{"id":28092,"date":"2015-06-17T23:45:48","date_gmt":"2015-06-17T22:45:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/theskepticalzone.com\/wp\/?p=28092"},"modified":"2015-06-17T23:45:48","modified_gmt":"2015-06-17T22:45:48","slug":"the-intelligent-design-catch-22","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/theskepticalzone.com\/wp\/the-intelligent-design-catch-22\/","title":{"rendered":"The Intelligent Design Catch-22"},"content":{"rendered":"

\nHerman Reith says that the trouble with the design argument is that “the examples used and the interpretation given them prevents the argument from rising to the metaphysical level…above the order of the physical universe,” so that “it cannot conclude to anything more than the existence of some kind of intelligence and power” within that universe. … Christopher F.J. Martin … avers that “the Being whose existence is revealed to us by the argument from design is not God but the Great Architect of the Deists and Freemasons, an imposter disguised as God.”<\/p>\n

…arguments like Paley’s … cannot in principle get us outside the natural order to a divine intellect of pure actuality but at most to an anthropomorphic demiurge.<\/p>\n

– Edward Feser. On Aristotle, Aquinas, and Paley: A Reply to Marie George\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I may be a bit different from the typical IDist in that I am a huge fan of Edward Feser. His criticism here of ID is that it cannot get you to God.<\/p>\n

What’s more, the modern design argument cannot get you to God even in principle.:<\/p>\n

\nBut the problem is not just that Paley’s designer may be something other than God as classicasl theism understand Him. There is reason to think that Paley’s designer could not be God as classical theism understands Him.<\/p>\n

…Paley’s procedure is to model his designer on human designers. By implication, his designer exercises the same faculty human designers do–he works out design problems, performs calculations, and so forth–but does so with massively greater facility. He is an essentially anthropomorphic designer. And as such it is hard to see how he could be as classical theism says God is — absolutley simple, immutable, eternal, and so forth.<\/p>\n

– Edward Feser, Natural Theology Must Be Founded in Philosophy<\/i>\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So on the one hand we have some critics of ID claiming the problem with ID is that it’s not about God and on the other hand we have critics of ID claiming the problem with ID is that it is about God. Must be nice to be an ID critic!<\/p>\n

For those of you who think that ID really is “about God” why not adopt the approach of Edward Feser?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Herman Reith says that the trouble with the design argument is that “the examples used and the interpretation given them prevents the argument from rising to the metaphysical level…above the order of the physical universe,” so that “it cannot conclude … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1045,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28092","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-intelligent-design"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/theskepticalzone.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28092","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/theskepticalzone.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/theskepticalzone.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/theskepticalzone.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1045"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/theskepticalzone.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28092"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/theskepticalzone.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28092\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/theskepticalzone.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28092"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/theskepticalzone.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28092"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/theskepticalzone.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28092"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}