Posted on 01/18/2006 3:09:20 PM PST by xzins
Vatican Paper Hits 'Intelligent Design' By NICOLE WINFIELD ASSOCIATED PRESS
VATICAN CITY (AP) -
The Vatican newspaper has published an article saying "intelligent design" is not science and that teaching it alongside evolutionary theory in school classrooms only creates confusion.
The article in Tuesday's editions of L'Osservatore Romano was the latest in a series of interventions by Vatican officials - including the pope - on the issue that has dominated headlines in the United States.
The author, Fiorenzo Facchini, a professor of evolutionary biology at the University of Bologna, laid out the scientific rationale for Darwin's theory of evolution, saying that in the scientific world, biological evolution "represents the interpretative key of the history of life on Earth."
He lamented that certain American "creationists" had brought the debate back to the "dogmatic" 1800s, and said their arguments weren't science but ideology.
"This isn't how science is done," he wrote. "If the model proposed by Darwin is deemed insufficient, one should look for another, but it's not correct from a methodological point of view to take oneself away from the scientific field pretending to do science."
Intelligent design "doesn't belong to science and the pretext that it be taught as a scientific theory alongside Darwin's explanation is unjustified," he wrote.
"It only creates confusion between the scientific and philosophical and religious planes."
Supporters of "intelligent design" hold that some features of the universe and living things are so complex they must have been designed by a higher intelligence. Critics say intelligent design is merely creationism - a literal reading of the Bible's story of creation - camouflaged in scientific language and say it does not belong in science curriculum.
Facchini said he recognized some Darwin proponents erroneously assume that evolution explains everything. "Better to recognize that the problem from the scientific point of view remains open," he said.
But he concluded: "In a vision that goes beyond the empirical horizon, we can say that we aren't men by chance or by necessity, and that the human experience has a sense and a direction signaled by a superior design."
The article echoed similar arguments by the Vatican's chief astronomer, the Rev. George Coyne, who said "intelligent design" wasn't science and had no place in school classrooms.
Pope Benedict XVI reaffirmed in off-the-cuff comments in November that the universe was made by an "intelligent project" and criticized those who in the name of science say its creation was without direction or order.
--
There is actually a big argument within the Church hierarchy over this issue.
.................................................
Well that's the problem with the Roman Branch of Christianity...it's too Pope based and not enough Christ based.
Christ said something about ID specifically?
Me either.. Since ID is Agnostic Creativism at best and a Metaphysical Diversion from Ockhams Razor at worse.. Even slapping some people with the bible won't knock any sense into them.. even with a very big bible..
- See my article: "Let philosophy link evolution, creation."
The Lord Jesus Christ believed the cosmos actually had a beginning, not "eternal potential" ("since beginning of world [Greek kosmos] to this time" Matt. 24:21)
...believed it was God who created, not natural processes ("From the beginning of the creation which God created" Mark 13:19)
...believed in fixity of created kinds ("Do men gather grapes of thorns...figs of thistles?" Matt. 7:16)
March for Life Monday Pyro. We'll be there.
I'll be there too. :-) I don't know if I can go with the FR group though.
We generally don't, we March to the beat of our own drummer, the Big Guy. :-} But it is amazing how many people we see who we have met only that one day a year in the following years. Pro Life for Life methinks.
Well... not to me. As much as I'd like to see a counter to the Dawkins of of the world, Intelligent Design ain't it. Unfortunately.
YEC INTREP
The word of God means nothing to them, so going along with humanism is right up their alley.
Whenever this subject comes up, I think of the point of view of these men of science:
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/lunar/apollo8_xmas.html
Thank you so much for that Christmas greeting!
I merely point out that this is outside the purview of science.
As far as the nature of God and "the Word", I don't presume to begin to fathom the depth of the Creator. What was "the Word" before there was anything physical to create sound? What was the medium that "the Word" travelled through before the physical universe?
Arrogantly using Scripture to make trivial ego-driven points, being so deluded that one thinks they can comprehend the totality of the Creator, leads to silly, sophmoric discussions of the angels-dancing-on-the-head-of a-pin variety.
Meanwhile, let scientific inquiry lead where it may, nothing that is true is going to be "unbiblical", so why put all this sophistry into creating a fake science? Afterall, if evolution and Darwinism is "unbiblical", then physics is certainly "unbiblical"; the same science that lead to microchips also tells us that the universe is billions of years old ("contradicting" Scripture if one is strictly counting the generations listed in the OT). So are we all being blasphemous by typing into these infernal boxes?
Do you accept it on faith.
Do you believe God?
Well let's see.
ID states and believes that, "the laws of physics are insufficient to govern the world and a fifth force is required to direct all the others to account for various phenomena." That is not science.
Proof:
ID uses the laws of physics to make some calculation. The ID guy swears his logic is OK and his math likewise. The output of his calculation says, "the result of the calculation can't explain the observaitons."
There are then 2 remaining possibilities, because he swears his model is good:
1) The model is missing some knowledge and understanding.
2) The model is right, the physics are 100% correct, that's all the physics there is, and there's a 5th force.
Take your choice:
The laws of physics are not sufficient and you abandon science to arbitrarily inject and define the 5th force, else they are and you stick with science, admit ignorance and work harder.
Now you claim with your logic, that making the 2nd choice is the correct one to walk the path to truth. Here's what God says about the matter.
Matthew 12:38-39
Then some of the Pharisees and teachers of the law said to him, "Teacher, we want to see a miraculous sign from you."
He answered, "A wicked and adulterous generation asks for a miraculous sign! But none will be given it except the sign of the prophet Jonah.
God is clear here, that there is no sign, other than the Holy Spirit. IDer magic notwithstanding.
I propose that most people who have formed an opinion about intelligent design do not realize what the hypothesis actually says:
"Intelligent cause" is not stipulated. It could be a phenomenon (such as an emergent property of self-organizing complexity or fractal intelligence) or an agent (such as God, collective consciousness, aliens, Gaia, etc.)
For instance, if it is determined that the selection of a mate is the "best explanation" for "certain features" in "life" then the hypothesis is vindicated.
"Undirected processes" suggest that randomness can occur in physical reality. But of a truth, one cannot say anything is random in the system without knowing what the system "is" - and that question is not yet answered.
Jeepers, science has not even yet observed or made ordinary matter (Higgs field/boson) - and if it does (CERN tests), the remaining 95% of the critical density is not yet understood. And that's without considering spatial and temporal dimensionality.
The bottom line is that order cannot rise out of chaos in an unguided physical system. But when you look at the cosmology - whether inflationary theory, multi-verse, multi-world, ekpyrotic, imaginary time, cyclic, etc. - physical causality relies on geometry and yet there was a beginning of geometry, of space/time.
That means in the void from which there was a beginning there was no space, no time, no energy, no matter, no physical laws, no physical constants, no logic, no qualia, etc. - and most especially, no physical causation.
IOW, the cause of physical causation was uncaused - and the only possible uncaused cause is God.
" Which part of that definition does the Vatican find threatening or worthy of distancing itself from?"
First, it's not a theory, it's a hypothesis. It's a hypothesis with no evidence, only a pile of faulty modeling. Faulty modeling is the best they can do, because no fifth force that can direct all the others can be demonstrated scientifically.
Second, the claim that, "intelligent causes best explain the origin of many features of living systems", is empty. The simple scientific explainaiton suffices.
Third, the hypothesis is based on a false model of information theory. Their theory has nothing to do with reality.
I'm still waiting for evolutionists to produce a half-plausible explaination for the development of "instinct" with some passing awareness of information theory.
I strongly suspect any serious inquiry on how "software" arises from evolutionary processes would tend to support the central tenets of Intelligent Design.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.