Robert Koons and Logan Paul Gage have a defense of ID uploaded, titled St. Thomas Aquinas on Intelligent Design. The article is intended to address specifically theist criticism against ID and to show that ID is perfectly compatible with Thomistic metaphysics.
Up front, on the first page, the critics are identified by name. On the second page, the critical theses have been laid out. This is a very promising straightforward start. Unfortunately, the rest is downhill. While much of the criticism is accurately represented, some of it is not, and the defense with its misguided appeal to science misses crucial points of the criticism. And way too much of the defense simply reiterates ID slogans without actually defending them. And, to top it all, Aquinas is falsely interpreted to mean what he could not have meant. The last point is not too concerning though. Aquinas inevitably has that role in the circles that self-identify as Thomistic, which happens to include both ID critics and advocates.
Thomistic defense of ID by Koons and Gage
My interest was in finding an actual Thomistic or Scholastic defense of ID. Therefore I will ignore most of the mere reiteration of ID talking points in the article, such as appeals to science that cannot convince anyone but those already converted to the ID cause and that don’t really address what theist critics criticize about ID. Spoiler: That’s the bulk of the article.
However, I found what I was looking for: Aquinas’ doctrine of exemplar causation. It’s represented in the article as follows.
An exemplar cause is a type of formal cause—a sort of blueprint; the idea according to which something is organized. For Thomas, these ideas exist separately from the things they cause. For instance, if a boy is going to build a soap-box derby car, the idea in his mind is separate from the form of the car; yet the car’s form expresses the idea, or exemplar cause, in the boy’s mind. Herein lies the important point: for Thomas, a creature’s form comes from a similar form in the divine intellect. In other words, the cause of each species’ form is extrinsic. In fact, writes Thomas, “God is the first exemplar cause of all things” (p. 84-85 = p. 6-7 of the pdf)
The article says that the critics fail to mention this doctrine. That’s true. As far as I have followed the debate, exemplar causation has been mentioned only once by an ID critic in the debate, namely by Edward Feser (ID critic) when he says Vincent Torley’s (ID apologist) understanding of it is “worse than tenuous”. The rest of the mentions of exemplar causes I have seen in the debate are employed by the defenders of ID.
However, the problem with this defense is that it remains metaphysical and never touches on the physics and biology of design that ID is supposed to be about. Appeal to exemplar causes, while being relevant to Thomistic understanding of design, has no direct relevance to ID as an empirical theory whose mission is to measurably detect stuff. At least no advocate ever managed to clarify the connection to me and this article is no exception.
The real thrust of criticism
The thrust of theist criticism against ID is this: Teleology is beyond the empirical world. It cannot be measured or detected as a cause of this or that. Formal causes do not create or generate things and events, but rather “inform” things (with purpose, i.e. function, both intrinsic, special and contextual; it’s not a separately examinable part or appendage, like souls are often imagined to be separable ghosts). For example, a formal cause does not cause a dog to be, but rather determines what a dog is, what qualifies as a (natural or normal) dog and what doesn’t. The thrust of theist criticism against ID is meant to point out this category error between empirical and unempirical causation. The latter (namely, unempirical causation in Aristotelian metaphysics) would likely correspond to a “category” or “taxonomy” in scientific terminology. As long as ID fails to comply with the scientific terminology, it is doomed to remain a pseudoscience. And as long as ID trivializes Scholastic metaphysics, assuming empiricism where there is none, it is rightly criticized by Thomists and Scholastics.
This crucial criticism is sadly misrepresented in the article, sometimes subtly, sometimes grossly. For example, the article complains about the critics’ obsession with secondary causation (as distinguished from direct causation by God whereas, as rightly pointed out in the article, Thomas has no problem with direct causation) and aversion to God’s intervention and miracles. In reality, critics have no such obsessions and aversions. Instead, the criticism is that God’s direct intervention and miracles remain empirically undetectable after the fact. God’s intervention is indistinguishable from natural causes, because God is the author of natural causation. Intervention or miracles would be no different from natural causes, because God’s action is a single timeless act (a.k.a. pure actuality): When God acts, the outcome is most natural, nature itself.
Take a particular miracle such as raising Lazarus from the dead. After the raising, would modern physicians be able determine after examination, “Yup, God did it.” or “This is caused by design, not by natural causes”? No. There would be no empirical signs of miraculous intervention after the fact. And, incidentally, this is not how the Catholic Church goes about determining miracles. Yet this is how ID apparently proposes to proceed.
After all this, the article turns and says “ID is a very minimal claim which does not require intervention.” (p. 85 = p. 7 in the pdf) Then why all that accusation of critics with their obsessions and aversions concerning the matter?
Where did ID go this wrong?
There are other fundamental problems with ID theory that become evident in the article, mainly conceptual. For example, it’s never clear what is meant by “design”. Is it a cause or an effect? At one point, Behe is quoted definitionally, “Design is simply the purposeful arrangement of parts” and Dembski is claimed to have pointed out that Paley “made no appeal to miracles in the production of design.” (p. 85-86) So, if design is a production and an arrangement, it seems to be more like an effect. Yet there’s the rampant “caused by design” assertion in the ID community as we know it (from UD, originally Dembski’s forum). The article does not mention it. Dembski uses (at UD: Resources/ID defined) the term “intelligent cause” which is supposed to “best explain” “certain features of the universe and of living things” (the same as “design”?) while the relation between design and intelligence is never explained. That’s a problem created by, or at least amplified by, Dembski, I’d say.
Another is the term “irreducible complexity”. The article defends the term citing Aquinas.
Contrary to the claims of Feser (2010, 154–155), the presence of complexity is relevant to Aquinas’s argument for design:… It is impossible for things contrary and discordant to fall into one harmo-
nious order always or for the most part, except under some one guidance… (p. 86, underline in the original)
Now, does everybody agree with the implication that “one harmonious order” means something even remotely akin to “complexity”? Didn’t think so. The article is full of such misapplied quotes from Aquinas. They can be hunted for fun when reading. “Complexity” is like a square peg to a round hole when it comes to Scholastic metaphysics with its doctrine of divine simplicity. This is a problem invented by Behe.
Conclusion
The conclusion of the article says that “The Thomistic critics of ID understand neither ID nor the heart of Darwinian evolution… ID is not a competing metaphysical system for the simple reason that it is not a metaphysical system.” (p. 91-92 = p. 13-14 in the pdf) I’d say that if ID can be defended by means of Thomist metaphysics, then it must be a metaphysical system, except that it demonstrably cannot be defended by means of Thomist metaphysics, so it’s evidently something else. My conclusion is that ID is indefensible due to conceptual inconsistencies stemming from the fact that its advocates and apologists never figured out whether it’s a metaphysics or a science. Unfortunately, pace KN, metaphysics and science are two distinct worlds and need to be sorted out before engaging in either one.
Awesome! Where are the proponents of Aquianas’s design argument and why aren’t they here at TSZ where they are so sorely needed?
Why ought complexity be irrelevant? Would the ID movement be better served to focus on simplicity?
I noticed those answers as soon as you posted them. Same problem as always.
If you have an answer to the outstanding ID problems in this thread, such as why I am being invited to reach the conclusion “Eureka! Designed!” before I do anything else (like, before I measure or detect or experiment anything), give it a go.
Simplicity is the natural metaphysical conclusion logico-philosophically. Everybody knows that: Plato, Plotinus, Aristotle, Dharmakirti, Nagarjuna, Maimonides, Avicenna, Ghazali, Shankaracharya, Ramanuja, etc.
Feser has beaten ID to death from his A-T perspective. The Koons’ article (which the OP is about) is a straw in the stack of the debate. Read up http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2011/03/thomism-versus-design-argument.html (of course, we both know you already have and you are just playing Mung here)
Mung is the weightiest entity at TSZ. There are graphs about it every year, so it’s true.
“Where are the proponents of Aquianas’s [sic] design argument and why aren’t they here at TSZ where they are so sorely needed?”
Good Lord, are you blind & deaf not knowing that while most Abrahamic theists accept we live in a created (designed) world – don’t force us to us your STAINED but still preferred LANGUAGE – only fundamentalism-inspired Christian morons would defend design-fetish IDist ideology here at TSZ or anywhere else?
There is almost nothing to gain but disrepute or no repute (ask vjtorley) and not a soul here that would stand for accounting. Drenched in argument-filled atheist cynicism and arrogance, TSZ can’t even attract back it’s cognitive-apostate ‘Mother’!
Let me show my laziness and ignorance, and ask you all to do my work for me. If one is not a Catholic or someone else who thinks that Thomas Aquinas’s arguments are authoritative, but instead a working biologist who is trying to model nature and natural processes, does one need to concern oneself with this thread? Why?
I realize that we all have philosophical viewpoints on the world, but I suspect that whatever mine might be described as, it wouldn’t involve any reference to Saint Thomas Aquinas (or Saint anybody). So need I worry about having his approval?
You personally need to. Not because of Aquinas or Catholicism or theism, but because it gives you a dissection of the very bowels of ID, which you are an expert critic of. The article I link to in the OP may be nauseating and perplexing, but it’s recommended reading because it’s a look under the skin of ID.
A wise man once said
Aquinas is the problem and the Reformation was the solution. 😉
peace
quote:
Take a particular miracle such as raising Lazarus from the dead. After the raising, would modern physicians be able determine after examination, “Yup, God did it.” or “This is caused by design, not by natural causes”?
end quote:
Heck yes. as long as they weren’t unnecessarily shackled by methodological naturalism
peace
Hi Erik,
Back again. Instead of writing one very long post, I’ll try to address your questions separately. You write:
For my part, I’m happy with colewd’s answer: “Design detection simply means observing something and inferring if its designed.” The “something” which is observed here is an arrangement of matter – i.e. a pattern.
You ask what Intelligent Design is meant to be contrasted with. Why not go to the official definition: “The theory of intelligent design (ID) holds that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause rather than an undirected process such as natural selection… In a broader sense, Intelligent Design is simply the science of design detection — how to recognize patterns arranged by an intelligent cause for a purpose.”
In other words, Intelligent Design is about detecting arrangements of matter [patterns] that can be shown by scientific methods to have been planned, as opposed to arrangements of matter that either were not planned, or cannot be shown by scientific methods to have been planned. Simple as that.
Most Intelligent Design advocates would agree with the claim that God created and designed every kind of thing in Nature. The question is: could this claim be demonstrated scientifically? No. You’d need metaphysics to support a claim like that. Unfortunately, metaphysics is an area where the experts can’t agree on even the most basic questions – e.g. are there substances? (A Humean would say no.) However, there could (in principle) be scientific evidence for the claim that some intelligent agent designed some structures in Nature.
You also write:
Yeah, you do. It so happens that three very prominent scientists – all atheists – have come out in support of the claim that (i) Intelligent Design is a scientific hypothesis (even they happen to think if it’s a bad one), and (ii) miracles are scientifically detectable, in principle, which means that there could be scientific evidence for the supernatural. None of them happens to think that there is any, at the present time, but that’s beside the point. They’d be impressed with a videotape purporting to show a miracle, and they’d be even more impressed with lots of videos of either the same event or similar events.
In a November 8, 2012 post entitled, Shermer and I disagree on the supernatural, Professor Jerry Coyne, who is an evolutionary biologist and a world authority on speciation, wrote:
What’s more, Professor Coyne admits, in another post titled, Ken Ham vs. Dawkins: On the nature of science and physical law (February 25, 2015), that scientific claims do not even need to be replicable – they just need to be sufficiently striking:
Professor Coyne is not alone in his rejection of dogmatic methodological naturalism. The New Atheist physicist Sean Carroll has candidly acknowledged that there is a possibility, in principle, that science could one day decide in favor of the miraculous, in an essay refreshingly free from dogmatism, entitled, Is Dark Matter Supernatural? (Discover magazine, November 1, 2010):
There is much wisdom in Carroll’s words. Science cannot let itself be imprisoned by metaphysical dogmas.
And finally, I’d like to quote from Professor Larry Moran, a prominent biochemist and evolution defender. In a post titled, UK bans teaching of creationism (June 25, 2015), he acknowledged that Intelligent Design is a scientific hypothesis which he happens to regard as very bad and unsupported by the evidence:
Finally, I should point out that Intelligent Design does not require miracles, in order to support a design inference. But I’m sure you already knew that. Cheers.
If you have time and interest, would you mind taking a look at the Wikipedia article on Dharmakirti? I ask because I’d never heard of him, and wanted to find out more. What I found in that article is fascinating to me, so if it’s a reliable interpretation of Dharmakirti’s thought, then I’d certainly want to add him to my reading list!
No, I don’t think so. We’re not talking here about any empirical deficiencies in ID, but rather whether it’s compatible with Thomistic metaphysics. It’s a very specific focus!
quote:
Who can but confess that as there are tools of all sorts and sizes in the shop of Providence, so there is a most skillful hand that uses them, and that they could no more produce such effects of themselves than the axe, saw, or chisel can cut or carve a rough log into a beautiful figure without the hand of a skillful artificer
end quote:
John Flavel in The Mystery of Providence
peace
Hi Erik,
I just wrote a post in reply to the scientific points you raised, but unfortunately, it’s not up yet. I’m not sure why. While we’re waiting, let me briefly respond to some of your other statements. You write:
I’m glad we’ve established that you’re not an expert on Aristotelianism or Thomism, although it seems you have an interest in Indian philosophy (which is a fascinating field in its own right). In fact, there are hundreds of Aristotelian-Thomistic academics all around the world, but only a handful have expressed any opinions on Intelligent Design – whether for or against it. There is currently no consensus on the subject in A-T circles. By the way, Robert Koons, an ID supporter who describes himself as an analytical Thomist, is a professor of Philosophy at the University of Texas (UT), noted for his contribution to metaphysics and philosophical logic. And Professor Alexander Pruss, another analytical Thomist who is also Professor of Philosophy and the Co-Director of Graduate Studies in Philosophy at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, writes, “On the compatibility between Thomism and ID, the answer is surely positive.” These are not people to be sneezed at.
Regarding Edward Feser (who, by the way, is an Associate Professor), you write:
I would also agree that there is a distinction between Aquinas’ Fifth Way (an argument from the mere existence of regularities in Nature) and Paley’s design argument (which has to do with the existence of what he calls “contrivances” in Nature – i.e. parts working together to produce an effect), but as I explained above, Aquinas also made subsidiary arguments in his writings (e.g. his argument with regard to the origin of “perfect” animals), which bear strong similarities to subsequent arguments made by Robert Boyle and William Paley.
In an effort to contrast his theological position with Paley’s, Feser also misconstrues Paley’s argument for a Designer as an inductive, probabilistic argument (see his 2009 book, Aquinas), when in fact, Paley himself declares that he intended his argument to be a deductive, demonstrative argument. (Modern ID advocates present their argument as an abductive argument, but the term “abductive” hadn’t been coined in Paley’s day.)
Feser’s assertions about Paley can be readily shown to be false, as I argued in the following posts of mine on Uncommon Descent, in December 2012 and January 2013:
Paley’s argument from design: Did Hume refute it, and is it an argument from analogy?
Was Paley a mechanist?
Was Paley a classical theist, and does his design argument lead us to a false God?
Unfortunately, Feser has continued to propagate his mistaken construal of Paley’s views in his article, “Between Aristotle and William Paley: Aquinas’s Fifth Way” in Nova et Vetera, vol. 11, no. 3 (Summer 2013), pp. 707-749. Although the article itself is quite long (43 pages) and contains extensive, paragraph-length quotations from the writings of such thinkers as Aristotle, Aquinas and Ockham, the section devoted to Paley’s views (pp. 722-723) is very short, and the handful of quotes from Paley are fragmentary, each consisting of no more than a few words. They don’t address my evidence.
You also write:
That’s demonstrably false. Feser was still responding to me on the subject of Intelligent Design as late as May 2011. My five-part series on St. Thomas Aquinas and Intelligent Design was written in October 2010, and I emailed Feser to let him know that I had posted it. Feser failed to engage, for whatever reason (he is, after all, a busy man).
Finally, with respect to the phrase, “caused by design,” you cited just two Uncommon Descent posts (one in 2011, one in 2015) by Kairosfocus, where he uses this phrase in comments he makes (not in his OPs). Kairosfocus, as you are well aware, has written tens of thousands of posts on Uncommon Descent. So when you say, “He repeats it over and over, with variations,” I have to call you out on that point.
Let’s look at what he says. He speaks of “trillions of cases known to be routinely caused by design” (he’s talking about FSCO/I) and he goes on, “The ONLY actually observed cause is design, intelligently directed configuration. Until factors of blind chance and necessity demonstrate such capability, they are not even serious candidates.” Notice that he speaks of design not as a mere configuration (which would be absurd), but as “intelligently directed configuration,” as opposed to factors such as blind chance and necessity. As far as I can tell, what he’s saying here is that functional specified complexity [exceeding 500 bits] has only one known cause in Nature: intelligent direction, which makes the configuration to be the way it is.
Finally, I’m perfectly well aware that ID doesn’t require miracles, but neither does it rule them out. If there were scientific evidence of a miracle, ID proponents would certainly be interested – as would many atheistic scientists. I have written more about this point in my other post (which should be up soon). Cheers.
I am not seeing it anywhere. I looked at drafts, pending, etc. And there’s nothing recent with your name that is newer than your “problem of evil” post.
Spam filter due to embedded links?
The same thing happened to his post yesterday. It appeared in the thread after a post of mine appeared though his was written earlier.
Yes, that’s where it was.
Once the science has been refuted, having to do so over and over again just gets boring.
And that’s why they pay me the big bucks!
Not even Saints Nicholas, Luke, and Augustine, the patron saints of beer?
Not an expert and not an adherent, but familiar enough to know it’s not the thing I’d become an adherent of. Anyway, there are universal common points to classical theist Scholastic tradition all over the world (which I am an adherent of) and those are the points I will emphasize.
Well, in his own blog, Feser has a series of posts on ID mentioning you around 2010 and 2011 and then again in 2014, so your complaint that he hasn’t replied to you does not quite hold. He apparently replied to his own satisfaction and, since he’s the expert on A-T philosophy insofar as you two are concerned, that’s what matters.
Whereas over at UD, you have a very copious series of posts mentioning Feser at a fairly steady pace in 2010-2015. Nobody can keep up with those series.
Moreover, don’t you think that the manner of quoting, as indicated in the OP, would give a fair reason not to engage with those who defend ID by appeal to Aquinas? In the OP, the example is Aquinas’ “one harmonious order” which is interpreted by Koons as support for IDist “complexity”. First, on the face of it, “one harmonious order” does not mean “complexity”. Second, “complexity” as a mark of intelligence is not defensible by appealing to any representative of the Scholastic tradition, because divine simplicity is the fundamental metaphysical principle. When things go against the fundamental principles, then they are incompatible with the tradition. I found Koons’ article full of such inapplicable quotes of Aquinas and I’m not surprised if Feser found the same in your posts.
And I have to call you out on that those comments are stray or unrepresentative. He used the phrase in discussion with me and it jumped out at me as the grossest misuse of semantics. And this is just the tip of the iceberg. He’s not the only one and this is not the only phrase.
Let’s look for “cause is design”. 181 results on my end. Different posters, among them gpuccio, an eminent calculator of FIASCO when I was participating over there. Let’s not look for more examples. It’s rampant.
Yes, Martin Luther had such an open and tolerant view of the Jews.
The fact of the matter is that, having encountered thousands of recipients of the Ph.D., I know of only one who has never published a scholarly paper. The intelligent-design movement tacitly admitted to intellectual bankruptcy when it began promoting a mere graduate as a public intellectual.
Surprise, surprise! Dickless wants to compare penis lengths.
I think you have made an incorrect inference. If all tables have four legs and this dog has four legs, how can we NOT conclude that this dog is a table? The set of all things we can say show “design” in some way, is essentially infinite. The set of all known processes that can produce designs is finite.
And so we see in these threads, endlessly, that the ONLY way to infer a purposeful design process by looking at any object is actually to ASSERT that there must have been such a process. The conclusion comes first, and the rationalization of that conclusion is an afterthought. And so, also endlessly, we ask what tests we can apply to distinguish purposefully designed objects from those not purposefully designed, and the answer always comes back the same: the test is to JUST LOOK! Obviously this thing is designed, I SAID so!
Evolution is not doubted because it’s misrepresented or misunderstood or whatever. Instead, evolution is pre-rejected because it purports to explain much about life without resorting to anyone’s god. THEREFORE it must be wrong, THEREFORE we must locate the error in our theory. And from that point, we are pretty much obliged to misrepresent the theory in order to INSERT error as necessary to restore that god.
I suggest that we must start with the verb. Which means, we presume nothing is purposefully designed UNLESS we can identify the design process involved (if any), as a first step in determining if there is a purpose involved in that process. In this way we can work forward successfully. We can’t work backwards, from object to process. Attempts to do so devolve into assertions of magic poofers.
They are paying you twice as much as they are paying me.
Depends on the structure of your belief. Most people hold to “Tables (tend to) have four legs” and not to something like “If it has four legs, it must be a table”.
And they stem from multiple simultaneous causes, invariably. It’s a total mystery what logical structure ID folk’s “design inference” has.
Neil Rickert,
Vince is referring to a comment, now published, that was held in moderation. It had a lot of links and that pushed it into moderation
Flint,
If we define design as the purposeful arrangement of parts that perform a function:
and you go around your house and list the objects that are designed how many errors in detection do you think you will make? If the answer is less than 1% do you think you are a pretty good design detector?
Flint,
Because legs are a subset of both objects, dog and table. If we say they both are made of atoms that would be true and inclusive of all known objects in the universe.
If you conclude the atom is designed then this appears to be true.
Convenient for ID.
Something, however, that needs to be demonstrated (and how are you going to show “purpose” without observing any designer known to purposefully make organisms?), not merely assumed. That’s why ID as a whole is not and cannot be science, it isn’t interested in subjecting its presumption that life was designed to an honest test.
It merely wants to define what is observed about life as “design.” Completely unscientific.
Glen Davidson
Archaeological evidence is clear that there was beer long before there were these patron saints. So they are unnecessary add-ons, except perhaps in the case of Christmas Ale.
We could also define it as the arrangement of elements of a thing produced by or the result of a process.
And I strike him from my list. I misremembered Chandrakirti.
Feser has a post on Dharmakirti and Maimonides https://edwardfeser.blogspot.com.ee/2014/03/dharmakirti-and-maimonides-on-divine.html
Martin Luther was the problem and the Anabaptists were the solution 😉
More accurately excessive deference to the opinions of men is the problem and Jesus is the solution 😉
peace
Not really. The logical structure is simple:
All purposeful design processes produce designs
This is a design
Therefore, it was produced by a purposeful design process.
See, the logic is exactly like this:
All water runs downhill
This substance runs downhill
Therefore, this substance is water!
Now, sometimes the ID folks “repair” this logical error by saying:
ONLY purposeful design processes produce designs.
This is a design.
Therefore, it was produced by a purposeful process.
Here, the ID person has corrected the logical error by making a factual error, since the first postulate is demonstrably false.
But unfortunately, your definition includes the conclusion you wish to investigate. Here we have something that seems designed. Now, IS IT designed? Sure, if we DEFINE design as being purposeful. But in that case, the answer is ALWAYS yes, it’s purposeful. You defined it that way, you didn’t discover that.
I’m probably about as good as most people in identifying as human designs, things I know humans designed around the house. But if I were suddenly transported to an alien world, how good a design detector could I be? My error rate would probably run about 50% (that is, random guessing). It’s really hard to detect purposeful design if you do not smuggle in either a knowledge of the design process, or a presumption of design as the foregone conclusion.
Unfortunately, this is simply your opinion. You have assigned this opinion the value of Absolutely True, but it’s still only your opinion. Your thinking is still circular.
But how can anyone can be happy with that answer? I know what inference is and that’s how I know it doesn’t fit into that sentence. If “design detection” means luring the credulous with words like “infer” and “detect” to give them the impression that there’s something scientific going on, then I don’t want to be part of it.
The official definition is no different from the other culprits. Let’s try this part today: “certain features of the universe and of living things”. Which certain features are those? Is there a list?
Some structures such as? Some intelligent agent such as? Evidence such as?
(i) Hypothesis with no method going for it, I can grant this also.
(ii) They say the word “miracle” but are you sure they mean the same thing by it as you do? Atheists use the word “God” too, but it normally turns out they don’t mean what theists mean by the word. Such as lawyers in “act of God” or physicists in “God particle”. This is an aspect how miracle detection is scientifically ridiculous. It requires a rigorous definition and IDists are not known for rigorous definitions. While those who have a rigorous definition of miracle, namely theologians, have no common language with scientists.
Or would you leave it to the metaphysically drifty scientists to define? For example you quote Sean Carroll, “Let’s imagine that there really were some sort of miraculous component to existence…” So, existence is made of components, among them a miraculous component. Put the components together and, voila, existence. Take them apart and no existence anymore. Let’s go home, no existence here today.
More Sean Carroll, “…lawful, “natural” explanations are certainly simpler — they involve fewer metaphysical categories, and better-behaved ones at that — and correspondingly preferred, all things being equal, to supernatural ones.” So, according to Carroll, the distinctive hallmark of the miraculous component of existence would be that it’s not well-behaved. Don’t we see this in our real lives with everything that involves will, intention, consciousness and mind? Sometimes you wake up nice and dandy to go to work, sometimes you sleep in. Sometimes you brilliantly run up the stairs like a ninja, sometimes you stumble on the flat floor. And all that is not “natural”, according to Carroll? Not a desirable metaphysical category, even though part of his everyday experience?
In reality, matter behaves “lawfully” precisely because it doesn’t behave at all. It only drifts inertly under the impulses given to it, whereas all the impulses to it come from the will, intention and consciousness “component” of existence. That “component” explains why anything exists at all.
Why would I want to? One could do linguistic analysis of the ’empirically recorded’ text or audio. So what? Yada, yada with your cloudy vengeance.
[ETA: Elevate into personhood beyond the mere words themselves (what the phil-lol-o-gist studies) and ‘Final Cause’ is simply a discussion involving human ‘reflexivity.’ It’s a word you might want to unpack and explore by reading others in SSH.]
On the path of oneness with himself instead? Referring only to his personal attraction to them, the question of truth regarding the Abrahamic religions seems to be a non-starter for Erik. Not interested in history or reality, just wordplay?
So my question remains: What kind of ‘theist’ are you, Erik? Saying what you aren’t is only apophatic.
Answering Vincent with “Indian philosophy, privately” is slightly more specific. So are you a Hindu? A Sikh? There are Indian Muslims of course too. It obviously makes a difference if your worldview involves a deity, many deities or none.
The IDists, for all of their ‘ugly revolution’ fails and horrible PR games, not to mention having no coherent strictly natural scientific program of any success, still have a hedgehog argument against the likes of the pluralist nonsense being spewed here. They accept the same argument that all monotheists, including Baha’is accept, but which apparently you do not, Erik, i.e. that the world was created by –the Creator–. Do you reject that or accept it too?
Better stop kissing KNs soft spots then – he’s put himself on truth-ignore, worship science + consume knowledge together. ; )
“(i) Hypothesis with no method going for it, I can grant this also.”
Their ‘scientific theology’ method is similar to Foucault’s: “Design (power) is everywhere if you look for it.” It’s religious apologetics.
I missed Gregory. Never fails to bring a smile. 🙂
Careful though, you might have to beg Patrick to let you back in if Neil and Alan can agree your comments amount to spam.
Mung,
Thanks. Don’t worry, I’m not back. Just diversion from deadlines.
This place lives & dies as a mirror of Uncommon Descent. That place is a cess pool. And this place is a hive of anti-theists, mainly atheists who are so stuck fighting with IDists that they would throw out huge swathes of ‘design thinking’ around them to avoid the Discovery circus.
You apparently feed Discovery Institute with your wallet, Mung; that never fails to show where your conspiratorial values lie.
Deductive certainty is great! So why are none of the “skeptics” here convinced? Does it really matter that the Thomists have a better argument, one that cannot possibly fail to be true, if no one is actually convinced?
Are all the atheists here simply blind?
If something is metaphysically impossible, doesn’t it follow that it is also improbable? Thomists appear to be unaware that there’s another hypothesis on the table these days, unless they are theistic evolutionists, in which case they just kowtow to the current consensus. And what would Aquinas say about that?
Well, don’t be a complete stranger then.
Worse. I found out that my company does matching funds!
Pat on the head, mung. He would tell you to drop IDism. He might challenge you to make a coherent book report of the top 10 ‘theistic evolution’ arguments. It’s doubtful you could muster the strength to do that, but perhaps medicine for the IDist Seattle ‘WOO’ you’ve been consuming for years can be found among non-fanatic, non-fundamentalist theists?
“kowtow to current consensus”. Such courage coming from the non-academic! Just sounds like anti-intellectual O’Leary. Vacuous. Disrespect. That’s IDism. 🙁
Surely there’s no better place for your money than among your intellectual, courageous heroes at the Discovery Institute. But hey, you’re buying skeptic books here too ; )
The money got flung by mung peddling IDism like tasty chocolate dung
Flint,
I don’t think you would need to know the design process in order to determine functional design. All you need to understand is the function. Yes, if you were on another planet it might take longer to understand the function but once you understand widget x controls widget y you know that widget x was designed. The parts of widget x were arranged to control widget y.
Could it possibly be that the Thomists have made an error, namely assuming their conclusion and defining the evidence as dispositive? I wonder what the Thomists would make of a watershed. It’s definitely complex, it’s clearly functional, it’s plainly end-directed (it gets the water to the ocean). Can we therefore be absolutely certain that all watersheds have an intelligent cause? Could it be possible that watersheds are simply side-effects of the shape of the landscape, rainfall, and gravity?
I find it hard to accept that watersheds are impossible, or even implausible.
So if widget x (evaporation) controls widget y (rainfall), and we understand this function, we can therefore conclude that evaporation was designed? Are you saying that there is no need to understand the mechanics of evaporation to know that the purpose of evaporation is rainfall?
Come to think of it, historically many human cultures have attributed rainfall to divine whim, and have developed elaborate rituals to bribe the divine to produce needed rain. So maybe you’re right, and there is no need to understand how evaporation works to conclude the divinity of rainfall. Many cultures have.
Flint,
Evaporation is a widget? 🙂 Again, an arrangement of parts that perform a function.
Sun and water and atmosphere