Vatican astronomer likens creationism to superstition

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Is that arrangement intelligently designed?

As in, “Why does God let bad things happen?”

???
God lets bad things happen, so he can draw out good from that happening. If you do not believe this, you deny the merits of the crucifixion. The Crucifixion of Jesus was the greatest evil ever perpetrated by man. Yet the greatest good for mankind was the result, i.e., our redemption.
Deacon Ed B
 
No, Miller does not believe this – that’s his whole point in showing that “irreducible complexity” is biological nonsense.

As for wasting my time reading ID literature, why would I do this? Careers are too short to spend precious moments analyzing the arcane ideas of cranks in a cultural backwater. Meanwhile, 100,000 biologists quietly go about their daily work, adding to the store of human knowledge about how the world works, and for most of them it’s as if the Discovery Institute didn’t even exist. It will fade away, just as Young Earth Creationism has faded over the years. When a new and educated generation grows up, they will wonder what all these antiquated school board fights over the teaching of evolution were all about.
The purpose for reading the literatue is to become acquainted with the subject matter. If you do, you will discover that you have been lied to. Meanwhile, your credibility will suffer for having read only half of the story. The bare minimum for ID critics is to understand what ID is.

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The doctrine of original sin has nothing to do with biology or the way the world works.
First things first. Do you believe in the doctrine of original sin? Do you accept the proposition that through ONE man sin entered into the world? The last time we discussed this matter, I pointed to two Church documents that refute the notion of multiple first parents. I haven’t heard from you on this matter since. So do you accept Church teaching on this matter or do you reject in in the name of provisional science?
 
The doctrine of original sin has nothing to do with biology or the way the world works.
I beg your pardon, but it has everything to do with it. The book of Wisdom tells us, “Death was not part of Gods plan for creation.” (For those of you who are Protestant, I am sorry you do not have this book.) It is because of original sin that we now have illness, disease, death and the like. So yes, it has everything to do with biology. This goes back to Catechism 101.
Deacon Ed B
 
No, Miller does not believe this – that’s his whole point in showing that “irreducible complexity” is biological nonsense.

As for wasting my time reading ID literature, why would I do this? Careers are too short to spend precious moments analyzing the arcane ideas of cranks in a cultural backwater. Meanwhile, 100,000 biologists quietly go about their daily work, adding to the store of human knowledge about how the world works, and for most of them it’s as if the Discovery Institute didn’t even exist. It will fade away, just as Young Earth Creationism has faded over the years. When a new and educated generation grows up, they will wonder what all these antiquated school board fights over the teaching of evolution were all about.
To clarify a bit further on Miller. He doesn’t believe that the individual parts have no function alone, but he falsely attributes that positon to Behe. At Dover he said this:

“Now what I did in this slide was to prepare a graphic to make this point as clear as possible to those of us in court today. And that is to emphasize that complex biochemical machines composed of multiple interacting parts, if they work, they can have a function that’s favored by natural selection. The essence of the biochemical argument from irreducible complexity, however, is that the individual parts of that machine have no function of their own. And because they have no function on their own, they cannot be produced by natural selection and, therefore, the impediment, the reason you can’t get to here from there, you can’t go from individual parts to the machine, is because the individual parts have no functions of their own.”

This is not true. Behe doesn’t believe that. He has never said that the parts cannot perform functions on their own. HIs point was that they are all necessary for the functioning of the bacterial flagellum. Don’t you care that Miller was either ignorant of the facts or was being purposefully dishonest? Do facts matter to you at all?
 
God lets bad things happen, so he can draw out good from that happening. If you do not believe this, you deny the merits of the crucifixion. The Crucifixion of Jesus was the greatest evil ever perpetrated by man. Yet the greatest good for mankind was the result, i.e., our redemption.
Deacon Ed B
Yes, God lets bad things happen, so he can create a greater good from it. And the crucifixion is the ultimate example of that. Absolutely. I’m not denying this, it’s something I teach to my confirmation and RCIA classes all the time.

I was puzzled by drpmjhess’s comment and was trying to suggest in a polite way that the answer to his question about the gamma ray bursts which destroy things is the same as the answer to the question, “Why does God let bad things happen?”

You’ll have to ask drpmjhess separately what his views are.
 
Theorizing about gamma ray bursts are a bit beyond my astrophysics ability, which is -0-. If however that is how God plans to end what he created. bring it on.
Deacon Ed B
 
drpmjhess, certainly has a head in the sand attitude. Creationism and intelligent design are not about to wither away. As Stephen LB pointed out, if you don’t know what a thing is you can’t discuss it intelligently. Creationism has moved in just the last couple of years from 42% to 51% of belief among American people. Probably because it is presented so intelligenly.
 
Theorizing about gamma ray bursts are a bit beyond my astrophysics ability, which is -0-. If however that is how God plans to end what he created. bring it on.
Deacon Ed B
It might be quite fun for us all to watch. At least for a short time, so it could be 😦 or 🙂 depending on ones views of life after death.

In any case, we won’t have much to say about it.
 
The purpose for reading the literatue is to become acquainted with the subject matter. If you do, you will discover that you have been lied to. Meanwhile, your credibility will suffer for having read only half of the story. The bare minimum for ID critics is to understand what ID is. .
I know the ID literature, as I work with combating Creationism (YE and ID) every day., and it’s a constant subject of discussion between my colleagues at lunch. I don’t have to read and analyze every article and book to know how to refute ID. Besides, we are in touch with many of the 100,000 or so biologists who work with evolution on a daily basis, so I get good expert exposure there.
 
It might be quite fun for us all to watch. At least for a short time, so it could be 😦 or 🙂 depending on ones views of life after eath.forums.catholic-questions.org/images/smilies/redface.gif
:oIn any case, we won’t have much to say about it.
Sorry, ricmat, but the event itself would be over practically before we know what’s happening – GRBs last between a few seconds and a minute. You would be most fortunate were you on the side of the planet directly exposed to the GRB, as death – while not comfortable – would be swift. Those less fortunate will live on the non-exposed side of the planet, where the radiation and atmospheric damage would be extensive, and the suffering would take a lot longer as the ecosystems collapse from exposure to the effects of cosmic rays.
 
Sorry, ricmat, but the event itself would be over practically before we know what’s happening – GRBs last between a few seconds and a minute. You would be most fortunate were you on the side of the planet directly exposed to the GRB, as death – while not comfortable – would be swift. Those less fortunate will live on the non-exposed side of the planet, where the radiation and atmospheric damage would be extensive, and the suffering would take a lot longer as the ecosystems collapse from exposure to the effects of cosmic rays.
Actually, I was thinking more in theological terms.

Such an event, if it occurred, would mean the end of all life on earth. All human life (everywhere). This most likely would be coincident with the 2nd coming of Christ, since there would be no more humanity after this event to worry about saving. If you are looking forward to that event then you are :). If you don’t believe in such things, then you are :(. That’s why I used the smilies in my post above. 🙂
 
I know the ID literature, as I work with combating Creationism (YE and ID) every day., and it’s a constant subject of discussion between my colleagues at lunch. I don’t have to read and analyze every article and book to know how to refute ID. Besides, we are in touch with many of the 100,000 or so biologists who work with evolution on a daily basis, so I get good expert exposure there.
A lot of them are practicing Catholics, I bet.
 
drpmjhess, certainly has a head in the sand attitude. Creationism and intelligent design are not about to wither away. As Stephen LB pointed out, if you don’t know what a thing is you can’t discuss it intelligently. Creationism has moved in just the last couple of years from 42% to 51% of belief among American people. Probably because it is presented so intelligenly.
The rise of YEC and IDC is a measure of the abysmal state of education in this country. It is virtually non-existent among educated people and seems to be an American phenomenon, although the infection is making inroads in Australia and Europe. It will be interesting to see whether Asian countries will be infected – I suspect Korea might be, with it’s strong complement of evangelical Presbyterianism.
 
I beg your pardon, but it has everything to do with it. The book of Wisdom tells us, “Death was not part of Gods plan for creation.” (For those of you who are Protestant, I am sorry you do not have this book.) It is because of original sin that we now have illness, disease, death and the like. So yes, it has everything to do with biology. This goes back to Catechism 101.
Deacon Ed B
Death has been part of creation since the first organisms began devouring one another billions of years ago, long before humans evolved. There are of course theological ways to connect that evolutionary death with “original sin,” as Catholic theologian John Haught does creatively in Deeper than Darwin.
 
I know the ID literature, as I work with combating Creationism (YE and ID) every day., and it’s a constant subject of discussion between my colleagues at lunch. I don’t have to read and analyze every article and book to know how to refute ID. Besides, we are in touch with many of the 100,000 or so biologists who work with evolution on a daily basis, so I get good expert exposure there.
Well, yes, as a matter of fact, it is necessary to do the reading. What good does it do anyone to interact with people who have no knowledge of the subject? I am in touch with some of those same biologists, many of whom receive their information from the same places that you do—anti-ID websites.

I have yet to meet even one of these “professionals” who can explain the difference between CS and ID, much less can they trace the history of each back through time. Not one can explain to me, even at the most fundamental level, what a design inference is or how it works. Predictably, they simply fall back on their boilerplate assertion that “ID is not science.” Ironically, they cannot define either ID or science, which means, of course, that they are hardly in a position to make claims about either.

Most of them are dutiful little worker bees who discuss the subject only among themselves, which means of course, that they learn nothing. Even when I present a simple example of a written paragraph as an example of multiple information bits “designed” according to a specified pattern, they cannot respond intelligently to the point. Either that or they withdraw from the dialogue realizing that once the mathematical models are introduced, all their uninformed objections about ID not being science are immediately refuted. That means that either [A] they are ignorant of the subject matter or ** they are intellectually dishonest.**
 
The rise of YEC and IDC is a measure of the abysmal state of education in this country. It is virtually non-existent among educated people and seems to be an American phenomenon, although the infection is making inroads in Australia and Europe. It will be interesting to see whether Asian countries will be infected – I suspect Korea might be, with it’s strong complement of evangelical Presbyterianism.
The subject of intelligent design is over two thousand years old. Anyone who does not know that contributes to the “abysmal state of education in this country.” For the first time in history, the badly educated are even more intellectually deprived than the uneducated, precisely because they think they know things that they don’t know. Such is the price of unrestrained hubris.
 
Death has been part of creation since the first organisms began devouring one another billions of years ago, long before humans evolved. There are of course theological ways to connect that evolutionary death with “original sin,” as Catholic theologian John Haught does creatively in Deeper than Darwin.
Immortality and freedom from illnesses, etc, was one of preternatural gifts lost with original sin. So I go back to my original statement. Death was not part of God’s plan in creation. Wisdom 1:12-13 says, "Court not death by your erring way of life, nor draw to yourselves destruction by the works sof your hands. Because God did not make death, nor does he rejoice in the destruction of the living."
Deacon Ed B
 
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