology strengthens the claims that teleological arguments make by vindicating many of their key features. As a consequence, I show how Aristotle and Aquinas’ teleological argument for an intelligent First Cause remains valid.”
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cfauster
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Catholic Answers Magazine featured an article on this topic by Michael Tkacz.
Another article by him is “Thomistic Reflections on Teleology and Contemporary Biological Research.”
Another article by him is “Thomistic Reflections on Teleology and Contemporary Biological Research.”
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womanatwell
Guest
I have read one of your links previously (Tkacz). I don’t feel that Thomas Aquinas is always being interpreted fairly when it comes to Special Creationism (direct supernatural creation). In contrast to the explanations given (I have read this type of thing elsewhere) is a very simple and direct statement which IMO makes clear what Aquinas thought about Special Creation, in this example, of humans.
In Summa Theologica, Part 1, Question 92, Article 4, Aquinas himself says this in his answer (after laying out the contrary objection first, which is at the link if you want to read it):
In the next statement, Reply to Objection 1, Aquinas says:
home.newadvent.org/summa/1092.htm#article4
The Tkacz article mentions Michael Behe, who actually believes in common descent, but of course also thinks there are other than totally materialistic explanations to all development and diversity. But Behe does not reach out on the theological side to say whom he believes is the designer. He, like most other Intelligent Design advocates, wants to stick strictly with science as a means to discover design.
However, in the recent book Undeniable by another Intelligent Design advocate who I mentioned earlier in this thread, Dr. Douglas Axe, the author laid out plainly who he believes is the Designer, and that is God. Dr. Axe believes there is an innate sense of design in humans about science which he calls “Common Science.” He thinks children are born with this sense and can see biology entities (and the cosmos) are designed but are later talked out of it by others.
Special Creationists believe God is the Designer and created supernaturally and directly, at least in some cases (as in kinds of animals), not to say there couldn’t have been some microevolution of these kinds.
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cfauster
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Indeed, it’s important to understand the debates current when Thomas Aquinas lived. Here is the best essay I have read on that.
A few highlights:
“It seemed to many of Aquinas’ contemporaries that there was a fundamental incompatibility between the claim of ancient science that something cannot come from nothing and the affirmation of Christian faith that God produced everything from nothing. Furthermore, for the Greeks, since something must always come from something, there must always be something; the universe must be eternal.”
“On the specific questions of creation out of nothing and the eternity of the world, the key to Aquinas’ analysis is the distinction he draws between creation and change. The natural sciences, whether Aristotelian or those of our own day, have as their subject the world of changing things: from subatomic particles to acorns to galaxies. Whenever there is a change there must be something that changes. The ancient Greeks are right: from nothing, nothing comes; that is, if the verb “to come” means to change. All change requires an underlying material reality.”
“Creation, on the other hand, is the radical causing of the whole existence of whatever exists. To cause completely something to exist is not to produce a change in something, is not to work on or with some existing material. If, in producing something new, an agent were to use something already existing, the agent would not be the complete cause of the new thing. But such complete causing is precisely what creation is … The Creator does not take nothing and make something out of nothing … Creation is not some distant event; it is the complete causing of the existence of everything that is. Creation, thus, as Aquinas shows, is a subject for metaphysics and theology; it is not a subject for the natural sciences.”
Thus, the passages you quoted show Thomas distinguishing between the course of nature (change) and things outside the course of nature (creation, in the strict sense) that only God can do. A full reading of Thomas certainly shows that nature too is part of the world that God created and thus God “creates” through nature’s indirect/secondary causes as well as through direct/primary causation. The direct, primary causation can be inferred philosophically, but not by gaps in our understanding of indirect/secondary causation. That’s what Tkacz and other Thomists are saying. The scientific arguments of Thomas’ day (could humans arise by means other than normal procreation, and in normal procreation was it semen from the man, or something the woman contributed, or both) were not the issue to Thomas. He lists them only to say that regardless of how those questions about indirect/secondary causes might be answered eventually, “God alone, the Author of nature, can produce an effect into existence outside the ordinary course of nature.”
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Ruqx
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There is a basic problem with the complexity argument. “Complexity” is not an inherent attribute, which can be “measured”. For a child everything is complex, for God everything is simple.
So the argument is DOA.
So the argument is DOA.
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JapaneseKappa
Guest
The problem lies in the difference between the colloquial use of “pure chance” and the actual science of stochastic systems. In a truly and purely random assemblage of matter, then the structures we see would indeed be astronomically unlikely. But we’ve never had such a scenario, and people who appeal to such a scenario are essentially attacking a straw man.
The reality is that hydrogen atoms prefer to hang out next to each other, masses attract each other, and opposite charges attract. These kinds of laws of nature create a sort of “funnel” for randomness. I like to explain it by appealing to those penny vortexes you occasionally see in shopping malls. The paths the pennies take while spinning around or sliding down are incredibly complex, and may involve all sorts of weird collisions and outside interference. It might make some people call the paths they take “random.” And indeed, that’s not a terrible thing to do. But that might lead some people to ask: “Well, if the paths are random, why do so many pennies end up at the bottom? Shouldn’t some pennies circle forever, or fly out of the machine, or come to rest somewhere else?” The answer to the question is that the forces that produce randomness are generally weaker than the forces producing the order. There are very few random collisions that could fling a penny out of the vortex, because all the collisions inside the vortex produce forces that are weaker than the gravity pulling them down. Pennies couldn’t come to rest somewhere on the side because, while friction does produce some randomness, it is not strong enough to force a stopping location.
And so it is with the development of complexity. The forces that push organisms to evolve into more complex forms can be “stronger” than the randomness the organisms encounter along the way.
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tonyrey
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tonyrey
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You are presupposing that natural laws exist yet there is no obvious reason for the fact that “hydrogen atoms prefer to hang out next to each other”. Your argument is based on what happens in this universe but the null hypothesis is a total absence of order or regularity - unless you believe in physical necessity (which is based on an act of faith!).
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tonyrey
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The argument from complexity is not based on what happens in this universe but in any possible universe and there is no obvious reason for any laws or regularity to exist.
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inocente
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Perhaps you don’t understand how the null hypothesis is used.
Suppose a claim that a new drug cures cancer. The null hypothesis H[sub]0[/sub] is that it doesn’t work, the alternate hypothesis H[sub]a[/sub] that it has some beneficial effect. The one making the claim must then falsify H[sub]0[/sub] (ie. disprove by empirical evidence).
Or suppose H[sub]a[/sub] claims fairies exist. H[sub]0[/sub] is that they don’t The person making the claim must falsify H[sub]0[/sub].
Or suppose H[sub]a[/sub] claims nothing exists. H[sub]0[/sub] is that things do exist. The person making the claim must falsify H[sub]0[/sub].
H[sub]0[/sub] is always the default position, the position most easily defended, which a claim must overturn. In this case H[sub]0[/sub] is that order and regularity exist (since it’s obvious there are physical laws, patterns all around us, and we ourselves couldn’t exist otherwise).
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womanatwell
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Thank you for your quotes and it does help me understand what Thomists are thinking but it has seemed to me that Thomists insist there are *only *secondary causes for life and that we can’t stop looking for them no matter what we believe, while St. Thomas and the very Genesis story in the Bible talk about God “producing,” “making” and “creating” (animals, sea creatures, mankind).
usccb.org/bible/genesis/1 .
Why not give the biologists who see the design in nature some credit for ascribing some things to God’s direct creativity? Dr. Douglas Axe, whom I mentioned before, has a Ph.D. from Caltech and post-doctoral work at Cambridge in proteins. Dr. Behe has a Ph.D. from University of Pennsylvania. They work in cell biology and are not the only ones who are seeing that some cellular processes and structures are irreducibly complex. In fact, a growing group of scientists are expressing their opinions about the inadequacy of the neo-Darwinian theory (they are materialists but see the theory is falling apart). The link to the Third Way of Evolution is here:
thethirdwayofevolution.com/ .
They of course dismiss Creationism, but there are a lot of us who don’t. Also, a meeting at the Royal British Society this November is going to discuss the inadequacy of the neo-Darwinian theory as it stands now. The link for the meeting info is here:
royalsociety.org/science-events-and-lectures/2016/11/evolutionary-biology/ .
It is almost like Thomists can’t see their way into any explanation for God to be able to use His Creative powers after the Big Bang. Human beings can still research science–there is still plenty to learn–even if we believe there are some things we are not able to explain in a natural way.
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cfauster
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Great question. Aquinas and his Thomist interpreters are not deists. Like you and I, they certainly think God continues to act, even if unique things were also done by God “at the beginning.”
And, Thomistic thought certainly embraces design. I guess for me the question comes down to how we as humans can know about causes, design, etc. For example, what’s the difference between Theistic Evolution (TE) and Intelligent Design (ID)?
Many TE adherents share with most ID adherents the conviction that there’s design in nature and that God is the designer. They may even share the same views on when the design is accomplished by God, which varies within (not really between) both TE and ID.
Of course, whenever the discussion turns to time, our perspective as creatures might be very different from God’s perspective “beyond time.”
That caveat notwithstanding, among both TE and ID adherents there are people who imagine (again, from our limited human perspective) that God continually directs the course of natural processes (such as evolution) long after the beginning of the universe, and there are other people who imagine that God set things up at the beginning to guarantee certain outcomes so that no later “steering” would be needed, and God’s later actions are limited to rare miracles, for example.
Regardless of whether God designs by front-loading or ongoing direction, among people equally accepting of divine design, the only real difference between TE and ID is whether or not the divine design is detectable using the scientific method.
Design-accepting TE adherents argue that belief in (potentially divine) design - while rational and consistent with science - requires theological reasoning that goes beyond what science itself can do if the designer is unidentified and potentially divine. They argue that the scientific method can (and often does) detect design, but its method of detection requires that the designer be constrained (subject to) the limitations that science calls “natural laws” so that positive evidence for the design is available via science. Negative “evidence” - merely the current absence of a natural (non-design) explanation - is not by itself sufficient to detect design because it can’t be tested.
ID adherents argue the opposite: that design - while compatible and even congruent with religious belief - is a scientific conclusion reachable without reference to any theology, even if the unidentified designer might be God. The current absence of a natural (non-design) explanation is given great weight by ID adherents, and by itself is considered sufficient to detect design.
Each approach, TE and ID, is diverse and among their respective adherents one finds a variety of views about the Bible, divine action, etc. The only essential distinction between TE and ID boils down to what can be known from science. What can be known from other sources (Bible, philosophical reasoning, revelation, etc.) does not really distinguish TE and ID from one another.
So, when Thomists resist being identified with ID, they are not being deists, and they are not resisting design, theism, etc.
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JapaneseKappa
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Why? This is a point that frequently gets bandied around, but I’ve never heard a good justification.
The assumption you’re making is that in the absence of some “overriding cause” or “sufficient reason” the universe would be a certain way (e.g. nothing would exist, there would be chaos, etc.) But we have no good reason for thinking that way. What makes the “nothing exists” or “chaos reigns” scenario the default? After all, we could suppose either scenario, then ask the counter-question: “why should there be nothing instead of something?” "why should there be chaos instead of order?
What you’re doing is declaring the “null world” to be the default or natural state of the universe, when we have no reason to believe that it is. You say there is no obvious reason for the laws, but likewise there is no obvious reason why there shouldn’t be laws. From the point of view of the complexity argument, the null world should be one that is governed by the same laws as ours, but devoid of complex life.
What you appear to be doing is attempting to transform the argument from complexity into an argument from the existence of laws.
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fisherman_carl
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I think the argument from design makes sense. Even if you could setup the right conditions for life to evolve naturally, those right conditions would still need to be setup. It would be a philosophical assumption to assume those right conditions would spontaneously exist without the help of a designer. The complexity of the world is consistent with a designer. Of that there can be no dispute, regardless of whether it proves it or not. This, making theism at least a rational position.
Consider the lotto 649 machine. The balls spin around and out pops the numbers. This is an attempt at a random number. The machine makes use of natural laws to do so. Each time the machine is run a different number is presented. Now compare that to the universe, which also uses natural laws. Now some atheists would say the output of the universe is not random. However, this would imply that if you restarted the universe that unlike the random number generator which also uses natural laws you would get the same result everytime. However, like the random number generator it may be far less likely to get the same result everytime. If this is so then we could consider this particular result to be randomly generated.
Now, when you consider the possibility of this particular result it is quite low. Low enough that many atheists have considered a random generator called the multiverse. The existence of a multiverse theory should tell us that they themselves do not think our particular result is too probable.
Consider the lotto 649 machine. The balls spin around and out pops the numbers. This is an attempt at a random number. The machine makes use of natural laws to do so. Each time the machine is run a different number is presented. Now compare that to the universe, which also uses natural laws. Now some atheists would say the output of the universe is not random. However, this would imply that if you restarted the universe that unlike the random number generator which also uses natural laws you would get the same result everytime. However, like the random number generator it may be far less likely to get the same result everytime. If this is so then we could consider this particular result to be randomly generated.
Now, when you consider the possibility of this particular result it is quite low. Low enough that many atheists have considered a random generator called the multiverse. The existence of a multiverse theory should tell us that they themselves do not think our particular result is too probable.
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Charlemagne_III
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It is a very compelling argument. For many scientists teleology has resurged in modern times just when atheists thought it was completely annihilated. The Catholics who are still against teleology are simply the tools of the secular establishment, they have been so absolutely conditioned to parrot the atheist line.
Isaac Newton Laws of Thermodynamics, Optics, etc.
“This most beautiful system [the solar system] could only proceed from the dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being.” Isaac Newton
Charles Darwin Theory of Evolution
“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.” Origin of the Species, 1872 (last edition before Darwin’s death).
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womanatwell
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I am re-reading Tkacz and will read your Carroll reference, but I just wanted to comment that I agree there are different views among the TE and ID adherents, but the most prominent of TE’s is the Biologos group started and previously headed by Francis Collins. IMO as far as they are concerned, evolution may as well have been totally independent of God. They say something like, “Evolution may LOOK random to us, but not random to God.” The logical fallacy there is that the protein machines such as I pictured on the first page of this thread DO NOT LOOK random. They are very precisely made up of atoms in exact configurations to do exact jobs.
I heard an interesting interview of Stephen Meyer, one of the leading ID advocates, on a Cross Examined radio program. He is writing a book about Theistic Evolution in which he intends to pin them down because he believes they are deficient either in their theology or their science: their theology in that they don’t need God, or their science in that what they claim about materialistic evolution being an established fact must be wrong in some way. He is trying to put the TE’s in a corner and make them spell out their stand.
I don’t consider myself a theistic evolutionist or an ID advocate in the sense that either of them present themselves. I guess I am simply a Creationist (I’m open-minded about the age of the Earth). I have written a small booklet called “Creation Biology” and I feel that if a person sees and learns some of cell biology, s/he will or at least *should *appreciate the creativity that went into it. The link to it is here:
womanatwell.blogspot.com/p/creation-biology.html .
To be truthful, I don’t know where that puts me with the Thomists. God’s abilities and thoughts are way above ours and I think there will be some things about nature we won’t ever understand. If that means GAPS, so be it. In fact, I’ve written my own theory of GAPS that is not too long (it’s a bit tongue-in-cheek), and if you would like to read it, the link is here:
womanatwell.blogspot.com/2013/11/gaps.html .
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tonyrey
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Lion_IRC
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I don’t think EITHER theory - gravity or evolution - ‘sets out’ to do something and nothing whatsoever beyond that.Lion IRC;14063916:
I think the reason evolution “doesn’t say” is because it doesn’t know.
The lack of a tested/testable abiogenesis theory is a huge knowledge gap.
And what we are left with is the two-pronged idea of random mutation and natural selection.
But I’m always skeptical when science invokes terms like random, spontaneous, singularity
…I think Cheiron’s point may have been that’s not what the theory sets out to do, just as it’s not something the theory of gravity sets out to do.
To the extent that knowledge gaps exist within a theory, those gaps don’t constitute some artificial ‘boundary line’ where enquiry immediately ceases because…oh well, you know…that’s of no relevance to evolutionary biology.. This would really smack of intellectual laziness.
And to say that evolution is not concerned with how life originated would be the scientific equivalent of starting a book titled “Evolution” with the words “Once upon a time…”
ETA - Not discussing evolution here. This is about the philosophy of science more generally.
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JapaneseKappa
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