Some, who are aware of the absurdity of Darwinian macroevolution but, in the same time, dislike intelligent design (ID), believe that a third way is possible between the two, a third way able to explain the origin of living beings. Their position can be expressed in many manners, e.g.: (1) “natural substances have built-in capabilities to produce complexity” or “an intrinsic teleology is built into the universe”; (2) “cells have an internal intelligence, sort of natural internal engineering. […] Evolution by natural genetic engineering has the capacity to generate complex novelties.” (James A. Shapiro, “A Third Way”); (3)”self-assembly to produce complexes which have capabilities far beyond component pieces seems built into creation at multiple levels”. (Loren Haarsma, “Models of evolving Read More ›

Atheist and feminist blogger Greta Christina recently wrote an essay for AlterNet titled, Why You Can’t Reconcile God and Evolution, which has been re-published in Salon magazine under the title, The truth about science vs. religion: 4 reasons why intelligent design falls flat. The article was then critiqued by an agnostic called Andy Ihnatko and finally, New Atheist P. Z. Myers commented on both the article and the critique over at his science blog, Pharyngula. Although I disagree with Greta Christina on many subjects, she writes well and is generally a fair-minded person, so I thought her piece deserved a reply from the Intelligent Design community. Let’s have a look at her four reasons why God-guided evolution won’t work. Greta Read More ›

Imagine that scientists discovered the best documentary evidence for God’s existence that anyone could possibly hope for: messages in the DNA of each and every human cell, saying “Made by Yahweh.” Imagine that a notorious New Atheist and a well-known Catholic philosopher are both asked by journalists what they make of this evidence. The New Atheist shocks everyone by announcing that he now (provisionally) accepts that there is a God. “Sure, aliens might have made those messages,” he concedes. “But it’s not likely, is it? For the time being, I’m going with the hypothesis that God did it. This looks like pretty good evidence to me.” The Catholic philosopher is asked what he makes of the new discovery. To everyone’s Read More ›

In a series of recent posts, RDFish has made several penetrating criticisms of the Intelligent Design project, which can be summarized as follows: (i) the ID project does not currently possess an operational definition of “intelligence” which is genuinely informative and at the same time, suitable for use in scientific research; (ii) the explanatory filter used by the Intelligent Design community assumes that intelligence is something distinct from law and/or chance – in other words, it commits itself in advance to a belief in contra-casual libertarian free will (the view that when intelligent agents make a decision, they are always capable of acting otherwise), a view which is appealing to “common sense,” but which is highly controversial on both scientific Read More ›

In a recent post, Professor Larry Moran takes exception to a Youtube video by Intelligent Design advocate Dr. Jonathan Wells, who uses the illustration of a leaking cell to rebut scientific claims that life on Earth could have arisen naturally from non-living matter, via an unguided process. The Youtube video did not mention God. Instead, Dr. Wells began with a discussion of Stanley Miller’s 1953 experiment, which simulated the conditions thought at the time to be present on the early Earth, and which managed to produce more than 20 amino acids, as well as some sugars. Here’s the complete transcript of Dr. Wells’ video: Even if Miller’s experiment were valid, you’re still light years away from making life. It comes Read More ›

As has been noted, sometimes people come to UD looking for answers to questions about what they have been taught regarding “Evolution”; typically in the context of indoctrination under the Lewontinian ideological a priori materialism that he outlined thusly in his infamous 1997 NYRB article: [T]he problem is to get [the general public] to reject irrational and supernatural explanations [–> note the implicit bias, polarising rhetoric and refusal to address the real alternative posed by design theory, — which was already topical in those days some months after Behe’s first book on Irreducible complexity. Namely, assessing natural (= chance and/or necessity) vs ART-ificial alternative causes on empirically tested reliable signs] of the world, the demons that exist only in their Read More ›

Recently, I had the privilege of viewing Ray Comfort’s new DVD, Evolution vs. God (which can be viewed online here). The movie made for very interesting viewing, as it provided an excellent snapshot of the different worlds that Darwinists and believers in a designed cosmos inhabit. Let me begin by saying that I was greatly impressed with Ray Comfort’s 2011 pro-life movie, 180. It packed a powerful emotional punch, and it also made you think. The hypothetical question which Comfort posed to the college students he interviewed was simple but stunningly effective, in exposing the intellectual inconsistency of the pro-choice position. Unfortunately, I didn’t feel that Evolution vs. God was in the same league as 180. On an emotional level, Read More ›

In the past, Intelligent Design has been accused of being tied to a “watchmaker” model of the cosmos. In today’s post, I’m going to look at four different metaphors for the cosmos, all of which are highly relevant for Intelligent Design, and discuss their strengths and limitations. 1. Why Professor Dembski considers Paley’s watch to be a bad metaphor for the world, and why he thinks the lute is a better one Left: A Renaissance-era lute. Unlike a watch, a lute does not do anything unless a human being is playing it. For this reason, Professor William Dembski, a leading proponent of Intelligent Design, thinks that the lute is a much better metaphor for the world than a watch. Right: Read More ›

In a recent post, entitled, Was Paley a mechanist?, I argued that Paley’s argument from design in no way presupposes a mechanistic philosophy of life, and that Paley’s philosophy of Nature was much closer to that of Aristotle than is commonly supposed. In today’s post, which is a follow-up of my latest essay, Building a bridge between Scholastic philosophy and Intelligent Design, I shall attempt to lay to rest a long-standing myth: the myth that the Intelligent Design movement is tied to a mechanistic view of life. I propose to lay the evidence before my readers, and let them draw their own conclusions. 1. What is a mechanist, and why does Professor Feser think that Professor Dembski is one? Left: Read More ›

This post is written for two groups of people: first, those who don’t know much about the philosophy of Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) or the Scholastic philosophy of the Middle Ages (which was influenced by his thinking) and who would like a clear, jargon-free introduction; and second, those who would like to understand why some Thomist philosophers have a problem with Intelligent Design. As my principal aim is clarity of exposition, I have endeavored to keep this post as free from polemics as possible. It is my contention that the philosophy of the Intelligent Design movement fits squarely within the broad tradition of Scholastic philosophy. If you’d like to learn why, please read on. What prompted me to write this post Read More ›

Dr. Mohamed Noor is the Earl D. McLean Professor and Associate Chair of Biology at Duke University. His specialties include evolution, genetics and genomics. Professor Noor also runs a free online course entitled, “Introduction to Genetics and Evolution” through Coursera, which “gives interested people a very basic overview of the principles behind these very fundamental areas of biology … and tries to clarify some misconceptions.” By all accounts, Professor Noor’s exposition of evolutionary theory is admirably lucid and succinct. In the last week of his course, Dr. Noor discusses some applications and misapplications of the theory of evolution. In the final lecture, Dr. Noor puts up a Powerpoint slide claiming that Hitler believed in Intelligent Design! The text is below: Read More ›

(Part two of a series of posts in response to Zack Kopplin.) The Seven Sages, depicted in the Nuremberg Chronicle of 1493. Image courtesy of Wikipedia. Zack, in your poker challenge to Congresswoman Michele Bachmann on May 24, 2011, you declared: Congresswoman Bachmann, you claim that Nobel Laureates support creationism. Show me your hand. If you want to be taken seriously by voters while you run for President, back up your claims with facts. Can you match 43 Nobel Laureates, or do you fold? Actually, what Congresswoman Bachmann said was that “There are hundreds and hundreds of scientists, many of them holding Nobel Prizes, who believe in intelligent design.” (Bachmann-Wetterling-Binkowski candidates’ debate. October 7, 2006. Voter’s Choice Candidate Forum, sponsored Read More ›

In the Pulsars and Pauses thread, Petrushka raised a rather revealing assertion, to which MH, EA and I answered [U/d and GP just weighed in]: P: >> I find it interesting that when it seems convenient to ID, the code is digital (and subject to being assembled by incremental accumulation). But at other times the analogy switches to objects like motors that are not digitally coded and do not reproduce with variation. >> I have of course highlighted some key steps in the underlying pattern of thought: (i) design thinkers think one way or another at convenience [–> TRANS: we “cannot” happen to have either honestly arrived at views, or warrant for our views . . . ] (ii) our arguments Read More ›

UPDATE:
Professor Feser has drawn my attention to a remark he made in a recent post:

The dispute between Thomism on the one hand and Paley (and ID theory) on the other is not over whether God is in some sense the “designer” of the universe and of living things – both sides agree that He is – but rather over what exactly it means to say that He is, and in particular over the metaphysics of life and of creation.

In the interests of truthfulness and accuracy, I shall place this remark at the top of my post. I find it immensely heartening, as it means that the gap between Professors Dembski and Feser is much narrower than I had imagined. I would also like to assure Professor Feser that I have no intention of mis-representing his views, and I apologize for any implication on my part that Feser does not regard God as the designer of living things.

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I have written this post in the hope of achieving a rapprochement of sorts between the Thomistic philosopher Professor Edward Feser and the Intelligent Design movement, which Feser has criticized in his books, The Last Superstition and Aquinas, and also in his blog posts (see here for a round-up of Feser’s online writings on Intelligent Design).

To be specific: Feser has frequently accused the Intelligent Design movement of holding the same mechanistic view of life as the neo-Darwinian evolutionists whose views they criticize – a view which Feser, as an Aristotelian Thomist, rejects as radically mistaken, as it ignores the fact that a living thing possesses certain built-in goals which are wholly contained within it and which benefit it. Now, Intelligent Design proponents have a wide range of views, and I have previously argued, on several occasions, that the Intelligent Design movement is not tied to any mechanistic philosophy. Feser insists, however, that the whole case for ID, which Professor William Dembski makes in his book, The Design Revolution, is based on a faulty analogy between living organisms (such as oak trees) and human artifacts (such as ships). Feser argues that on the contrary, the teleology of an oak tree is fundamentally different from that of a ship (as indeed it is) and that therefore the analogy is a bad one (which it is not). Hence the title of this post. In this essay, I will be arguing that Feser has in fact innocently misread Professor Dembski’s views on teleology. The misreading is a pardonable one, but I would like to propose a more charitable and (I believe) more sensible construal of Dembski’s views on the subject. In particular, the point which Feser thinks Dembski was making about ships and oak trees is quite a different one from the point he was actually making. I shall also argue that a living thing’s being designed is perfectly compatible with it having built-in, goal-directed processes that terminate in and benefit the living thing itself (i.e. immanent final causation, in Aristotelian terminology).

The concession I’m seeking from Professor Feser is an acknowledgment that there is in fact nothing in Dembski’s writings that ties the Intelligent Design movement to the philosophy of mechanism, and that Professor Dembski’s writings, properly understood, are perfectly compatible with an Aristotelian-Thomistic view of what it means for something to be alive.
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