Posted on 12/16/2013 3:23:41 PM PST by Politically Correct
Taking the publication of Stephen Meyer's bestseller Darwin's Doubt as his news hook, our colleague the University of Texas, El Paso, mathematician Granville Sewell smartly answers a good question: What do you have believe if you're NOT a proponent of intelligent design? Writes Dr. Sewell in an El Paso Times op-ed:
So what do ID proponents believe?
Perhaps the best way to answer this question is to state clearly what you have to believe to not believe in intelligent design. Peter Urone, in his 2001 physics text "College Physics" writes, "One of the most remarkable simplifications in physics is that only four distinct forces account for all known phenomena."
The prevailing view in science today is that physics explains all of chemistry, chemistry explains all of biology, and biology completely explains the human mind; thus physics alone explains the human mind and all it does. This is what you have to believe to not believe in intelligent design, that the origin and evolution of life, and the evolution of human consciousness and intelligence, are due entirely to a few unintelligent forces of physics.
Thus you must believe that a few unintelligent forces of physics alone could have rearranged the fundamental particles of physics into computers and science texts and jet airplanes.
Contrary to popular belief, to be an ID proponent you do not have to believe that all species were created simultaneously a few thousand years ago, or that humans are unrelated to earlier primates, or that natural selection cannot cause bacteria to develop a resistance to antibiotics.
If you believe that a few fundamental, unintelligent forces of physics alone could have rearranged the basic particles of physics into Apple iPhones, you are probably not an ID proponent, even if you believe in God. But if you believe there must have been more than unintelligent forces at work somewhere, somehow, in the whole process: congratulations, you are one of us after all!
The great point Granville makes is that far from ID proponents being the ones who should be on the defensive, it's really design deniers who are saddled with a heavy load of presumptive error. The real burden of proof lies on them. Poor guys!
ID proponents all too often don’t understand the science of emergent order, as detailed in the study of chaos, cellular autonoma, etc. ID may be true, but proponents who don’t understand these subjects are grossly ignorant.
The statement is not non-sense if you actually spent some time reading.
Science, and its study has boxed itself into a corner.
It is Reductionist and Materialist and MUST be, by its own definition.
Someone posted this on FR a number of years ago.
It is a very long read, but well worth it.
The Folly of Scientism
Austin L. Hughes;
.....Carolina Distinguished Professor of Biological Sciences at the University of South Carolina.
http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-folly-of-scientism
snip
When I decided on a scientific career, one of the things that appealed to me about science was the modesty of its practitioners. The typical scientist seemed to be a person who knew one small corner of the natural world and knew it very well, better than most other human beings living and better even than most who had ever lived. But outside of their circumscribed areas of expertise, scientists would hesitate to express an authoritative opinion. This attitude was attractive precisely because it stood in sharp contrast to the arrogance of the philosophers of the positivist tradition, who claimed for science and its practitioners a broad authority with which many practicing scientists themselves were uncomfortable.
The temptation to overreach, however, seems increasingly indulged today in discussions about science. Both in the work of professional philosophers and in popular writings by natural scientists, it is frequently claimed that natural science does or soon will constitute the entire domain of truth. And this attitude is becoming more widespread among scientists themselves. All too many of my contemporaries in science have accepted without question the hype that suggests that an advanced degree in some area of natural science confers the ability to pontificate wisely on any and all subjects.
snip
It’s 15 pages and over 8 thousand words.
Enjoy !!!
I enjoyed the snip and also have serious problems with scientism.
This: “It is Reductionist and Materialist and MUST be, by its own definition.”
Is absolutely true.
I don’t think anything you’ve said, though, detracts or contracts my observation.
Perhaps you can provide more detail or clarity.
Can you expound a bit on this?
“Both in the work of professional philosophers and in popular writings by natural scientists, it is frequently claimed that natural science does or soon will constitute the entire domain of truth.”
If the rest of the 8,000 words are strung together like this, it’s nonsensical gibberish.
Your point seems to be that morality can exist independently of human society, and that is nonsense. Evolution may or may not have something to do with morality but to imbue morality with an objective reality that transcends its human context is absurd.
The quote, you quoted;
“The prevailing view in science today is that physics explains all of chemistry, chemistry explains all of biology, and biology completely explains the human mind; thus physics alone explains the human mind and all it does. This is what you have to believe to not believe in intelligent design”
This needs to be broken down.
“The prevailing view in science today is that physics explains all of chemistry, chemistry explains all of biology, and biology completely explains the human mind;
Is it the following Statement;
"thus physics alone explains the human mind and all it does.
That you call Non-Sense ?
Or this statement ?
This is what you have to believe to not believe in intelligent design”
I see nothing wrong with the statement in its entirety.
I'm not sure what you are calling Non-sense?
I have no problem with science being material and reductionist. I do have a problem when it is held up as an all encompassing enterprise that has all the answers.
“”thus physics alone explains the human mind and all it does.”
That you call Non-Sense ?
___
It is nonsense to claim believing this means one can’t believe in intelligent design.
That’s not my point.
Morality is wholly unique to Humans.
You assume Evolution.
I don’t.
Well, I don’t agree with that statement either, when taken “out of context”.
Like you did.
I’m not trying to take anything out of context.
What is the writer trying to say?
I’d say the most powerful argument for intelligent design is simply the fine-tuning argument for God.
If you come to the conclusion of God in explaining the mathematical absurdity that is our universe, you can’t really stop there. If God made sure all of the constants were perfect for life, it seems unlikely he would not have a hand in how that life formed. What would the point be otherwise? Like painstakingly creating a train set, and then going upstairs for eggs.
Our souls are in the image of God, but our bodies are something else entirely. God does not have a physical shape, so where does our shape come from? Why are our bodies as efficient as they are? Why are they as deficient as they are?
I pray all is answered on the other side.
What is the writer trying to say?
I’ll try my best to break it down.
Intelligent design requires “PURPOSE”.
Today’s evolutionist require an extraordinary belief in the mathematically impossible.
I wouldn’t say that follows. It depends on what you mean by ‘image of God’. I don’t take that to mean a literal, physical image. This seems to contradict God’s very nature. God is spaceless and timeless. He has no shape or form. A God with a literal form would be more akin to what the Mormons envision.
Take a look at the argument from the beginning of the universe. When discussing what possible causes there could be for the universe, two candidate emerge, both filling the criteria of being spaceless and timeless.
A) An abstract object
B) An unembodied mind
The nature of an unembodied mind (or God in this case) is that it is without body. It is simply what we might describe as ‘an entity’.
While I agree with the premise of what you say, that if indeed man evolved from time+matter+chance, and there is no God, then certainly morality is just a delusion.
But let us for a moment think of a scenario in which God creates the universe with the capacity for life, and perhaps even begins creation of the first organism. Over time, several organisms evolve, some even have two legs and become more resourceful than the others, but they are still animals. They do not have any notion of ‘should’ or ‘should not’, they die and that’s the end of them, and they have no empathy for each other or God whom they are unaware of.
Then, God decides on which creature he shall give his image to, or to put it more accurately, which will he give a soul to. The soul is the most precious of creations and no animal has it, for it is eternal and is capable of those things that crude biology is incapable of. And let us suppose that humans are gifted with soul. It is at that moment that the species Homo Sapien Sapiens becomes Mankind.
Adam and Eve may have been the first Man and Woman, but may not have been the first Homo Sapien Sapiens.
All just theory and speculation of course, and it is contingent on how you interpret both Genesis and modern biology.
I read something on what were actually ‘primordial seas’. Not puddles, but oceans, and not calm ones at that. The ‘lightning strikes’ experiments were done when the elements were essentially still, but the primordial seas were more likely raging, churning waters where even if you did get that chance reaction, it would likely be dashed to smithereens in a matter of seconds.
I like the way you think.
That would be an opinion, but that is what it means for something to be ‘objective’.
To go in to depth, morality ‘applies’ to agents, but only certain types of agents. Without human beings OR other suitable agents, it has nothing to apply itself to.
For instance, if the universe did not exist, gravity would not exist. But even so, we would still say the laws of gravity are objectively true, even if there is nothing that they would apply to. By the same token, I think it is fair to say that moral laws would still be objectively true, even if there was nothing they applied to.
Furthermore, I’m not sure that’s his point. Objective vs. Subjective morality is less about morality’s objective truth in the absence of appropriate agents, but more about its truth across appropriate agents through time and space.
Not to break Godwin’s Law, but the best and most striking example is this.
If Hitler had won WWII and exterminated or brainwashed everyone on the planet into believing that the Holocaust was a just and righteous act, would the act then be just and righteous?
If morality is objective, the answer is no. Regardless of opinion, morality is binding. Saying the Holocaust was righteous is as incorrect as saying 1 + 1 = 967.
If morality is subjective, the answer is yes, but only so far as morality becomes pretty much a pointless exercise applying human feelings and emotions to scenarios in the guise of something greater.
This is the philosophical morality debate. Personally, objective morality to me seems far more plausible and likely than its negation, and I take this to be a properly basic belief.
How can that be the case if it was from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil that man was forbidden to eat from? — Or do you mean to say that before the fall that man had no distinction from the animals? (If so, why then were none of the animals found to be suitable to helpers of man?)
If there's no Supreme to whom all Authority belongs, maybe… but if there is then moral authority belongs to him and he defines it.
Now, if that authority is unchanging, then so is his standard of morality, and if that be the case then morality is objective.
Maybe not.
If we consider that the son had [and has] a body, and that He is the very essence of God, and that God is not constrained by time… then is is it possible that the image the first Adam was made in was that of the Second?
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