Re: [asa] Cosmologial vs. Biological Design

Thanks Moorad. These two quotes from that article are particularly
interesting:

The anthropic principle is an observation, not an explanation. To believe
otherwise is to believe that our emergence at a late date in the universe is
what forced the constants to be set as they are at the beginning. If you
believe that, you are a creationist.

And:

We will soon learn a lot. Over the next decade, new facilities will come on
line that will allow accelerator experiments at much higher energies. New
non-accelerator experiments will be done on the ground, under the ground,
and in space. One can hope for new clues that are less subtle than those we
have so far that do not fit the standard model. After all, the Hebrews after
their escape from Egypt wandered in the desert for 40 years before finding
the promised land. It is only a bit more than 30 since the solidification of
the standard model.

So, we are *all* creationist God of the gappers, who lack adequate faith in
human capacity and science.

On 10/4/06, Alexanian, Moorad <alexanian@uncw.edu> wrote:

> Interesting article in Physics Today.
> http://www.physicstoday.org/vol-59/iss-10/p8.html
>
> "Theory in particle physics: Theological speculation versus practical
> knowledge" by Burton Richter
>
> Moorad
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> *From:* asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu] *On
> Behalf Of *Iain Strachan
> *Sent:* Wednesday, October 04, 2006 11:31 AM
> *To:* David Opderbeck
> *Cc:* asa@calvin.edu
> *Subject:* Re: [asa] Cosmologial vs. Biological Design
>
>
>
> I can have a stab at one of your questions.
>
> As regards "cosmological design", the problem is that the physical
> constants are just "given" numbers tha happen to have the values we observe,
> and those values appear to be very precisely chosen to make anything
> interesting at all happen in the universe. There is nothing in physics that
> attempts to explain how those numbers got to have those values - they are
> just empirically observed parameters. With biology, it is different,
> because evolution is an explanatory process that shows how complex objects
> could have built up from something simpler by a series of small steps. ID
> critics will say that it is incredibly unlikely for all these elements (of
> an irreducibly complex system) to come together at once. But an
> evolutionist would be able to counter that we just haven't imagined the
> steps that were taken to reach the final product. However the choosing of
> physical constants isn't a stepwise process - they really did all come
> together at once and haven't changed since the Big Bang.
>
> The emergence of the moral law is on more tricky ground, and Collins could
> perhaps be accused of God of the Gaps here. I guess one answer could be
> that it doesn't actually give us any advantage naturalistically because we
> all continually break it & our conscience tells us when we obey and when we
> break. See Romans 2:14-15:
>
> 14(Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things
> required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not
> have the law, 15 since they show that the requirements of the law are
> written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their
> thoughts now accusing, now even defending them.)
>
> Iain
>
> On 10/4/06, *David Opderbeck* < dopderbeck@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> After reading Francis Collins' new book, and seeing some of the reviews of
> it, I'm trying to understand the distinction he apparently makes between
> cosmological/moral and biological design argments. On the one hand, he says
> the appearance of fine tuning, the emergence of mind and reason in humans,
> and the human moral sense are not explainable only by naturalistic causes,
> and support belief in a creator-God. On the other hand, he says that
> arguments from the appearance in design in biology are merely worthless
> God-of-the-gaps arguments.
>
>
> I can't see the principled distinction here. In fact, the argument from
> human mind, reason and the moral sense is a type of biological gap
> argument.
>
>
> I suppose the cosmological/moral arguments can be seen as teleological.
> The point is not so much that there are gaps in our understanding of how
> naturalistic processes alone could result in the finely-tuned cosmological
> constant or in the emergence of human mind and morality, but that, even if
> we were to understand all those naturalistic processes completely, the
> extraordinarily low probability of how they played out suggests an
> intelligent purpose beyond mere chance. But the same could be said of
> biological design arguments such as the argument from irreducible
> complexity. And even the probabilistic-teleological argument itself is a
> sort of gap argument -- we can't conceive of how something of such a low
> probability could have occurred in nature, so we fill in our inability to
> grasp that happenstance with God.
>
>
> I also don't understand Collins' criticism of some ID / design /
> OEC arguments on the basis that they present an inept designer who was
> forced to repeatedly intervene in the creation. The same can be said of any
> TE view that retains any concept of God as a sovereign creator. If God
> sovereignly superintended ordinary evolution, then he repeatedly and
> constantly "intervened" (and still "intervenes") in the creation, making
> myriad trial-and-error adjustments, arguably at great cost in terms of
> "wasted" organisms.
>
>
> The answer to this criticism of TE, of course, is that God is perfectly
> good, wise and knowing as well as perfectly sovereign, that his direction of
> evolution was fully in accordance with His goodness, wisdom, and
> foreknowledge, and that it accomplished exactly the purposes He intended,
> even if we as humans don't always fully understand them. But that same
> answer applies to Collins' criticism of the "meddling" ID God. There's no
> reason to assume God was "fixing" some kind of "mistake" if He intervened in
> the creation apart from the working of natural laws. His intevention is
> equally consistent with a perfectly good, wise, previously known and
> established plan by a sovereign creator-God. (Likewise, the same criticism
> and answer applies to criticisms of the Atonement -- why did God have to
> "fix" human sin by becoming incarnate and dying on a cross?) (The other
> answer to this criticism is open theism, which Collins doesn't seem to
> espouse. But again, that would equally be an answer in the case of an ID /
> OEC paradigm).
>
>
> So what am I missing?
>
>
>
>
> --
> -----------
> After the game, the King and the pawn go back in the same box.
>
> - Italian Proverb
> -----------
>

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Received on Wed Oct 4 12:30:22 2006