Re: [asa] Cosmologial vs. Biological Design

*There's a difference between "Given these unexplained factors, it makes
sense to consider the possibility that God is behind them" and "Given these
unexplained factors, I have proved God's existence." There's a difference
between "I find all known scientific explanations for X unsatisfactory and
suspect God did it in a way not following the patterns of scientific laws."
and "X is clearly impossible to explain scientifically and proves that God
must have done it in a way not following the patterns of scientific laws";*
**
Agreed -- but most of the arguments from biological design that I've seen,
including Dembski's and Behe's, don't claim to "prove" God's existence or to
"prove" that God worked outside natural laws in a given instance. They are
all probabilistic arguments, which aim to suggest a rational basis for
belief in a creator / designer, just as the fine tuning argument is a
probabilistic one that suggests it is reasonable to believe in a designer /
creator of the universe.

I'm still failing to see any principled difference between cosmological and
biological design arguments in general. I can see that some particular
biological design arguments, such as irreducible complexity, might have
empirical weaknesses (e.g., the flagellum might not really be an IC
mechanism). But it seems to me that both cosmological and biological design
arguments rely on gaps in scientific knowledge, the probability that such
gaps can be closed with reference to natural laws alone, and human intuition
about teleology; and that both types of arguments are typically presented in
the form of support for justified belief rather than as certain proofs of
God's existence.

I also agree whole-heartedly with the theological point Ted raises from
Irons & Kline. However, I'm not sure that evangelical concordists like
Ross, or evangelical ID theorists like Dembksi, really promote the either-or
fallacy. Most evanglicals who think about it would agree with Irons &
Kline's general point about God's sovereignty. But folks like Ross reject
gradual biological evolution simply as a result of their interpretation of
Genesis 1 and 2 -- "after their kinds" means no macroevolution, and Adam and
Eve must be separately created. It's a hermeneutical, not a theological,
point.

On 10/5/06, David Campbell <pleuronaia@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> The fundamental problem of a god of the gaps is its claim that something
> happened either by "natural" processes or by God, making the two mutually
> exclusive. As such it is not a necessary part of antievolutionary ID, much
> less of fine-tuning, but it is easy for either to fall into that error.
>
> Related to this is the fact that inferring about God from general
> revelation is fraught with problems, not only our sinful tendency to worship
> other things but also the fact that it's not a very useful or clear guide on
> a lot of points. Scripture needs to be the basis of our understanding of
> God. We can then see that both everything that does have a scientific
> explanation and everything that doesn't can be explained at a fundamental
> level as God's work.
>
> In the focus on arguments over whether good natural explanations exist,
> underlying philosophical assumptions are rarely explicit. This keeps the
> real issues concealed, preventing progress in discussion and also making it
> difficult to tell exactly what premises a person is operating under.
>
> ID and young earth advocates typically recognize the god of the gaps as an
> error when put in this way; in fact, I suspect only thoughtless atheists
> would claim such a statement was true. (thoughtless being a noisy subset of
> atheists, not a universal characteristic). However, the frequent "God or
> evolution" arguments made show that antievolutionists often fall into the
> error of god of the gap thinking.
>
> Fine-tuning and morality issues are slightly different in that they are
> not entirely within the realm of science. However, inference about God
> based solely on these is still risky.
>
> There's a difference between "Given these unexplained factors, it makes
> sense to consider the possibility that God is behind them" and "Given these
> unexplained factors, I have proved God's existence." There's a difference
> between "I find all known scientific explanations for X unsatisfactory and
> suspect God did it in a way not following the patterns of scientific laws."
> and "X is clearly impossible to explain scientifically and proves that God
> must have done it in a way not following the patterns of scientific laws";
> even the latter is different from though easily slipping into "Claims that X
> is explicable by scientific laws remove God from the picture."
>
> --
> Dr. David Campbell
> 425 Scientific Collections
> University of Alabama
> "I think of my happy condition, surrounded by acres of clams"
>

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Received on Thu Oct 5 14:59:37 2006