What’s Wrong with the World

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What’s Wrong with the World is dedicated to the defense of what remains of Christendom, the civilization made by the men of the Cross of Christ. Athwart two hostile Powers we stand: the Jihad and Liberalism...read more

“Nothing but”

“Consciousness is ‘nothing but’ a complex set of electrochemical processes in the brain.” “Living things are ‘nothing but’ aggregates of physico-chemical processes.” “Human beings are ‘nothing but’ primates of a certain sort.” "Intelligent Design" theorists rightly decry such reductionism. But where did the reductionist tendency so prevalent in modern thought come from? Why, from the very “world as artifact” model of nature ID theorists themselves have inherited from the anti-Aristotelian revolution of the early modern philosophers. See the first of what I expect will be a series of posts on this subject over at my own blog.

Comments (48)

To paraphrase Ronald Reagan, “Well, there you go again, Ed.”

Once again, you are twisting the position of the ID camp by imputing a judgment about the essences of natural substances that the ID position does not at all posit. ID does not argue that natural things must be accidental forms like artifacts. Rather it argues that, as with artifacts, some natural things show unmistakable signs of having been designed.

It seems to me that you are committing the “fallacy of accident,” to wit, since the IDers argue that natural things are like artifacts, and since artifacts are accidental forms, therefore, IDers argue that natural things are accidental forms. But ID theory does not liken natural things to artifacts insofar as the latter are accidental forms, but rather only insofar as they show unmistakable evidence of having been designed. The fact that artifacts are accidental forms is completely irrelevant to the ID position.

Wrong again, George. See my next post on this topic, which will go up tonight or tomorrow.

Why is it the no Christian philosophers or modern theologians (I know of) ever make the argument that Consciousness is God?

It's for the same reason that even when Christians are asked, "What is Truth?" they ramble around talking about contingency or some other intellectualization of abstruse nonsense rather than simply admitting, "God is Truth."

Or when do we ever hear, "Because God is, I am"?

It seems that the more secular our society becomes, the less faith filled Christian arguments also become.

I remember many arguments I had with atheists where I simply tried to get them to answer some questions like, "Can you get something from nothing?" or "Can you get life from non-life?"

And they would never answer yea or nay, but strung long, run on sentences of gibberish which any rational, open minded observer could see failed to persuade and demonstrated the basic absurdity inherent in atheist or material or scientistic thought.

The invincibly ignorant, of course, saw my questions as stupid, simplistic, irrelevant, and "illogical" but I didn't care. I don't mind looking like a simpleton for Truth when in fact, nothing is simpler than Truth.

Why waste a lot of words arguing about basic Truth when you could be doing something more productive like prayer, or teaching basic Truth and leaving other people to work out whether it's self-evident or not?

Why is it the no Christian philosophers or modern theologians (I know of) ever make the argument that Consciousness is God?

Because most Christian philosophers are not Buddhists nor New Agers.

The Chicken

If I were to ask an atheist philosopher "can you get something from nothing?" the answer would be either "no", "yes", "who knows?", or "why not?". If I were to ask him "can you get life from non-life?" he would say "yes".

"when Christians are asked, "What is Truth?" they ramble around talking about contingency or some other intellectualization of abstruse nonsense rather than simply admitting, "God is Truth."


If I say 2+2=4, we would say that statement is true, all people would except that from all walks of life and beliefs systems. If I say God is Truth, and the statement 2+2=4 is true, does that mean God is 4, or God is the truth in the specific statement.

Saying God is the answer to all questions and the truth in all questions, doesn't make sense. It doesn't help us acquire knowledge about the topic (and even pointlessly mysticizes it). We have to have objective systems of truth to accumulate knowledge on Phenomena and Objects.

And it would make you sound irrational to people who believe there is objective truth without God (at least in the area of scientific study).

"The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth." - Niels Bohr

Good Quote.

Bobcat - you're *almost* as smart & funny as your brother.

;^)

George, why don't you argue that because artifacts resemble living organisms they are alive?

The fact that the artifact is the analog and nature is the subject tells you all you need to know about what philosophy of nature is doing the intellectual work.

For example, my camera is an artifact that resembles my eye in so far as both capture images in similar ways. But the camera has no inherent purpose. It is a collection of parts whose identity as a "whole" is purely extrinsic to it. My eye, on the other hand, is a fully-integrated part of a whole organism that works in concert with all the other fully-integrated parts (e.g., brain, hands, stomach, etc) for the good of the whole, which has an intrinsic end or purpose.

Or when do we ever hear, "Because God is, I am"?

Rarely. Possibly because most Christians try to avoid blasphemy.

There may be an important way in which my being (and yours, and the cat's) is a being which is anything at all insofar as it participates in BEING, the One Who Is. But that "important way" is not the end of the story: there is also an (at least as) important way in which my being is not that of the BEING, The One. One of the amazing facets of God - which would be shocking to us if we could take on an absolute observer role watching God create - is that He can create things whose existence is really distinct from Himself. Christians are not pantheists.

And given that God creates things whose existence is really distinct from His, those creatures are not necessary beings. Which means that it is not true to say "Because God is, I am." Though it would be true to say "Because I am, God is," using upwards logic from effect to cause.

I feel sort of bad, cause all of us are going after mark Butterworth because of his comment.

On the "tendencies" thing, Ed, I'd like to find out if you think the following empirical statement is false:

There are multiple levels at which the component parts of living organisms have no "intrinsic tendency" to form living organisms. Proteins do not have an intrinsic tendency to fold into useful and stable shapes, for example. Atoms do not have an intrinsic tendency to form DNA. Hence, it is simply _true_ to say that living organisms are made of physical elements in arrangements that they do not have an intrinsic tendency to form.

If I say 2+2=4, we would say that statement is true, all people would except that from all walks of life and beliefs systems.

Except, of course, for mathematicians and theoretical scientists. It all depends on how one defines addition. For instance, in a group (a mathematical system in which addition is defined) based on ordinary numbers , 1 + 2 = 3 = 3 + 1. In a group based on symmetry operations on a square (rotation and reflection), a + b = c, but b + a = d, so a + b =not b + a. In reproductive biology, for example, 1 + 1 = 3 (from a famous postcard sent by Leonard Euler to announce the birth of his child).

The Chicken

Opps.

Should, obviously, be:

1 + 2 = 3 = 2 + 1. Good grief!

Proteins do not have an intrinsic tendency to fold into useful and stable shapes, for example.

Proteins have an intrinsic tendency to minimize energy and this does lead to complex foldings.

The Chicken

It doesn't with high probability lead to stable foldings of the specific sort needed for specific functions, Chicken. Or such is my understanding.

Francis Beckwith,
You seem to be making the same argument as Ed. Let me try to clarify my position with respect to his:

1) I agree with Ed’s position with respect to the distinction between the essences of natural substances and that of mechanisms or artifacts.

Also,

2) I agree with Ed that ID does not affirm this distinction.

However,

3) I reject Ed’s contention that ID denies this distinction.

ID neither affirms nor denies the modal differences between artifacts and natural substances for the simple reason that such questions are outside of its scope.

It doesn't with high probability lead to stable foldings of the specific sort needed for specific functions, Chicken. Or such is my understanding.

Actually, it does. We do not know what shape, a priori, a protein will assume, in general, because the calculations are exceedingly difficult to perform. There is a movement to use down computer time, as with the SETI project, to do calculations of protein folding. There are, in general, four levels of order with proteins, so-called, primary, secondary, teritary, and quatenary, structures. These organize into folded states based on such things as amino acid groups, solvent environment, etc. The energy minimizing principle was proposed by Joseph Bryngelson and Peter Wolynes in the late 1980s and early 1990s. See the Wikipedia article, "here.

The Chicken

Chicken, that surprises me, and I'll check it out. It is, however, always possible to find a level at which it is, in fact, true that the physical components of living things do not have an intrinsic tendency to form those living things--the protein example was just one example. The atomic example is another. The origin-of-life problem, for example, arises from these improbabilities. It is not as though even most die-hard evolutionary biologists or abiogenesis folk take this to be _probable_. My point, in this context, is that Ed seems to be saying that it is contrary to Aristotelian metaphysics to hold that living things are made of parts that don't have an intrinsic tendency to make living things. I'm afraid that, if this is true, Aristotelian metaphysics is refuted, for it is just the case that living things are made up of atoms, molecules, etc., which do not have an intrinsically high probability of jumping up and forming themselves spontaneously into the forms necessary to make living things.

The Masked Chicken, your points only make sense in a applied context, were there are other things to take into consideration for the specific statement to be true. The statement, 2 Apples + 2 Apples = 4 Apples is a correct statement and is true, so long as there is no other factors to consider.

Lydia,

Start with a simpler example, water. A-T would say not only that it is an error to hold that water is "nothing but" H2O, but also that it is an error to say that hydrogen and oxygen are, in the strictest sense anyway, actually in water in the first place. Rather, they are "virtually" in water, in the sense that hydrogen and oxygen can be derived from water. For A-T, a natural substance is a composite of prime matter (matter without any form whatsover) and substantial form (form which makes something a substance of the particular kind it is, with the essence definitive of that kind). Hence water is a composite of prime matter and the substantial form of water. It is not a composite of, as it were, preexisting hydrogen and oxygen with the substantial form of water. In a natural substance there is no "middle layer" of forms between its substantial form and prime matter; in this case, there is nothing with the substantial form of oxygen or hydrogen "coming between" the prime matter and the substantial form of water. If there were, we wouldn't have water, but just hydrogen and oxygen themselves, with the exact causal tendencies they have (which water does not have) and without all the causal tendencies water does have. That does not mean that hydrogen and oxygen cannot be transformed into water, of course, but what happens in that case is that the prime matter underlying the hydrogen and oxygen lose those substantial forms and take on another. In general, none of what we know from modern chemistry is at issue here; what is at issue is the metaphysical framework in terms of which we are to interpret what we know from modern chemistry.

Now, in the same way, it is for A-T a mistake to think of proteins, atoms, etc. as existing in organisms in exactly the same sense in which they exist outside them. Rather, they exist virtually in organisms in the sense that they can be derived from organisms. So it's true that an atom or protein considered in isolation has no active intrinsic tendency to form an organism -- though each does in fact have at least a passive tendency to do so (otherwise it could never become part of an organism at all) -- but then, proteins, atoms, etc. don't exist in organisms in the same way they do outside them in the first place. For an organism too is a composite of substantial form and prime matter, with no "intermediate" substantial forms between the two. Hence proteins, atoms, etc. exist in an organism only as integral parts of the whole, albeit parts whse causal tendencies overlap with those of proteins, atoms, etc. as they exist outside organisms. And if someone wants to insist that a protein, atom, etc. is something that can be defined entirely apart from anything it might become a part of, including an organism, then the thing to say is that what exist actually (and not just virtually) in organisms are, strictly speaking, not proteins, atoms, etc. but rather parts which are "transformed" into proteins, atoms, etc. when removed from the context of the organism. Compare the well-known Aristotelian example of a hand: For Aristotle, a hand is a hand in the strict sense only when united organically to the whole body; detached from the body and preserved separately, it is not strictly the same kind of thing. Same with other components, all the way down to basic particles.

Here too, though, what is at issue are not any findings of empirical science, but rather what metaphysical framework to interpret these results in light of. Hence it is misleading to refer to the claim you put forward as flatly an "empirical" one.

George,

Wrong. Dembski explicitly denies the distinction. See the post I'll be putting up later today.

Hence it is misleading to refer to the claim you put forward as flatly an "empirical" one.

But it sounds, Ed, like you're _agreeing_ with the statement that I made. Here it is again, with the examples elided:

There are multiple levels at which the component parts of living organisms have no "intrinsic tendency" to form living organisms. ... [L]iving organisms are made of physical elements in arrangements that they do not have an intrinsic tendency to form.

The only way I can see that you are disagreeing with it is that you seem to be saying that organisms are not "made up of" the atoms, proteins, etc., that are in them. I have to admit that I don't really understand what is gained by saying that the component parts of organisms are _not_ proteins or atoms in the same sense that they are proteins or atoms when outside of the living organism. I mean, scientifically speaking, they are identifiable. You can, as it were, find them and point to them, even as they play their roles in living organisms.

In any event, what seems to me far more important here is the question of intrinsic tendencies. You seem to be saying that your disagreement with an ID argument isn't an empirical issue. All right, let's take that quite literally. If it isn't an empirical issue, then it is _compatible_ with the A-T view as you conceive it to say, for example, "Atoms have no intrinsic tendency to form living organisms." Now, if that is so, then there should be _no problem_ from that perspective with someone on the ID side saying that very same thing concerning atoms, proteins, or whatever. In other words, it seems strange for you to say that A-T is not empirically refutable but then to criticize someone from the ID side who makes an empirical claim that it is improbable that what we see in living organisms should have formed spontaneously from the lower-level component parts. If that empirical claim is compatible with the A-T view, then its use in an ID argument should be no problem.

You seem to be criticizing ID for saying that the parts of living organisms are performing a function "which they have no tendency to perform on their own." (Quote from your linked post.) If it's empirically verifiable that, in fact, they _have_ no such tendency, and if the A-T view is compatible with any such empirical finding, then where's the problem?

No snark intended. I'm genuinely curious.

Bobcat, an atheist's "yes" to the second question insists that it happened at least once that he knows of, but does he in fact know it? It's a posit without proof.

***

Phantom, yes, God is the 4 from 2+2 if you're insisting that the equation is a matter of logic. Whence comes logic? It's not an aspect of God like some sort of branch or offshoot. It is something bound into the being of God. Truth is a Person. Logic, beauty, goodness aren't things which come from God but are the nature of God. It's who he is.

Anytime you're discussing or investigating matters of truth in any form that we deal with it, you ought to feel you're in the presence of God. Which would make you sound irrational to people who think that logic or empiricism is something separate or absolute on its own terms. Like the irrational Aquinas?

If God is the source of all phenomena and objective truth (is God an object or subject?), why wouldn't you want to credit God every time you found out something to be true? Oh, the other boys would sneer at you?

****

Chicken, right. I guess that English bishop was right when St. John of the Cross was brought up in discussion and he referred to him as " That Buddhist."

****

Tony, you're simply saying that you're not actually created in the image of God.

"He can create things whose existence is really distinct from Himself"

And you know this because . . .? What exactly is your existence and God's existence that leads you to say this?

For example, if Jesus and the Father "will come to him and make our home with him", exactly how distinct is the consciousness of a man from that of God?

"And given that God creates things whose existence is really distinct from His, those creatures are not necessary beings. Which means that it is not true to say "Because God is, I am." Though it would be true to say "Because I am, God is," using upwards logic from effect to cause. "

What are necessary beings? I suppose you could say a child is not necessary to his parents, but this is a bit silly. If an adult couple partly exists to create children, if God's being is essentially creative, then the Creation and Creator are inextricably bound together.

People will sometimes say things like: we need God but God doesn't need us.

Really? Where's the evidence for that? It's a supposition based on various posits about God which may or may not be true.

Yet, it appears that we have great value to God, a necessary value to him, if you will.

***

When anyone of you can tell me exactly what consciousness is, perhaps it will then explain how consciousness is not God, then. Until then, none of you really has a leg to stand on.

****

I've noticed that not a single person is willing to discuss the fact that there never was an Adam and Eve or a Fall from Eden by human choice which brought sin and death into the universe.

Because if there was no specific Fall, what need for an Atonement, an Atoner, is there? No first Adam in natural history, no second Adam in historical Jesus.

No sacrifice was necessary (there's that word again) by anyone to redeem Man from sin and death if there was no Fall into sin and death.

Then what in heck was Jesus' death about if it wasn't a reconcilating sacrificial act? A basic miscarriage of justice toward a preaching, wonder worker?

C'mon folks, step up to the plate.

Or do some of you want to keep saying "Blasphemy", "new ager", "pantheist"?


Now, let's examine my pantheist, blasphemous, Buddhist, new ageyness.

Y'all must mean this:

Strive always to prefer, not that which is easiest, but that which is most difficult;

Not that which is most delectable, but that which is most unpleasing;

Not that which gives most pleasure, but rather that which gives least;


Not that which is restful, but that which is wearisome;


Not that which is consolation, but rather that which is disconsolateness;

Not that which is greatest, but that which is least;

Not that which is loftiest and most precious, but that which is lowest and most despised;


Strive to go about seeking not the best of temporal things, but the worst.

Yup. And there's this:

In order to arrive at having pleasure in everything,

Desire to have pleasure in nothing.

In order to arrive at possessing everything,

Desire to possess nothing.

In order to arrive at being everything,

Desire to be nothing.

In order to arrive at knowing everything,

Desire to know nothing.

In order to arrive at that wherein thou hast no pleasure,

Thou must go by a way wherein thou hast no pleasure.

In order to arrive at that which thou knowest not,

Thou must go by a way that thou knowest not.

In order to arrive at that which thou possessest not,

Thou must go by a way that thou possessest not.

In order to arrive at that which thou art not,

Thou must go through that which thou art not.

And of course, there is this blasphemy to consider:

"Our intense need to understand will always be a powerful stumbling block to our attempts to reach God in simple love [...] and must always be overcome. For if you do not overcome this need to understand, it will undermine your quest. It will replace the darkness which you have pierced to reach God with clear images of something which, however good, however beautiful, however Godlike, is not God."

If you guessed St. John of the Cross for the first two sections, good on you.

The third is from The Cloud of Unknowing.

I'm guessing that fellow Christians here are extremely familiar with this kind of prayer and discipline which leads them to acknowledge a Doctor of the Church and the anonymous writer of The Cloud as being accurate in their advice and conclusions.

But since Jesus never explicitly said these things, and the Gospels failed to include these insights, they must really be a whole lot of BS, thank you very much.

I don't suppose I should quote Meister Eckhart since he had the pleasure of being excommunicated after he was dead.

Anyway, it's a curious phenomena when you gradually find that you can no longer get your mind to function discursively in matters of abstract thought and complicated reasoning, but have to observe the world, yourself and others while not being able to really "think" about what's going on. You have to simply "be".

It's a kind of a fog, a suppression of certain parts of the mind, and a great relief, in many ways, to discover you're not entirely a prisoner or victim of a brain that won't ever shut up about so many useless and stupid things like complicated ideas about God, theology, philosophy, science, and so on.

It's a life more lovely, and rather a sorrow to see it pass after a period of time as it usually does in this world.

"Anytime you're discussing or investigating matters of truth in any form that we deal with it, you ought to feel you're in the presence of God. Which would make you sound irrational to people who think that logic or empiricism is something separate or absolute on its own terms. Like the irrational Aquinas?"

The point I was trying to make, was that if you were in a debate with someone, saying God is all Truth would not convince anyone who didn't already believe that.

You originally said thats how you would reply to an atheist in a debate, but they would make the point I did, about the Objective truth of Science and Mathematics. They would then say that there's no need to bring God into it, he adds nothing to the debate and doesn't help us understand anything better. So when we mention Truth, we have to understand there belief about truth in order to show faults in it, and show that there view of the objective truth of science, can not explain all knowledge and phenomena.


"If God is the source of all phenomena and objective truth (is God an object or subject?), why wouldn't you want to credit God every time you found out something to be true? Oh, the other boys would sneer at you?"


Giving credit to God has nothing to do with the point I was making about there view of objective truths that wouldn't (in there view) require god, its a totally different topic.

TMC writes:

Proteins have an intrinsic tendency to minimize energy and this does lead to complex foldings.
Ah, but here's the rub: a random chain of polypeptides does clump up to minimize free energy, but it does so differently every time. For some completely not-understood reason, the specific polypeptide chains built via transcription always fold into the same stable native state under physiological conditions.

Lets back up a second.

A polypeptide chain is like, well, a chain. Think of a chain composed of 20 or so differently shaped magnets: take a typical complex protein length of 1000 polypeptides, so your chain has 1000 magnets on it all randomly chosen from the 20 different shapes.

Throw the chain in a barrel and shake it. What you get out is a clump, not a stretched out chain: a different clump every time you stretch out the same chain and then shake it up again in the barrel. That is what it means to minimize the free energy: the chain is all stuck together in clumps, not stretched out straight, because of the magnets all sticking to each other.

That is what happens to random polypeptide chains too. Yes, they clump up into a low energy state: a different (and useless, and probably toxic) one every time.

For some unknown reason, though, there are certain highly specific polypeptide chains which, when you put them in the barrel and shake it, always come out in the exact form of a bicycle sprocket: the precise same sprocket every time.

Then when you put a whole bag of parts made that way into a bigger barrel and shake it, bicycles come out.

So Lydia is right if we substitute the word "polypeptide chain" for "protein". A protein by definition is one of those sprockets that comes out every time from these very special highly specific sequences, so by definition it has a stable native folded state under physiological conditions. But the bits that it is made of, the polypeptides, do not have a stable native state: if you stick them into random chains and shake them you will just end up with a big mess of clumped up random (and toxic) crap.

How that pertains the the present discussion isn't clear to me. I don't now and never have understand A-T hostility to ID per se (any more than I would understand A-T hostility to neo-darwinism per se). As I understand it, A-T philosophers are not hostile to forensic science in general. They are (rightly) hostile to scientism, and would be hostile to forensic science (whether Darwinian or ID) understood as an all-explaining theory of everything. But they wouldn't be hostile to me concluding from a bloody knife and a corpse that an intelligent agent committed murder. So I continue to puzzle over A-T hostility to ID, since it seems to me to represent a hostility to science, not scientism. If science on its own concludes forensically that life is the product of intelligent design, why would an Aristotlean care either way?

Sounds to me like creation singing the glory of the Creator on yet another level; but what do I know?

Tony, you're simply saying that you're not actually created in the image of God.

And here I always thought that an image of something is distinct from the thing itself.

"He can create things whose existence is really distinct from Himself"

And you know this because . . .? What exactly is your existence and God's existence that leads you to say this?

I didn't know we were providing proofs for every statement. Someone left that out of the instructions. Mark, what is your evidence for St. John of the Cross? Or for yourself. How do you prove to me that you are you, that you are a human, that you are conscious?

I have direct consciousness of my own self. And let me tell you, that self ain't God. If I need more evidence than that, then all evidence and all proof is pointless, as is every discussion. The very idea of evidence and proof become pointless.

Mark, you are trying to shoehorn in a discussion that would require going way, way back logically prior to about 1000 points that were assumed for Ed's thread topic. Maybe that is a discussion that someone should have, but casting it up here without taking notice of the 1000 prior points that (for your purposes, but not the rest of us) are matters of contention is pretty unreasonable.

I don't now and never have understand A-T hostility to ID per se.

I think part of it stems from ID being very selective (compared to the A-T view) in what "counts" as design. On a theological point, since God is final cause of everything, special intervention in events after Creation not easily related to man's salvation tend to look like fixing a mistake.

And a bit for mark:

"Logic is a system whereby you may go wrong with confidence." – Charles Kettering.

One definition that covers many areas: Consciousness is a complex, fluid process of analog processing that filters our sensory input and memories and also synthesizes new perceptions and memories, typically in a strategic and associative manner.

"since God is final cause of everything, special intervention in events after Creation not easily related to man's salvation tend to look like fixing a mistake."


It makes me think of Isaac Newton who insisted that divine intervention would eventually be required to reform the system and keep the universe in check, due to the slow growth of instabilities. For this, Leibniz lampooned him: "God Almighty wants to wind up his watch from time to time: otherwise it would cease to move. He had not, it seems, sufficient foresight to make it a perpetual motion."

I thank Zippy for his correction ("protein" to "polypeptide chain") and for the information and sharpening of the example I was trying to give.

since God is final cause of everything, special intervention in events after Creation not easily related to man's salvation tend to look like fixing a mistake.

Thank you, Step2Spinoza. Seriously, this is straight deism, except that the deists didn't try to make the ad hoc exception for "easily related to man's salvation."

Am I fixing a mistake when I make something? Am I fixing a mistake in the world right now when I make this comment on this blog post? Must the world have something wrong with it that it does not spontaneously generate books, paintings, and 747's? Then why must God have made a mistake if he didn't make the world such that it spontaneously generates living cells from non-living matter?

I give Ed enormous credit that he has never, never made this "God would have to be fixing a mistake" argument against ID.

Step2:

I think part of it stems from ID being very selective (compared to the A-T view) in what "counts" as design.
I think it is a fair point that "design", as with all terms, can only be used analogically when it comes to God. But again, I don't see why ID is singled out among all kinds of forensics as especially worthy of opprobrium. It is also a fair point that God designed everything in this analogic sense, not just life forms.

But why does A-T philosophy have this particular axe to grind when it comes to forensic empirical investigation?

I mean I understand the problem when the inference is made "thus the designer implied by the forensics is God". But I always see ID types disclaiming that inference, much as theistic Darwinists disclaim its contrary. And given those disclaimers, where's the beef? What exactly is the A-T problem with a scientific design inference given overwhelming facts which support it?

I mean, I agree that a materialist can just claim (as consistently as materialism is consistent, which is to say, not very) that the designer is some kind of super-alien. In fact, some materialists have claimed exactly that. But so what?

that the designer is some kind of super-alien. In fact, some materialists have claimed exactly that.

Fred Hoyle, Franics Crick and Richard Dawkins have at one point or another stated this view. Dawkins stangely enough stated this view in the film "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed" which was a defense of Intelligent Design.

I don't now and never have understand A-T hostility to ID per se ... So I continue to puzzle over A-T hostility to ID, since it seems to me to represent a hostility to science, not scientism.

This is absolutely surreal. Zippy, have you or the others on this board who continue to evince such puzzlement actually read any of the many posts I've written on this subject? Or have you instead simply noted that the posts are anti-ID and then, convinced that you already know what the arguments must be, jumped straight to the combox, impatient to begin the brow-furrowing and chin-pulling?

Really, it's not that difficult. I've only said it 1,234 times already, but as a post-Lenten penance I'll go for number 1,235, in a condensed version. What A-T philosophers fundamentally object to in ID are:

1. The mechanistic conception of nature its arguments typically presuppose, whether its adherents realize this or not.

2. The anthropomorphism inherent in the univocal application of the concept of "design" both to human designers and to God (the allusion here being to the Thomistic distinction between univocal and analogous uses of language).

That's it. The reason A-T philosophers object to these features is that they represent bad metaphysics and bad theology. The metaphysics tends toward reductionism, gives at the very least aid and comfort to deism and atheism, and is incoherent in any event. And theologically speaking, no strategy presupposing 1 and 2 can get you even one inch beyond naturalism (as A-T conceives of what is "natural") or one inch closer to the God of classical theism, but at most to a demiurge. This conception of God is not only philosophically dubious but dubious in its orthodoxy to boot (certainly from a Catholic POV).

Notice that I've said nothing whatsoever here about Darwinism or science in general. Some A-T thinkers accept Darwinism and some do not, but that is not what their philosophical objections to ID are about. Nor does the objection have anything to do with a "hostility to science" more generally -- a completely bizarre and utterly groundless accusation on your part. As I said in my remarks to Lydia, A-T philosophers disagree with the standard mechanistic interpretation of the results of science, but not with the results themselves.

Some A-T philosophers no doubt also think that ID is bad science, but (a) that is a separate issue from their objections to 1 and 2 above, which have to do with metaphysical issues, and (b) has nothing to do with "hostility to science" but, on the contrary, with the view that ID arguments are scientifically deficient. In any event, I have not addressed this topic at all, but have focused only on the metaphysical issues.

Notice also that the issue has nothing to do either with probabilistic arguments per se. A-T philosophers don't say "You should never give anything less than metaphysical demonstrations in defense of theism." The objection is rather to the specific method the ID theorist uses to do this, and in particular (to repeat) that the method reflects 1 and 2.

Now, if you want elaboration of these themes, take a look at the many posts on this topic I've written, such as the ones linked to above. Or don't. But please don't feign ignorance about what A-T thinkers object to in ID. If you want to say "But I don't agree that ID really has those problems," fine. That's another subject. But since A-T philosophers themselves think ID has those problems, there should be no mystery at all about why they object to it.

Alternatively, someone might say "OK, so ID has those problems. But they're criticizing some of the same people you are, viz. naturalists like Dawkins and Co. So why not cut them some slack?" Well, like St. Thomas, I think we should never make use of bad arguments even in a good cause, lest we "furnish infidels with an occasion for scoffing" (ST I.46.2).

Ed:

I'm not faking ignorance. In point of fact, I don't fake anything I say, ever, though there are certainly times that I am wrong, of course.

When I say that I don't understand what objection a Thomist could have to ID as a forensic science I mean precisely what I say.

Now maybe you could reply that you don't see anything wrong with ID as a forensic science either, since the domain of your criticism is metaphysics. Heck, maybe you _have_ said that and I missed it: I've read a couple of your books, which are well worth reading, and many of your blog posts too; but I don't read everything everyone says all the time. I don't recall a clear statement to that effect from you offhand, but I apologize if I missed it or just don't remember.

If you think I'm faking my puzzlement though you are, you know, wrong. I know when something puzzles me, even if I don't know much else.

Zippy,

"Feign" was not a good word choice, sorry. I don't think you were faking, but it does seem to me that you were being very careless, because I (and other A-T philosophers) have been very clear about what exactly the A-T beef with ID is. And I've addressed the subject many times on this blog, including in remarks that I recall you commenting on. So, I don't think my expression of annoyance at all unjustified. Moreover, you didn't merely say you didn't understand "what objection a Thomist could have to ID as a forensic science," specifically; you said "I don't now and never have understand A-T hostility to ID per se" etc., which I took (not unreasonably, surely) to be a claim to the effect that you didn't understood why A-T philosophers had any problem with ID, not just with ID considered "as a forensic science." And the "hostility to science" charge is, as I said, bizarre and unfounded in any event.

Lydia,

The only way I can see that you are disagreeing with it is that you seem to be saying that organisms are not "made up of" the atoms, proteins, etc., that are in them. I have to admit that I don't really understand what is gained by saying that the component parts of organisms are _not_ proteins or atoms in the same sense that they are proteins or atoms when outside of the living organism. I mean, scientifically speaking, they are identifiable. You can, as it were, find them and point to them, even as they play their roles in living organisms.

Here's an analogy: Take the letter "e," which occurs in "pet," "late," and "latte." In an obvious sense it is the same letter whether we consider it by itself or within any of the words, but it also has properties in each word that it does not have in the others or by itself. You "find them and point to them" in each case but you are, in an equally obvious sense, not dealing with exactly the same thing in each case because each "e" as it exists in the different words has a property (how it is pronounced or whether it is pronounced at all) that derive from its relation to the word as a whole, while still being a property of the letter itself. In a similar way, an atom, proteisn, or whatever as it exists qua part of a functioning organism is a different thing from the atom, protein or whatever that exists on its own, outside that context.

Re: "empirical findings," two things. First, just to avoid a common misunderstanding, I want to make it clear that A-T is not committed to armchair physics, chemistry, biology, or the like a la the standard caricature of Platonists reading off reality from a priori reflection on the Forms. That is not at all what A-T claims; the essence of a natural substance can be known only via empirical investigation. What is primarily at issue here is just the general metaphysics that informs this investigation, but when we come to specific metaphysical questions about such-and-such a specific material substance, the metaphysical and empirical questions do not necessarily admit of an obvious or easy demarcation. For example, is water that exists in an animal "actual" or "virtual," to use a distinction I alluded to earlier? It depends -- I'm inclined to say that the water it just drank and which sits in its stomach is actual, and the water that has been integrated into its cells is virtual, but this sort of question can't be settled without both knowledge of various physiological details as well as a careful application of the relevant A-T metaphysical concepts. Same thing with atoms, proteins, etc. The devil is in the details.

Secondly, I'm not sure I understand your point about empirical evidence vis-a-vis the dispute between A-T and ID; or at least, to the extent I think I understand it, it seems to me you're just missing the very point that I thought from your first comment you understood. For your criticism here -- again, at least if I undertand it correctly -- seems to boil down to this: "Ed, you admit that 'atoms have no intrinsic tendency to form organisms'; and yet when ID makes the same observation, and then commments on how very improbable it therefore is that atoms could form together into an organism as they clearly do, you object. What gives?"

Well, the problem with such a criticism -- if that is your criticism -- is that it simply forgets the earlier point that for A-T atoms etc. exist "virtually" in organisms rather than "actually," as they do when free-standing. A free standing atom has no inherent tendency to function as part of an organism; but an atom-as-integrated-into-an-organism does have such a tendency, otherwise it wouldn't be an organic part of the whole in the first place. In that sense it isn't the same kind of thing as the free-standing atom; rather it is a part of an organism which has a potency to become the sort of thing the free-standing atom is. (Compare: The second letter in "pet" and the last letter in "latte" each have a determinate pronunciation that is different from that of free-standing "e," qua parts of those words; but each also has the potential to take on a new pronunciation when removed from those contexts.)

In other words, atoms, proteins, etc. in the context of an organism aren't, for A-T, like mousetrap parts in relation to a mousetrap, which have no inherent tendency to function together as a mousetrap even once the trap has been constructed. A flat piece of wood is intrinsically the same thing whether it's fitted together with the rest of the trap or not, because its "mousetrappish" tendencies derive entirely from the designer. But it's woodlike tendencies are, relative to that same human designer, not observer-relative but inherent. Recall Aristotle's bed example: A bed made from fresh wood would, if it took a course of its own as it were, grow into something plant-like rather than bed-like, because the parts of a given piece of wood have (at least while it is still alive) an inherent tendency to act together in a "plant-like" way in a way that the pieces of wood together do not have an inherent tendency to act in a bed-like way.

As I note in my latest post, Dembski himself perfectly well understands this Aristotelian distinction. He understands that there is a difference between the concept of organic unity and that of artifactual unity. What he disagrees with Aristotle about is that he evidently thinks that once we have used examples of natural objects (acorns and the like) to generate the distinction, we should go back and say that even the acorns are really artifacts after all, and that there are no "natural" objects in Aristotle's sense. Obviously I think he's wrong about that, but surely it is clear why an Aristotelian would say that the ID "organisms as artifacts" model is metaphysically wrongheaded.

Phantom,

I understand your point. There's no need to invoke God when you're teaching kids the times tables, or showing them how a barometer works.

Saying God is Truth will convince no one in a debate, but the starting point in any debate that is more than technicians arguing about the stress bearing struts in bridge building is going to, at some point, come to what the nature of truth is.

Just go around and ask your friends or acquaintances point blank, What is Truth?, and see the response you get. I've done that.

You'll find that most people haven't got a clue, and most have contempt for the very question.

Heck, saying that God is Truth doesn't convince Christians. The argument then becomes how or why is Truth personal?

The world is now filled with people who have no interest in being or knowing. They're interested in self and utility. What's there to argue with them about anyway? They're invincibly ignorant.

But if you don't know how Truth is a Person, what makes that so, then you have a lack of something essential to thought and understanding.

****

Tony,

"I have direct consciousness of my own self. And let me tell you, that self ain't God. If I need more evidence than that, then all evidence and all proof is pointless, as is every discussion. The very idea of evidence and proof become pointless."

Exactly. You have awareness of a Self, and self is a very false thing. That's why it's advantageous to have experience of He Who Is as The Cloud of Unknowing advises. Otherwise, everything you have to say about God comes from Self and its illusions.

****

This post isn't the place to debate Adam and Eve? Fine. Then let's have a blog post that will.

So, Ed Feser, Paul Cella, Lydia and whoever, I want to discuss the theological problems of Adam and Eve among various theological issues addressed here.

I emailed Fr. Neuman a few years before his death at First Things about the Adam and Eve problem and he agreed it was worth discussing, but he wanted to save it for another day.

So, when can I expect the issue to be addressed?

Or the matter of consciousness. Is that too much to ask?

Seriously, this is straight deism, except that the deists didn't try to make the ad hoc exception for "easily related to man's salvation."

I am very fond of deism. It seems to me more defensible than atheism or a particular brand of theism. God inspires many exceptions, so I thought it appropriate to return the favor.

Am I fixing a mistake in the world right now when I make this comment on this blog post?

You are trying to correct my mistake, so the answer is yes.

Then why must God have made a mistake if he didn't make the world such that it spontaneously generates living cells from non-living matter?

I don't believe there is a possible world that God couldn't create. So either a world of spontaneously generated living cells is impossible, which seems a bit arbitrary in terms of impossible things, or God's act of creation neglected a significant problem.

A free standing atom has no inherent tendency to function as part of an organism; but an atom-as-integrated-into-an-organism does have such a tendency, otherwise it wouldn't be an organic part of the whole in the first place.

This is a fantastic thread. Ed, the focus you have on complexity is exciting.

Stepping away from philosophy and toward empiricism, if a body reduces to organs, which reduces to cells, molecules, atoms, and subatomic particles, and we recognize the structures of bodies, organs, and cells as living organisms, then two hypothesis stand out above all others. Either molecules, atoms, and subatomic particles are also living organisms, or there is an agency external to cells that give them the property of life.

Ultimately, all physical existence is nothing more than subatomic particles and geometry. Quantum geometry (represented in the arrangement of subatomic particles) is ultimately the only physical difference between a rock and a human body.

Either the subatomic particles have a living quality, or the cell gets its living quality from an external agency. If subatomic particles have a living quality, then there must be different orders of life just as there are different orders of matter (body, organs, cells, molecules, atoms, subatomic particles, etc). We acknowledge the body, organs, and cells are different orders of life, so what stops us from accepting molecules, atoms, and subatomic particles as life forms?

In fact, hormones (molecules) appear to act as living entities as they disassemble and reassemble other molecules during biological processes. Further, a substantial body of evidence (Kervran) suggests the transmutation of atoms within living beings.

Through reductionism in physics Gforce quantifies as a reciprocal force driving all the fundamental forces. The fundamental forces drive the mechanics of the Universe, including life processes.

The same matter and forces producing rocks is the same matter and forces producing living beings. Both matter and forces quantifiably trace back to Gforce. Gforce ultimately gives rise to and maintains the entire physical Universe and the processes within it.

I have spent eight years working out the physics and putting these concepts into publication form. As a reference for those who are interested, the two main publications are available free online:

www.secrets-of-the-aether.com
www.metaphysics-and-physics.com

If my ideas are not welcome, I will not further disrupt your discussions.

You have awareness of a Self, and self is a very false thing.

Do you mean that my direct awareness is false? If so, how can I correct it by yet another awareness? Or rather, how can I even think that any sort of awareness can have an aspect of validity, once I accuse awareness itself of falsehood? What shall be the measuring stick by which I say yea to this awareness and nay to that, if awareness itself be disreputable? Am I aware of this measuring stick?

That's why it's advantageous to have experience of He Who Is as The Cloud of Unknowing advises.

And yet, it is possible to have experience of He Who Is, and yet remain distinguishing Him from self. As is attested by Christian saintly mystics. So, are we to say that their experience is faulty, or vain; their wisdom but ashes?

Otherwise, everything you have to say about God comes from Self and its illusions.

Including the things that we say from Scripture? And from nature: is nature illusion? St. Thomas didn't think so, he taught that we can say many things truly about God from nature alone, without Revelation and without direct experience of God.

This post isn't the place to debate Adam and Eve? Fine. Then let's have a blog post that will.

Mark, do you have a blog site?

Further, a substantial body of evidence (Kervran) suggests the transmutation of atoms within living beings.

The work of Corentin Louis Kervran seems to be regarded as fringe physics or even pseudoscience by most physicists and biologists.

There does seem to be one piece of interest though, In 1978 a report was issued by the U.S. Army Mobility Equipment Research and Development Command proposing Magnesium adenosine triphosphate, located in the mitochondrion of the cell, provided the energy for the effects observed by Kervran. "It was concluded that elemental transmutations were indeed occurring in life organisms and were probably accompanied by net energy gain". However this work was never followed up, and lies well outside mainstream scientific understanding of biology.

But I fail to see a substantial body of evidence as you suggest. Maybe you could direct me to this other such evidence.


But I fail to see a substantial body of evidence as you suggest. Maybe you could direct me to this other such evidence.
The best reference for the evidence is Kervran's book, but you can read a synopsis of his work online:

http://www.metaphysics-and-physics.com/joomla/the-body.html?start=1
http://www.infinite-energy.com/iemagazine/issue34/bookreview_biotrans.html

As for "fringe" work, Galileo, Einstein, and practically all other scientists who made significant discoveries were "fringe" at first, too. If they were mainstream, then that would mean the ideas were already known and accepted, which of course would preclude the possibility of discovering something new. Some discoveries, such as Tesla's wireless power transmission, take one hundred years before getting into the mainstream.

I think if you read Kervran's book, which I recommend, you will find there is substantial evidence in favor of biological transmutations. As always, when a valid theory is not immediately accepted into the mainstream, it is due to politics within the scientific community, not necessarily because of a weakness in the science.

The fact that this area hasn't been researched much in the mainstream could play into the lack of evidence. I'll check out your website to see your theory's and ideas on this topic. I'll have a look into all this Volantis, thanks.

Tony,

I have an old blog site that still functions, I believe, but I don't see why we shouldn't have a post here to discuss it.

Self and consciousness are inextricably bound, so there are severe problems with trying to judge Self. That's why it takes God to do the job.

In the same way that we can't redeem or save ourselves from our self, we have to rely on someone other than ourselves, and in many respects this is what The Cloud of Unknowing means when it says we have to go blindly.

The Christian mystics you might be familiar with generally always maintain there is a duality between God and me. Even if God has made a home in me, so to speak, they insist there's a clear difference between God and me (or I).

There is a clear difference so long as you can experience (Bernadette Roberts can explain much of this better than I, but I'm trying to be brief, too) God as other than yourself. So long as you sense what St. John calls The Living Flame of Love no matter has small it may become, that duality exists.

But when that flame goes out, it means that God has disappeared inside of you (and every pleasure of his presence, grace, and consolation disappears, too).

Then you're stuck with being back to who you seem to be. Older and wiser, but not necessarily feeling better (except you are); and it becomes impossible to see how God is working in your life as you saw before because he's disappeared in you and nothing is extraordinary any more.

You've been transformed by faith and yet you're not like Jesus, you can't heal the sick or raise the dead or walk on water. But you see life differently from everyone you encounter. You might as well be called an ET, an alien life form because I think you might say that you're seeing the world more like Jesus did when he walked the earth -- you have the same insight into God and people, the same frustrations with human ignorance and arrogance, the same compassion toward people and the same impassivity which accepts all this suffering as the price of becoming a soul in God.

It's like God keeps killing you and killing you over and over until there is no more Self in you to kill, and you are thus resurrected into a new man, but you look around and you're not in heaven, you're still where you have to chop wood and carry water in a world where no one wants to buy whatever it is you want to sell.

But I could be wrong. I may still be bound in the process of being killed all the time, year after year, because I notice from time to time I've gained a slightly deeper appreciation for God's simplicity, and the pure marvelousness of his being and my own.

t's like God keeps killing you and killing you over and over until there is no more Self in you to kill, and you are thus resurrected into a new man, but you look around and you're not in heaven, you're still where you have to chop wood and carry water in a world where no one wants to buy whatever it is you want to sell.

But I could be wrong.

Mark, your understanding of mystical theology is seriously flawed, but a discussion of where that flaw occurs (it is in the nature of the idea that grace builds on nature) is probably not germane to this particular blog post. I would be happy to discuss the matter further if someone, here, provides the opportunity.

The Chicken

Sorry, Mark. I didn't mean to sound so condescending in my last post. I'm still not entirely awake. In any case, I think a careful reading of many accepted mystical theologians and mystics would show that the concept that God kills the self is not at all what they meant.

Again, sorry if I said things in a way that were dismissive of your searching.

The Chicken

No offense taken. I didn't notice any condescension.

The killing I refer to is the dying to Self, a non-controversial subject mentioned in Scripture, but for humans, hardly a one time event in the path of prayer.

The various writings on Christan mysticism certainly describe a process of transformation. That process is episodic with repeated "little deaths" so to speak.

But if you're relying entirely on much older or classic works by mystics or acceptably orthodox books on mysticism, they leave much to be desired.

I found Merton's New Seeds of Contemplation a good starting place, and then all the classic and approved mystics like St. John, St. Theresa, The Cloud, etc, but there comes a point where their works end at a summit or sort of apotheosis and you think there's a high point you remain in for the rest of your mortal life.

I found Bernadette Roberts' books on No Self more valuable and more informative about the afterlife of mysticism, and Fr. Keating at Snowmass has a good deal to say about the post-process of prayer.

If you're a contemplative and have experience of the process of prayer, I'd be glad to compare notes sometime.

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