Re: [asa] ID/Miracles/Design

Dick Fischer's reply to my post appears to me to be more dogmatic than conversational. I'll comment on a few things:

DF: "Strict naturalists" do not see "some sort of intelligence at work." Natural evolution is totally natural whether you are a born-again believer or a non-believer.

Dick, Michael Denton is a strict naturalist. I can point out passages in *Nature's Destiny* if you don't believe me. Denton sees some sort of intelligence at work in nature. Yet he agrees that "natural evolution is totally natural" (a tautological and therefore meaningless expression when you think about it, Dick). But you don't understand what I mean by "some sort of intelligence at work in nature". You apparently interpret it as some ghostly supernatural intervention. But that wasn't my language. My language was deliberately general and non-committal, because the relationship between intelligence and nature is not clear. One possibility for expressing that relationship is Denton's, which is the front-loading possibility. In that case the intelligence was injected into nature at the beginning, in the initial parameters. Another possibility is some sort of immanent intelligence. Neither requires miracles of the sort you are objecting to.

I would suggest that your statement begs the important metaphysical question. "Natural evolution is totally natural" -- obviously. But what is included in "natural"? Merely blind pushes and pulls? And who decided that? Your apparent view of "nature" (if your example of water eroding the Grand Canyon is any guide) is fundamentally materialistic and mechanistic, and I would remind you that materialism-mechanism is a philosophical view, not a scientific one. Science's job is to explain nature, not to explain nature exclusively within the narrow confines of any particular philosophical view. Nature may be much richer and subtler than the mechanistic-materialistic philosophy supposes. This is why "methodological naturalism" is such a sneaky little phrase. People like Eugenie Scott and Ken Miller invoke it as a "neutral" term to protect science from invasion by "the supernatural"; yet, as they use it, it cuts out much more than "the supernatural"; it cuts out any possible immanent teleology in nature; it means mechanism-materialism, plain and simple. They mean that mechanism-materialism is capable of giving an exhaustive interpretation of nature (not of God, but of nature), and they mean that if you don't believe that, you can't possibly be a good scientist. This is metaphysical dogmatism masquerading as science; it is Kant-Laplace as the final teaching about nature which must not be questioned.

DF: It's God's choice to remain in the background, unseen and undetectable. Yet here come the God cops who want to pry open a big black box, grab the God of the universe and drag him kicking and screaming out for display to the jeering crowd. On the other hand God deliberately chooses to reveal himself to persons and at times that are known only to him on his terms and a time of his choosing. I can live with that. Yet the ID crowd wants to set up trip wires and flash cameras, catch God in action and dangle him out there for public display. If he wanted that kind of publicity he could get it on his own.

Dick, your language here is histrionic, and demagogic. I pass by with contempt this form of argumentation (which unfortunately is not uncommon coming from supporters of TE), except to ask you for evidence (quotations and page numbers, please) where any ID proponent has said that we can "catch God in action". I raised the same question in my comments to Keith Miller a week ago, who made a similar charge (though without the crude journalistic tone), but he has not yet replied.

But let's turn to the content: "It's God's choice to remain in the background, unseen and undetectable." Who is making this apodictic statement? You personally? Then the proper form is: "My personal religious belief is that God chooses to remain..." Instead, you choose to pronounce, to issue a sort of Papal edict on how God does in fact behave. Too often on this list I have seen statements about God's actions, motives, etc. which display this kind of dogmatic confidence. One would think that believers humbled by an awesome, mysterious God would be very hesitant to set limits on how he might behave, but the tendency here is often the opposite, i.e., it is to say how God would or must or does always behave. At the very least, one would think that anyone who is sure that God wants to remain "indetectable" should offer an exegesis of the Hebrew text of Psalm 19, and of the Greek text of Romans. And it would also be reasonable to expect such a person to explain why so many of the greatest theologians in the history of Christianity have accepted at least a limited version of natural theology.

DF: Natural evolution produces brilliant human beings and pesky mosquitoes. Any theorist who posits manipulation of the processes of life by an unseen disembodied spirit being needs to have a satisfactory explanation for both ends of the spectrum. ID theorists don't bother with that. Add to that genetic diseases caused by genetic defects, which likewise is unaddressed by ID theory, and you should be able to see that ID follows the same path as all other creationist explanations - brandish one side of the argument and suppress or ignore the counter arguments.

Again, Dick, show me where Behe or Denton or Dembski insists upon "manipulation of the processes of life by an unseen disembodied spirit". Passages and page numbers, please. (I will also be grading for grammar and spelling.)

Also, tell me what you mean by "satisfactory explanation". Do you mean, an explanation for evil and suffering in the natural world? Do you mean that ID needs to explain "why" (in the the moral or religious sense) there is evil and suffering? If that is your question, then you don't understand the self-limitation of ID theory. ID theory has no responsibility for "why" questions. In fact, TEs are always yammering about how "why" questions, questions of ultimate purpose and meaning are "outside of science", and they constantly complain that ID people illegitimately get into "why" questions, and therefore violate "methodological naturalism". Yet here you are (and you aren't alone -- Ayala and Ken Miller use the same argument), insisting that ID give an answer to a "why" question -- why there is evil. You can't have it both ways. You can't fault ID on the one hand for illegitimately introducing questions of purpose and meaning into science, and then blame it on the other hand for never discussing questions of purpose and meaning. TEs need to get their arguments straight.

I add -- and this is not addressed particularly to you, Dick, though it may be relevant to your concern about evil -- that the TE solution to "the problem of evil" is no solution at all. Miller and Ayala have both argued that because God is not directly responsible for what happens in the evolutionary process, he is removed from "the problem of evil", whereas in ID God is directly responsible for evil (which they judge to be morally and spiritually unacceptable). Aside from the fact that ID does not require the direct creation of anything by God (as I explained in my post to George), this argument would flunk Miller and Ayala out of Ethics 100. If X sets in motion a process which he knows will lead to evil and suffering, and (having the power to prevent it) does nothing about the evil and suffering, X is just as morally guilty of the suffering as if X had inflicted it directly himself. The man who hires someone to kill his wife is just as guilty as if he pulled the trigger. God can't escape blame for all the pain and suffering in the world by saying: "Don't look at me! Evolution did it!" This sort of lame argumentation is unfortunately typical coming from TEs. Whether the fact that most TEs are trained in either science or theology, and not much in philosophy, has anything to do with the lack of philosophical competence in their argumentation, I can't say for sure.

Cameron.

  ----- Original Message -----
  From: Dick Fischer
  To: 'Cameron Wybrow'
  Cc: ASA
  Sent: Thursday, April 23, 2009 10:25 AM
  Subject: RE: [asa] ID/Miracles/Design

  Hi Cameron, you wrote:

>So, for strict naturalists, the historical cause, i.e, the efficient cause of the flagellum, could be some form of front-loaded evolution, in which there is obviously some sort of intelligence at work, but no "miracles" in the sense of "interventions"<

  "Strict naturalists" do not see "some sort of intelligence at work." Natural evolution is totally natural whether you are a born-again believer or a non-believer. That doesn't mean it IS totally natural. We really don't know, but for science to do its work it has to rely on natural causation. That's what science is. For a theist like me I see God's creation all around me. I gawk at the Grand Canyon and see God. Yet the sculpting of the Grand Canyon was done by simple water erosion over millions of years. No miracles, no intervention, no "front loading." Just water working on rock.

  It's God's choice to remain in the background, unseen and undetectable. Yet here come the God cops who want to pry open a big black box, grab the God of the universe and drag him kicking and screaming out for display to the jeering crowd. On the other hand God deliberately chooses to reveal himself to persons and at times that are known only to him on his terms and a time of his choosing. I can live with that. Yet the ID crowd wants to set up trip wires and flash cameras, catch God in action and dangle him out there for public display. If he wanted that kind of publicity he could get it on his own.

  Natural evolution produces brilliant human beings and pesky mosquitoes. Any theorist who posits manipulation of the processes of life by an unseen disembodied spirit being needs to have a satisfactory explanation for both ends of the spectrum. ID theorists don't bother with that. Add to that genetic diseases caused by genetic defects, which likewise is unaddressed by ID theory, and you should be able to see that ID follows the same path as all other creationist explanations - brandish one side of the argument and suppress or ignore the counter arguments.

  By all means help an elderly woman cross the street, but Spiderman can make it on his own.

  Dick Fischer, author, lecturer

  Historical Genesis from Adam to Abraham

  www.historicalgenesis.com

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Received on Thu Apr 23 18:00:09 2009