Evidence for Design? - Page 70

Al Moritz · #**1036** Jan 31, '12, 1:50 pm

Quote:

Originally Posted by reggieM

I'm glad we do agree on many essentials.

Well, we certainly do agree on Cosmological Intelligent Design and on the metaphysics (metaphysical design) of human nature (rational soul!), as well as on the merits of Thomistic philosophy (even though our interpretations thereof differ).

God bless.

reggieM · #**1037** Jan 31, '12, 1:55 pm

Quote:

Originally Posted by Al Moritz

Now that is a truly excellent link! Thanks for posting this!

O.k., here's the deal:

I will not discuss any further until ReggieM, Tonyrey, Charlemagne, Buffalo and other IDers here have read that link in its entirety.

Until everyone reads it, further discussion is futile.

Among others, it explains very well the connection between natural causes and divine providence through them and keeping nature in existence on one hand, and divine "intervention" on the other hand. Along the way, it very well explains classical theistic philosophy.

A must-read. See you on the other side.

(By the way, the design that the article espouses under the heading "No order, no science" is precisely the one of nature following order and natural laws -- that is where the cosmological fine-tuning argument can come in.)

I have read that paper several times.

Now if you want to be open-minded and objective, please take some time to read a Catholic rebuttal by a Thomistic philosopher to the claims of the very author of that CAF post.

St. Thomas Aquinas' 15 Smoking Guns -- Each of these statements is a "Smoking Gun," which refutes Professor Tkacz's ridiculous claim that Intelligent Design is "inconsistent with the Catholic intellectual tradition," while Darwinian evolution, properly understood, is perfectly compatible with that tradition.

http://www.angelfire.com/linux/vjtor...omas1long.html

Here is Professor Torley offering a similar argument to another Thomist:

http://www.uncommondescent.com/intel...ofessor-feser/

reggieM · #**1038** Jan 31, '12, 1:56 pm

Quote:

Originally Posted by Al Moritz

Well, we certainly do agree on Cosmological Intelligent Design and on the metaphysics (metaphysical design) of human nature (rational soul!), as well as on the merits of Thomistic philosophy (even though our interpretations thereof differ).

God bless.

Yes -- and those are major points of agreement.

Thanks again for many good insights.

(I wanted to get that in before the thread closes.

)

**tonyrey** · #**1039** Jan 31, '12, 1:58 pm

Quote:

Originally Posted by Al Moritz

I see some progress in wording here, that's for sure. Good job.

The facts are often both scientific and metascientific evidence for Design!

StAnastasia · #**1040** Jan 31, '12, 2:33 pm

Quote:

Originally Posted by tonyrey

The facts are often both scientific and metascientific evidence for Design!

"Intelligent design" or "ID" developed in the late 1980s, after the Supreme Court decision Edwards v. Aguilard (1987) outlawed the contemporary teaching of biblical creationism. The emphasis of some of its proponents shifted from championing ―creation science to promoting scientific-sounding theories, like "irreducible complexity" and "complex specified information." After the 2005 judgment in Dover, Pennsylvania ruling that ―intelligent design is not science, ID advocates switched tactics yet again, utilizing slogans such as "teach the controversy" and "analyze strengths and weaknesses of evolution," and pushing "academic fairness" legislation in various states.

"Statements rejecting intelligent design as science have been issued by more than a hundred scientific organizations, and by dozens of religious denominations. As representative of these, I will quote from the statement issued by the International Society for Science and Religion (ISSR):

http://www.issr.org.uk/id-statement.asp

"While science does not operate according to consensus, the fact that the membership of the ISSR—which includes biologists, paleontologists, geneticists, anthropologists, theologians, philosophers, historians, and representatives of numerous other disciplines—has unanimously judged intelligent design as not passing scientific muster carries a lot of weight. Intelligent design has no coherent research program, and adds nothing new to the discussion of alternatives to evolution as practiced by scientists. The ISSR statement advocates a dual caution: "We recognize that natural theology may be a legitimate enterprise in its own right, but we resist the insistence of intelligent design advocates that their enterprise be taken as genuine science—just as we oppose efforts of others to elevate science into a comprehensive world view (so-called scientism)."

http://www.stthomas.edu/law/programs...0formatted.pdf

Charlemagne II · #**1041** Jan 31, '12, 3:19 pm

Al

In Newton's days science was not as advanced as it is now. With the knowledge at Newton's disposal, also biological ID was a reasonable position to hold back then.

Exactly why is it not rational that God designed abiogenesis and evolution?

Gee, I missed that in Biology 101.

“There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.” Origin of the Species, 1872 (last edition before Darwin’s death).

Charlemagne II · #**1042** Jan 31, '12, 3:27 pm

Anastasia

The ISSR statement advocates a dual caution: "We recognize that natural theology may be a legitimate enterprise in its own right, but we resist the insistence of intelligent design advocates that their enterprise be taken as genuine science

I'll say it again. By this standard, no intelligently designed scientific experiment can be evidence that intelligent design was behind the experiment ... because intelligent design is not a scientifically provable hypothesis.

Charlemagne II · #**1043** Jan 31, '12, 3:45 pm

From the Catholic Encyclopedia

Siger [of Brabant ... 13th century Catholic scholar refuted by Thomas Aquinas] wished to remain a professing Catholic, and to safeguard his faith he had recourse to the celebrated theory of the two truths: what is true in philosophy may be false in religion, and vice versa. It is hard to tell whether such a mental attitude indicates buffoonery or sincerity.

This remark suggesting buffoonery applies equally to those deluded Catholics who hold that what is true in theology may be false in science.

**buffalo** · #**1044** Jan 31, '12, 3:52 pm

Quote:

Originally Posted by Al Moritz

I don't see biological ID throughout the universe, but I see intelligent design throughout the universe just like Newton, in the sense that the laws of nature that bring about the development of the universe are designed by God.

I have repeated that position many times, and you have ignored it just as many times.

In Newton's days science was not as advanced as it is now. With the knowledge at Newton's disposal, also biological ID was a reasonable position to hold back then.

Let me get this straight. Intelligent design is present throughout the universe but God purposely excluded it from biology?

**buffalo** · #**1045** Jan 31, '12, 4:01 pm

Quote:

Originally Posted by Al Moritz

Now that is a truly excellent link! Thanks for posting this!

O.k., here's the deal:

I will not discuss any further until ReggieM, Tonyrey, Charlemagne, Buffalo and other IDers here have read that link in its entirety.

Until everyone reads it, further discussion is futile.

Among others, it explains very well the connection between natural causes and divine providence through them and keeping nature in existence on one hand, and divine "intervention" on the other hand. Along the way, it very well explains classical theistic philosophy.

A must-read. See you on the other side.

(By the way, the design that the article espouses under the heading "No order, no science" is precisely the one of nature following order and natural laws -- that is where the cosmological fine-tuning argument can come in.)

Al - read it -a few times.

Promise me you will read this:

St. Thomas Aquinas and his Fifteen Smoking Guns (A five-part reply to Professor Tkacz)

For some time now, I’ve been threatening to publish an expose of the pretentious claims of self-styled “Thomists” who have argued that Intelligent Design is completely at odds with St. Thomas Aquinas’ philosophy. Well, this is it. The Big One. Get ready, and hold on to your hats. In today’s post, I’m going to comprehensively rebut a paper by a leading “Thomistic” critic of Intelligent Design, who contends that Thomists have nothing to fear from the scientific claims of Darwinism. I’m going to show that this ID critic actually contradicts what St. Thomas Aquinas wrote on the topic of origins, on no less than fifteen specific points (yes, fifteen!), which I shall call Aquinas’ “fifteen smoking guns.” I think my readers will agree with me that a “Thomist” who contradicts his master (St. Thomas Aquinas) on no less than fifteen substantive points can hardly be considered a true Thomist.
One of the smoking guns (number 10) will be of special interest to UD readers, as it reveals an Intelligent Design-style argument in the writings of Aquinas himself!

more...

**buffalo** · #**1046** Jan 31, '12, 4:07 pm

Darwin, Design & Thomas Aquinas

The Mythical Conflict Between Thomism & Intelligent Design

.......

What About Man?
Now we see Chesterton’s point. Man, the universal, does not really exist. According to the late Stanley Jaki, Chesterton detested Darwinism because “it abolishes forms and all that goes with them, including that deepest kind of ontological form which is the immortal human soul.” And if one does not believe in universals, there can be, by extension, no human nature—only a collection of somewhat similar individuals.

Read more: http://www.touchstonemag.com/archive...#ixzz1COKw2les

Read more: http://www.touchstonemag.com/archive...#ixzz1COK5w8i1

and.........that is why St Thomas would like IDvolution.

Thus, natural agency is not eliminated, yet God is still actively involved in nature. Specific forms originate and reside in his mind, though God allows creatures the dignity of acting in this creative drama. Still, Thomas is careful to note that while secondary causes are real, “God . . . can cause an effect to result in anything whatsoever independently of middle causes.”
By now it should be clear how different Thomas’s philosophy of nature is from Darwinism. Rather than form being a merely apparent reality that can be molded into any other form, for Thomas form originates in God’s mind. He directly creates it. It is a forethought, not an afterthought. Species, then, come to be because of his will and power (either successively or all at once). They are neither the product of a trial-and-error process of natural selection nor the mere intrinsic unfolding of secondary causes. Secondary causes have their place, but they are inherently impotent to create novel form.

Read more: http://www.touchstonemag.com/archive...#ixzz1COSjktGe

**buffalo** · #**1047** Jan 31, '12, 4:11 pm

Darwinism from an informatics point of view

...
Leaving aside the problems associated with defining what a gene is, it can still be shown that the random processes which evolutionary theory claims are capable of generating biological complexity, simply don’t work. They don’t work because they are, by their very nature, incapable of generating the top-down functional hierarchy of nested decision structures that is responsible for making the whole system. Since this objection to the adequacy of random processes is an in-principle objection, it is useless for evolutionists to attempt to counter it by resorting to vast amounts of time or huge probabilistic resources. The fundamental problem of Darwinism is that the greater cannot come from the less.

To sum up: Darwinism, from an informatics point of view, has absolutely zero credibility. This explains, among other things, why so many computer programmers who are interested in the ID/evolution debate are on the ID side. In their own job they have never seen a single bit of software arise gratis. Rather they have to create, bit by bit, the active information of the software applications they develop. These people are justifiably perplexed when they encounter the evolutionist claim that God did not have to write a single line of code, because biological complexity (which is far greater than any computer software) arose naturalistically. “Why no work for Him and so much work for me?” they may ask. In this post, I hope I have helped explain that God, also in this case, expects far less from us than what He Himself did and does.

**buffalo** · #**1048** Jan 31, '12, 4:18 pm

Can Thomism Save Science?

In our initial article we raised this question: Is the Catholic community retreating from an engagement with science? Answering in the affirmative, we attributed the retreat to an inadequate understanding of the philosophical foundations of science and of knowledge as a whole. The breadth of the problem reveals how widespread and complete is the lack of principled understanding of the proper nature and role of science.

This problem is not new, nor is the identification of its cause. As a former professor visiting his former university in Regensburg, Germany, Pope Benedict XVI identified the crisis of reason as the root problem of the West. Human reason, reduced in modern times to empirical rationality, has forgotten what it means to be human, with tragic consequences. No longer capable of the clear perception of order, goodness, and intelligibility, our culture has reduced morality to relativism, a utilitarian calculus devoid of true reason. Who needs to be reminded of the results?

One symptom of the schism is the growth of scien*tism, which Pope John Paul II recognized as being of particular prominence in the modern world. As the late Holy Father pointed out, scientism has at its root an incomplete understanding of knowledge, of reality, and of humanity, which can only be mended by a return to first principles -- in this case, the principles of natural philosophy. In returning to the work of St. Thomas Aquinas, the exemplar of natural philosophy, is it possible to rediscover science proper, and to find thereby a means of returning the world to an integrated view of faith and reason?

more.

Charlemagne II · #**1049** Jan 31, '12, 4:30 pm

buffalo

Let me get this straight. Intelligent design is present throughout the universe but God purposely excluded it from biology?

This is a very intelligently designed question.

Al Moritz · #**1050** Jan 31, '12, 4:56 pm

Quote:

Originally Posted by Charlemagne II

Al

In Newton's days science was not as advanced as it is now. With the knowledge at Newton's disposal, also biological ID was a reasonable position to hold back then.

Exactly why is it not rational that God designed abiogenesis and evolution?

Sigh. Of course God designed abiogenesis and evolution. He designed the laws of nature that drive natural causes such that they would accomplish that. But I have no reason to believe that God steppped in, overruling natural causes because they would have been insufficient for the task, as a designing and sculpting 'artisan', directly creating the structures ('Irreducible Complexity', anyone?).