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drpmjhess
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So if it does happen, as it might, should a priest baptize a child created artificially through genetic science? Or should we deny baptism on the grounds that it didn’t have a mother and father?
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drpmjhess
Guest
Leeta, creation ex nihilo is standard Catholic teaching. But creation and evolution are not opposing ideas, any more than the redness and sphericity of a ball are opposing ideas. Just as a ball can be both red and spherical, the universe can be both created and evolving. To assume that creation and evolution are contradictory is to commit a category mistake.
Petrus
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Deacon_Ed_B
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In reply to post 337. The usual answer I give to questions of this nature, is that I will not debate hypotheticals. I will wait until I am presented with an actual circumstance before making a judgment, as I would l have most of the facts at that time. With hypotheticals, there are too many variables.
Deacon Ed B
Deacon Ed B
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ricmat
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IMHO - Couldn’t we conditionally baptize these children, on the assumption that they are human and have human souls?
If it looks human, and desires baptism, why would we not baptize?
If it turns out there is actually no soul, then the baptism has no effect, but nothing is lost in any case.
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Stephen_LB
Guest
This actually is no problem because the Church will rule on that if the time ever comes. The real problem will be theological dissidents who decide that the teaching is wrong and ask other catholics to ignore it, just as they did with Humanae Vitae…
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Stephen_LB
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I don’t think ricmat ever brought up the subject of animal gender. As I read it, he was simply referring to the fact that God created humans male and female.
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edwest2
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You seem to describe Catholics as if they were voters. The Pope, in consultation with Catholic bioethicists, would instruct the faithful on this matter. So far, (Ventner, et al), no one has succeeded in creating artificial life. Their approach has been to use already living things like bacteria and similar.
And if this life could be made, why do you think the Church wouldn’t respond?
God bless,
Ed
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drpmjhess
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Yes – conditional baptism would be the way.
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Stephen_LB
Guest
ricmat, I visited your website. May I congratulate you for putting together such consise, on target, commentaries. By the way, Peterson’s article on intelligent design is indeed excellent. It has been a while since I read it, so it was good to become re-acquianted with it. I wish more on this thread would read his summary of intrelligent design.
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ricmat
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Thanks!
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drpmjhess
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Except that there is no science in “Intelligent Design.”
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ricmat
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Someone privately informed me that rather than call it “Intelligent Design” it would be better to call it “Theistic Evolution”, and then everybody would be happy.
OK - so from now on all you ID folks, just refer to yourselves as theistic evolutionists
The article that was referred to in the post you responded to is here:
intelligentdesignnetwork.org/NCBQ3_3HarrisCalvert.pdf
It was originally published in the National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly. Perhaps you won’t like the science in it, but based on your other posts, it might be interesting to you from the perspective of Bioethics.
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drpmjhess
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Ricmat, I am a theistic evolutionist, a position consistent with Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and other monotheistic religions. “Theistic evolution” is not science – and neither is “Intelligent Design” – but the two must not be confused. “Intelligent Design” pretends to be science, which it is not (Michael Behe’s own biology department rejects his so-called “irreducible complexity” thesis as a “science stopper.” ID does not belong in schools because it teaches children to give up in the face of trying to explain challenging things such as bacterial flagella.
Theistic evolution, on the other hand, is explicitly not science. Rather, it is a theological worldview proclaiming the world to be God’s creation, and science to be the legitimate method for inquiry into it. As a Catholic it goes without saying that I believe the world to have been created, and therefore to be the product of design. However, the world is far more ambiguous than ID proponents allow – there are complex and horrific diseases such as ALS and Fibrodisplayia ossificans progressiva which could also be said to haev been designed.
Let science be science, and theology be theology!
Petrus
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ricmat
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That’s exactly my definition of ID. You’re a fairly recent poster to join the forums, but in the past I’ve made some impassioned posts with regard to science being an avenue into a greater appreciation of God’s glory through a better understanding of his universe.
It might help you understand other views of ID if you read the article I referred to in my last post. One excerpt:
Of course, there is more in the article.
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drpmjhess
Guest
I have read the article, and ID proponents argue for much more than you expect under your definition. Science ceases to be science if it proceeds according to the principle that there are black boxes into which science dare not pry, or that there are physical structures and biochemical processes so irreducibly complex that they must be left to the theologian to sort out. It is not about his Catholic belief that Behe’s Lehigh colleagues post their disclaimer on the biology department web page, but about his departure from the scientific method.
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ricmat
Guest
I don’t see this as giving up on science to explain e.g. irreducible complexity. I see this only as looking at the probabilities that something happened without intelligent intervention. ID accepts that it is theoretically possible for e.g. A to evolve into B, but that it is so highly unlikely that it can’t have happened in the needed timeframe.
The anti-ID people look to me to be using the same kind of arguments that we all sometimes see against the existence of God. A typical atheist argument goes “You say that God is this old man with a white beard, sitting on a cloud, and hurling lightning bolts all over to prove how mighty he is. I don’t believe in that God.” And of course, we respond “Well, we don’t believe in that God either…”
The anti-ID people typically trot out the Dover creationists, and the so called wedge document, and say that this is ID. Well, our response is “We don’t believe in that ID either…”
In any case, I hope you enjoyed the article
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edwest2
Guest
The ID with which most people are familiar is a political game. Dover, the so-called wedge document. These are the sorts of props used by political groups. Notice that the anti-ID people tell us there is a terrible thing out there called ID. It is like a big dog with sharp teeth but upon further examination, it is no such thing.
Pope John Paul II did say there was design in nature. And to deny that fact is to abrogate human reason. Too bad that the common form of ID has been so viciously attacked both here and elsewhere. However, there is real design in nature and I believe at least some of those decrying any form of design as science are afraid of it. Why? Because it all leads back to the “intelligent project” that Pope Benedict spoke about. In other words, the truth.
God bless,
Ed
Pope John Paul II did say there was design in nature. And to deny that fact is to abrogate human reason. Too bad that the common form of ID has been so viciously attacked both here and elsewhere. However, there is real design in nature and I believe at least some of those decrying any form of design as science are afraid of it. Why? Because it all leads back to the “intelligent project” that Pope Benedict spoke about. In other words, the truth.
God bless,
Ed
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drpmjhess
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Yes – it was an interesting read. As a Catholic theologian, I naturally presuppose the intelligibility of the cosmosu, and that however obscure it might be to us now, we have faith that the universe ultimately is intelligently designed.The anti-ID people typically trot out the Dover creationists, and the so called wedge document, and say that this is ID. Well, our response is “We don’t believe in that ID either…”
In any case, I hope you enjoyed the article
The problem is that since ID is not science, it does not belong in science class, any more than astrology (however compelling) does not belong in an astronomy course. Scientists may detect patterns in nature, and their faith in God may be reinforced thereby, but that is not germane to their doing of science.
Petrus
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ricmat
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I understand your position.
If evolution were taught in the schools as an incomplete theory (not a fact) I think a lot of the emotion on this issue would go away. People see evolution being used as a tool to advance the atheist agenda, and rightly (in my mind) want to slow down or stop that agenda. ID came along and that looked like a counter-tool. As a result, we now need to call ourselves Theistic Evolutionists
This subject has been debated to death on this thread and others, so I’m just posting this thought as an observation, not to reopen the whole “science is not inherently atheistic” argument again.
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Stephen_LB
Guest
You conveniently ignored my earlier posts.
If the concepts were not comprehensible in scientific terms, ID critics would not be able to use the vocabulary to argue against it. Dembski’s probability bound, for example, sets virtual certainty at a complexity level of 500 bits of information. That is the equivalent of l chance in 10^150 that the complexity resulted by chance. That number is something like the probability that all the characters in this paragraph occurred in the exact order as lucky combination of events. To analyze the probability of an event by using data and expressing it in terms of mathematical certainty is a good example of science in action. As a scientific inference to the best explanation, you can conclude that the paragraph I alluded to was “designed.”
Behe’s conceptions are scientifically formlated as well. Ken Miller, for example, has attempted in vain to refute Behe’s thesis. I have also read papers from evolutionary biologists who made heroic attempts to find an evolutionary pathway to complexity, which is the scientific alternative to Behe’s scientific proposition.
And your objection to these points is what?
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