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Bradski
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It makes more sense if you say all religions.
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Bradski
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Then we agree. Let’s make the assumption that there is no agenda unless one specifically states as much.
Correct. As far as I was aware, everyone that had any influence on me in my youth were Christians. That would include family, friends and teachers. I literally have never had a conversation with anyone that led me to realise that I didn’t believe in the supernatural.
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tonyrey
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prodigalson2011
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No, not at all. I, being a Catholic, presuppose that. Not arbitrarily, mind you. My belief in God as the Catholic Church understands Him, is based in philosophical and historical considerations separate from science. My personal expression (i.e.choice of words) of a theist’s scientific freedom should be understood as just that: my personal expression of that freedom, which will naturally reflect my broader worldview. In no way do I intend to limit the scientific or religious liberty of theists of other persuasions to my own complete understanding. The theological, historical and empirical data can all be considered separately.
I think you misunderstood me. I didn’t mean “the evidence on either side” in the sense of God’s existence vs. nonexistence. I don’t think there can be any positive evidence for his non-existence; in fact, for one grounded in theistic philosophy, all explanation of material phenomena must eventually terminate in God, though individual phenomena may have more immediate sufficient causes (i.e., planetary orbits and gravity, etc.)
What I meant by “the evidence on either side” was whether a particular phenomena might be shown to have a sufficient cause within the natural order or, on the other hand, to exhibit behaviors or structure that contradict that order (Peter Plato’s example about proteins, for example).
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Peter_Plato
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At least Nagel is being completely honest in stating his agenda. He has also shown courage in defending the work of Dembski and Meyer in his recent book and in the press.
Using the analogy of the watchmaker we can explore the minds of scientists like Dawkins or Hawking.The upshot is that these people will reject any argument or fact that even hints that anything exists but matter and most of them will reject out of hand formal and final causality outright and if they acknowledge efficient causality it is a distorted concept.
Initially the enterprise of science was to explore the workings of the “watch” without reference to the watchmaker. The question, “How does the watch work?” (formal cause) is a fair enough question and may include what is it made of (material cause) and references to immediate efficient causes (this cause triggers this effect). The method of science, could very well be limited to the workings and material makeup of the watch. I have no qualms about scientists restricting themselves to looking at these as defined by their methodology.
The difficulty it seems to me is that people like Dawkins and Hawking have overstepped the limits of their own methodology by claiming that the formal, immediate efficient and material causes can now be used to dismiss the need for a sufficient efficient cause (who or what assembled the entirety) and the final cause (why was it made) as non sequiturs. For them, the watch internally explains itself and to ask “Why?” is spouting nonsense because a scientific understanding is all that is needed.
They are attempting to redefine the limits of science by denying the need to know anything that lies beyond the methodological parameters of science. The philosophical question (and a very important one) is: How can we be sure that the limits as defined by scientific method are indeed the limits of all knowledge? We certainly cannot prove that limitation by the scientific method without presuming the scientific method defines everything that can be known.
In the watchmaker example, once the function of the watch is fully understood in terms of formal and material causes, we could sit back and say, “Ah, yes. Now our work is done. We have fully explored all we need to know as defined by the limits of our enterprise. Nothing else is needed.” That would be ignoring the fact that the watch does not explain its own existence (why is it there to begin with) and knowing how it works does not answer why it is the way it is and not some other.
What Meyers and Dembski and others are doing is to point at aspects of the watch and claiming that these aspects of the watch cannot be explained merely by reference to other aspects.
The “scientific” response, typically, is to claim that we may not know how these aspects came about since they are not explained internally by other functions, but science will some day find the answers within the watch itself. No other solutions can be allowed because science assumes all answers are locatable in the watch itself.
The point that Meyer’s is making is that science itself can show methodologically that it cannot explain certain internal aspects of the watch. There are some things in the watch itself that cannot be explained with reference to other workings, therefore science has found and can prove that it must at this point defer to some other methodology.
Let’s say the watch is found to be an electronic version with a small computer chip in it that runs the works. The code on the chip points to some intelligence outside of the watch that bears no material connection to other aspects of the watch. The arrangement had to be inserted by an external cause because the internal functioning of the watch demonstrably could not have brought about the code. We are compelled to look outside the watch even though our methodology has imposed the limitation that we must restrict our field of view to the watch itself.
The incredibly complex order of the nucleotide bases in the DNA molecule that form the genetic code that determines the order and function of each part of the cell has no connection to chemical or biological causes. There is no known molecular reason or cause why the bases line up in the order they do. In this case, there is a breakdown in the overarching purview of science’s methodological claim that the watch explains everything about itself. It simply doesn’t where the cell is concerned without reference to an external origin for the code. There is a supernatural wrench in the works because the complexity of the code far exceeds the naturalistic means to produce it.
Certainly, you could, as a scientist, cry, “Foul!” because this is not a “scientific” answer. That completely misses the point. The point is precisely that science has uncovered something in the workings of nature that cannot be explained by strictly scientific methods. This answer that we cannot go there because it is not science, is rebutted precisely by the answer that science itself compels us to go there. That is why Meyer has raised such ire among methodologically minded scientists - fear of the unknown calling them to leave the comfort of their world view addiction. Big fish in a little pond syndrome.
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buffalo
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No, not all religions have the fullness of truth. Some do have common truths but have not elevated themselves to the same level as the Catholic Church. Some religions are diametrically opposed. They both cannot be true.
It is good to understand that religion actually means (from the root words) - to bind oneself to God.
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ReapReason
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Bradski does not know that the Catholic church is the fullness of truth, so what philosophical sense does it make to give that distinction.
Science frees all religion from false interpretations of physics; and it frees us from what is sometimes dangerous superstitions surrounding purely physical events. This is a good thing.
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Bradski
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Then you must concede from the outset that design, for example, could be initiated by any supernatural entity. You can’t start with the answer that you want and then look for questions that will lead you where you want to go.
So you are willing to listen to any argument for a supernatural interpretation? I’m not sure how we decide on which one it is likely to be as we’re now in the supernatural arena and natural means will not give us an answer.
Well said.
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Bradski
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You are looking at the problem just from your perspective as a Christian. If you tell a scientist that there is a supernatural cause for something in nature, you personally would mean God as that supernatural cause. The scientist would probably suggest to you that he now has, rather than a narrow range of possible natural explanations for the problem, an infinite number of explanations as there are an infinite number of possible supernatural causes.
If you were entirely honest in suggesting a supernatural cause you would accept this. You could quite validly say that ‘as far as you were concerned’ this entity was your God. But the scientist would get that comment from everyone. He would have to accept all comments at face value. As would you.
Dembski et al haven’t suddenly discovered, in the course of some general investigation into their specific area of interest, some anomaly about the world that seems to point to a supernatural cause. They haven’t all got together and said -‘Hey, look what I just found. I wonder where this will lead.’ They have specifically gone looking for anything that would point to a supernatural cause and that supernatural cause, they had already decided before they started looking, was God.
They are Creationists. They are members of the Design Institute which is, by its own admission, a Creationist organisation. They have all been found, in a court of law, to be pushing Creationist views. This is a bald fact.
To try to separate design from Intelligent Design from Creationism is literally impossible because all the proponents of design by supernatural means are all Creationists. This thread seems to try to talk around this at every post, but it’s the elephant in the room.
Overwhelming Evidence for Design is Overwhelming Evidence for Creation. I have found evidence of design…therefore God did it.
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prodigalson2011
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Did you read my last post? Yes, I am willing to admit such capabilities to lesser supernatural entities, I.e. demiurges, etc., but as I indicated previously, my views about the supernatural are informed by a separate philosophy which does not permit such interpretation and is independent of scientific design arguments. Arguments from the scientific data can only speak to the possibility of design. The nature of any designer depends upon theological argument. The two can be cohesively combined into a broader argument, however, which would not constitute circular reasoning.
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tonyrey
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Irrefutable! If scientists can be scientifically explained their explanations are worthless. 
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Peter_Plato
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rossum
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buffalo
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No - design has been around a very long time.
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tonyrey
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No response from the anti-Designers!
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Peter_Plato
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Oh, that elephant!
You see we had to prove the mere fact of its existence for the blind watchmaker before we could go on to describe its genus and species. Blind watchmakers are funny that way. Otherwise they would accuse us of presuming an elephant if we just pointed to it and said, “Here is an elephant.”
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Bradski
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The missing link…
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Bradski
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But the argument doesn’t go anywhere. You say that there’s evidence for a supernatural Intelligent Designer. I ask how you know there’s a such a thing and you say it’s because you’ve found the evidence. And then I ask what evidence and you say evidence for a supernatural Intelligent Designer…etc etc.
What we could do to sort this out is accept, for the purpose of further discussion, that there may well be evidence for a supernatural designer. We’ll accept, for the moment, everything that Dembski and his chums are saying.
What we’ll do then is ask everyone to send in their idea as to what this designer might be. We’ll take one representative for each suggestion and they’ll all go into a room to discuss it. How do you think that might go?
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prodigalson2011
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Doesn’t matter. The point is that science can, and has, given renewed vitality to theistic philosophy in an increasingly materialistic environment. The arguments within that realm, like those of history, politics, etc., are more complex than science and will naturally entail much more debate and abstract reasoning, and just because everyone won’t necessarily come to the same conclusion doesn’t mean the argument won’t go anywhere or isn’t worth having, for that matter. Plus, it’s simply wrong to say it won’t go anywhere. Conversions happen all the time. Case in point: me.
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Peter_Plato
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There are three very cogent arguments for theism that, when taken together and honestly assessed, form a very powerful case and even point directly at the classical conception of God.
Briefly:
- The Cosmological Argument that the universe does not explain itself and because the Big Bang clearly defines a beginning of matter, space, time and energy, points directly at a timeless, immaterial, all powerful, necessary and intentional explanation or Cause.
- The fine-tuning of the universal laws of physics at the instant after the Big Bang demonstrates that the controlling “force” behind the universe must have the virtually unlimited power and intelligence to fine tune more than 30 universal constants to allow the universe to bring about life.
- The level of intelligence and virtually unlimited power that could chemically order the DNA code in the first living cells with the “programming” necessary to allow for the capacity of DNA and protein molecules to generate the vast array of life on the planet Earth and possibly elsewhere in the universe.
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