The Science Delusion. 10 dogmas of modern science

[Skeptic92]

It remains a fact that those who reject Design are deists rather than theists.

How could a loving Father possibly follow a policy of non-intervention?

Why did Jesus ask us to pray for our daily bread?

John 14:13

So your opinion is that Thomas Aquinas was a deist, and held to heretical doctrine? As Intelligent Design only makes sense within the highly flawed Cartesian metaphysics of the modern era, within the classical metaphysics of Thomas Aquinas & Aristotle Intelligent Design is completely incoherent.

Remember folks: there is a difference between Intelligent Design and the Argument from Design, the former is self-contradictory and relies upon flawed metaphysical assumptions that are being refuted and abandoned. The latter relies on God sustaining all that there is in an causal chain that will go on for eternity, not at flash points in history. Prayer is to align ourselves with the divine will, not to bend God to our passions- you seem to have a deficient understanding of prayer.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

I think this is what you are thinking of but the way the ID argument is framed makes it seem like God lets the universe “do its own thing” and periodically stops by to debug it.

Isn’t the Incarnation a stop-by visit to debug?

And aren’t miracles also stop-by visits to debug?

 

[balto]

Isn’t the Incarnation a stop-by visit to debug?

And aren’t miracles also stop-by visits to debug?

Not necessarily. Keep in mind that everything God created was good. Also keep in mind that God is timeless. So it’s not accurate to say that God created everything the way it was in the Garden of Eden and then was surprised that Adam and Eve made a mistake. That would assume that He’s part of the timeline. He’s been eternally viewing the timeline in its entirety. The incarnation and miracles have eternally been a part of that and He’s been eternally viewing and sustaining them.

This is not to say that our actions are necessarily pre-destined. God desires that we love, hence we need free will. He knows that our loving Him is in our best interests and gives us everything we need to be able to make the decision to love Him. But our loving in return needs to be free. The fact that some people refuse does not invalidate the claim that God created everything good because every single person ends up with what they love. Sure the people that didn’t choose God chose wrongly, but in their hardness of heart they don’t believe they did and never will because they chose to love something else more.

 

[Skeptic92]

Isn’t the Incarnation a stop-by visit to debug?

And aren’t miracles also stop-by visits to debug?

No, your question assumes there is ever a point that God is not involved in the causal chain of the universe. Which is logically absurd.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

Sure the people that didn’t choose God chose wrongly, but in their hardness of heart they don’t believe they did and never will because they chose to love something else more.

I don’t agree. The natural law is in all of us. So the hardness of heart is a lie to oneself.
In their heart of hearts they know they have lied to themselves, and that is why they spend so much time and labor justifying the lie. No one really knows there is no God. They just hope there is not one, so that they will not have an accounting due for their sins.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

No, your question assumes there is ever a point that God is not involved in the causal chain of the universe. Which is logically absurd.

Your remark is uncalled for because I have never made any such assumption.

God fine tuned the universe at the start when he said “Let there be light,” and if that wasn’t intervention, what is?

 

[balto]

I don’t agree. The natural law is in all of us. So the hardness of heart is a lie to oneself.
In their heart of hearts they know they have lied to themselves, and that is why they spend so much time and labor justifying the lie. No one really knows there is no God. They just hope there is not one, so that they will not have an accounting due for their sins.

Maybe I worded my response poorly. This is my view as well.

 

[Aloysium]

. . . Since we must assume the ultimate particle that can be realistically called a thing . . . has a nature, we must assume that this nature . . . functions in a definite and characteristic way, that is naturally. From God’s perspective, this would be according to the law of the being’s nature. And I don’t think God works from probabilities, I think, though I can’t prove it, that God is very definite about such things. . . Have you seen the movie the Star of Bethlehem? . . .

I would emphasize these points.

Regarding what we understand as probabilities for example:
one may think that the planet Jupiter is where it is because of random factors. I would assert that God knows where it is and that it is there for His reasons.

Quoted in the movie mentioned above:
Psalm 19

The heavens declare the glory of God;
the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
Day after day they pour forth speech;
night after night they reveal knowledge.
They have no speech, they use no words;
no sound is heard from them.
Yet their voice goes out into all the earth,
their words to the ends of the world.
In the heavens God has pitched a tent for the sun.
It is like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber,
like a champion rejoicing to run his course.
It rises at one end of the heavens
and makes its circuit to the other;
nothing is deprived of its warmth.
. . . . . .
May these words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart
be pleasing in your sight,
Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer.

 

[Ben_Quincy]

WARNING

Discuss the topic, not each other. Infractions will be issued.

 

[Skeptic92]

Your remark is uncalled for because I have never made any such assumption.

God fine tuned the universe at the start when he said “Let there be light,” and if that wasn’t intervention, what is?

The beginning of the causal chain: this is God giving light existence, an event that happens in eternity and isn’t a ‘one off’ as that is logically absurd. God is always the beginning of the causal Chain as the First Cause (The first way of the Quinquae Viae) or the ‘unconditioned reality’ as termed in Fr Spitzers book. Intelligent Design inherently assumes the Cartesian Metaphysics of a mechanistic nature to matter: which means God isn’t ‘involved’ in the Chain at all times but the chain is entire efficient in its own right. The problem lies in the metaphysical assumptions being flawed, they have caused problems in all realms of Philosophy and by many schools are being abandoned. The Philosophers of the school of Aquinas have always rejected these metaphysical assumptions in favour of the Classical metaphysics of Aristotle- which intelligent design is incoherent within this framework.

This is the reason the orthodox Catholic Philosophers haven’t got involved in the ID vs Evolution debate; they believe the Evolutionary scientists have got it right to a point, they just have a deficient metaphysical understanding (and viewpoint) in how they understand it. Both the ID and modern science take Cartesian metaphysical assumptions, in their view of matter. In Science this has shown to be problematic with the advent of Quantum Physics, one current debate that is going on is a return to the classical Aristotelian notion of causality in Philosophy of Science.

In short: ID is false as it is based upon a flawed Metaphysics, Philosophy of Nature, and a deficient Ontology.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

The beginning of the causal chain: this is God giving light existence, an event that happens in eternity and isn’t a ‘one off’ as that is logically absurd. God is always the beginning of the causal Chain as the First Cause (The first way of the Quinquae Viae) or the ‘unconditioned reality’ as termed in Fr Spitzers book. Intelligent Design inherently assumes the Cartesian Metaphysics of a mechanistic nature to matter: which means God isn’t ‘involved’ in the Chain at all times but the chain is entire efficient in its own right.

It seems to me that nothing you have said in the previous post is true. Show, for example, where Michael Behe is a champion of Cartesian metaphysics. You haven’t.

What is a “one off” please? And why is “giving light existence” an event that happens in eternity since it clearly happened on the first day?

Carl Sagan in Cosmos, 1980 A.D.

“Ten or twenty billion years ago, something happened – the Big Bang, the event that began our universe…. In that titanic cosmic explosion, the universe began an expansion which has never ceased…. As space stretched, the matter and energy in the universe expanded with it and rapidly cooled. The radiation of the cosmic fireball, which, then as now, filled the universe, moved through the spectrum – from gamma rays to X-rays to ultraviolet light; through the rainbow colors of the visible spectrum; into the infrared and radio regions. The remnants of that fireball, the cosmic background radiation, emanating from all parts of the sky can be detected by radio telescopes today. In the early universe, space was brilliantly illuminated.”

Genesis, 1200 B.C. : “In the beginning God said: ‘Let there be light.’”

As astronomer Robert Jastrow pointed out in God and the Astronomers.

“For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.”

By the way, why isn’t it philosophically consistent to assert that evolution and ID can co-exist in the grand scheme of things? Why does one have to “logical” and the other “absurd”?

 

[buffalo]

** The Magician’s Twin - CS Lewis **

A powerful must see video:

[

**The Magician’s Twin: C.S. Lewis and the Case against Scientism **](http://idvolution.blogspot.com/2013/02/the-magicians-twin-cs-lewis.html)
The Similarity Between Science and Magic

1. Science as religion
2. Science as credulity
3. Science as power

 

[Skeptic92]

It seems to me that nothing you have said in the previous post is true. Show, for example, where Michael Behe is a champion of Cartesian metaphysics. You haven’t.

What is a “one off” please? And why is “giving light existence” an event that happens in eternity since it clearly happened on the first day?

In the mechanistic view of matter that Intelligent Design proponents take: this is Cartesian Metaphysical assumptions.

I’ll state them for you so you can see them:

There exists the res cogitans (the thinking thing), an immaterial substance that we also call ‘Mind’ or Soul
There exists the res extens (the extended thing, or extended matter), the mechanistic matter or natural world that we see in our universe. This of course doesn’t come without qualification due to modern physics, but this however is the core assumption in the view of nature taken by modern science.

To argue through modern science, within these assumptions is inherently flawed and doesn’t match up with a mature ontology or match up with scripture.

Now onto your quote from Genesis: if you have a closer reading of the text you will see that the ‘time’ implied in the ‘day’ is not analogous to our notion or conception of time. The sun and moon do not come into existence till later, and before God saying ‘let there be light’ there is nothing. Now nothing is an odd thing, it is not like or unlike anything, it is not bigger than or smaller than anything, it is nothing. Nothing simply doesn’t exist: that is the meaning of it, to be nothing is to not exist. When God says ‘let there be light’ light doesn’t go on its merry way and God is no longer involved; God sustains the existence of light for potentially infinite time from our perspective (of course, the End of Times or Eschatology is core in Christian Theology, but lets keep to theology for now) and is always involved in the causal chain of light existing.

Didn’t you notice I’m attacking Cartesian Metaphysics? I’m happy to say that both sides have a flawed metaphysical framework that allows for absurdity, the scientific one just doesn’t happen to show its deficiency in the theory of evolution: it works. I’m not alone in this, as it is the reason that Thomistic Philosophers have kept away from the debate. The issue is a much more fundamental one, and is an issue ID and modern scientists have in common; that is their metaphysics is flawed.

 

[Skeptic92]

Carl Sagan in Cosmos, 1980 A.D.

“Ten or twenty billion years ago, something happened – the Big Bang, the event that began our universe…. In that titanic cosmic explosion, the universe began an expansion which has never ceased…. As space stretched, the matter and energy in the universe expanded with it and rapidly cooled. The radiation of the cosmic fireball, which, then as now, filled the universe, moved through the spectrum – from gamma rays to X-rays to ultraviolet light; through the rainbow colors of the visible spectrum; into the infrared and radio regions. The remnants of that fireball, the cosmic background radiation, emanating from all parts of the sky can be detected by radio telescopes today. In the early universe, space was brilliantly illuminated.”

Genesis, 1200 B.C. : “In the beginning God said: ‘Let there be light.’”

As astronomer Robert Jastrow pointed out in God and the Astronomers.

“For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.”

By the way, why isn’t it philosophically consistent to assert that evolution and ID can co-exist in the grand scheme of things? Why does one have to “logical” and the other “absurd”?

Well neither of those quotes support your assertion, one Sagan was not an IDer and two: Natural Theologians have trouble getting on board with the ID argument- it seems to be inherently flawed on many levels, not just in its conception of causality and the nature of God. I’ve actually got a small paper you could read from Gonzaga university that goes through this briefly: guweb2.gonzaga.edu/faculty/calhoun/socratic/tkacz_aquinasvsid.html .

 

[Aloysium]

Where are you getting the 40% number? I think it’s generally around 1 out of 3 people.

I was specifically using the example of antidepressants in that post, since the causes of depression are multifactorial.
I believe 40% is the generally accepted number in that field.
I tried Googling it and there are articles mentioning 38% and 39%, and alternatively that 75% of an antidepressant’s affect can be explained by placebo. (This would not be true in the individual who responds or doesn’t, but in the overall group.)
At any rate, for conditions having less of a psychological and a greater physiological component, it could very well be around 1/3.