Re: [asa] ID- has nothing to do with God?

Dear Randy et al,

As to your comment:
> I may be missing something here. If this "intelligent agent" can be either
> natural or supernatural, what is the case for the natural version? Usually
> natural would mean operating through the weak, strong, E&M, and
> gravitational forces. A natural intelligence means that some intelligence
> must have been embodied in a physical form and able to manipulate
> biochemical molecules on a nanotechnoloogy scale. And it would have had to
> do so for the past 3.5 billion years and continue to do so but without
> being detected other than by its end results.

The natural version of an intelligent agent would, of necessity, also be
natural (i.e. in his essence be subject to the same four forces you
mentioned and composed of matter and energy in the form of some
configuration of subatomic particles.) For me, this places Him as part of
the creation and no longer definable as "spirit." Of course, I have a hard
time thinking of an intelligent designer as other than the Judeo-Christian
God of the Bible, so such a definition is unavoidable for me.

Christian philosophers have a hard time conceiving of an intelligent
designer capable of interacting with the creation from a position outside
created space and time. This leads to interesting variations on the
classical atemporal view of God, such as Bill Craig's ASCTAC view.
(Atemporal Sans Creation - Temporal Avec Creation) Bill suggests that an
atemporal God, at the moment of creation, chose to enter that creation.
However, for many this impinges on His immutability.

I do think there is a possible mechanism for interaction between the
atemporal, non-spatial realm and the spatiotemporal creation, however.
Unfortunately, I am not sure yet how we might test my hypothesis. We know
that space and time seem to end at a black hole's singularity. Just as
many scientists believe that "prior" to the big bang singularity, God was
all that existed, so might God be all that exists "beyond" a black hole
singularity. If this same reasoning follows for extremal black holes (i.e.
mini-black holes, microscopic black holes), couldn't God interact with His
creation via the formation of these extremal (Planck scale) black holes,
such that they affected neighboring subatomic particles in such a way as
to guide events in creation?

Best,
RC
------------------------
> As an example of that confusion, the recently published book "Intelligent
> Design 101" contains chapters by various authors, one of which is by Casey
> Luskin on "Finding Intelligent Design in Nature." In his conclusion he
> writes, "Many scientific organizations have rejected intelligent design
> for political reasons by purposefully mischaracterizing it as a
> supernatural explanation that is not testable. The evidence briefly
> outlined here explains that intelligent design is a testable scientific
> hypothesis based upon our understanding of the type of information
> produced when intelligent agents act. Intelligent design does not
> necessarily appeal to the supernatural, but rather appeals to an
> explanatory cause with which we have much observational
> experience--intelligence."
>
> I may be missing something here. If this "intelligent agent" can be either
> natural or supernatural, what is the case for the natural version? Usually
> natural would mean operating through the weak, strong, E&M, and
> gravitational forces. A natural intelligence means that some intelligence
> must have been embodied in a physical form and able to manipulate
> biochemical molecules on a nanotechnoloogy scale. And it would have had to
> do so for the past 3.5 billion years and continue to do so but without
> being detected other than by its end results. But apparently, ruling out
> that possibility constitutes "political reasons by purposefully
> mischaracterizing."
>
> I believe it was in 1999 when Dembski published his book "Intelligent
> Design: The Bridge Between Science and Theology". By being a bridge I
> suppose it can be either or neither or both, depending on the audience and
> the situation.
>
> Randy
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Dehler, Bernie
> Cc: asa@calvin.edu
> Sent: Tuesday, May 20, 2008 4:27 PM
> Subject: [asa] ID- has nothing to do with God?
>
>
> The ID movement is confusing. They go out of their way to claim it has
> nothing to do with religion. and now comes their conference on theology!
> If they aren't a Christian group, how can they speak on theology??? I
> think they lost their agenda. are they floundering now?
>
>
>

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Received on Wed May 21 10:56:43 2008