RE: [asa] STATEMENT ON INTELLIGENT DESIGN BY IOWA STATE

The question is can we ascribe a designer to an observed object or entity? Surely, we know of man-made objects and so we can infer from a given object if it could conceivable be made by a nonhuman designer. For instance, anything with life, a baby or animal newborn, even if we know their parents, we can still ask if they can create life per se. Therefore, we can legitimately ask if a nonhuman being created life or else life itself is designed by an Intelligent Designer [read: God the Creator.]

Our fanciest theories or ideas about Nature merely corroborate what we already know of Nature but cannot explain the origin of what existent. Therefore, if to scientific questions we add ontological questions, then we need a metaphysics that, in my opinion, must require the notion of a Creator.

Moorad

________________________________

From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu on behalf of Randy Isaac
Sent: Wed 6/6/2007 10:21 PM
To: asa@calvin.edu
Subject: Re: [asa] STATEMENT ON INTELLIGENT DESIGN BY IOWA STATE

Moorad wrote:

"For natural agents, say humans, the notion of designer can be separated
from that of creator, which is strictly not applicable for humans, since
here design means doing or making. However, for a supernatural agent, the
notions of designer and creation are one and the same. For instance, one
cannot say that an electron is not designed since the possibility of its
creation may obey some already existing, fundamental laws. The latter are
mimicked by quantum electrodynamics, which are only descriptive and not
prescriptive."

The distinction between a creator and a designer isn't always so crisp. Yes,
we can clearly identify the extremes. On one hand there is ex nihilo
creation where something comes into existence from nothing. At the other
extreme is design in the sense of reshaping or rearranging existing matter.
In the middle, it gets fuzzy. Humans can modify matter or even cause matter
to come into existence by inducing radioactive processes. Of course it's not
ex nihilo but a transformation of matter. This is quite different from
reshaping or rearranging matter. In quantum field theory, the creation and
annihilation operators are very interesting and useful. Given the right
conditions, matter/antimatter pairs can be generated. Any of these processes
can be part of a design of a system.

Perhaps the notion of designer and creation for a supernatural agent aren't
so clearly one and the same either. Couldn't a supernatural agent reshape or
rearrange material as easily as creating ex nihilo?

As for the electron's very existence, one can get to the fundamental point
and ask what it means for an elementary particle to exist. The existence of
quite a few of these particles have been inferred from the symmetry of the
field theories. Proof is the observance of a resonance in a cross-section of
some interaction. Doesn't it seem that the notion of particles is our human
creation of a concept to explain interactions around us?

And now that I have written all this, I'm asking myself "so what?" I seem to
have forgotten the point.

Sorry,
Randy

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Received on Thu Jun 7 11:28:16 2007