>If I understand your comments in this post, you are saying that matter has
>creaturely properties which are not fully determined by the laws of nature
>and the universal constants. If this is so, is there any way to ever be
>able to identify the existence of such properties scientifically or are we
>to just base our belief on such properties on metaphysics?
1. My emphasis is more on capabilities than on properties, although these are
not wholly independent.
2. We may be using the term "law" in different ways. I find this legal
metaphor -- laws of nature -- quite restricting for talking about the
capabilities of the various 'creatures' (members of the Creation, whether
animate or inanimate) that comprise the Creation. How many creaturely
capabiliities are expressible in "law" form. Some very important ones, to be
sure, but perhaps only a small minority. I think we have only begun to
realize how gifted the Creation is with capabilities for actualizing its
potentialities for form and structure, for organization and transformation,
etc.
3. What I have long found problematic about the ID strategy is its tendency to
move too quickly from "we don't understand how X may have come to be formed"
to "X's form must have been imposed on it by some extranatural agent."
Cordially,
Howard