I hate to say it, but I find the arguments for Intelligent Design to be somewhat unconvincing. I'm afraid I just don't see why the fact that even fairly simple life forms are actually incredibly, amazingly complex, proves anything. I don't see why incredibly, amazingly complex life forms couldn't have developed their complexity through a kind of biological trial and error over a very long period of time. I just don't really see mere complexity as a sufficiently compelling argument for the existence of a designer.
At the same time, I find the answers of the Darwinians equally unsatisfying. I think both groups are locked into a materialist mindset that cannot grasp certain metaphysical ideas. They are looking for proof of God in the wrong place. And they are giving answers that are, essentially, non sequiturs. Religious people understand that the proof for the existence of God has little to do with the question of the origins of the universe or of life. God doesn't live in the universe. The only way He could have created it is to have already existed before it. Physical reality and all the laws governing it were made by God; He therefore can't be part of it.
Darwinians especially seem locked into a silly argument with Protestant fundamentalists over the origins of the physical universe or of life in it. Because they don't know anything about religion or philosophy, (and can't seem to be bothered to look it up on Wikipedia) they they don't seem to understand that Protestant creationists are not only talking scientific nonsense, they are talking through their hats on religion too. I once had to laugh when some nasty little atheist tried to accuse me of being a Creationist because I believed that God made everything. He seemed incapable of understanding that one can believe God is the author of reality without trying to prove that the early verses of the book of Genesis is a literal historical, minute-by-minute account of the first week of existence.
They don't seem to understand that the dumb Proddies arguing this silly theory are just as irritating to intelligent Christians as they are to the scientists.
Creationism is not properly speaking a religious argument about the creation of the universe; it is a political argument for the literal interpretation of the Bible and for sola scriptura. It is, in origin, a fight not with science, but with the Catholic Church. It goes back to the 16th century and is, frankly, very boring and stupid. (Really? I'm supposed to believe that the earth is 4000 years old because of the genealogies? Seriously?) The problem these Proddies have is a basic misunderstanding of what kind of document the Bible is, what it is for, and the way in which it is inerrant. It's neither a history text nor a book about physics or geology.
But this brings me to Intelligent Design, which is not, as far as I can see, an offshoot of this ancient and tired Protestant fight. It really does seem to be a movement springing from scientists who had no previous association with Proddie fundamentalism. And yet, it is still hampered by the same mistakes that both the Creationists and the Darwinians are making. None of them seem able to think outside their materialist box.
God is not in the universe. He made everything and holds everything in existence moment to moment by a continuous, eternal act of His will. The problem everyone seems to have with this question is the difficulty of thinking of things that exist outside physical reality. Outside time and space.
Darwinians and atheists like to say that the universe was brought into being by a big explosion a long time ago. When you ask them what was there before that big explosion, they will say, variously, "nothing" or "another explosion". But these answers are not even addressing the real question. It does not answer, "Where did the explosion come from? What made it happen?" Saying, "It just happened" or things "just exist" is not only unsatisfactory to people like me, it's anti-scientific. It's an expression of belief.
Dawkins once answered the question about where the big bang came from in an interview by saying, "I don't know." Which is at least honest. But when he is saying, "God doesn't exist," and seems to expect people to believe it because he's a scientist, he is making a fool of himself in the same way a plumber would be foolish to make definitive statements about cosmology.
All these people are missing the point. The existence of God really cannot be either proven or disproven by the natural sciences. Dawkins' assertion that God does not exist is not based on evidence, it is not a scientific assertion, it is an expression of religious belief. And I think that the best the ID guys can say is that they believe that such complexity as can be found in the bacterial flagellum, seems likely to point to a designer.
Physical science is only capable of observing objects and systems within physical existence and God, the author of physical reality, does not live there, as an author does not live in the book he writes. When people are looking for evidence of the existence of God, you can't answer them from inside the box of physicality.
Unfortunately for us, natural scientists are no longer trained in philosophy so they don't seem to understand the limits of natural science, and don't seem to know that they can't answer all questions about reality. It's a pity, because it seems clear that the people asking them for proof or disproof of God don't know this either. Modern people have been conditioned to think that questions about what is and is not real can only be answered using empirical science. Philosophy has become so arcane and intellectually corrupt (thanks Descartes) that it would never cross their minds to look for concrete answers there. That there are other kinds of proofs is something that many people, and apparently most scientists, have forgotten or have never known.
Darwinians have failed to even address the real question and it is hard to escape the idea that they are refusing to address it because they know it is outside their competence. It is very difficult to listen to these people talk about religion without thinking them very arrogant, and quite frankly, ignorant. I have always wanted to hear what Dawkins would have to say in response to Aquinas' five proofs. But it seems likely that neither he nor most of his interlocutors have heard of them and none of them, on either side, seem to have any notion that there is any way to address the question without natural science.
They have no background whatever, it seems, in even elementary philosophy. The Darwinian answer, "It just happened," because it ignores the real issue, is trite and unsatisfying. Things do not "just happen". There's this thing in metaphysics called "causality," which is completely observable and which philosophers have called "the cement of the universe". In other words, you can't have physical reality without it.
I myself have been observing things not just happening all my life. Events inside physical reality, existence, are always caused by some other event. All of existence is linked together by this chain and everything that happens also causes other things to happen. This is something that everyone can observe and figure out.
This means that everything that happens and everything that exists is "contingent". Everything is reliant on the thing prior to it in the chain. In philosophy, the word contingent means, "neither impossible nor necessary". A contingent being, therefore, is something that really exists, but depends on something else for its existence. Contingent beings do not exist out of necessity. It is not their nature to exist. I am a contingent being, there was a time when I didn't exist, therefore it is not my nature to exist.
The trouble that both the Darwinians and the ID people are having is that they are trying to demonstrate the existence of God from observing things within that chain of causality, and all they can come up with are things that do not exist out of necessity. Things that are contingent, dependent upon something else in the chain for their existence.
What they seem incapable of doing, perhaps because their intellectual training has been too specialised, is thinking about something that exists out of necessity. What people are asking when they want to know where did the universe come from is not, when was the Big Bang. It is, where and when did the chain of causality start?
The only way to start this chain that is the "cement of the universe," the foundation of physical reality, is to be something whose nature it is to already exist, to exist outside time and space. It has to be something that is not subject to causality, whose existence is not contingent, or dependent on anything else to have started it.
There is only one thing, one being, whose nature it is to have always existed and which will always exist in the future, and this being by its nature cannot exist within the boundaries of the causal chain.
Next time you're discussing the existence of God or the origins of the universe, the thing to ask is not, when did it all start, but how. All things are dependent upon previous things. What, then, is the first thing?
~
30 comments:
I know many Christian Homeschool families. Most assume since I am pro-life, and pray and even attend a Catholic Church on a regular basis - that I must be a Creationist.
I can't get into conversations with them about this issue - but it is interesting when we went to the ROM (museum) for a field trip the families wouldn't go into the dinosaur exhibits.
Unschooled HS families are the total opposite where it is all the Big Bang and there is no question that God does not exist.
I remember getting into a conversation with one mom - "God could not make everything out of nothing" ... later on .. "the universe started from nothing."??
This is one of the best things you've ever written.
Creationism, I heard, has its roots in Deism -- the idea that the Grand Architect of the Universe created the cosmos at the beginning time and has nothing whatsoever to do with it since. This of course denies miracles, revelation, Jesus as Second Person of the Most Holy Trinity, and so forth. The Deists see Creation as a great clock being wound up and left to run on its own.
I suppose the acceptance of Creationism among Evangelicals is a measure of how infested their churches are with Freemasons. Certainly, the degree of acceptance of Darwinism in liberal churches is a measure of how infested they are with Socialists.
This is in contrast to the Catholic notion of God being eternally present to the world, and so active in it, as well as the notion of the myriads upon myriads of angels acting within creation also.
From what I gather, Darwin's theories didn't have the huge impact on Catholics as they did on Protestants.
I'm not a trained philosopher, but it seems to me that Aquinas' proofs do work, but they do not tell us that this "God" is the personal God of the Hebrew Bible who spoke to Moses and said, 'I am the being whose very nature it is to exist, whom the Greeks are going to tell you about in a few hundred years. Oh, and don't eat pork.'
Basically they just prove the necessary attributes this "God" has to have, and that such a "God" exists, but go no further.
I had this taught to me by my philosophy professor at Notre Dame (who majored in physics before he went on to become a philosophy professor). It was a class on Aquinas, so we covered this extensively. I would just like to say though that a book DOES indicate an author, so this would seem to be a good argument for the Creationist.
Billy, yes, Thomas himself said that the proofs only go so far. They demonstrate that it is impossible to declare there is no God, but don't describe his attributes.
Nate,
Yes, St. Paul said as much, that people who say there is no God are silly, just look at creation. I think this is more or less the arguments of the ID people and it certainly is valid logic, but it also only goes so far, and cannot break through the wall of materialist prejudice that is the foundation of modern peoples' way of thinking.
Finally, the gift of Faith is just that and a person who has intellectually accepted that these proofs are irrefutable can still have no faith. It takes one step further. Submission of the intellect and will.
Generally I agree with the point. I am, however, going to jump on one line and breed an argument out of it.
"I don't see why incredibly, amazingly complex life forms couldn't have developed their complexity through a kind of biological trial and error over a very long period of time."
That's just it. Evolution depends on a chain of intermediate forms between one thing and the next. You can develop a rodent into a whale if you imagine a long chain of successive species that progressively get bigger and, er, more aquatic or some such. The selling point of Intelligent Design is that it's arguing in the field of biochemistry, where the rules of the game disallow most intermediate forms. (Naturally most treatments, favorable and unfavorable, tend to miss this point.)
There are roughly fifty proteins composing and used to construct a flagellum. Assuming that a flagellum developed gradually, there must have been a proto flagellum that was slightly simpler than today's model first. But we don't have anything simpler; take any one of those proteins away and you don't get a weaker flagellum, you get a nonfunctioning one, or one that doesn't get assembled. Ok, maybe the cell had the proteins on hand for some other use and they got missassembled into a useful device. But that doesn't work; there's no other use for most of those proteins. The closest anyone's come to finding anything that looks like an intermediate form is the Type III export apparatus, another structure which shares a number of proteins with the flagellum. And nothing else; the proteins they share have no other known uses either.
If evolution depends on a chain of small variations, it doesn't work in this case. You go from nothing to the Type III export apparatus to the Flagellum, with no other steps in between. (That we know of; the atheists who look into this tend to rest their hopes on some future brilliance making the problem more tractable.)
Up to this point the argument makes a pretty solid objection to evolution, it's the "therefore" that gets into people's way. When you say "therefore God exists", people stop listening and start arguing.
-Hank
In praising the work of the Kolbe Center, Fr. Chad Ripperger, F.S.S.P., pastor, St. Joan of Arc Parish, Coeur d'Helene, Idaho, formerly
professor of theology at Our Lady of Guadalupe Seminary said:
Pope Pius XII in his encyclical Humani generis exhorted those who were investigating the
question of human origins to seriously weigh the reasons for opinions both favorable and
unfavorable to the evolution of man’s body. Since that time most Catholics have heard very little
or nothing to challenge the current consensus in favor of an evolutionary model of human origins.
The Kolbe Center for the Study of Creation is a tremendous resource for those who would like
to hear the compelling evidence for the contrary position, one that accords well with the longer
tradition of the Church. The work of the Center deserves a careful hearing by all who are seeking
to come to a full knowledge of the truth about God’s magnificent creation.
It isn't just Ignorant Proddies we're talking about. How many know that all of the Fathers and Doctors of the Church, save one, interpreted Genesis 1 the same way --and ALL of them interpreted Genesis 2-11 in the literal historical sense. The Catechism of Trent calls Genesis a "sacred history."
There is no crying need to echo Catholic & Enjoying It on a traddie site
ID really doesn't seem to be the issue for the neo-Darwinians.
Cretaceous dinosaur bones with soft tissue dated to modern ages, does.
The first is a philosophical/metaphysical argument.
The second is a scientific observation, and it is utterly devastating to the Darwinist timeline.
See:
http://magisterialfundies.blogspot.com/2012/01/marys-bones-part-ii.html
Hilary, if you want I can send you a video of a hilarious Q&A I went to (and recorded) that brought up the topic of contingency and necessity.
You should check out some of Ed Feser's writings on this.
The Catholic arguments for God's existence are quite different from the Protestant "intelligent design" theory.
Rick, I had a look at that and I think that the obvious answer, biological film clinging to the cavities in the bones, is clearly it.
I think there is something more than idiotic biblical literalism and political motive behind the strange insistence of these people that dinosaurs and monkeys lived at the same time. I think they are people who live in a kind of fantasy world, engaging in what the shrinks call magical thinking, a common way that children think that sometimes holds over into adulthood. The desire to see dinosaurs living in the same times as later animals, or even within the epoch of homo sapiens, comes from being rather simple, not very well exposed to actual science, and in the same kind of magical wishfulness that makes little kids look for fairies at the bottom of the garden, and look eagerly into the back of every wardrobe they find.
Look how many people, how many grownups, have graduated from looking for fairies to looking for ghosts, or USFs or yetis or the Loch Ness monster. This is partly the natural human desire to believe in the supernatural, in something outside and better than our humdrum materialist reality, and find something fantastic peeking in from the outside world. But sadly it is also a sign of people choosing comforting fantasy over the hard and unexciting Real.
Your point in the original post about creationism being a political argument was also made by Cdl. Ratzinger in his 1981 series of Lenten homilies on Genesis, published by Eerdman's: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0802841066/
Well well, don't great minds think alike!
howsays: "Rick, I had a look at that and I think that the obvious answer, biological film clinging to the cavities in the bones, is clearly it."
>> Well, it isn't. Go to the link again and this time click on the 2009 Science study by Schweitzer, et al, which definitively refutes that "biofilm" hypothesis.
Short version- biofilms don't test positive for heme reactions.
The ":biofilm" hypothesis was the best shot the Darwinists had, but it is water under the bridge now.
hjw: "I think there is something more than idiotic biblical literalism and political motive behind the strange insistence of these people that dinosaurs and monkeys lived at the same time. I think they are people who live in a kind of fantasy world, engaging in what the shrinks call magical thinking, a common way that children think that sometimes holds over into adulthood. The desire to see dinosaurs living in the same times as later animals, or even within the epoch of homo sapiens, comes from being rather simple, not very well exposed to actual science, and in the same kind of magical wishfulness that makes little kids look for fairies at the bottom of the garden, and look eagerly into the back of every wardrobe they find.
Look how many people, how many grownups, have graduated from looking for fairies to looking for ghosts, or USFs or yetis or the Loch Ness monster. This is partly the natural human desire to believe in the supernatural, in something outside and better than our humdrum materialist reality, and find something fantastic peeking in from the outside world. But sadly it is also a sign of people choosing comforting fantasy over the hard and unexciting Real."
>> Yawn. It's about the science, how, and the science has shown they aren't biolfilms, burn instead they are soft tissues, collagen, and blood cells on a TRex.
Similar TRex bones from the same Hell Creek formation in Montana have been carbon 14 dated- precisely by the guys claiming they were "biofilms" back in 2008- to "relatively modern" origin.
Since Schweitzer et al conclusively refuted the "biofilm" hypothesis in 2009........
Well.
I think you can see the problem.
We have a peer reviewed C134 dating of TRex to relatively modern origins.
Interesting times.......
Reply to hjw by Hugh Miller -
The alleged Biofilms would be the by-products of bacteria feeding off of their dinosaur host bones as all labs can attest. And therefore if there was any bacteria biofilms left they would be the same age as their host dino bones. Had the 2008 team used the normal acid - base -acid pretreatment that all labs use to remove contaminants even those alleged biofilms would be gone. I've been a research chemist and chemical consultant for 50 some years and a Roman Catholic for my whole life. You know the old ad: "Tides in, dirt's out." Well I've even worked in a C-14 lab for three years doing the aba pretreatment. I have been on many field and laboratory adventures including sawing dinosaur femur bones [2005] and having their partially fossilized insides C-14 dated at different labs which yielded ages in the 22,000 to 39,000 RC years for a total of nine dinosaurs from TX to AK [one even from CHINA] - all within the same ball P.A.R.C with mammals - good Precision, Accuracy. Reproducibility and Concordance so I think I know a bit about the origins issue.
An independent team of 12 Swedish and American scientists in documenting that small amounts of collagen still existed in a even Mosasaur marine reptile supposedly 70 Ma from Belgium appear to have confirmed our data with C-14 age of 24,600 years as their extensive equipment could not detect bacteria and potective coatings. http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0019445 page 8 & 9
These data are 2000 times younger than what evolutionists claim and support main stream scientists studies that large biomolecules like collagen should not last longer than a hypothetical maximum of 100,000 years.
The evolutionary hypothesis of long ages needed to ensure that evolution of life from non-life is even remotely possible simply don't exist. Therefore evolution as is taught to our children and on by the mainstream media has been falsified and is therefore not much more than a fairy tale for tenured professors and gullible students of all ages [as was I for many years]. 19th century science got it wrong; the church fathers and scripture got it right. God bless!
I want to add one more important point. The readers of this blog should listen to this excellent half hour recorded explanation of "Why it Matters" http://www.blogtalkradio.com/hugoc14/2010/12/30/who-is-hugh-owen
Do we look upon God with a capital "G" as the creator of the universe as He said He created in scripture or do we agree with modernist interpretations who compromised with the evolution hypotheses to teach that god (with a small "g") used evolution of life from non-life over 15 some billions of years to get where we are now? According to Modernism mankind was not created in the image of God but in the image of an evolved monkey.
Hugh Owen is the guest speaker and director of the The Kolbe Center www.kolbecenter.org who seeks to educate the public, particularly within the Catholic Church, in the truth of creation as revealed in Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition and as confirmed by the findings of modern science. With the help of experts in the fields of theology, philosophy, and natural science, the Kolbe Center also seeks to show the superiority of special creation over all forms of molecules-to-man evolution.
The above blog talk radio show is part of the Paleochronology Group www.dinosaurc14ages.com that interviews scientists and educators
of differing Christian faiths who show from their perspective that evolution is truly a "fairy tale" which has adversely infested our culture to the detriment of religious faith, the health of mankind and morality.
I think my main point is that I really just don't care "how". It's not important either "how" or "when". It's just important "that". "How" isn't my business. "That" is what I am mostly concerned with.
We exist and we are what we are and we know what's true about God. It's enough.
http://www.mark-shea.com/ID.html
http://www.mark-shea.com/ID.html
HJMW:
The American theologian Mark Shea has explained that Genesis exists to tell us WHO created the world, not HOW.
Great minds think alike.
Kevin E.
Mark Shea in my estimation is not a real Catholic thrologian. A real theologian submits him and herself like Paula Haigh to reality which includes Divine Revelation. Mark Shea supports the unreality of evolutionary kooky speculations about how life arrived on earth and then further speculates evolution is "how" god did it [god with a small g]. Paula Haigh goes on:
Metaphysics is the highest of the natural sciences and as such, it is necessary support of the divine science of theology. Grace presupposes nature. Grace builds upon and perfects nature. This is precisely what evolutionists and atheists deny. They make it their mission in life to destroy the natural order of Creation as revealed in Genesis 1.
St. Paul summed up this primary submission in Romans 1:20 "the existence and attributes of God are known from the things that are made." " So they have no excuse." Very blunt. Very emphatic. And yet how many Catholics are guilty both directly and by accomplice - complicity in the modernist sin of atheistic evolutionism: a world view that excludes the God of Divine Revelation. Theistic evolution is a phoney compromise, a failure to come to terms with the real atheism of evolution. This heresy cannot be reconciled with Catholic faith. Pascendi proves that. Also Get 24 thesis of St Thomas and Paula Haigh's excellent discussion of the five ways of St Thomas for the existence of God which refutes evolution, link to: http://www.creationism.org/csshs/v12n4p10.htm Paula Haigh suggests that the "The five ways of St. Thomas are nothing but an extensive exposition of Romans 1:20."
To that I would add that ID is an attempt to put St. Thomas's work and Roman's 1:20 into simplistic scientific exlanations. If you're an evolutionist of whatever persuasion you will knock ID. But the major point I make is the how and when in evolution does not exist as the millions and billions of years is a fairy tale and the church fathers spoke the truth.
God Bless!
So. leaning on Mr. Shea are we? Pretty lame
Hilary, how do you think our first parents fit into this?
Seán
Hilary - What Mark said about Ed Feser. A serious philosopher and a serious Catholic. I suspect he puts the fear of God into the Dawkinseenies.
Hilary - I hate to say it, but I find the arguments for Intelligent Design to be somewhat unconvincing. I'm afraid I just don't see why the fact that even fairly simple life forms are actually incredibly, amazingly complex, proves anything. I don't see why incredibly, amazingly complex life forms couldn't have developed their complexity through a kind of biological trial and error over a very long period of time. I just don't really see mere complexity as a sufficiently compelling argument for the existence of a designer.
JM- Here is a reason why an intellect is required to design complex systems. Any system is composed of parts and each part must be organized by act for an end and that end must be and end subordinated to the end of the organism, which is its own existence. For example, the heart exists for an end, which is the pump blood, the kidneys exist for an end to clean fliud, the lungs exist for an end to bring about oxygen exchange and so on. Each of these organs is also composed of billions of parts, called cells, each of which also acts for an end.
As each part acts for an end, then each part is passively ordained, for passive ordination is to be receptive of an arrangement for an end. As each part is ordered towards an end then each part is passively ordained, for no part can order itself to an end, from itself alone. For to order itself, from self alone, would be to exist and order, before the part existed, which is absurd.
As such, passive ordination, which is an ordering towards an end, requires a cause to order the part to that end. This cause requires a knowledge of end, as end. This means the cause, knows the nature of end and the nature of the end of each part which is passively ordained. Therefore, wherever there are parts or things which are passively ordained, there must be a cause, which is a knower of end. But to know the nature of a thing is the act of an intellect. Therefore, passive ordination concludes to the need for an intellect, which is the designing intellect of all parts and things, which have passive ordination.
The intellect, which is required when passive ordination exists, is the cause of active arrangement of the thing, or of the parts to the end, which is passively received in the thing, or the parts. As such, the intellect, which is the cause ordering others, is the intelligent designer. Therefore wherever there is an act for an end, whereby the thing acting has a potency and therefore a passive ordination, there must be an intelligent designer.
As complexity is merely a way of saying many parts are ordered towards many subordinate ends, then complexity must always infer intelligent design.
The Christians believe the first creatures were created and within this paradigm, the first creatures to exist were also designed by the creator, who is also the intelligent designer behind the existence of all subsequent creatures as well.
JM
Anonymous said...
So. leaning on Mr. Shea are we? Pretty lame
7:05 PM
Are you trying to lmake a monkey of me?
Don't slander monkeys by comparing them to Neo Caths.
Dear Miss White,
You state that "I'm afraid I just don't see why the fact that even fairly simple life forms are actually incredibly, amazingly complex, proves anything."
The one argument with which I am familiar, that of irreducible complexity is well explained in Prof. Michale Behe's book Darwin's Black Box, which I have recently read. What it boils down to is the following.
• Darwin's theory of natural selection is based on the idea that mutations occur to members of a species randomly and rarely. If the mutation confers a survival benefit, more individual members of the species having the mutation will tend to survive than will those who lack it. Some of those survivors will produce progeny some generations later who will experience another mutation, which, if beneficial to survival, will be preferentially passed on. Repeat many times and you have a new creature, perhaps even a new species, having significant survival advantages compared to its unevolved ancestors unmutated progeny. Note that, in order to be preferentially inherited, each mutation must confer on the mutants a survival advantage.
Professor Behe points out several examples where the above process (referred to as Darwinian gradualism) is simply incapable of explaining a biological feature or process that we see in a currently surviving species. The most dramatic example given in the book I cited above is that of the clotting of blood. There are 13 individual chemical reactions, occurring in a specific order required fo the successful clotting of blood such that the injured individual creature survives. If any one of the required chemical components is not present, the injured animal does not survive. Therefore, no one, let alone several, of the 13 steps can be missing at any time in the history of the species in order to provide the survival advantage. If just one of the 13 reactions fails to take place the bleeding does not stop and the animal dies. Therefore, all of the components for the 13 reactions must be present (i.e., the process must be fully developed in one step) if it is to confer a survival advantage. This process could not have evolved gradually as one step, followed later by another step, etc., in order for the existence of the clotting of blood to have evolved consistent with Darwinian gradualism. The whole system of reactions has to appear, in its entirety, in order for it to provide any benefit to the creature whatever.
I hope that helps.
Pax et bonum,
Keith Töpfer
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