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Gaber
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Love it! Thanks!
Unfortunately, by your accuracy, I bet you have even more deeply entrenched the OP in his Kringleism!
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Unfortunately, by your accuracy, I bet you have even more deeply entrenched the OP in his Kringleism!
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tonyrey
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You are obviously unaware that I pointed out the distinction between Design and ID a long time ago when I was explaining the limitations of both arguments. It pays to read through threads…
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tonyrey
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NB You are encouraging a person who has substituted a disrespectful word for God and breached the forum rules.Love it! Thanks!
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Gaber
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Uh… You keep saying that design is not about the designer, or words to that effect, something I could never understand as a bifurcation. So how is the Kringleization of your tract disrespectful to…to…what?
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buffalo
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tonyrey
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That is for the moderators to decide. It is irrelevant to the topic.
No one else has failed to understand my statements.
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Sample
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Attention forum (in particular tonyrey),
A recent post of mine on this thread was deemed “uncharitable” by the Mods. I am sorry for violating the Forum Rules and if anyone was offended by my reply, I extend a sincere apology to you.
A recent post of mine on this thread was deemed “uncharitable” by the Mods. I am sorry for violating the Forum Rules and if anyone was offended by my reply, I extend a sincere apology to you.
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reggieM
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Right. From the specified functional complexity we infer a cause that transcends what natural laws can produce.
A Necessary Being is not a “designer god”, but is rather a single entity that possesses certain characteristics.
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reggieM
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A single human intelligence has fewer parts, and is therefore less complex, than many of the products it can create.
So it doesn’t follow that an object that is composed of a highly complex arrangement of parts must have been created by an entity that is more complex.
Intelligence is not reducible to matter and mechanism – it’s a spiritual entity. In that sense, it is simpler than things made of material elements.
So it doesn’t follow that an object that is composed of a highly complex arrangement of parts must have been created by an entity that is more complex.
Intelligence is not reducible to matter and mechanism – it’s a spiritual entity. In that sense, it is simpler than things made of material elements.
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tonyrey
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As I have remarked more than once Design by itself is not evidence for the existence of God and has to be taken in conjunction with reasons such as the Necessary Being, the Prime Mover and the Source of Morality. Christianity is based on Revelation but since the foundation of the Church philosophy has been used by apologists like St Irenaeus as a rational foundation for faith in the face of scepticism. Jesus Himself pointed to the beauty of the lilies as evidence of the Father’s power, wisdom and love.
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reggieM
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If we took, for example, the collected poetry of John Keats and then, with an equivalent collection of Scrabble letters in a box and you shook up the box, dumped the letters on the floor would it be possible for the letters to fall in a single line that read, precisely, the entire collection of poetry?
I guess we could say that it’s theoretically possible. But the idea that it could happen is not plausible. Poetry gives evidence of Design by intelligence. I don’t even think you could have language at all without a Designer.
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reggieM
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True. As you said before – the Design argument itself has sub-categories. ID is one of those. Where we see that kind of Design, we can reasonably infer an intelligence. From that, we need other arguments to determine the nature of the Designer and then from that, other arguments to show that the Designer is God (and from that, arguments on the nature of God, then Revelation, etc).
As I have remarked more than once Design by itself is not evidence for the existence of God and has to be taken in conjunction with reasons such as the Necessary Being, the Prime Mover and the Source of Morality.
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reggieM
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I don’t want to leave this unanswered …
Anyone who holds the second premise (and probably some do) is a victim of materialism. The immense richness, beauty, meaning and purpose of life is obscured by that worldview. I consider that as one of the evil effects of scientism.
Life is immensely complex. That is very easy to prove. Nobody could claim the opposite for the very simple reason that life is so complex we cannot even catalog it, much, much less explain how it works and far beyond that, how it originated.
Anyone who holds the second premise (and probably some do) is a victim of materialism. The immense richness, beauty, meaning and purpose of life is obscured by that worldview. I consider that as one of the evil effects of scientism.
As above, this is an empty claim – since we cannot even describe what life on earth is. But let’s pretend that this claim has some merit. We then have the conclusion …
Clearly, if the immense complexity and richness of life was created by natural laws, then it would clearly require an even more immense intelligence and wisdom to create laws like that.
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tonyrey
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In the context of life there is a superb book which subverts Darwin:
evolutionnews.org/2012/05/subverting_darw060181.html
There is a touching video of a two-legged dog which has learnt to walk upright with remarkable adaptive changes to his spine and muscles demonstrating the developmental plasticity of the body - not to be found in any machine
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tonyrey
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The beauty of this evidence is that it is not about what happened in the past but what happens. It satisfies all the criteria of a scientific explanation - being observable, verifiable and has predictive power- and yet at the same time it is teleological.
Every living organism has this plasticity of development but it is not usually so obvious because it doesn’t have to adapt itself so radically when it isn’t deformed. Its ability to achieve this feat exposes the absurdity of the “machine controlled by its genetic makeup and its physical environment” theory. The primary source of adaptation is the body’s problem-solving ability which enables it to overcome difficulties even without knowing what it is doing. It is not only an engineer but an inventor responding to a variety of challenges.
Nor is survival the sole goal of a living organism. It seeks to make the most of its potential by fulfilling **all **its functions. Unlike programmed instincts - which often lead to disaster - the ability to compensate for defects is flexible. Living consists in far more than avoiding danger, seeking food and reproduction. The body ensures that it achieves every goal for which it is designed - within reasonable limitations. A two-legged dog obviously cannot be as effective as a normal dog but it can succeed in overcoming its disability sufficiently to live a fulfilling life. It proves that not only charity but development begins at home - within each living individual!
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Carrie1
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more than wordshttp://www.cleaningcassette.com
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reggieM
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True - that was a very interesting article. When the body compensates for variations due to changes in conditions, then the organism is working to preserve itself and not to change into some other kind of organism. Plus, all of this happens without mutations over centuries of time – but immediately.
It’s very similar to repair-mechanisms in the cell, which work to repair the damage caused by mutations. The organism compensates and protects itself. That’s a goal-directed process that goes beyond “survival of the species”.
The Darwinian view holds that all living beings are merely the assembly of molecular parts which accidentally created functional machines. But if that was true, the body wouldn’t contain these repair mechanisms or compensation methods. Challenges could only be answered if there was a lucky mutation that caused an organism to adapt.
That is really interesting – and obviously true when you look at the variety of creatures in nature and the many strange ways they do things. If simple survival was the only goal (and even that would not be explained – why would a collection of chemicals want to survive?) – then there would be no need for anything except the first bacteria. Bacteria still exists today, virtually unchanged.
That dog teaches us something about life itself. Why would it be unreasonable to conclude that it was created for that purpose?
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reggieM
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Thanks for pointing this out – it looks very interesting!
The Pope does not endorse many books – so it’s significant for that fact alone.
His endorsement does not mean that the Church agrees with every point the book raises, but that the Church permits the faithful to take a strong position against Darwinian evolution.
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tonyrey
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You’re the wrong person to ask!
The devil’s advocate could say it teaches us nothing because there is nothing to be taught. In other words life is absurd and we only imagine it has any value, meaning or purpose…
To which the obvious retort is:
If that is the case the statement that nothing has any value, meaning or purpose that very statement is valueless, meaningless and purposeless - and therefore not worth considering! All unbelief presupposes some kind of belief. So I ask:
What is the basis of the unbeliever’s belief(s)? :juggle:
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Jason_Firestone
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You’re gonna have to do better than that. The origins of morality do not rest in religion. Anthropology has proven that. The psychological need for meaning, (whatever that is), does not imply the existence of YOUR meaning. Because you feel the need for meaning doesn’t mean you get to make up one.
And speaking of Aquinas, if there is no time, (as there is at a Singularity), then First Cause has been rendered mute.
We are either left in the “Cloud of the Unknowing”, (unknown Medieval mystic), or we are nowhere. It’s no longer about science and logic, (or it’s NOT about faith).
All this “intelligent” design is nonsense, (as Father Coyne, from the Vatican has told us).
news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051118/ap_on_re_eu/vatican_evolution
The “irreducible complexitry” has been debunked, in countless places.
You do faith no service, sir.
And speaking of Aquinas, if there is no time, (as there is at a Singularity), then First Cause has been rendered mute.
We are either left in the “Cloud of the Unknowing”, (unknown Medieval mystic), or we are nowhere. It’s no longer about science and logic, (or it’s NOT about faith).
All this “intelligent” design is nonsense, (as Father Coyne, from the Vatican has told us).
news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051118/ap_on_re_eu/vatican_evolution
The “irreducible complexitry” has been debunked, in countless places.
You do faith no service, sir.
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