But it is random. The fact that there are multiple possible outcomes did not blind God to the one that actualizes. That’s part of Gods foreknowledge. The same with Free Will. The fact there are multiple possible choices did not blind God to the one chosen. All Random mutations were known to God before he created.
1 Like
Definitely not. Your claim is false.
That’s obvious. Your claim that processes are random is still false.
But not random, so your claim is false.
That makes it not random and it means that your claim is false.
Isn’t it amusing that in a thread in which you fall all over yourself to claim that ID is separate from creationism, you go back to the boring, false, creationist trope that evolution is random?
2 Likes
You certainly appear to be strenuously auditioning for such a gig.
You and Behe are still pretending that selection does not act on the far greater amount of already existing variations. Your rhetoric suggests that wild populations are like a colony of a single strain of inbred mice, with nothing happening until a new mutation occurs.
This falsehood is an important part of the creationist’s arsenal of deceptive weapons.
1 Like
Maybe you should invest in a dictionary since you seem to have no idea what “assert” means.
assert [transitive verb]
1a. to state or declare positively and often forcefully or aggressively
Behe has asserted (not just implied) his intelligent designer God has intervened in natural processes. This has been demonstrated in multiple Behe quotes provided here.
When the ID-Creationists actually come up with a theory, let us know. Right now they can’t even think up a testable hypothesis.
1 Like
Well, I think that makes logical sense, but whoever said the TEs at BioLogos were logical? They say one thing one minute, another the next. One minute God is “mightily hands-on in evolution” and the next there is no reason to assume that anything but purely unguided causes can explain the whole thing. Coherent philosophical vocabulary just isn’t a strength of most Protestant TEs. (Which is not surprising, since most of them are trained in science, not philosophy or theology, and tend to belong to churches where systematic theology is not very much emphasized.)
As there aren’t very many explicitly interventionist TEs (I mean, among the leaders – among the rank and file in the churches there a zillion of them), it’s hard to say how Discovery reacts to them. But obviously the only ID folks who could like the view that God intervenes in evolution have to be those IDers who think evolution happened in the first place. So sure, Behe could be sympathetic with a TE like that. And it’s quite possible, maybe even probable, that Behe does think in terms of occasional interventions. But my point is that he never openly declares for interventions. He always answers the question obliquely.
As for the TEs who endorse front-loading, again, there aren’t many of them, but an ID person like Behe wouldn’t object to the fact that they endorse front-loading; he would object to the fact that they deny that the front-loaded design is detectable. There’s little difference between Denton and Lamoureux except that Denton indicates that the design is potentially detectable, whereas Lamoureux doesn’t think it is.
I am telling you what I meant by it, and pointing out that this is typical usage. I note you can’t deny this.
So do I, but I see no evidence that most writers believe the phrase “traditional natural theology” is typically understood of Stoic speculation on the divine.
I don’t rely on my Latin scholarship, I rely on professional Latin scholarship. Please demonstrate that the translation “and this being we call God” is wrong.
Evidence please. You keep making ad hoc claims without substantiating them. Remember when you said this?
That was patently false, given that he actually specifically quotes a verse from the Bible. You either haven’t read this before, or you forgot about it.
Aquinas specifically uses the word deus. He doesn’t use numen, or divus, but deus. Even more specifically, he says dicimus Deum. The burden of evidence is on you to demonstrate that he really means “non-Christians”. While omnes when used in context with dicimus Deum can easily be interpreted as “all we Christians”, you have a harder task proving that dicimus Deum really refers to the one God that everyone in the world worships. This is particularly difficult given that Aquinas was aware of polytheism.
“Quarta via sumitur ex gradibus, qui in rebus inveniuntur.”, Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Editio altera Romana. (Romae: Forzani et Sodalis, 1894), I q.2 a.3 resp.
“Ergo est aliud, quod omnibus entibus est causa esse, et bonitatis, et cujuslibet perfectionis, et hoc dicimus Deum.”, Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Editio altera Romana. (Romae: Forzani et Sodalis, 1894), I q.2 a.3 resp.
“Quinta via sumitur ex gubernatione rerum:”, Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Editio altera Romana. (Romae: Forzani et Sodalis, 1894), I q.2 a.3 resp.
“Ea autem, quae non habent cognitionem, non tendunt in finem, nisi directa ab aliquo cognoscente, et intelligente, sicut sagitta a sagittante; ergo est aliquid intelligens, a quo omnes res naturales ordinantur ad finem, et hoc dicimus Deum.”, Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Editio altera Romana. (Romae: Forzani et Sodalis, 1894), I q.2 a.3 ad 1.
The force of Aquinas’ quotation from Exodus is obvious. He is identifying the God he is speaking of as the God revealed in the Bible.
“All five ways are probative for Aquinas, because all five can be understood as starting from observed sensible things in which existence is other than nature and as proceeding to existence identified with nature, which is the Judeo-Christian God as named in Exodus.”, Joseph Owens, Saint Thomas Aquinas on the Existence of God: The Collected Papers of Joseph Owens (SUNY Press, 1980), 137.
“Although the statement, which he wants to prove true, is a Scripture quote (Exodus 3,14: in the Vulgate translation Ego sum qui sum) he avoids using scriptural authority and endeavors to make his case on the basis of common reason.”, Klaus K. Klostermaier, “Vidyaranya Swami’s ‘Pañca Viveka’ and Thomas Aquinas’ ‘Quinque Viae’ in the Light of Today’s Science,” Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies 23.1 (2010), 7.
“The format of his Summa is key here. He begins each article with a question, followed by the major objections (arguments that can be answered), then an “On the contrary” that contains a supporting Biblical verse, and finally his answer and specific replies to the objections. In the case of the proofs for God St. Thomas cites the supporting verse Exodus 3:14: “I am Who am”. This is a perfect example of a faith-based answer, but one that is followed by five proofs made without falling back on religious authority.”, Heather Thornton Mcrae and James Mcrae, Revisiting Aquinas’ Proofs for the Existence of God. , ed. Robert Arp (BRILL, 2016), 33.
“In a famous instance of this causal reasoning in the early De Ente et Essentia, Aquinas calls the first cause of the act of existence, pure existence—esse tantum. Aquinas immediately recognizes it as Deus, the God of his belief.”, John F X Knasas, “PHILOSOPHY, GOD, AND AQUINAS,” Societal Studies. (2013): 36.
Note how Knasas identifies deus here as the God of Aquinas’ belief. You don’t even seem to understand why Aquinas specifically quotes Exodus 3:14 here. It’s because he identifies the Aristotelian esse tantum, as having been specifically revealed to Moses as God Himself, YHWH. For Aquinas, the esse is YHWH, and none other. He makes the same argument in Summa Contra Gentiles.
But he never says that. On the contrary, he says the God whose existence he is proving without the need for the Bible, is specifically the God in the Bible (the Bible which he even quotes). He even claims that the very esse tantum of Aristotle is specifically the ego sum qui sum of Exodus 3:14.
Which is irrelevant to your original argument. You were presenting examples of people who used natural theology to argue for a generic non-Christian deity. You presented the Stoics (who made such an argument, but this was not “traditional natural theology”), Aquinas (who actually made a specific argument for the Christian God identified in the Bible, and even quotes the Bible), and Mill. But Mill was not making an argument for God. He was not using natural theology to make an argument for any deity at all. He was citing the arguments of traditional natural theology and explaining why he thought they were weak.
Not only have you offered it, you have identified it as synonymous with what Darwin called “descent with modification”. So you don’t believe it’s “too vague”, you believe it refers specifically to “descent with modification”. You can’t even remember your own arguments, because virtually everything you write is ad hoc apologetics.
Yes, and you’ve forgotten that another phrase you’ve used is “the process of organic change over time”, which you said is synonymous with “descent with modification”.
No, that is not what you said. You said they were neutral on it, which they are not; they endorse it enthusiastically.
Why? I didn’t mention Denton, my statement was about DI. I said “while the DI claims to be open to the possibility of evolution being planned and/or guided, they constantly argue against it”. I note you were unable to dispute this with any evidence.
Complete non sequitur, and I note that you provide no evidence for this.
What nonsense. This is more ad hoc apologetics without any evidence.
Please quote all the Discovery Institute articles which argue for this form of evolutionary creationism.
Sure it is. He identifies people as creationists, who you have claimed are not creationists. He uses creationist language in ways which you claim are confusing and contrary to 100 years of popular use.
You truncated my sentence and changed its meaning. It did not say there is currently no ID theory, it said this.
You don’t seem to realise that what you are saying here is that currently there is no “ID theory” which is not either creationism dressed up as ID, or non-science.
I note you have not contested this. So you agree that ID currently only exists in these forms?
- Creationism dressed up as ID.
- Non-science.
The definition of “assert” that you quote confirms that your claim is false. You fail English 101.
If I ever encounter any “ID-Creationists,” I’ll do that. But normally I only hang out with ID people.
Then show us this “ID theory” you keep talking about. Why have you not presented us with the ID hypothesis? There was an entire thread devoted specifically to it.
Are you paying attention? I didn’t say that translation was wrong. Read again what I did say, about the varying Latin expressions used in the passage.
What, you want me to quote you the Latin phrases used in the various Five Ways paragraphs? I can do that if you don’t have a Latin text handy. But I did look up the Latin before I wrote, and what I said was correct. And I suspect that with your apparent textual resources, you can find the Latin without my help, and very quickly. But if you can’t, let me know.
Not in the argument part of the article. If you are familiar with the structure of Summa articles, you would know that the Bible reference is in another section, not the one where he makes the arguments for the existence of God. So I’m correct to say that the argument makes no reference to the Bible.
That proves nothing. The word deus in medieval Latin need have no specifically Christian reference.
I did not speak of a God that everyone in the world worships, since there are pagans who worship many gods rather than one. But where rational thought, anywhere in the world, reaches the conclusions of the first mover, the cause of order in nature, etc., it calls this cause or mover God. That is what Aquinas is trying to convey.
From the way you are grasping at quotations specifically about Thomas Aquinas, and ignoring the medieval context, I suspect you know very little about the thought background here. There is a massive body of scholarship about the intellectual predecessors of Aquinas in Islamic and Jewish thought, and their influence upon Aquinas and medieval Christian thought generally. Arguments for the existence of God had been regularly discussed in the centuries preceding Aquinas. And the generic God reached by such arguments could be identified indifferently with the Jewish or Muslim or Christian God.
Irrelevant. He is obviously not speaking of the gods of polytheism.
Not only do I not deny that, I affirm it. But it doesn’t falsify the point I’m making. Yes, Aquinas says that the God that the philosopher with no knowledge of revelation can reason to turns out to be the Lord God of the Bible. But that doesn’t change the fact that the philosopher can reason to God without ever having heard of the Lord God of the Bible. The validity of the argument is independent of the possession of Christian faith.
Your source here states what I have said. It is the general understanding of Aquinas’s arguments held by virtually every philosopher, theologian, and historian of ideas: the arguments make use of common reason and require no religious faith or Christian premises. The unaided reason can get to God. This is a commonplace of Thomistic and Medieval scholarship regarding arguments for God.
All irrelevant, for reasons given above.
Focus on the italicized words. Demonstrating the existence (or attributes) of God without reliance on revelation, that’s called “natural theology.” Aquinas provides examples of natural theology. And the point of the article is not to confirm the truth of the Bible – even if in the “on the contrary” section Aquinas acknowledges the truth of the Bible – but to show that God’s existence can be known by natural reason.
Does Aquinas locate his natural theology within the context of a book which defends Christianity? Of course. But his arguments aren’t specifically Christian. They imply that any rational person from anywhere in the world could reach the conclusion that God exists, without knowledge of the Bible or the Christian faith. And this has been the claim of natural theology all along, even if one restricts it only to Christian examples.
Then you explain why Johnson used the scare quotes.
I never said any Discovery article did so. I said that ID, as such is not against evolutionary creation, where evolutionary creation is understood as a planned or guided process. “Is not against” does not mean “endorses.” Further, your quote from Johnson confirms that I am correct; Johnson, an ID proponent, does not rail against that conception of evolution (as opposed to the Darwinian one).
Only with the use of scare quotes, which you slyly omit in your discussion here. And you still haven’t explained why he uses the scare quotes, if it’s just obvious that creationism means what you say it does. You don’t use scare quotes when you’re using a meaning that no one is likely to contest, or be puzzled by. You use them when you are drawing to attention to a use of a term which some might find unfamiliar, debatable, etc.
Combining multiple replies:
With current search engines it’s frequently easier to find the full text of a document given a long quote from it than it is to find that same text given just a reference, since the latter will often give false hits of other documents that reference the one you’re looking for. I don’t see any point wasting my time to provide you with something you shouldn’t need and which may actually hamper your search.
Searching for quotes also has the advantage that you may be able to determine whether the quoter was using the original text or some mistranscribed copy. This can be useful if the quotes are taken out of context.
While you’re right that I haven’t much training in the humanities, I’ve had a lot of experience in both citing and tracking down (pseudo-)scientific references. Given that the source is question is (supposedly) scientific, not humanist,* my scientific experience is more relevant than yours in the humanities.
So what? I’m trying to determine what Behe believes, not what he’s said, which may be two different things - especially since he’s so coy about giving straightforward accounts of his views.
Of course I am aware of the difference. But it’s irrelevant, since I’m not pointing out what Behe has said, or even the consequences thereof, but that you are wrong when you say that those passages are compatible with front-loading. They aren’t.
That it has escaped Behe’s attention that much of his argument against evolution is incompatible with front-loading is his (and your) problem. not mine.
Again, not nearly as evident or relevant as your lack of training in science and logic.
I have absolutely no objection to people who post under pseudonyms.
I don’t mind people using their qualifications to provide some authority to their arguments.
But I do object to people who want to do both. If some-one wants to remain anonymous, then their qualifications and experience become unverifiable assertions, and can be rejected as such.
Thanks. I note that Behe writes:** “Thus, if the bacterial flagellum is designed, it could be that God took a regular bacterium and miraculously “tweaked” it, or it could be that God “front-loaded” the evolutionary development of the bacterial flagellum, in a manner similar to that suggested by, say, Michael Denton. Design detection as a science cannot rule on these things; all that it can show is that Darwinian mechanisms, all by themselves, could not have produced integrated structures such as the flagellum. If there was not direct intervention (tweaking, guiding, steering, etc.) or advance planning (“front-loading”), neo-Darwinian processes would never have been able to produce all the complex varieties of living things that we see today.”
Verbatim statements from Behe** showing Behe thinks his Intelligent Designer God may have directly intervened in life on the planet, and that evolution could not have produce today’s diversity of life without God.
You can keep quibbling that Behe gives front-loading as an alternative to direct intervention, but it’s clear that Behe believes direct intervention by God during life’s history may be the answer. Given both the contradiction inherent in front-loading evolution to do something evolution supposedly can’t do, as well as his focus on features of organisms that arose late in life’s history, such as blood-clotting and malarial resistance, it almost certainly is his preferred answer, whether he expressly admits it or not.
And yes, that’s an inference. But it’s a damn good one.
*I think that looks weird and ambiguous too.
**Or at least his correspondent (who may be a convenient fiction), with Behe’s confirmation.
I’m still waiting for the direct statements in which anyone in this discussion has stated Behe has made any such direct statement. But I have no realistic expectation that you will even attempt to produce one.
As I have directly stated: In my opinion Behe has articulated no clear and coherent model or hypothesis. He just makes a number of vague, inconclusive suggestions that are internally contradictory. If he had made a direct statement endorsing a particular mechanism, this would contradict my position. So I don’t know why you are asking me to do that.
"So they’ve gone from something like, oh, $238,654.19 to $234,650 whatever dollars and maybe 84 cents. Heck, if you put that in the bank, you would certainly want more interest than that in two million years.
More interest? That investment is going down.
If the front-loading is done at the start of the universe, then not only could evolution produce all the structures Behe claims evolution couldn’t produce, but it did produce all those structures, and in fact was expressly designed to produce those structures.
If front-loading is the answer, then almost everything else Behe has written is incorrect. Behe is arguing that God’s design can’t do what it is designed to do. If Behe is right about front-loading being a possibility, then evolutionary biologists are right about the capabilities of evolution, and Behe has refuted himself.
Behe does envision that: “… it could be that God took a regular bacterium and miraculously “tweaked” it …” .
I don’t think you’ve read the articles you’re citing.
You want us to concede that Behe takes care never to unambiguously state that in his opinion God tweaks nature, probably because that would re-expose ID as being religious? I have no problem with that.
2 Likes
Gee, that sounds suspiciously like a direct statement confirming your claims regarding what Behe states.
Hopefully @Eddie will soon be along to enlighten us on how it means something completely different from what Behe’s words denote.
1 Like
You’re asking how rejecting the theory that the bacterial flagella could evolve rules out the possibility that God set up the universe so that the bacterial flagella could evolve.
(I’m getting miffed that most of the conversation happens while I’m asleep)
3 Likes
You can lead a horse to water . . .
2 Likes
The question from the interviewer gives the context.
Theistic evolution and evolutionary creationism are described as you describe them, as working through nature or possibly set up at the Big Bang. Behe views TE and EC as materialistic and naturalistic explanations in line with Darwinism, and he also views it as being the opposite of intelligent design:
" And it’s just cool too, it seems to be more modern than somebody who claims that life was designed, that a creator had to have made life."
He has natural processes on one side and design on the other.
Furthermore, he aligns TE and EC with materialism and Darwinism:
“As far as theistic evolutionists, well you can’t explain a whole broad category. But still, I think that a major factor is that they have kind of been influenced by these sociological factors too. That some of them explicitly assume that it’s illegitimate to talk about design. And you have to explain life by using only material factors, even though they believe that there’s God and that … So there’s something other than material factors that could have influenced life. Nonetheless, they bought into the assumption that you can’t consider that when trying to explain life.”
According to Behe, TE and EC are on the side of materialism in opposition to intelligent design. Behe is saying that ID doesn’t proceed through natural processes.
3 Likes