Intelligent Design or Mindless Evolution

CERC ^ | 10.26.05 | Bishop Donald Wuerl

[indcons]

Ping......

[Coleus]

Faith, Science and the Persecution of Richard Sternberg

[Coleus]

If this is going to be a big crevo discussion, please, don't direct comments to me, thanks.

[coconutt2000]

There's a hidden genius in DNA.

Is blind evolution necessarily in conflict with intelligent design? What happens if evolution and the laws that govern chance were specifically designed to create life as we know it?

[loboinok]

Excellent!

[Rembrandt]

It seems rather telling that these people feel their theories are so fragile that they need to bloody the nose of anyone requesting a fair hearing for Intelligent Design as an alternative.

[shuckmaster]

Show me the intellegent designer!

[shuckmaster]

Saint Augustine noted centuries ago, the six "days" of creation could hardly have been solar days as we now know,

Six days doesn't really mean six days ping.

[Petrosius]

Show me the intellegent designer!

As you wish:

[RobbyS]

Pythagorus--and Newton--thought of God as a geometer. Call it design or patterns. whatever, but the reduction of them to math is what we call science.

[taxesareforever]

Psst, psst. Open the Bible.

[LogicWings]

Anyone who, as a child, marveled at the sky full of stars on a clear, dark night and concluded intuitively that there is more to the heavens than one can see is an intellectual heir to the great thinkers of the Western World

One can easily conclude from reason alone that there is intelligent design in the universe.

One can "intuitively conclude" (a contradiction in terms) or one can "conclude from reason alone."

Covered all our bases here. Between these two extremes one can "conclude" anything. All without any evidence! Amazing.

[shuckmaster]

The plagiarized scrolls of a tribe of sandal wearing bronze age goat herders? No, thanks! Show me the designer!

[shuckmaster]

Is Michaelangelo the intelligent designer?

[shuckmaster]

One can "intuitively conclude" (a contradiction in terms) or one can "conclude from reason alone."

My favorite is "Let the students decide what they will be taught".

[taxesareforever]

Show me a picture of the first human. Shouldn't be hard for you to come up with that. It's only a couple of hundred thousand years old compared to the billion years of earth life.

[John Locke]

Compounding matters all the more on the part of some proponents of evolution is their insistence on the need to exclude any possibility of God or intelligent design at any stage in the process.

Straw man. That is emphatically not what proponents of evolution say. Their stance is properly called methodological naturalism. In other words, if we can find a sufficient explanation for the evidence in terms of natural causes alone, we should not posit supernatural causes. Or, in the words of another thinker of the Church, William of Ockham, Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem.

For example, if the planetary motions can be explained by Newtonian gravitation, it is not appropriate to postulate that the planets are in fact pushed by angels. If the current and fossil lifeforms can be explained by Darwinian evolution - of course, that is a big if! - then it is not apropriate to assume God created trilobites out of clay, or for that matter tweaked trilobite DNA with his finger.

The reason science adopts this view is because the alternative is to stop doing science. "The planets are moved by angels?" - So, no need to do any astronomy, because everything we see in our telescopes is the incomprehensible work of the supernatural. It seems unlikely that the Mayan wise men came to this conclusion - though since all their writing has been lost, we have no way of knowing what conclusions they came to, except that the Creator God had to be fed a regular supply of raw human hearts.

A far stronger view is philosophical naturalism, which says that we must never assume causes outside Nature for effects within Nature. Not many people believe this, but even those who do believe it accept it is an article of faith, not justifiable by reason alone.

Finally, it is interesting that we should learn biology now from bishops and cardinals. I propose to call a council of evolutionary biologists, and ask them to decide whether the Church should ordain homosexuals. Overlapping magisteria seems to be a two-edged sword.

[jennyp]

Intelligent design in the world is a rational conclusion based on thousands of years of observation and reflection.

Um, it's also a rational conclusion based on thousands of years of observation and reflection that heavier objects fall to the ground faster, and that the Sun, planets, & stars rotate around the Earth.

That is not a compelling argument at all. Science education is precisely the business of explaining to people why scientists have concluded that things don't necessarily work the way they seem to do to a naive observer.

It's the same way with evolution. The naive observer says, "gee those creatures are really complex, and I've never seen anything like them. I can't see how they could have evolved from something else!" The scientist proceeds to search for the story behind the story.

[PatrickHenry]

Archival ping.